Guest post: Meera Nanda on India’s superstition industry

First published in India’s Frontline magazine; reposted here by permission.

Asaram Bapu’s alleged sexual assault on a young girl offers an opportunity to throw light on India’s superstition industry and lift the veil on the state-temple-corporate complex. By MEERA NANDA

At one level, the arrest of Asaram is a rather humdrum, same-old story. One more godman has fallen from grace. So, what is new under the sun? Aren’t we used to discovering the clay feet of our sadhu sants? Perhaps George Orwell was on to something when he said that “saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent”, for no all-too-human godman can ever live up to the qualities of godliness. Perhaps the wise course to take is to reflect upon the tragedy of overweening human ambition of these fallen gurus and move on.

Yet, if one pauses to think about it, Asaram’s arrest is not just a matter of one more godman’s personal failings. Rather, this episode dramatises the thin line between faith and blind faith, and the near complete merger of faith, politics and money in contemporary Indian society.

Asaram’s alleged rape of a 16-year-old girl is proof—if more proof is needed—why Narendra Dabholkar’s struggle against superstitious beliefs and practices is indeed the need of the hour. [Read more…]

If you accept rather than interpret

Aphorisms. I can’t figure out if I like them or hate them. I suppose the answer is, banally enough, that I like the good ones and the bad ones not so much.

I spotted one I do like a lot. Of course it’s on Twitter; where else would it be? (It’s a funny thing but just a few days ago I heard someone on NPR grumbling about “being told what entrée you chose.” Come on. I was born just as the Vikings invaded Britain and even I know that’s not what Twitter is. There is plenty of random chatty personal stuff, sure, but there are also many many other categories, including fomenting revolution and organizing protests outside the Dáil. And for that matter random personal chatty items have their value, and clever people can make them into an art form, which we might not have known if Twitter hadn’t come along. Stop griping.) It’s Neil deGrasse Tyson.

If the world is something you accept rather than interpret, then you’re susceptible to the influence of charismatic idiots.

It says a lot. There are many things that could follow the first eleven words. I might make mine “…you miss out on a great many ways of understanding.” You?

Golden Dawn BUSTED

Yes busted. Booya!

The leader of Greece’s extreme-right Golden Dawn party and four other of its lawmakers were formally charged Saturday with membership in a criminal organization with intent to commit crimes, in an escalation of a government crackdown after a fatal stabbing blamed on a supporter.

It was the first time since 1974 that sitting members of Parliament have been arrested. The arrests underline the Greek government’s efforts to stifle the fiercely anti-immigrant party, which has been increasingly on the defensive since the killing.

Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos, party spokesman Ilias Kassidiaris and Yannis Lagos, Nikos Michos and Ilias Panayiotaros were arrested by counterterrorism police. The latter two gave themselves up voluntarily. A sixth lawmaker, Christos Pappas — described in a prosecutor’s report as the Golden Dawn’s No. 2 — remains at large.

An additional 15 people, including 13 Golden Dawn members and two police officers, have also been arrested and are due to appear before a prosecutor and an examining magistrate soon. They face the same charges.

That is good news.

H/t Simon but tell me more promptly next time.

 

Little North Korea on the prairie

Welp, it appears that Pat Condell got pissed off at PZ the other day.

Expect a few rounds of fuming racist comments today — I have been discovered by Pat Condell, and he’s sending his pals over to set us all straight.

Pat Condell @patcondell Many thanks to @pzmyers and everyone at the North Korea of free thought for a most amusing start to the day. https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/09/23/feminism-is-not-an-excuse-for-your-racism-pat-condell/

Ha ha, yes, because a blog network is just like a totalitarian state. [Read more…]

If you’re not Nabokov

And then there’s the academic peonage aspect.

In all the recent talk about dead white males and the living white males who teach them, we’ve missed something about the David Gilmour controversy. It’s not at all unusual for people to want to teach only the things they like, but, generally speaking, it is unusual for them to get what they want.

In other words, why did David Gilmour get such a sweet deal?

Consider this set of well-worn truisms about higher ed: arts enrolment is at an all-time low. The academic job market is bleaker than a house in a novel by Charles Dickens. Actual PhDs, who have trained to teach the curriculum, compete with hundreds of qualified applicants for every one position available. Those who don’t opt out altogether fall back on “sessional” instructor work, which is widely known for its poverty-line wage, lack of job security and low status. [Read more…]

If you be mainstream everyone will love you

Yeah I already knew that, thanks.

Study: Everyone hates environmentalists and feminists

Of course everyone does. And you know why? Because lots of people work hard to make everyone hate environmentalists and feminists. People who hate feminism and feminists themselves work hard to convince everyone else that feminists are witch-hunters from North Korea. Oil companies and other interested parties hire PR firms to make environmentalists seem like soppy tree-hugging fools who will steal your SUV to plant potatoes in. [Read more…]

The First Amendment right not to be taught science

So Judge John Jones might as well not have bothered writing that opinion in the Kitzmiller case? I ask because some eternally hopeful types in Kansas have filed a federal lawsuit claiming that science is religion and must be kept out of the public schools.

TOPEKA, Kan. — An anti-evolution group filed a federal lawsuit Thursday to block Kansas from using new, multistate science standards in its public schools, arguing the guidelines promote atheism and violate students’ and parents’ religious freedom.

So is it promoting atheism and violating students’ and parents’ religious freedom to teach about gravity without any balancing teaching that actually it’s God pushing everything down? [Read more…]

Guest post: two real teachers of literature respond to Gilmour

Andrea Day and Miriam Novick read these remarks yesterday at the event Serious Heterosexual Guys for Serious Literary Scholarship, held at the statue of Northrop Frye at Victoria College in the University of Toronto. The remarks are on Facebook, and posted here by permission.

For those of you who couldn’t be there yesterday, below are the remarks @Andrea Day and I read at the start of yesterday’s events.

Good morning, serious and unserious readers, teachers, and lovers of literature! We’ve asked you to join us here today to respond to David Gilmour’s recent comments about why he teaches what he calls only “very serious heterosexual guys” in his literature courses here at Victoria College. In his own words, “I teach only the best.”

Because Gilmour does not “love” any Canadian authors or writers who “happen to be Chinese or women” (except, of course, Virginia Woolf), he focuses on books about white, middle-aged male authors here in his classes at Vic. This misrepresents our profession: as teachers of literature, we want to introduce our students to a range of perspectives and to encourage them to think critically. [Read more…]