Category Archives: History

A history of European vegetarianism

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I know that many SM readers like to partake in one particular cross-border skirmish we seem to have a lot here. You know the one of which I speak, right? It’s the herbivores vs. the carnivores (although technically we are all omnivores). Well, to throw a little fuel on to that fire I submit to you this book review over at Slate.com.. The book is titled “Bloodless Revolution” and is meant to be a sort of “history of European vegetarianism.” I haven’t read the book but the review was quite insightful. First the background on the book:

Here’s the story as he tells it in The Bloodless Revolution: In the 17th century, a fundamental question about the relationship between ourselves and the other creatures of the earth broke out into passionate debate, a debate that swooped over and around and through the culture, rattling long-held European assumptions about the very nature of life. There was no single word adequate to capture the ideas that were bursting forth, until the term vegetarian emerged in the middle of the 19th century. And with that, the battle was over–not because meat-eating came to an end but because European culture made a home for this challenge to dietary norms, giving it a local habitation and a name. Whether or not this constituted a victory for animal-lovers is hard to say. As Stuart points out early on, when the concept of vegetarianism became domesticated, it turned into “a distinct movement that could easily be pigeon-holed, and ignored.” But people did start thinking differently about animals, human responsibilities, and the rights of living creatures, albeit rarely to the extreme sought by such groups as PETA. Stuart sums it up well: Nowadays, he says, “negotiating compassion with the desire to eat is customary…” [Link]

The critic contends, however, that vegetarianism from a European perspective isn’t so much something they accept as a way of life but is rather a philosophy to be practiced off an on:

If vegetarianism has settled comfortably into Western culture by now, it’s because the term vegetarian has become so vast and shapeless that it describes just about everybody who isn’t on the Atkins diet. To be sure, there are vegetarians who avoid all animal food. But most are willing to eat eggs, and many eat fish. Chicken is fine with some because hey, it isn’t beef. Hamburgers? Absolutely not–or maybe just once in a while. And turkey because it’s Thanksgiving, ham because it’s Easter, pepperoni because it’s pizza–what on earth is a vegetarian, anyway? No wonder Stuart never tries to define the term. A huge, wonderfully entertaining cast of dietary rebels parades through his chapters, but all we really know about the eating habits of these pagans, scientists, doctors, scholars, theologians, writers, philosophers, and crackpots is that most of them ate meat. [Link]
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Our Foremost Political Philosopher

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dineshbook.jpg“The worst nonfiction book about terrorism published by a major house since 9/11” is what Warren Bass, senior books editor at the Washington Post (and, the byline notes, a former staff member of the 9/11 Commission), calls the latest from desi Talking Android nonpareil Dinesh D’Souza. The book is called THE ENEMY AT HOME: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, a title that begs little further explication. Indeed, Bass points out at the end of a sharp review that’s less blustering and more cutting than that of Alan Wolfe in the New York Times, the whole exercise of D’Souza’s book seems so plainly intended to cause a kerfuffle in the blogosphere that I feel tawdry even bringing it up here, despite the Desi Angle (TM). As Bass notes:

Either D’Souza is blaming liberals for 9/11 because he truly believes that they’re culpable, or he’s blaming liberals for 9/11 because he’s cynically calculating that an incendiary polemic will sell books. I just don’t know which is scarier. One has to wonder why his publisher, agent, editors and publicists went along for the ride, and it’s hard not to conclude that they thought the thing would cause a cable-news and blogosphere sensation that would spike sales — a ruckus triggered not despite the book’s silliness but because of it. This sort of scam has worked before (think of Christopher Hitchens’s gleeful broadside against Mother Teresa or the calculated slurs of Ann Coulter), but rarely has the gap between the seriousness of the issues and the quality of the book yawned as wide. This time, let’s just not bother with the flap; this dim, dishonorable book isn’t worth it.

And perhaps, indeed, it isn’t. Still, as the rituals of the publishing biz dictate, Brother D’Souza has been getting his publicity on since the book’s release last week. Yesterday he had an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle that begins with a piece of logical reasoning that might have done Descartes proud:

The Pelosi Democrats sometimes appear to be just as eager as Osama bin Laden for President Bush to lose his war on terror. Why do I say this? Because if the Pelosi Democrats were seeking Bush’s success, then their rhetoric and actions now and over the past three years are pretty much incomprehensible. By contrast, if you presume that they want Bush’s war on terror to fail, then their words and behavior make perfect sense.

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One Indian’s Kenyan Nationalism

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If you are looking for an alternative take on Kenya’s Indian community, speak to Zahid Rajan, editor of Awaaz, a magazine focusing on historical, political, and cultural issues in the South Asian community in East Africa. The local Indian community traces its roots to the late nineteenth century laborers imported by the British to build the Uganda Railway and grow sugarcane and to the generations of traders who settled along the Indian Ocean coast in Mombasa, Dar es Salaam, and other port towns. The Indian community quickly prospered and became managers instead of laborers (the current issue of Awaaz has a great article on the cultural dynamics that promoted their rapid success). In short order, Indians built businesses, hired black Kenyans to do the work, and banked their considerable profits.

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Today, the community in Kenya is perceived, not without justification, as wealthy and aloof. Rajan is critical of what he sees as the community’s lack of engagement with Kenya’s many challenges. ““The South Asian diaspora in Kenya is completely nonpolitical,”” he says. ““It stays behind its security fences in [the Nairobi suburb of] Parklands.””

Historically, Indians were engaged at all levels, leading labor unions, participating in the struggle against British colonialism, and building schools and hospitals, but that civic drive was sapped somewhere along the way.

Rajan attributes the Indian withdrawal from politics to three factors: the “Kenyanization” programs of the late 1960s that redistributed land, awarded contracts and licenses and reserved government jobs for black Africans; Idi Amin’s expulsion of Asians from Uganda in 1972; and a failed coup attempt against Kenya’s president, Daniel arap Moi, in 1982. Fighting during that conflict resulted in significant destruction in downtown Nairobi, where many Indians ran businesses.

“”I know Indians who have never been back to the city center,”” he says. Continue reading →

To the Mountaintop

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I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment [December 1964] when twenty-two million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award in behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice.

I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeing to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. And only yesterday more than 40 houses of worship in the State of Mississippi alone were bombed or burned because they offered a sanctuary to those who would not accept segregation. …

After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time — the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.

Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.

— Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, December 10, 1964 Continue reading →

The Myth of “Martial Races”

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Gurkha.jpg Though I’ve always been proud of the Sikh tradition in military service — particularly in the First and Second World Wars — the fact that the British Raj designated certain ethno-religious groups as martial races makes me uneasy. And recently I’ve been reading a book on the Gurkha regiments, (Byron Farwell’s The Gurkhas), and after reading a number of chapters I’m ready to throw out the designation entirely.

For those who are unfamiliar, the Gurkhas (or Gorkhas) come from a region of Nepal west of Kathmandu, and have been actively recruited by the British for service as mercenaries since 1815. It so happened that the British discovered the Gurkhas’ military aptitude after defeating them in a series of particularly tough battles — just as they did with the Sikhs, the Marathas, and indeed, the Zulus (all of whom would be designated “martial races”; see the full list here). Often, troops from one recently conquered region would be instrumental in defeating the next group (the Gurkhas were deployed in the Anglo-Sikh Wars, for instance).

As a side-note, though most Gurkha regiments joined the Indian army at independence, the British did retain a small number of Gurkhas for the British Army after 1947 — and they still actively recruit them today (on a fully voluntary basis, of course). Gurkhas were deployed in the Falklands’ War, in Kosovo, and are now in Afghanistan. Retired Gurkhas are also probably going to be deployed to monitor the fragile peace agreement between the Maoists and the new government of Nepal. Joining the Gurkha regiments in the British Army is considered desirable, but it’s a tough gig to get: one of the physical tests in order to be accepted involves running uphill for 40 minutes with a 70 pound bag of stones strapped to your back!

The author of the book on the Gurkhas is mainly a military historian, not an anthropologist, so it’s probably too much to expect to ask him to deconstruct the idea of “martial races.” But it’s extremely frustrating that in episode after episode Farwell seems to reiterate a few straightforward stereotypes as explaining the Gurkhas’ effectiveness in battle on behalf of the British: they are simple peasants, they are hardened by life in a mountainous region, and they have a strong sense of cultural identity. The same could be said of many other ethnic groups, most of whom were not designated “martial races.” So why the Gurkhas?

It seems hard to escape the conclusion that “martial race” is a convenient term created by the British to continue military recruiting patterns favorable to the progress of imperial expansionism. Continue reading →

Absolute Borders: Partition, Pluralism, and Nationalism

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Via Desipundit, I caught a link to a post by Qalandar on a recent article in the Calcutta Telegraph by Mukul Kesavan.

For those who don’t know, Mukul Kesavan is a pretty accomplished writer — the author of Looking Through Glass, and an interesting little monograph that came out a few years ago, called Secular Common-Sense.

His latest column is about the lingering consequences of the experience of Partition on the thinking of the Indian government regarding its borders. Kesavan is pointing to a kind of paradox in the constitution of the Indian state — it was founded on a principle of pluralism across religious, linguistic, ethnic, and caste differences. But once it was defined as such and those borders were consecrated, if you will, in blood during the Partition, the possibility of allowing one or another territory to secede on the basis of ethnic or religious difference became an impossibility. If you do that, the whole justification for holding the rest of the country together could potentially collapse.

Qalandar raises some questions about the rhetorical stance taken by Kesavan in his piece, and Mukul Kesavan himself actually shows up in the comments to clarify some things. In fact, it’s in the comments to the post that he gives what might be the clearest account of his position:

Pakistan claims Kashmir because as a Muslim state carved out of British India it thinks it has a right to Kashmir as a Muslim majority province. Israel, as a Jewish state, wants to annex large settler blocs of Jews on the West Bank to Israel and in return would be happy to give away bits of Israel that have concentrations of Arabs. Other nations dispute or defend territory on the ground of language. Indian nationalism refused the temptation of a single collective identity; as a result, the republic it created had no way of discriminating between borders that were negotiable and those that were written in stone. Not only were its borders were colonial and therefore arbitrary, being an ideologically pluralist state it couldn’t claim or trade away disputed borderlands going by the nature of the populations settled there. So it decided that every inch of its border was sacred and what it had, it held. (link)

It’s an interesting thesis — one could argue that it might not hold in the case of India’s claims to the Kashmir valley (too much strategic and symbolic value to ever think of letting go). But the northeastern provinces, where secessionism abounds, seem more marginal. And just to reiterate in case anyone misses it: Kesavan isn’t saying that India should just let go of any territory (indeed, he comes out pretty clearly as saying it shouldn’t). Rather, Kesavan is trying to explain why India has held on — and will continue to hold on — so tenaciously.

There’s more to it, but I think I’ll leave it to readers to explore some of the other interesting points made in this discussion, by Qalandar, Mukul Kesavan, and Nitin Pai. Continue reading →

Friedman on India

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It should be no surprise to most here that I’m a strident fan of Milton Friedman and that his passing was quite a bit more than a garden variety celeb obit for me. While I’m a geek of rather high proportions, there are quite a few of us for whom the loss left an almost personal hollowness.

“The current danger is that India will stretch into centuries what took other countries only decades” – Milton Friedman, 1963Because he called San Francisco home, I actually had the honor of seeing Uncle Milt speak in person about 2 years ago at a benefit gala for a thinktank I’m a contributor to.

And earlier this spring, I had another opportunity to see Milton & Rose Friedman in person at the unveiling of a PBS documentary on his life and times. At the time, I implored several friends to join me with the argument that “at 94, homey ain’t gonna be around too much longer – see him while you can.” Unfortunately, a bout of flu kept Friedman from joining us that evening (Rose did, however make it) and alas, my words were sadly prophetic.

Interestingly, at that event, Gary Becker was on tap for Milton & Rose’s intro. In nearly any other context, Becker’s own Nobel Prize would have garnered him a headline act. But given Friedman’s ginormous stature, Becker’s intro speech was instead somewhat rudely met with idle chatter from the back of the banquet hall. You’d think scoring a Nobel prize would earn a little more respect – apparently not so when you’re between an audience and the Friedman’s.

‘Tis the curse of the passage of a generation that we take for granted previous, hard fought accomplishments – both material and intellectual. In its extreme, we just assume that he world we see around us had to be rather than recgonize the role of volition, creativity, and intellectual accomplishment which enabled it to be.

In Friedman, India, and recent economic history, we see all this wrapped up in a neat tidy little package. So much that seems obvious now was contrarian then. And so many of the arguments we use to excuse and ignore the outcome of disastrous policy was plainly predicted and evident decades ago.

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A Farewell to Doffing & Doffing About

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Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen has a (p)review of Gregory Clark’s “A Farewall to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World” in today’s NYT.

It takes 3 men to replace one good woman?

Unfortunately, the book isn’t available quite yet but, interestingly, the full manuscript is available on the web (not anymore!)

Clark follows in the footsteps of recent mass market developmental econ books such as Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer-winning Guns, Germs and Steel and William Easterly’s The Elusive Quest for Growth. All three attempt to tease apart resources, institutions, culture, money, colonialism, and the like in trying to answer the age old question of why some nations are rich and others are poor.

Clark comes down firmly in favor of culture while using the somewhat oblique, econ-centric term “Quality of Labor”. The example Cowen chooses to excerpt in his NYT review comes from India –

…A simple example from Professor Clark shows the importance of labor in economic development. As early as the 19th century, textile factories in the West and in India had essentially the same machinery, and it was not hard to transport the final product. Yet the difference in cultures could be seen on the factory floor. Although Indian labor costs were many times lower, Indian labor was far less efficient at many basic tasks.

For instance, when it came to “doffing” (periodically removing spindles of yarn from machines), American workers were often six or more times as productive as their Indian counterparts, according to measures from the early to mid-20th century. Importing Western managers did not in general narrow these gaps. As a result, India failed to attract comparable capital investment.

Contrary to the “race to the bottom” thesis, Clark argues that the real driver of globalization is interconnectedness amongst others who’ve mastered the strange calculus of economic growth rather than simple exploitation of the poorest –

Professor Clark’s argument implies that the current outsourcing trend is a small blip in a larger historical pattern of diverging productivity and living standards across nations. Wealthy countries face the most serious competitive challenges from other wealthy regions, or from nations on the cusp of development, and not from places with the lowest wages. Shortages of quality labor, for instance, are already holding back India in international competition.
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50 Years after Ambedkar’s Conversion

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ambedkarpics.jpgFifty years ago, on October 14, 1956 — and a mere two months before his death — Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the scholar and political leader who was principally responsible for the drafting of India’s Constitution, converted to Buddhism in a public ceremony in Nagpur. Somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000 of his Dalit followers — the accounts vary — embraced Buddhism in the immediate wake of his conversion. For Dr. Ambedkar, nothing in his long, distinguished career could convince him that the socio-cultural dynamics of Hinduism would ever offer Dalits a way out of “untouchability,” disenfranchisement, poverty and social stigma.

Each year on October 14, conversion ceremonies take place at which Dalits embrace Buddhism or Christianity. This year they have extra poignance, not only because it is the 50th anniversary of Ambedkar’s act, but also because several states ruled by the BJP have recently adopted or strengthened laws limiting conversion. On top of all this, a principal follower of Ambedkar, Kanshi Ram, who founded the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) which is the main political vehicle for the Dalit movement now, passed away earlier this month.

From accounts in the press so far, there were major conversion ceremonies today in Nagpur and also in Gulbarga in Karnataka:

Hundreds of Dalits on Saturday embraced Buddhism and Christianity at a mass conversion programme in Nagpur, in which copies of Gujarat government’s anti-conversion bill were also put to fire.

The mass conversion, organised by the All India Conference of SC/ST Organisations and the All India Christian Council on the occasion of World Religious Freedom Day, was attended by Dalits from Orissa, Karnataka and Gujarat states, organisers said.

The conversion of Dalits to Buddhism was performed by priests, while a group of Christian pastors from the Council led by President Dr Joseph D’Souza baptised the Dalits. [Link]
GULBARGA (Karnataka): More than 3,000 Dalits on Saturday embraced Buddhism at an impressive ceremony here on Saturday, synchronising with the golden jubilee of Dr B R Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism.

Marking the change of faith, the Dalits were administered the oath by Bante Bodhi Dhama, a Buddhist monk from Japan.

Preceding the ceremony, “Buddha Dharma Deeksha Pratigne”, a huge procession led by more than 500 monks, was taken out through the city streets. [Link]

There are some very interesting present-day political angles here, not least the controversy over the anti-conversion laws, and the fact that the leader of the BSP, Mayawati, the former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, has said she will not convert to Buddhism yet. She said this at today’s Nagpur rally, while announcing that Kanshi Ram’s funeral rites were performed in the Buddhist tradition, even though he had not converted; and while expressing her hope that Buddhism would spread further among Dalits. The mixed message clearly reflects the political complexity of the Dalit leadership’s position.

In the larger historical frame, perusing the day’s news and doing a little background research reminds me how shamefully little I know about Dr. Ambedkar’s story, let alone more obscure yet significant figures like Kanshi Ram. I hope that comments and debate on this post will help me, and surely others, remedy this lacuna. Continue reading →

Leave the gun. Take the wattalapam.

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I like to keep track of the various industries where desis are making an impact, especially in New York City. When I was growing up, almost all the news stands were owned by Bangladeshis. Later, Punjabis became a major presence in taxi cabs in the city and gas stations in the suburbs. But the one I missed along the way had to do with Sri Lankans and porn stores [hat tip Manish].

In 1999, Tunku Varadarajan wrote an article for the NYT about Gujarati motel owners that contained the following throwaway line:

Sri Lankans, in case you didn’t know this, run most porn-video stores… [Link]

I did some digging, and the best estimates I could find show only a 10% ownership of the video smut business (I’m not entirely sure that these figures describe the same period as Varadarajan’s article, and they may be low since they came from within the Sri Lankan community). Still, no matter what the numbers, it’s a fascinating history.

The story starts, as all good New York City stories start, with the Mafia. La Cosa Nostra had dominated New York’s red light businesses for a number of decades but finally found their dominance undone by new technology:

Video’s emergence in the ’80s changed the Mafia’s porn role. No longer could the mob dominate distribution by simply running adult theaters and peep shows. Gotti and Basciano allowed businessmen without ties to the Mafia to move into retail stores. Immigrant entrepreneurs, particularly from Israel and Sri Lanka, multiplied X-rated video shops in New York neighborhoods from Greenwhich Village to Queens.

“The days of Mob influence are gone,” claimed a Sri Lankan businessman. “There’s no money in the business for them. Tapes used to be $100 each. Now they’re selling for $3:99.” [Link]

Confusingly, the same source also tells an alternate story, one where Sri Lankans entered the business earlier, working with the Mafia at first:

Sri Lankans worked for the Mafia through the 1980s and moved into ownership when the Mafia left. [Link]

This generates a great image in my mind, almost Benneton-like in its pluralism, of Sicilian and Sri Lankan mobsters working side by side to bring smut to the city that never sleeps. If this is true, a lot of hollywood dialogue needs to be rewritten and desi actors will start to complain that they only get roles as doctors, terrorists or gangsters. Sri Lankan script doctors will have to be hired to write lines like this:

“Leave the gun. Take the cannoli wattalapam .”

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