tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355Sat, 19 Dec 2009 01:25:44 +0000Anti-history is the idea that our histories are not exhausted by official History. It is a modest attempt to rethink Indian pasts and presents through alternate archives of experience and expression. It is an intimation of the many lives of every event, story, and memoryhttp://antihistory.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)Blogger257125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-7382721671374761858Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:48:00 +00002009-12-18T20:25:44.047-05:00In the culture wars in America in the 1980s, the figure of the intellectual (usually caricatured as an elitist communist academic) was pitted against the figure of the honest, everyday, God-fearing patriotic American who loved family and country, football and Apple pie, and lived by simple rules. The American right was extraordinarily successful in propagating the myth that devious intellectuals,http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/12/anti-intellectualism-in-internet-age.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-6347992335731719896Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:29:00 +00002009-12-11T11:53:49.072-05:00Tariq and Michaele Salahi's act of gatecrashing the White House dinner for the Indian prime minister shows them for the name-dropping, social climbing parvenus that they are. There is another, less obvious, Indian resonance to the event as well. For Indian society excels in producing Salahis of its own--- name-droppers, social climbers, arrivistes, parvenus, self-promoting hustlers. In any Indianhttp://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/12/name-droppers-and-social-climbers.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-7397081865982782906Mon, 07 Dec 2009 03:00:00 +00002009-12-06T22:59:15.246-05:00Dear Mr Mehta,I have long been an admirer of yours: not least because I think you are, arguably, India's finest editor but also because of your record of speaking truth to power. I think you were unfairly targeted by many Maharashtrian chauvinists, including 'progressive' intellectuals who claimed to be committed to freedom of expression, for your article on Y.B. Chavan's links with the CIA. I http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/12/open-letter-to-editor-of-outlook.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-4128959249401913364Sat, 05 Dec 2009 06:49:00 +00002009-12-05T02:04:05.473-05:00The city of New Delhi has a campaign to stop people from urinating in public. CNN reports"The city of New Delhi, which is preparing to host the Commonwealth Games in October of next year, will soon be displaying large billboards along its gridlocked roads and on buses in a bid to embarrass those who urinate in public to end the practice, said Mayor Kanwar Sain.The signs will feature three http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/12/which-ad-agency-government-dept-came-up.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-7712190625882366399Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:37:00 +00002009-12-04T18:06:35.225-05:00It is the doxa or orthodoxy of our age, to challenge which is heresy. 'Innovation' and 'entrepreneurship' are the magic pills that will solve all the world's problems: at last count, global poverty, global warming, and global hunger. Even the Israel-Palestine problem and other intractable conflicts, since, advocates of economic enterprise have it, economic development inevitably leads to http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/12/rethinking-innovation-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-6157841913612100410Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:39:00 +00002009-11-23T00:41:55.375-05:00The current isssue of GQ has a terrific article, "Barack Obama's Work in Progress" on how "Barack Obama's first and truest calling -- his desire to write" influences his presidency. Must-read.http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/11/on-barack-obamas-literary-aspirations.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-6879266712655340448Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:37:00 +00002009-11-15T19:18:16.207-05:00I have had the extraordinary good fortune of encountering one masterpiece after another in the course of recent reading and re-reading over the last few months. Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall is an absolute delight. A professor of mine in Bombay once observed that it was much harder to talk meaningfully about books that one liked than about those one found fallinghttp://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/11/must-read-books-pollock-buck-morss.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-1127703404887732075Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:36:00 +00002009-11-09T23:13:56.381-05:00Via Marginal Revolution, a wonderful interview with mathematician, Alain Connes, and another article on Russian Math from the Wall Street Journal, which, among other things, talks about the mathematician Gregory Perelman who proved the Poincare conjecture. There are many interesting insights in both texts about the sociology of knowledge. As Connes states, and as Perelman exemplifies through his http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/11/on-academic-integrity-and-autonomy.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-735042315618004263Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:12:00 +00002009-11-09T01:17:08.820-05:00Interjunction features a detailed essay, "An Indian under the Crown" by Dr Roshan G. Shahani. The essay engages with the autobiography (titled The Story of My Life) of an unfairly neglected figure whose life spanned part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a Parsi lady by the name of Dosebai Cowasjee Jessawalla. Dosebai travelled to Europe in the early twentieth century, met the kinghttp://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/11/dr-roshan-g-shahanis-essay-indian-under.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-8910599246345387383Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:41:00 +00002009-11-07T12:51:18.831-05:00A recent article about Macolm Gladwell's new book in The Guardian draws attention, among other things, to his ability to articulate big ideas: the tipping point, outliers, etc. A recent profile of Larry Summers in The New Yorker notes that Summers' influence in the field of economics has been profound but he is known for many small insights rather than for one revolutionary big idea.These http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/11/big-ideas-and-small-ideas.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-1907310358843998590Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:35:00 +00002009-11-04T15:41:42.666-05:00Sumanta Banerjee has a terrific article in the Economic and Political Weekly, "Two Parallel Narratives""The case of the Sri Ram Sene leader Pramod Muthalik, who is facing some 40 criminal cases in Karnataka, epitomises the Indian state’s pussyfooting in dealing with Hindu religious extremists, while that of the Maoist leader Kobad Ghandy typifies the same state’s trampling down on dissenters http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/11/sumanta-banerjee-s-excellent-article.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-5170992816062163172Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:15:00 +00002009-10-31T15:30:12.966-05:00More often than not, I disagree with much, if not most, of what Arundhati Roy says in her articles. Here, however, is a superb article by Roy on P. Chidambaram's "War on Maoists". Notwithstanding whatever grounds on which one might criticize Roy, there are several things that she needs to be unconditionally respected for: her courage, her insistence on speaking truth to power, and her http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/10/arundhati-roys-superb-article-on.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-1838504652469676283Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:44:00 +00002009-10-28T00:16:39.975-05:00Simple-minded and spurious reasoning from the CPI(M) head honcho. Proving why the 'progressive' Indian position that the CPI(M) for all its faults is better than the BJP or Samajwadi Party is utterly unfounded.Karat suggests that Naxalites--- who, as is well known, are Maoists--- are not a "Left trend" and not "Marxists". Here's the problem Mr Karat-- whatever you think of Mao and Maoists, it is http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/10/stalin-good-mao-bad-comrade-karat.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-1546502251378521069Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:55:00 +00002009-10-26T22:50:46.402-05:00The New York Times has another one of its stories that periodically puts the developing world in its place. This story is about the Chinese regime's undemocratic rules, specifically a rule that cars should be saluted by kids. I have no objection to the story in itself. There is no doubt a story here. And I am no fan of undemocratic policies anywhere in the world, whether India, China, or the US.http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/10/more-of-the-ny-times-double-standards.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-5557753765728662694Fri, 23 Oct 2009 03:11:00 +00002009-10-22T23:12:41.189-05:00It is a plague that afflicts popular writing about literature and the humanities-social sciences. It is seen in Indian and Western media alike, in newspaper columns, blogs, and trade books. It is often but not always those trotted out by right-wing culture warriors, and sometimes by those with one foot in the academy. I refer to the chronic grousing about the 'difficulty' of academic scholarship http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/10/in-praise-of-academic-difficulty.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-8711175936078459184Sat, 17 Oct 2009 16:22:00 +00002009-10-17T12:18:55.098-05:00Hearing media commentators refer to illegal immigrants in the context of debates about immigration reform or healthcare, I am amazed at the fact that the category of "illegals" is treated almost as if it were another species, one that is less than human--- as if they don't have possess basic human rights, or that they make no contribution to society by doing the jobs that no one less will do in http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/10/does-illegal-mean-inhuman.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-3967621191418974617Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:21:00 +00002009-10-10T12:54:01.404-05:00The reaction to Barack Obama's Nobel Prize among Indian bloggers confirms something peculiar about the strange relationship of Indians to American politics. The jokes about Obama's award circulating in the Indian blogosphere reflect an Indian tendency to deeply identify with American Republican perspectives-- these satirical pieces and jokes are picked up from many American conservative websiteshttp://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/10/mystery-indian-opposition-to-obama.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-3051879249355145281Fri, 09 Oct 2009 03:31:00 +00002009-10-09T00:07:04.926-05:00I have had the good fortune to have found three extraordinary works in the last few weeks, two of which I am still in the process of reading /re-reading. I thought I would share some general reflections on each text over three blog posts.One of these, Edward Said's landmark, Orientalism, is a text that I am familiar with, but it reads like a work encountered for the first time, sparkling as it http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/10/three-must-read-books-part-i.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-2297836032975229512Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:50:00 +00002009-10-04T21:05:20.529-05:00Tuning in to one of the local news channels some days ago, to get a sense of the weather, I found the newscasters enthralled with a really sleazy story about an affair between a priest and a stripper turned sordid. The sleaziness in the story lay solely in the hypocritical moralizing delight that the journalists were taking in the story. It was, frankly, a non-story, with nothing to recommend it http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/10/news-as-neighborhood-auntie.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-1018294199236525482Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:55:00 +00002009-10-01T22:58:07.951-05:00A true libertarian should, by definition, feel no compulsion to persuade anyone to change his or her beliefs, even if those beliefs are very critical of libertarianism. Libertarianism cannot for this reason either be a reason of state, or of a political party, or even a social movement. If a so-called libertarian philosophy is prescriptive or normative, is it even libertarianism anymore?http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/10/libertarianism-as-self-limiting.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-7304709301403006555Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:44:00 +00002009-10-01T22:55:33.967-05:00The trouble with cost-benefit calculations of any kind that involve more than one person is that the person or persons who reap the benefits are not necessarily the same as the persons who bear the costs.The writer Borges says somewhere that it makes no sense to speak of the total amount of suffering in the world because pain is not calculable. In much the same manner, one can argue that it makeshttp://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/10/on-cost-benefit-calculations-involving.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-4087560603171043194Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:18:00 +00002009-09-28T00:33:05.112-05:00Jyoti Punwani has an excellent article in The Hoot about the appalling ignorance of the Indian media when it comes to covering the Naxalite movement. The focus of Jyoti's article is the cluelessness exhibited by the Indian media in their hunt for information related to the arrest of Moaist Kobad Gandhy. Jyoti points out that the Indian media simply repeats the police line about Naxalite Maoist http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/09/ignorance-of-indian-media-indias-most.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-6479731539776702278Fri, 25 Sep 2009 23:41:00 +00002009-09-25T18:49:29.033-05:00Type in the word "attacks" on Google and the first three suggestions that appear are variations of "attacks on Indians in Australia". Not a day goes by without an Indian student, worker, or resident of Australia being attacked-- often very brutally and violently-- by Australians. And yet, some (though not all) Australian officials and politicians insist that the attacks are not indications of http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/09/attacks-on-indians-in-australia-what.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-2793234401123368277Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:10:00 +00002009-09-24T23:19:34.817-05:00There has been a lot of hype in recent times about the virtues of online learning; a triumphal narrative that is inevitably accompanied by predictions about the decline of the traditional higher education model and a listing of its faults. Here from the Chronicle of HIgher Education is a cautionary tale, about the quality of some of these online 'colleges' and 'universities'--"Unmuzzling Diploma http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/09/dog-earns-mba-online.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6750815039053669355.post-870759785695409100Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:23:00 +00002009-09-22T17:04:01.191-05:00is raised by Greg Mankiw in an Op-ed, "Why Health Care Will Never be Equal" in The New York Times where the Harvard economist talks about cost-benefit calculations in deciding which lives might be saved through healthcare. Mankiw does not take a position on how health care should be rationed out or the value of a life calculated, but suggests that such rationing is not unreasonable, even if it http://antihistory.blogspot.com/2009/09/realpolitik-argument-for-healthcare.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Rohit Chopra)1