A previous considered disowning ‘myself’, the pretense of  search for void, to be less egoistic as a new intellectual phenomena. The public face of  Gandhian humanists used this deceit of selflessness  for promise of a better  society. This void argument was targeted at specific people  for whom these concepts mattered, but was considered difficult enough. The deceit of collective selflessness was like a promise of  fast liberation. In reality, the intended, disowned peaceful void is missing. There was no such utopian reality. The reality is filled with daily maoist attacks, boisterous into bigger political parties, bigger govts hyper active on managing its subjects. Gandhian news paper helplessly write maoist attacks day in and day out, it celebrates their leaders.

The ‘ article ’  is written by a powerful  black intellectual in the USA. He is trying hard to justify a Harvard professor who was reported to deviate from the script -  “"You have no idea who you're messing with.” – he said that to a police officer. The black english professor was not disowning himself, he was not pretending the deceit of a collective larger goal, the black professor managed to speak the truth that he was powerful. The disowning oneself is not as popular in USA, it is popular among intellectual power elite as powerful argument to fix communal responsibility, and hence the defense.

The interesting observation is that the article doesn’t do much to justify itself, but for in a place where ‘arrogance’ is not  such a central word of the cosmos as immorality would be. Mr Robinson observes the power structure, who has, who hasn’t, the institutions and celebrities ….”But for the sake of argument, let's assume that Crowley's version of the incident is true -- that Gates, from the outset, was accusatory, aggressive and even obnoxious, addressing the officer with an air of highhanded superiority. Let's assume he really recited the Big Cheese mantra: "You have no idea who you're messing with. …. I can attest that meeting a famous Harvard professor who happens to be arrogant is like meeting a famous basketball player who happens to be tall. It's not exactly a surprise."

The point is most of the deceit of transcendental, organizational collectives, build to last towards utopia could as well be  …deceit. The void will not come. The deceit would have disowned the lighter and relatively selfless only.

• This was a slogan in a medical palmlet, posted in a clinic. The poster was celebrating mothers. Safely it was visualized in a place where god is an extra terrestrial  male.
• Navneet notebooks are readily available in this part of India, in the stationary shop for school kids, bit costly but okay quality. Its cover paper has race mobikes  and cars, with  half a page of its description The bikes include Suzuki Hayabusa, Hoonda etc. The description is from an American website, it  celebrates American innovation. I am not sure how it is useful for the Indian school kids .

      Together it means decline of original thoughts, expression. It means a big copycat and efficient machine churning out information for profit.

• Manmath Nath Das died today. He was a vice chancellor in the then biggest university of the state. I grew up remembering these names as symbols of everything good about modernity, education and so on…Dr Das was a historian. When congress party was made to revive by unseen forces using the Aryan/Dravidian ideas to divide people, Dr Das joined the congress party as a nominated MP. That was quite a big disappointment. The very idea of light was acting dark, supposedly nationalist, Gandhian and humanist had lost voice to write a single article criticizing the racial formulation that became so important again in 2000s.

       Manmath Nath Das was no symbol. History is it was  a stale subject, filled with gossip, with least appreciation of either arts or science. He had got a position by acting agent of a copycat and efficient machine –  that supported or colluded for racial construction of India.  The power structure had made these people vice chancellors and MPs. Today local news paper(samaj) mentions that he made history interesting.  Me thinks Dr Das missed one article in Samaj, to make the weakest attempt to extricate India out of the colonial story.

     The power and glory of modern India that Dr Das seeked  is no more with this former vice Chancellor and former Member of Parliament.

That is a benign headline, Considering the contents of the article, it could as well be titled “economics Fanaticism”, “ blind belief of economists” , “ the economic bureaucracy” or quite simply “principles of economics”.  Summary of the article :

• It introduces Ferguson, an economist of Harvard, who has authored an interesting  book The Ascent of Money .
• partisan recriminations: "Free-market ideology" is a standard scapegoat of current economists, though it masks the fundamental ignorance.
• so was the subsequent invention of finance -- the saving and investing of money – The saving of the money was considered a different subject both with implication for progress and instability.
• finance occupies a peripheral position in mainstream economics. It's studied by a subset of economists, and financial markets -- their ups, downs and side effects -- are not considered big sources of economic expansions and slumps. Economists tend to focus directly on the spending of consumers, businesses and government. It was also widely assumed that deposit insurance and the existence of the Federal Reserve would prevent financial panics.

       That is economists don’t understand finance. It is a simple yet revealing thought!

        I can add that Amartya Sens of the world were  indulged in a lot of  cheap colonial  politics for euro-national socialists, and somehow manage awards by white men, and earn godly status in “developing” countries inhibited by less civilized, half converted ones– all in name of economics. It was kind of scary to read the  way Sen applies linier algebra after  tossing  poor people into “sets” [ collectives] , it was from here that he has managed to write on democracy etc. I am pretty sure,  A power plant boiler plate would burst, if finite elements are tossed in to a set and linier algebra is applied to solve the induced stress.

    Very interesting paragraph to understand the economists :Overshadowing the misunderstanding of finance is a larger mistake: ignoring history. By and large, most economists don't care much about history. Introductory college textbooks spend little, if any, time exploring business cycles of the 19th century. The emphasis is on "principles of economics" (the title of many basic texts), as if most endure forever. Economists focused on constructing elegant, mathematical models. "For years theorists held the intellectual high ground," writes economic historian Barry Eichengreen of the University of California at Berkeley. "They were the high-prestige members of the profession."

  I would say, it is not that they don’t care much about history, it is that they think they know principles of history, which they presume as predictive and ***. Amartya Sen is quite comfortable at idea predictive history, he never objected to racial analysis of Bharat, in fact he was comfortable with marxist and colonial analysis where categories of class, race  operated as objects in the presumed principles of history.

Egoism – is a word of contemporary use, it means about “my self’. It had a central , inescable and different use in Bharat, where the purpose was not to search void, talking points not necessarily designed to disown “myself”. While search of void in modern times, disowned “myself” superficially and without any understanding, the liberation theology extended to colonial places has a niche place. Here, “myself” is celebrated when it added to victimhood. It was repeated that a hungry man need not worry about god , morality, metaphysics or  in general stuff other than food. Hungry man is a “victim”. Even Gandhi gave this comparison.  It was humane to sympathize with  talk of “myness” of victims. Victims are less than liberated. If one is a victim, then he was held to lesser “moral” standards of disowning. The idea was that, Once they were fed by the state schemes, they could be led to egalitarism, utopian voidness.

•      Iyer, Iyengar, Iyenagar are there levels of ego, one of my Brahmin friends used to quote to deride the egoistic Brahmins . It was in Tamilnadu  when the selfish, dictatorial Dravidian politicians took over, though in good talks tamil own of Ramanujam, Subramanium **** .
•    “Hindus are arrogant” – This was the justification when the hindus were driven out of Bangladesh.
•       Events in far off places have contemporary resonance too, one of my well read, analytically leftist, intellectual  friend  sways frequently to logic of  “Brahminical arrogance”, though he has no personal complains on it, except some professional issues with his liberal  boss.
•   Kashmir terrorism where lakhs of  pundits were driven out was a initially a case of Victims of Jagmohan and Victims of financial neglect from Indian state. Most  Intellectuals ( including marxist, Gandhian and islamic)  fought hard to avoid giving it a political color.
•   When the maoists were portrayed as a spontaneous agitation, the Gandhians and intellectuals remained silent on the external co-ordination, arms smuggling, massive intellectual and media support. Maoists were not judged on violence they perpetrated,  merely because they didn’t stake claim on morality.The Revolutionaries could wear the “myness” because  they were victims. Last year, there has been a news headline almost on everyday on maoists in the local newspapers. Probably the Gandhians and intellectuals will compromise and do a “peace deal” with those people some day with distribution of welfare money. There is also a good chance that the maoists drive away the Gandhian and intellectual pretense, and establish rule of permanent victimhood.

It looks at all these places modern intellectual was trying out “morality”. This trial has been destructive, it has only produced fake Mahatmas.

welfare economics  is an influential subject for determining the economic victims.

From the empty space,

beyond, far beyond the clarity of space, the heat fields,

perhaps from hazy clouds, perhaps unknown cold regions ,

emerges a ray of force,

unhindered it travelled the universe,

to act on its master in matter,

its master was attacked by man, by manly force,

the force of the universe collided with power of the man,

the power of the man has bonded force, even through nukes and magnetism,

the power of the man was intellectualism, or may be modern logic…

or whoever  said what it is ,

The  man emerged victorious  in moving matter,

then human  societies celebrated humbling of force,

force apparently retreated and  unsung in next pop album.

     -*-

      -* Couple of vague  lines on two characters :- face and belly *-

1-

A mud face hanging from nicotine gum inserted into the mouth,

Hanging in the surface, it looked  deep,

its belly was dissolved away in last flood.

2- A Belly was floating around,

Its mouth was chewing gum and looking around.

There was a day when the west traded slaves,imperial powers had  scanty concept for the people of world, unless it was there to be stolen and appropriated. A lot of Philosophical activity about the colonial subjects was about measuring the skull sizes of colonies to measure humans, or targeting to break down societies. A lot of education in colonies involved helping subject to contempt themselves, conversion to using a better European language, conversion to only religion(s) and civilized culture.

British authors have assumed how it was destined to be colonized – often described as burden of civilization. They have measured human specimens from the length of the country to find the human values . Yet the Indians were not convinced, the caricature of colonial superiority was no less funny in many local usages. In search for a coherent onslaught, the colonial scholarship has pushed the existence of lot of Bharat  to margins, has brought on the void and denial into the existence. Of few things that Max Mueller liked, one was Sanskrit verse about a lot of non existence.   Post 2000, many have re-interpreted Budha in terms of nothingness as a denial.

  It  is as if this denial is developing to a new logic. “Farewell to an India” – This is not the India where medieval European philosophers found concept of freedom of mind, some found Brahmins spending their life in quest to question their mind. In NY Times article,  Author Giridhar Das bids farewell to to something he “Hardly knew”, the void, the unknown comes off as so dear and  beloved to the author,  it deserved a farewell !

My thoughts are “ not again” !

                                          -0-

“The first thing I ever learned about India was that my parents had chosen to leave it.” , Giridhar Das, on his introduction to an unknown country..

“It was wrong, yet easy, to feel that we did India a favor by coming home.” – Giridhar feels doing a favor by coming “home” – Home ?

Giridhar an American, among others “because I felt that to say otherwise would be to accept a lower berth in the world”.

Yet it was “It was the chauvinism of uncles who asked about my dreams and ignored my sister’s.” .

                                       -0-

For Giridhar, “What it meant to be American was to be free to invent yourself, to belong to a family and a society in which destiny was believed to be human-made.” – Presumably that explains why  some are aghast at  GW Bush, often described  to have looked to higher something for deciding Democracy in Iraq.

“I looked around in India and saw everyone in their boxes, not coming fully into their own, replicating lives lived before”…Like “, so-and-sos’ marriage would be more like my parents’, with verve and swing-dancing lessons and bedtime crossword puzzles; so-and-so would study history and literature, not just bankable practicalities..” . Like ?

                      The englishmen of 19th century also wished so, for historical studies they collected the Indian specimens – including from Bengal, using the colonial understanding of 19th century, they prepared a pyre through a racial story,  called the Indian history,  then they threw the Indian manuscripts   into that fire of racial analysis. In addition to history,  Indians were often  expected to conform to dress complete with neckties, like it is snowy day in the middle of Indian summer . The blue  berries and  straw berries …  just across the pine woods  in sun bathed northern fields  is vividly described in literature. It would be considered  success of literature,if young Indians to identify more with berries, pine trees rather than  the mango trees and the ever present rice plants. India was expected to appreciate “literature”, long before that thought came to Giridhar. It did  before West would appreciate comparative trivialities such as “Power Yoga”, vegetarianism ,  Deepak Chopra etc on pyres of revolutions and burnt and defiled societies in India. It did so, when west appreciated  the idea of   Free mind, India appreciated ossified sahibs supporting free revolutions.

   In 19th century, ships in their onward journeys carried boxes of civilization arrogance, in its return journey it carried back spice and money. The civilization arrogance captured and collected Indian specimens, it measured their nose and skull sizes to determine their character and civilization standard. Sometimes, as in case of MaxMueller, it found indirect ways to achieve this result – the linguistic analysis they had learned from India with fail grades. They all saw a deformed nothingness, however The Nothingness that MaxMueller managed to appreciate in India was rather cosmological philosophy, the nothingness that the anglicized brown sahibs later repeated  is not so subtle , Giridhar describes it well:- “The first thing I ever learned about India was that my parents had chosen to leave it.” .

That certain trotsky is the real communism, daily violence, national suffocation are mere aberrations is as lame an argument as it could be. The trotskites however seemed to own that argument in 21st century leading to daily maoist violence in places like India. Another lame argument, but quite misleading is another such argument posted in a comment in an Am forum:

It amazes me that the Republican/Conservative movement continues to portray socialism as a political system. It is in fact an economic system, which has no bearing upon the governnment's exercise of its power over its citizens. Russia, China, Cuba, etal were dangerous because they were dictatorships (a political sytem)and the persons in charge used police and military power to maintain their grip on power. Only coincidentally were they also socialist or communist countries (an economic system). Denmark, Sweden, and to greater or lesser degrees, all western democracies are socialist economies but we continue to have democratic forms of government.

 It is true that socialist economists were considered intellectuals and higher mortals for their scientific pretense of socialism, less political compared to the maoist  party machine . The distribution economics however operated to serve a political system, patronized by such system. The socialist organization looks state as a feeder organization, or its duties extending to more aspects of family or individual life. They call the dependence of people on a massive organizational structure as equality, top leftist economic professors have surmised this could be conflicting with ‘democracy’.

The socialism is not separate from political doctrines and process. In fact, many its economic presumptions are shaky at best, it can be knocked off or compartmentalized if the political component, community or cader organizing go missing.