Two Music Live Shows in March

Both of the musical personalities written below experiment with concepts. Both are considered as extraordinary pioneers in their own musical milieu. I had the privilege to watch them in the same month and I thought it would be a really cool post to write about them together. 

3/15 Xi Ban (戏班) at Kulturpalast, Hannover, Germany

I was delighted to learn that the band Xiban, which means "Theater Troupe," toured in seven cities in Germany starting in March. As students with semester tickets, we had two options to travel without cost: Braunschweig or Hannover. The train left earlier on Saturdays in Braunschweig than Hannover on Sundays, so we opted for the Hannover show. I joked to my companion Maaz that in China, "Kulturpalast" or wenhua gong (文化宫) was an actual place in cities where privileged young children would go for their weekend art activities. The venue was intimate and some audiences were standing by the bar, while others opting for a closer look sat around the stage. We sat against the wall and were duly impressed. Maaz compared the band's traditional styles to qawwali folk songs that he loves.

Xiban  is a really mind-blowing band in the way that they experiment with elements from the South Asian sitar, jazz,  and a lot of folk instruments and oral traditions from China. Their fusion does not aim to entertain and display the exotic with superficial crossovers, but to alarm and shock with the transgressive potentials of sound. I only learned about them in February, and I I did not know much about traditional Chinese instruments, such as the different "luo" and drums used in Xiban's double albums.  It was a musical education to see the different instruments in action, something more than what I expected of a live show. The lead singer Zooma has stated in Chinese interviews that he would like to see more people using Chinese instruments and hopes to revive that part of the culture by introducing it to a new context. 

A type of luo; though Xiban uses hands rather than the sticks to drum on it

As a northerner by speech style, I was really amazed to learn that the lead singer Zooma 竹玛 was from Shanghai, because he mastered the northern style of singing very well. My favorite song is sung in a northern style--Counting People for Fun. His multi-linguistic ability also helped him perform songs in southern languages as well. I was most impressed by Li Xing's sitar-playing with his guitar in the last song, 藏相守. I even asked where he had learned it, and he said in China, from an American born Chinese guitarist called Gu Zhongshan (Lawrence Ku). 

Music and film critic Mengjin Sun, a very active figure in the Shanghai jazz circle, also put on his own improvisation that night, although that was less musical and less agreeable for the ear... The band toured for their album 《太平有象》 & 《五石散》. You can listen to some tracks here.

3/21 Vijay Iyer Trio at Bergamo Jazz Festival, Italy

This was the first live show I went to alone in Europe, first jazz performance I ever attended, and first time ever traveling to Italy. I was understandably nervous about whether or not I would be able to procure the ticket. Luckily I got one and there were many seats close to the front rows when I entered.

I heard about pianist and composer Vijay Iyer first through Heems (Himanshu Suri), a rapper vocal about his South Asian identity. I had no clear understanding of jazz at the time and I was intrigued by the possibilities of collaboration between rap and jazz. Even though I had not seen the Open City performance, I have been more on the lookout for opportunities of jazz musical education. Vijay Iyer, with his insightful opinions on race and art, such as this phenomenal speech at Yale, served as an opportunity for a person with a liberal arts background like me to this daunting subject. 

I’ve found myself right in the middle of conversations about race for most of the past 20 years. Now I’ve managed to maintain a stable and consistent presence in the jazz world; by any measure I’ve been one of jazz’s success stories, and at this point I have no bitterness; I just observe how things unfold. For example, I’ve seen my work described repeatedly (mostly by white men, who tend to do most of the talking in jazz) as “mathematical,” “technical,” “inauthentic,” “too conceptual,” “jazz for nerds,” “dissonant,” “academic,” and just last month, a “failure.” Over the years a racialized component emerges in such language—basically a kind of model minority discourse that presumes that Asians have no soul and have no business trying to be artists, especially in proximity to Blackness, which is, in the white imagination, a realm of pure intuition, apparently devoid of intellect. No such critique, I should add, is typically leveled at white jazz musicians, of which there are many.

I really appreciated the album Revolutions as well as some parts of Accelerando. Vijay Iyer has been influenced by Thelonious Monk and Henry Threadgill, but also maintains his own style through incorporating improvisation as well as Carnatic inspirations. During the show Vijay introduced the trio members several times, bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore. I unfortunately could not grasp the beginning and ends of each jazz track, so I was lost in the music (in the bad sense). I experienced the frustration of not "getting it." Compared to the controlled environment of my own computer, the live performance was even more challenging to my musical sensibilities. But when I saw Stephan Crump sweating at the end and audiences clapping with much enthusiasm, I knew the performance was something special. Vijay disclosed that there will also be a show in Italy again in June, and he looked forward to seeing the crowd again. I was determined to read more about jazz, and I found his illuminating conversation in 2005 with jazz sax player and South Asian American Rudresh Mahanthappa--Sangha: Collaborative Improvisations on Community (PDF available for download here) . This was my favorite segment from the conversation:

Vijay: I guess I still have twinges of bad feelings about it, because I find that barriers are maintained in the way that music functions, in all these different cultures and subcultures. I find that what’s true in the mainstream superstructure gets transferred even to these little fringe subcultures, like the South Asian underground scene. And in particular, the role that jazz has today, or anything affiliated with or having any relationship to jazz: it’s sort of a pariah. It’s true what Wadada said; it’s the sort of thing that nobody wants to like. And that continues to be true even in the club culture scene. And what’s funny is that if you go to these Desi club nights where there’ll be DJ’s and people playing tabla and dholek and stuff, the way they promote the events and the way they talk about it afterwards, they’re using all this idyllic language about improvisation and freestyling. You know the kind: these people are “on some next shit” because they’re making it up off the top of their heads. And it just strikes me how that same language is never used by those people to describe what we do. 

Rudresh: Yeah. I think when people think of jazz, the younger generation thinks it involves too much homework. Somehow this idea of just going and listening and not trying to understandit is kind of inconceivable. Somehow when jazz comes up, people feel like they always have to have a background, they have to understand it. I was online and I found some blogs about your quartet shows at the Jazz Standard in June. And some singer had posted to her blog, and it was this whole rant about how she’s been trying to get down with modern jazz but she just can’t deal with it. And the whole thing was so laden with—it wasn’t about the music, really. It was about her feeling like she’s supposed to understand this but she can’t understand it. And obviously there was this psychological thing happening there, where she was maybe on the verge of feeling ignorant or stupid or something like that. So that’s actually seen as a reason for not liking it. I mean, do you feel like when you go to the museum and look at some crazy modern art, do you feel stupid? I generally don’t, but I kind of decided a long time ago that I was just going to deal with it on my own terms....So jazz just challenges people—just the word “jazz” challenges people in all sorts of bizarre ways. It’s really a shame that people can’t just come to it with a blank slate and then decide if they like it or hate it, or just be able to groove off the energy or the emotion of it…

In this sense, both jazz and experimental music such as Xiban challenge the audiences. 

This was my favorite performance of Vijay and Rudresh together, from 2008:

Bonus: Vijay Iyer talking about the importance of participating music events (even when one does not know what is exactly going on)

I was checking out a lot of these South Indian classical concerts in the Bay Area, mainly in Palo Alto, which had such a strong South Asian population because of the Silicon Valley. They were able to bring over artists from India to perform, so there was a regular concert series and I was going to that twice a month. And that was where I learned a lot about just the basics of listening to Karnatak music. Not that I’m an expert or know anything at all, really, about the details of it, but I know how to participate in that kind of event. That is something you don’t get from listening to records — some of those extramusical factors that you can’t really get from books or pedagogy, really. You learn a lot from being immersed in this community that’s participating in these events. 

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What's next? Post-rock band Wang Wen (惘闻) will be playing in Dortmund. Looking forward to seeing them again. The last time I saw them play was in Chengdu, June 2012. 

Dalit Activism in Colonial South India: Pandit Iyothee Thass

I have finally written a paper on Pandit Iyothee Thass that is the precursor of Dalit activist B. R. Ambedkar. The legacy of these two men is also commemorated in my blog title--"Educate, Agitate, Organize." Footnotes have been simplified for the readability of this post. I will include a link formally cited version once I have converted the document into a pdf.

Political thinkers of the South Asian subcontinent who attempt to envision a better society in the nineteenth and twentieth century had to address, if not reconcile, the issue of caste. While most of the exploitation of the lower castes fell under the category of socioeconomic oppression, culture and values also played a role in their subjugation. Like darker skinned populations of post-slavery societies, Dalits and lower castes also faced the issue of social stigma and hegemonic values regarding their status. Some early scholars of the subcontinent, such as the European members of the Asiatic Society, have located utmost importance to these texts to their understanding caste, even though not all social practices originate from texts. These scholars have been accused of Orientalism and essentialism for using these ideas and addressing them to a diverse population and changing the way Indians think of themselves. Yet it is important to acknowledge that the ideas documented in texts wee also important for Indian intellectuals at that time to reconceptualize their society and religion. Rather than just listening to the European interpretation, Indian intellectuals also used the texts to their goals and politics.

In reaction to subjugation through history and narratives, many activists created their own foundation myths in attempts to rectify their status. One of the myths of Dalit and other lower caste activists have tried to address includes the Purusha Sukta’s corresponding each body part to each varna origin, with Brahmins coming from the man’s mouth and Shudras coming from the man’s feet. Notably, Dalits are not even included in the Sukta’s description and their oppression is also justified in many other religious and folkloric texts. These texts gained more prominence in the age of colonial censuses when officers used Puranic justifications for differentiating Shudras and Dalits from other castes. Many Dalits historicize their descent into untouchability because it indicates they are not “inherently menial, since their condition is historical and can therefore be overcome.”

While some of these myths have premodern origins, such as the Chuhras of Punjab, these myths received more attention once they were used to contest caste assignations after the advent of the ethnographic colonial state. Not all of these myths are emancipatory and some may have their own conservatism. Yet many non-Brahmin movements successfully utilized myths to challenge predominant myths, such as Jyotirao Phule’s eulogy of the Maratha king. Neo-Buddhist of Tamil Nadu argued that Arya-Brahmins entered the South, dominated after the decline of egalitarian Buddhism, created the four-fold varna system, and treated women in a different manner as well. Areas of new settlements of lower castes ordered by the colonial regime often became the hotbeds of anti-Brahminical and egalitarian movements and ideologies. For example, massive numbers from the notable Dalit groups in North India, the Chamars, converted to Islam in the 1920s. This paper will focus on the South Indian reinventions of myths regarding their land and society and the intellectual critiques of Dalit oppression and efforts of creating a Buddhist revival centered around Pandit Iyothee Thass.

In face of discussions regarding liberal values on equality in the second half of the eighteenth century, Brahmins felt obligated to defend the caste system. Some argued that caste was interlinked with fundamental tenets of Hinduism, while others argued that the caste system provided a good division of labor. To elite thinkers ranging from conservatives to reformers, the caste order could not and should not be instantly destroyed. They preferred to reform the order out of religious sentiments. They could not “step out” of the social order and regard it as a “historically evolved” one. Other reformers argued for varna as moral categories and that everyone can live the Brahminical way of life through cultivating a good character, devoting oneself to God and avoiding meats and liquor. These reformers included Mahatma Gandhi, who argued for including Dalits into an ideal varna system rather than throwing it away. Yet most of these reformers held back from critiquing the monopoly of certain spiritual acts by the Brahmins who have in turn exploited those who have been excluded from these qualities. Even some intellectuals who denounced caste-by-birth still wished to preserve the supposedly intellectually superior Brahmin caste and endogamous marriage practices to some extent as long as it was “humane.” As scholars Geeta and Rajadurai have argued, while some Brahmins were asserting their traditional rights while others responded positively to historical change, they were involved in imagining a society which would preserve the caste system and their own interests. It is understandable because from a religious perspective, Brahmins as well as other caste Hindus claimed a lot of ritual and spiritual privileges that were denied from Dalits. Brahmins were defined against the category of Dalits, which some regarded as having no "self" and would have been threatened if Dalits could also practice Brahmin rituals and attain spiritual advancement. Many caste Hindus as well as Dalits did not consider Dalits to be Hindus until politicians started scrambling tallies for more “Hindu” votes under representational democracy.

Aside from the notion Brahminism that affected most parts of South Asian society, South Indians also faced an additional challenge that worked against equality of all people: the theory of Aryan superiority. One of the theories that fused nationalism was that Indians enjoyed a high blood status from the northern Aryans. These Aryans were not the original inhabitants within the scope of the Indus river yet brought civilization to the region. While many historians such as Romila Thapar argue that the category of Aryan is most accurately a language group, many people to this day regard Aryans as a superior racial group often associated with Brahminical rituals. Dravidians, on the other hand, were portrayed as a more primitive race by Orientalists and later many northern nationalists. In the late nineteenth and twentieth century, intellectuals fought against these pro-Aryan narratives and stereotypes by arguing that adi dravidas were the "original Dravidians" before the arrival of the Aryan immigrant forces (mlechcha) and also established a rich civilization. These activists highlighted the advanced architecture, metal work and sculptures before Aryans. Symbols like the lingam and temple inscriptions preexisted Aryans as well but were incorporated into Brahminical orthodoxy. M. Masilamani, a neo-Buddhist intellectual, noted the subordination of the upper-caste woman to stringent norms consolidated the Brahmin males’ power and argued that arranging marriages were introduced by Aryans. Textual and scriptural evidence indeed support that caste norms were not solidified until the eleventh century in Tamil Nadu. Activists urged to reject Brahminical elements in Tamil culture. Another issue of divergence between the North and South regards language. Many non-Brahmins who joined the non-Brahmin movement spoke two main Dravidian language groups: Tamil and Telegu. Before the agitations against Hindi in the 1930s, South Indian Justice Party members already noted that Sanskrit was a badge of privilege and the disregard for local “vernaculars” such as Tamil and Telugu, allowed for elitist attitudes to flourish. For many activists, being Dravidian meant reviving an autonomous history before the Aryans and dominance of caste ideology. 

One of most original yet comparatively unknown South Indian intellectuals who championed these views was Pandit Iyothee Thass. Unlike the non-Brahmins, Paraiahs of the farm servant caste, like Thass, were considered lowest on the purity ranks. Their interests were not represented as much as non-Brahmins in later Dravidian movements of the twentieth century. Thass consciously chose the term "Poorva Tamizha," the original Tamil, to distinguish and highlight his community’s status even among the “original Dravidians.” Still, Thass imagined a future where all castes could show solidarity with Dalits and renounce caste order. Thus Thass should command even more attention for not only the similarities with non-Bramin and pro-Dravidian movements but also for his debates against untouchable stigma. Even among the Dravidians, they were not always included in the fraternity. His publication The Tamizhan produced rich content and galvanized Tamil circles and beyond, for reasons which this paper will explore.

Pariahs from Madras," from 'Naturgeschichte und Abbildungen

Like most places in colonial India, socioeconomic changes in Tamil Nadu helped the Dalits and lower castes. But the policy effects were not felt equally and many they still faced oppression and envy from privileged upper castes. The British efforts to commercialize property and land grants in the early twentieth century facilitated lower castes to acquire land. A British district collector in the Cumbum Valley insisted that granting land was the only solution to elevate the position of Kallars from “criminality.” Yet this intention does not corroborate with successful land reform results, since the British also relied on old institutions like mirasdars for agricultural revenue extraction. Even among places that achieved marginal land redistribution, discrimination from upper castes was still rampant and violent. Newly propertied castes were still vulnerable to upper caste neighbors’ attacks. For example, upper castes destroyed huts and crops raised in adi dravidas kitchen gardens, denied Paraiahs to occupational rights in subtenancies, and cut off water flow to Paraiah-owned fields. The Tamizhan’s initial audience were Thass’ own Pariah community in Madras, nowadays known as Chennai, and North and South Arcot who have have improved their economic conditions through recruitment in the army, migration to mining and urban centers, and employment with British in menial jobs.

Many publications and journals sprung up in South India at the time for these populations that ridiculed Brahminical exclusivity, such as Periyar E. V. Ramasamy’s English journal Revolt. The diaspora of Tamils added to a large audience of Thass’ Tamil-language publication The Tamizhan, such as converts to Catholicism abroad. It was circulated wherever lower caste Tamil people migrated for jobs, including South Africa, Burma, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Mauritius, Singapore, Malaysia, and Tanzania. The Tamizhan’s readership abroad demonstrates the salience of the issues tackled by Iyothee Thass and other contributors. The origins of Tamil migrant workers presence abroad was inseparable from oppressive caste regulations. The British colonizers promoted migration of labor for their own ends, such as ensuring a supply of labor to increase revenue from its colonies. Tamil oversea migration increased in nineteenth century; by the 1820s there were approximately a million and a half Tamils working overseas. Lower castes and Dalits literally escaped from the oppressive caste system and ideology through migration. Large scale migration consisted mostly of lower castes laborers, “from areas of settled agriculture to urban and mining centers, arid areas and to overseas colonies.” Dalits often emigrated to search for work that came with dignity. Workers in plantations received the same wages, lived in labor lines rather than segregated areas according to hierarchy. Also, there were no special ritual concessions for higher castes and all experienced same level of hardship. Main motivations behind these lower caste migrations included anonymity within a larger society and a chance of self-determination. In this context, Thass criticized the nationalists who opposed forced out-migration. Since caste norms prevented a Paraiah from owning land, protesting the migration of these workers who were formerly working in slave conditions seemed to Thass an instance of “misplaced charity.” The contributors used vernacular languages to express opposition to Brahminism, casteism, and Sanskritic culture. One of the Buddhist contributors, Sri Siddhartha Puthagasalai, published in the Tamizhan many tracts on the condition of Paraiahs, their lost Buddhist faith and ancient Tamil texts that appear Hindu but once had Buddhist origins. Along with South Indian neo-Buddhists of his time, Thass argued for the idea of a respected Tamizhan (or Tamil) regardless of his caste for the present and envisioned an adi dravidas community that had an egalitarian Buddhist past. Buddhists were the real Brahmins yet they were subjugated by the fake (vesha) Brahmin Aryans and stigmatized for non-conformity. Similar to Puthagasalai’s argument, Thass thought that the fake Brahmins Hinduized Buddhist scriptures. Thass demonstrated in through studies of Tamil sacred and literary texts how the victory of Brahminism in South Asia occurred in step with the demise of Buddhism and perhaps caused the latter. For example, In The Significance of Meditating on Abigai Amman in the Month of Aadi, Thass argued that the Aadi celebration commemorated the Ambigai of Puna Nadu, formerly a Princess, for her healing powers as a Buddhist female monk (bhikkuni). Yet later her legacy was co-opted into Hindu tradition as an angry goddess. Thass also argued that the Thirikural, highly regarded as the document of Tamil propriety, originated from the three Buddhist pitakas. The Brahmins falsely attributed the authorship to a man with a Brahmin father and a Paraiah mother, Thass argued, or else they would not be able to explain the author’s “extraordinary” intelligence. Later scholars also argued that Thirikural shows strong similarities with Jainist and Buddhist moral teachings. The Tamizhan also included many writings by Thass and neo-Buddhists on the life of the Buddha, his teachings, and Buddhist dharma. Thass converted to Buddhism and also inspired many other Paraiahs’ conversions. The Pariahs in Madras were only one of many instances of Dalit group conversions in India. Later B. R. Ambedkar also argued a similar thesis to Thass, that the Brahmins imposed untouchability on Dalits (“Broken Men” in Marathi) because they refused to convert from Buddhism. Thass considered Christianity and Islam helpful for uplifting Dalits, but Buddhism was more capable of Brahminical oppression than the other traditions because it has combated Brahminism for a long duration, before the arrival of Christianity or Islam, and thus had more philosophical resources to confront Brahminism. Even after Thass’ death, The Tamizhan continued to uphold his legacy: it was among the South Indian publications that publicized the large non-Brahmin movement’s aims and message in 1916. The Non-Brahmin Manifesto listed the absence of non-Brahmins many government institutions and also posed demands, “Progressive Political Development wanted and not unauthorised Constitution-Making; No Caste Rule and Self Government on Equal Distribution of Power.” There were broader similarities among these lower caste movements, such as wide horizontal mobilization, spread education for emancipation, demand to share political power with upper castes, and diversify occupations, and they all posed a challenge to the nationalists.

Many nationalists and anti-imperialists had opinions regarding caste and most were very outspoken, both before and after Thass' times. Annie Besant, once the leader of the Theosophical Society and a fervent Irish participant in the Indian nationalist Home Rule movement, was one of the Brahminical admirers who had paternalistic attitudes towards Dalits. For example, she argued that Dalits should work their karma to break free from their abject position of untouchability. Annie Besant also edited New India, which constantly published columns against the Non-Brahmin Manifesto, including her own. The Justice attacked New India and taunted Besant as an “Irish Brahmani.” After being challenged, she eventually refused to publish any articles related to this subject.

While these spates happened after Thass’ death, it highlights the tensions between caste self-respect movements and nationalism that continued to haunt India even after its independence. One of Thass’ most controversial stances was his skepticism of the national movement. First of all, he saw Brahminical authority dominating nationalist movements such as swaraj. He criticized the nationalists who blamed British imperialists for the starvation without taking into account their own complicity. For example, many of these Brahmin nationalists in Madras owned land that owned land tilled by workers that lacked adequate wages. Some also planted cash crops over food crops that led to many famines in Madras. Instead of focusing on the British, Thass criticized the greed of the landlord and the merchant and the Brahmin’s indifference who were complicit since they would not give any portion of his earnings towards famine relief.

Both Iyothee Thass and members of the non-Brahmin Justice Party questioned the legitimacy of the Indian National Congress to represent all Indians, stemming from two questions: caste as an identity issue and as a labor issue. The Madras Congress was predominantly Brahmin twenty years after its existence. Only swadeshi protests sent out their message more effectively across society to non-Brahmin. Thass held that Brahmin usually protected his own caste interests and historically expended unnecessary energy on tasks defining "rules of touchability, seeability and approachability" and these rules still influenced everyday actions. Thass also listed cases of discrimination exhibited by the largely Brahmin-owned press who constructed public opinion. Swaraj and Swadeshi seemed insincere to Thass where the social norms were governed by untouchability. Thass regarded social reform of caste should be prior to political reform and that swaraj should be not just Indians’ self-government, but also a “state of social and economic well-being.” He questioned whether or not the slums occupied by Paraiahs, called paracheris, could also be included under the grand scheme nationalists had for their ideal “Motherland.” In this context of criticizing nationalism for upholding the abstract notion of sovereign land, Thass even defended Lord Curzon's decision to partition Bengal as an administrative move and that the nationalists despised Curzon because he sought to improve the conditions of all castes. His skepticism was not unfounded, for non-Brahmin leaders of swadeshi like M. K. Gandhi did not break rules of inter-caste dining. In 1946, even as Gandhi showed solidarity, he tactically refused to take food from a Dalit group Balmikis when he attempted to show solidarity. Many anti-imperialists considered British benevolence for Dalits as well as Muslims to be part of a “divide and rule” agenda. Nationalist leaders and supporters of Home Rule, such as Annie Besant, did not put the status of Dalits at the forefront of its initiatives partly due to Brahmin dominance in the Congress Party.

Second of all, for Thass, swadeshi nationalism could not link its politics with transforming labor systems that exploited Dalits. Yet he did not highlight the the British rule’s tolerance of the existing labor arrangements. The adi dravida intellectuals at the time generally did not associate colonial rule presence with local matters. For example, Thass had argued that the British presence had use for it led to roads and railways, which facilitated the delivery of grain to famine-struck places. Many non-Brahmins feared that once the British left, there would be no arbiter left for caste relations and Brahmins might return to the old way of governance. The raja of Panagal once said that Home Rule might "push back the non-Brahmin communities to their original state of dependence and enslavement and re-install in the place of our British rulers the very priestly class who were responsible for unenviable state in which the non-Brahmin communities were stagnating before the advent of the British rule." Many South Indian non-Brahmin intellectuals and social figures considered the British colonial presence effectively polices Brahminical dominance.

But the British could not directly feel the negative impacts themselves and they did not share the similar urgency for abolishing caste rules as the victimized Dalits. As the ruling authority, a British official did not have to comply with rules of ritual purity--he could eat beef and still socialize with all classes without being stigmatized from locals. Furthermore, the British rulers were self-interested even as they promoted varying degrees of equality on the surface. Authors have argued that the British also circumscribed the politically active Brahmin through accommodating rival interests such as lower castes through social reform policies. This move also added to their perception among non-Brahmins as benevolent rulers.

The Kalaram Temple of Nashik city in Maharashtra, India

The non-Brahmin intellectuals and Thass’ view of the British intentions was overly optimistic, especially in regards to the issue of caste. Even though the British rulers knew that there was slavery practiced in Madras ryotwaris, they did not abolish it because they retained revenue from these farms. the government should not meddle with the ideal of private property. A ruling in 1819 expressed that the raiyats possess their slaves as private property. Consistent with the British attitudes towards caste, the court wrote that "it must be dangerous to disturb the long established relations subsisting between these two orders." After an official and some missionaries raised the Paraiah question in London, the Tamil Nadu Revenue Board still refused to acknowledge the existence of slavery and even allowed for bondage to continue in an intransigent statement. Yet the notion that all members of society can access public property and the expansion of what should be defined as “public” rather than community-based had to be continuously fought through several Dalit leaders’ agitations in the twentieth century, such as B. R. Ambedkar’s Kalaram Temple movement in 1930. The Congress Party also supported instances, such as the 1924 Vaikom Satyagraha in Travancore, Kerala, spearheaded by the lower-caste Ezhavas. The British officials of the Madras region were obviously not in the front lines for redefining or defending the ideal of public property as much as private. While criticizing caste rules and norms, the British also worked to solidify them when it worked in their political and economic interest.

In conclusion, Iyothee Thass produced a lot of significant works and opinions that carved an intellectual space for Dalits in Madras to reflect on their religious identity and social existence. His publication joined many others that aided the Dravidian movement call to eradicate Brahminical and Aryan domination, while also saving a distance from pan-South Indian Dravidianism for Dalit-focused activities through theorizing and practicing Buddhism. while also remaining a distance for Dalit-focused activities through theorizing and practicing Buddhism. His ideas on pre-Hindu culture, such as the origins of Thirikural, were surprisingly original and many of his theories of "Hinduization" were corroborated with later scholarship as well. Thass resisted the predominant tendency to glorify the anti-imperialist movement, critically examined Home Rule, and engaged with leaders of the other movements. While he overestimated how much the British colonial rulers were committed to the uplifting of Depressed Classes such as Dalits, along with members of the Justice Party he was an extremely important voice of dissent in turbulent times.

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Prashad, Vijay. 2000. Untouchable Freedom. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 

Ravi, J. 2015. 'What Were The Features Of Non-Brahmin Manifesto?'. Preserve articles. http://www.preservearticles.com/2011101915778/what-were-the-features-of-non-brahmin-menifesto.html.

Rawat, Ramnarayan S. 2011. Reconsidering Untouchability. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 

Varadarajulu Naidu and Diwan Bahadur T. 1991. The Justice Movement 1917. Madras: Dravidar Kazhagam Publications. 

Viswanathan, S. 2005. Dalits In Dravidian Land. Pondicherry: Navayana.

Heightened Nationalism in Times of Emergency

A month ago, some friends and I got into a heated discussion on the necessity of partition and the role of Islam in Pakistan politics. Both Amir and Bilal, students in Germany, argued for the necessity of partition and the role of Islam in law and politics. Many other Pakistanis also vest their trust in the centralized executive power and the Pakistani military. Last week the Taliban in Pakistan led several attacks that targeted Shia Muslims. One of the Pakistanis here lost a dear relative in the most recent attacks in a Peshawar mosque. While many friends consoled him in wake of the tragedy, it did not seem to change much in their outlook on politics. During the consolation, many of the discussed fervently about their views on terrorism in Pakistan, all of which seemed to be a dissatisfaction with the current situation, and demand immediate action and reaction. The military or the executive branch seem to be the go-to solution. I have heard about crises in a political philosophy (e.g. Carl Schmitt), but no other place seemed to be more crisis-ridden than Pakistan. In classes, I am also reminded of the omniscient energy of nationalism that seeps into every day life in India. In both countries, there are not enough restrictions on the demand for action and reclamation, especially in times when a group considers defending oneself. 

The political identity of "Hindus" rose in the 19th century partly in response to the threat of Christianity, social Darwinism and the growing consciousness of Otherness. Islam in South Asia also adapted to different times, which I have written about in Islamic Reform, South Asia, and Self-Reflection. These religious identities that adapted to new labels and contexts play an influential role in 20th century politics, including Hindu nationalism. In 1990, BJP politician L.K. Advani's Rath Yatra sparked riots that left many dead in Gujarat. In 1992, the demolishing of the Babri Masjid led to sectarian violence in other Indian provinces as well in which many Muslims were massacred. Documentaries Ram Ke Naam, Boy in the Branch and Men in the Tree show the ideological roots of Ayodhya conflict and the new wave of Hindu nationalism. Many Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) volunteers known as the kar sevaks (servers-in-action) were mobilized around the country. Even though the men could not keep up their RSS activities after Ayodhya due to pressures of earning a living, They still believed in the cause and felt proud having participated in the momentous event, with statements like “I was on the dome” or “I cleared the debris.” The temple had been a source of political contest between Hindu and Muslim communities since the 1940s. Why did the movement happen in the 1990s? Even though there are theories of elite conspiracy, other factors also contributed to the acceptance of Hindu nationalist ideology. 

Arvind Rajagopal’s Politics after Television documented the political effects on popular opinion from the widely followed commercial television series Ramayana. The book highlighted the role of the television and mass media in shaping peoples’ understanding of society. We have learned in class that the TV adaptation that started playing in 1987 is a uniquely North Indian and Sanskritized interpretation of a story that actually has many versions. But it clearly influenced many viewers. For example, more than one interviewee in Politics of Television, Mr. Jha, longed for a moral rule by Lord Ram-- "At the time of the Ramayan people used to say that everything is truth. Now there is truth in nothing. All 'departments' [sic] are corrupt. It wasn’t like this before – and this is the difference. Of course, even then there was poverty, but even the poor were knowledgeable and honest. Today, the wealthy and educated men are the most corrupt." Hindu nationalist thus “used religious appeals to distinguish itself from the unscrupulous majority of politicians in returning to politics a long-awaited dharma, a sense of duty and righteousness.”

The opening of Ram Ke Naam also shows how video clips serve as a good source for sharing religious experiences as well as political messages, mixing truth with myths. Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and co. clearly take advantage of the rise of mass communication, which has becomes a tool of expression as well as propaganda for the resourceful. In the documentary, court appointed priest at the disputed Ramjanmabhoomi Temple Pujari Laldas is interviewed at length. He replies to “What do you think of the VHP’s plan to build a temple?” --

Screenshot of Laldas from Ram Ke Naam

This is a political game played by the VHP. There was never a ban on building temples (during the Mughal times). Besides, according to our tradition, any place where the idols of God are kept, is a temple. That's the Hindu custom. ... And even if they wanted to build a separate temple, why demolish a structure where idols already exist? Those who want to do this are actually more interested in creating tensions in India in order to cash in on the Hindu vote. They don't care about the genocide that will occur, how many will be killed, how much destroyed, or even about what will happen to Hindus in Muslim majority areas. ... Muslim rulers granted land for Hindu temples, like Janki Ghat and parts of Hanuman Garhi were built by Muslims.

Just like what Laldas has observed, in previous riots, there were many Hindu politicians that stress differences and cut cleavages between the two communities to gain votes. Sadhus would defend and legitimize politicians with their spiritual currency and profit from political allies. Steven Wilkinson has shown that riots and deaths tend to "cluster in the months before elections, and then drop off sharply in the months after an election is held.” The Gujarat elections were scheduled in 2003 and the BJP just lost two cities' municipal elections in 200. While the documentaries did not depict the riots in 2002, previous incidents had similar context. Like the kar sevaks interviewed in The Men in the Tree, Naredra Modi is also a former RSS cadre member. Jaffrelot shows that then Gujarat chief minister Modi orchestrated a retaliation to the Godhra train incident in 2002 and even ordered police officers not to contain the consequent Hindu backlash. Yet Modi refused to acknowledge his role in inciting riots by making the dead nationalists a spectacle on TV and argued that the Hindu backlashes were spontaneous. (The VHP even published a manual to teach its activists to make planned riots appear as spontaneous acts of violence.) Several anonymous civil servants leaked to human rights investigators that Gujarat ministers directed the advance of the assailants from the “city police control room” of Ahmedabad. (p5) During the backlash, local BJP and VHP leaders also were out in the streets alongside the attackers and suffered no consequence afterwards.

In contrast to his actions that effectively absolved responsibility of Hindu rioters, Modi stated that the train attack was a pre-planned act of terrorism, even though evidence showed otherwise: the train only stopped after repeated harassment of the Hindu nationalists. Jaffrelot points to another political strategy: the thorough diffusion of Hindutva in reaction to a fear of Jihad. Jaffrelot shows that the Indian state has encouraged and indulged the use of labeling (Muslim) reactions to Hindu violence as "terrorism." The deployment of anti-terrorism discourse is distinct from the "communal" character of riots in the 1990s.

Not only was the BJP campaign rife with anti-Muslim references, but it was also based on an obvious equation between Islam and terrorism. One of the BJP's television commercials began with the sound of a train pulling into a station, followed by the clamor of riots and women's screams before the ringing of temple bells was covered by the din of automatic rifle fire. After which, Modi's reassuring countenance appeared, hinting to voters that only he could protect Gujarat from such violence. The BJP Election Manifesto pledged to train Gujarat youth, particularly those living on the Pakistani border, in anti-terrorist tactics. Self defense militias would beset up in border towns where large numbers of retired servicemen would be brought in. Special gun permits would be issued to the lifeblood of a nation under siege.

Yet even if the parties and organizations like BJP, VHP and RSS instigated and organized many of these riots, this fact does not exonerate the "ordinary Hindus" nor does it explain Hindutva's hegemony at this time. In Mass Movement or Elite Conspiracy? The Puzzle of Hindu Nationalism, Basu argues that "ordinary men and women were informed by their antipathy toward the state," previously mostly represented by the Congress Party. (p56) Indeed, as one of the leaders in Congress Party, Rajiv Gandhi undermined secularism when he supported very conservative Muslims in a decision denying alimony to a divorced Muslim woman, Shah Bano. Rajiv Gandhi pandered to a clerical elite and Muslim orthodoxy rather than a more feminist and secularist decision. This political mistake was exploited by the Hindu right and termed this as “pseudo-secularism” and favored minorities The BJP only addressed sections previously neglected by Indian politicians and could not be reduced to a simple allegiance to Hinduism. Basu argues that "the middle classes may support the BJP because they favor a stronger, more authoritarian state with more ambitious foreign policy objectives, whereas slum dwellers may support the BJP because it promises to legalize their dwellings." I was shocked when I got to know a Gottingen student who is an Indian Muslim BJP supporter for Modi's pro-development stance, but now I am understanding his alliance since he is from a middle class.
In the end, defending a group identity seems to be a great response to crisis, even though I would prefer to mourn and heal. Yet a violence response can also serve as an answer to many contradictions and uncomfortable questions---The Pakistani government indulged in calls for hanging the culprits of the Peshawar military school attack (Sharif lifted the ban on death sentences for acts of terrorism), while the Jordanian one executed the female bomber prisoner in response to the tragic death of the Jordanian pilot under ISIS. 

Reliance on Landlords: From the Colonizers to the Congress Party

Why did India never have a class-based revolution or stark social transformation? In a letter to Engels, Marx suggested that the arrival of British free trade brought the only social revolution in India. He starts by invoking the imagery of the static village-- 

These small stereotype forms of social organism have been to the greater part dissolved, and are disappearing, not so much through the brutal interference of the British tax-gatherer and the British soldier, as to the working of English steam and English free trade. Those family-communities were based on domestic industry, in that peculiar combination of hand-weaving, hands-spinning and hand-tilling agriculture which gave them self-supporting power. English interference having placed the spinner in Lancashire and the weaver in Bengal, or sweeping away both Hindoo spinner and weaver, dissolved these small semi-barbarian, semi-civilized communities, by blowing up their economical basis, and thus produced the greatest, and to speak the truth, the only social revolution ever heard of in Asia.

Tehri village paddy fields, Uttarakhand

But in Reinventing India, Stuart Corbridge and John Harriss have shown that the British left many pre-existing structures, such as the zamindari system or the village caste relations, untouched or even retrenched. Some have suggested that this was their strategy of divide and rule, since it would be to the British rulers’ advantage if supra-village structures were weakened and villages were strengthened. Others have also argued that the British colonizers could have been thinking only in terms of “Western” and “Indian” terms, saw India as a divided society, and strengthened preexisting divides in the process. Anti-colonialism sought to adapt western institutions while also understanding India as distinctly different than Western societies. Spiritual values and private practices can remain “Indian” while the public sphere becomes Western, which created new identities and contradictions. Economics definitely fell under the public sphere and has been a politically contested issue in India throughout the 19th and 20th century.

The authors provided many critiques of the Congress Party-led nationalist movement. Historian Barrington Moore suggested from a Marxian view that Gandhi provided a link between landed classes and peasants through satyagraha and ahimsa movements. Gandhi and his followers advocated for class conciliation while others saw a need for class struggle. But the Congress Socialists were divided and weak and eventually established their own party--CSP.  Therefore even though Jawarhalal Nehru’s position towards socialism was sincere, as Pramit Chaudhuri has pointed out, Nehru did not push for nationalization of land seriously within his own party for the sake of unity. He also felt personal loyalty to Gandhi’s positions. As soon as Congress Party came into rule after independence, according to David Arnold, they have strengthened rulings of the Raj, such as the civil administration and refused the interference of politicians. Some would say that the Congress Party became the Raj to some extent.
Corbridge and Harriss follow Gramsci, Partha Chatterjee and Sudipta Kaviraj’s idea of Nehru’s “passive revolution” to explain developments in the 1950s that substituted any real social revolution. Nehru wanted to uplift the poor through development led by a centralized state. Nehru proposed that top-heavy industrialization could reduce dependence on agriculture. He resisted conservative tendencies in the Party but he did not have the power to institute industrialization as much as countries like South Korea or redistribution of land like China. Furthermore, Nehru’s Congress Party garnered support through regressive taxation, in which the state did not tax rich Indian farmers much. This contributed to Nehru’s inability to implement agrarian reform and contributed to the 1970s’ “crisis of planning.” Due to these demand-side requirements, the state could not raise resources domestically. Used to the many concessions by the state, the New Farmers’ Movement in the 1970s also championed lower input costs such as the reduction of irrigation charges and more subsidies. This arrangement impeded planning and the passive revolution.
Partha Chatterjee and Karivaj identifies Nehruvian ideals as “high modernism” that was distant from popular support. For example, secularism through education was also an alien concept to the broader public. The English-educated elements in Congress Party realized in 1947 that in addition to these ideals, they also had to struggle and compete for local control of party organizations. They gradually lost ground to networks of important individuals with bonds to business patronage.

If nationalism had certain problems, how should we assess India’s (nationalistic) claim that it is the biggest democracy? Ambedkar, social reformer and champion of lower caste rights, criticized the lack of change over the caste-class issue. He posed the contradiction that from 1950, “In politics we will have quality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognising the principle of one man, one vote, one value. In our social and economic life we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man, one value.” (p34) Nehru understood democracy from the Raj and Westminister models, which nowadays people consider overly idealistic. Yet at the time mostly everyone in the Constituent Assembly agreed with him to form a centralized Parliamentary constitution rather than something close to the ground, like a panchayati government. Barrington Moore also identified the weak bourgeois class for a functioning participatory democracy in India. Karivaj proposed that due to the weak bourgeois, India requires state bureaucracies for social justice and redistribution. These institutions have been less funded since privatization led by Indira Gandhi and the Indian economists of the 1990s, which Corbridge and Harris criticize in a later chapter.

In an international context, state planning and rule by economic experts were two hegemonic ideas among much of the Third World Nationalists, such as Egypt’s Nasser and India’s Nehru. There was a brief honeymoon period between the Communist leadership and economists in China as well before Mao Tse Tung started movements to purge many intellectuals, economist and others, and consolidate in 1952, 1956-57 and 1966-1976. In India, Congress Party could not execute social justice through land reform and redistribution. Rather, the Party continuously distributed subsidies to rich farmers throughout post-independence. For example, fertilizer subsidies only strengthened the dominating landholding farmers. This strategy was also in line with the “demand side” Keynesian economics that sought to increase spending in the economy. Yet as Beverly Silver has pointed out, the Keynesian prescription was meant for the “developed” countries. High mass consumption and full employment were deemed to be beyond the reach of “underdeveloped” economies. (Silver, Beverly. Forces of Labor, 154.) Only the upper classes in India had money to spend and and rich farmers were taxed regressively. Since the money was not flowing to the state through taxed consumption, the subsidies partly caused the crisis in state finances in the 1980s and 90s. 

Banana tree in village near Rishikesh

Since rich peasants have been one of Congress Party’s main constituents’ interest, and may continue to serve as a powerful constituent of the BJP as well. Rich peasants obtained votes often vertically by coercing their tenants or dominions to vote with the rich's interest, this tendency may continue even as Congress Party support in current elections.  Rupa Viswanath argued in class that the phenomenon in which rich do not vote as much as the poor is because nowadays the rich are confident of their control over rural power. Thus it does not matter which political power is at the center. New taxes would be protested and fended off by the rich peasantry since there was a precedent of low to no taxes. More readings need to be done on the relationship between rural interests and electoral politics.

The City's Reliance on the Village

This blogpost will explore the relationship between the city and the village by first examining the everlasting material effects of caste in India. Then it will introduce the similarities of India's city with China's city: both countries' urbanization relies on the village and even subordinates the village to the city. Finally it will introduce some attempts to address this issue in China.

Does caste exist only as a religious category? Historical studies on India show that caste is a result of material institutional arrangements as well. Castes should not just be understood as the most commonly cited four varnas in popular explanation but also exist as jatis (job categories). Orientalists have proposed that caste only exists as religious and thus static; but it also constantly adapting as some jobs appear and while other jobs disappear. But to what extent does caste change with the time? Certain proponents of liberal modernization theories think that caste will only be practiced in a “backward village” and cities have successfully become caste blind. (Similar problems can be pointed about the "post-racial" American society so many people believe, but that is for another blogpost.) To quote Prof. Rupa Viswanath, "Most factories in India have divisions of labor. Every factory in India a particular caste is limited to particular kinds of work. The most dangerous and filthy work is usually relegated to Dalits." In the similar vein, scholars have suggested that industries cannot rely on stable labor supply due to the migrant workers attachment to rural lifestyle and their traditional culture. According to these scholars, India has the lowest speed of industrialization for this reason. 

But unlike what some modernization theorists expect, industrialization has not erased caste. Caste and religious practices have taken up new forms and adapted to post-colonial institutions. The importance of labor history in understanding rural urban links is crucial. One of the readings have mentioned the historian Raj Chandavarkar. He studied Bombay textile workers in the period of 1900-1940 and is known for conducting research at the workers’ neighborhood rather than just the workplace. He noticed that the ties with the village is not just cultural, but also rooted in economic necessity. Dr. Chandavarkar linked business strategies with instability of workforce: Businesses keep wages low by outsourcing the healthcare and retirement costs to the village. Tasks of reproduction are also transferred to the village. Thus only young men become migrant workers and contribute to the household without keeping the household.

The danger with comparing also could produce ahistorical misunderstandings. One Chinese scholar, while speaking at a college in the U.S., once pointed to the lack of women joining the workforce in India as India’s disadvantage in competing with China. His perspective is common among political scientists and development organizations who like to view India and China in competing terms. He may have been unaware of that this phenomenon was implicit in the patriarchal development logic of India’s capitalist accumulation.

Once the workers in India grow sick or old, they become social burdens and would be levied to the village, while supplemented with additional income from the city. Workers who have strong village ties can sustain the strike whereas workers who cannot return to the village cannot hold out during a strike. The worker's link with the countryside is not broken for pragmatic reasons. In light of these discoveries, the cultural explanation does not suffice to explain India's low industrialization speed. 

A cow herder possibly from the Yadav caste guides the cows across a road that connects Rishikesh with Dehradun, 2014

Although Dr. Chandavarkar studied Bombay workers in the 1900-1940, this theory is extremely relevant for China's migrant workers who are not protected by the same rights as urban citizens. Compared to many factories in India that have a long tradition of casual labor force, Chinese migrant workers are more stabilized and often live in community housing. Yet the hukou system formally discriminates against migrant workers and many do not have adequate access to resources other than the bare necessities. Chinese migrant workers thus also drift between the rural and the urban for both cultural and economic reasons. Migrant workers often work as couples, and once they have children they also rely on the child's grandparents to raise their children in the village. Their children cannot become legal residents of the city and have access to the city's public education. I am not very familiar with the land policies, but similar to India, many Chinese migrant workers return to the alternative option by becoming a peasant. As the economic advantages of the city decreases, some choose to return. However, recently there have been massive buyouts of rural land in regions surrounding Chinese cities. Even though the situation is different for migrant workers from different areas, some migrant workers are distressed with the cut off of options once they sell their land. This year, the Chinese state has tried to address this by expanding unemployment benefits to lure migrants to cities--

This would help migrant workers, who lack urban hukou, and are cut off, along with their families, from access to education and social welfare outside their home villages. Lack of a local registration should no longer be used as a basis for denying unemployment benefits, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said, according to a government website. Local governments must also provide free career counseling and job-seeking services, and subsidize career development and skill-building, it added.

But the effects of these policies are yet to be observed. The outsourcing relationship between the city and the village exists in both China and India, often by subordinating the village's interests for industrial needs. But China's subordination is perhaps more severe than India's case, since China has urbanized at a much rapid pace and much larger extent than India. The Party’s danwei system allowed for mobilization of people beyond their original hometowns and contributed to the severing of rural relations.

Since the Open and Reform policies prioritized Chinese cities, much has been said about the assumed inferiority of Chinese villages and the existential crises of people with village roots. For example, Liang Hong's books on Liang Zhuang document her alienation from her ancestral village. There have been efforts that address these issues. Chinese intellectuals and activists, like Ou Ning and Chang Kun, also link both the cultural and economic needs of the countryside. By fostering book stores, public interest internet cafes, and activity centers, activists pay attention to cultural activities. At the same time, they also notice that the lack of culture is linked with the monopolization of economic resources in the city. Ou Ning has tried to think about alternative methods that are not necessarily out-right commercialization and reification of the village culture through tourism. For more about this subject, I will have to watch his new documentary first. 

Rice field in rural Rishikesh, 2014

The Old Revolution

If the Egyptian Revolution happened in 2008 I would have been much more familiar with the political actors. I had been very concerned with democratic freedoms around the world, especially China's, and even staged or joined politically charged performance art in Beijing. But times have changed and my personal opinions regarding the discourse of democracy and human rights have also been complicated since. Ethically, a crucial point occurred when an opportunistic entrepreneur and alumni gave a speech at my college. To put it bluntly, he got rich during the privatization of the former Soviet Union's state sector the 1990s. During the speech, he was very unabashed about the fact that he took advantage of an unraveling country's state sector. He married a Czech wife and lives in Czech now as a millionaire. When I asked something along the lines of whether he sees the same happening to China, he was unconcerned with the moral dimension but rather focused on the "How to Get Rich" factor. He recommended people who have the ambition to go to Burma for the next liberalization windfall and invest there. I still remember this event, but this is my first time recounting it and I still feel indignation that there will always be these type of people who take advantage of political changes in other countries and encourage others to do the same. I see opportunistic actors gaining material benefits in China if liberalization occurs, and I hope that when people discuss "democracy" arriving they would also recognize this moral (if not legal) hazard. In and out of China, I am more concerned with AIDS rights, feminism and specific labor movements.

As a historian in training, I also know that certain cases have specific contexts and democratic experience of one country is not necessarily transferable to another country. However, these issues appear in discussions when I am in studying in Germany, since I met people who are from different parts of the world (and many who are anti-American). I have recently befriended an Egyptian, called A., who is my age. He comes from a Muslim family but he himself is non-practicing (no fasting during Ramadan, drinks and eats pork.). He is not very anti-American but he is sufficiently skeptical of neoliberal discourses. I have shared my favorite book that critiques the idea of "economics" as this objective subject that can necessarily promote development through top-down means, The Rule of Experts, by Timothy Mitchell with A. last month. 

More on this incredible book later, which was not the core of our discussion today over coffee. (A really tall and clumsy German sat next to us in the Balzac cafe, spilled his tea and then his stuff. When he settled down with his handwritten notes papers, he was probably also listening) I learned that A. was part of the revolutionary wing in Egypt and on and off with the Socialist wing from Jan. 25th 2011 and stopped a few months after his female cousin M. got arrested around the time after the military took power through a coup the second time, around July 2013. M., according to A., along with a group that consisted of half girls and half boys, were left in a desert for some time. None were fed for some days. The girls were released because it was very controversial. The boys were sentenced to 15 years in jail. M. is still active in pro-democratic organizations but A. thinks that it is too dangerous and that there is no hope. He does not want to return to Egypt, for both political and social reasons (he finds them too materialistic. I recommended him to check out the scene in China. Arabs in this city still regard A. as an Egyptian, regardless of how disaffected he is.).

A. still wants to take part in leftist groups in Germany and he thought about groups that help refugees. We have only arrived for 2 months so we have yet to find our "组织." I have tried talking with some Socialists here, references I got from the U.S.,  but my German is not at their level yet to be of any help. A. also attended Socialist Alternative meeting in New York, near Zuccotti Park, and was invited to talk about the Egyptian Revolution in 2012. He thinks that this invitation would not happen again these days. The enthusiastic side of American politics is that people are genuinely outraged by racist police brutality against African American males, but Egypt under the undemocratic leadership of al-Sisi does not seem to have a lot of hope in A.'s opinion.

Here's a song by Leonard Cohen about personal loss and political defeats, also the title of this post.

I fought in the old revolution
on the side of the ghost and the King.
Of course I was very young
and I thought that we were winning...

Yes, you who are broken by power, 
you who are absent all day, 
you who are kings for the sake of your children's story, 
the hand of your beggar is burdened down with money, 
the hand of your lover is clay.