This is the question that an Indian chemical engineer asked of history to Barbara Metcalf, president of the American Historical Association. She discusses her views on this in her article “Historians and Chemical Engineers” from which I quote extensively:

I have recently had e-mail correspondence with an Indian chemical engineer who wrote me because of a comment I had made in a general introduction to the modern history of India.1 In the book’s first chapter, an overview of the centuries of Turko-Afghan and Mughal dynasties, I had noted that the rulers in this period, who were of Muslim background, had no program whatsoever of mass conversion. Indeed, for the rulers, the forms of ritual, and the transmission of sacred knowledge on the part of their subjects, were, in fact, matters of indifference. (The political loyalty of their leaders was not.) This comment is unexceptionable to professional historians but it flies in the face of colonialist and indeed nationalist stereotypes about “despotic” and “fanatic” Muslims.

My correspondent cited an older secondary source that confirmed his viewpoint. I tried to explain to him the status of different kinds of sources and the challenge of interpreting them. In a later exchange, I suggested a few titles that he might enjoy reading that illustrate the use of primary sources and that counter the stereotypical accounts of Muslim rulers. (One of my suggestions was the marvelous Somanatha by this year’s new Honorary Foreign Member of the AHA, Romila Thapar.2) It’s been a few weeks since I’ve heard from him, but in his last note he signed off in style, asking whether I agreed with him that history was too important to leave to historians. All I could say in reply was that I felt quite confident that he, in fact, would not want to entrust some challenging problem in chemical engineering to me.

My answer was somewhat disingenuous. History may in some ways be primarily the purview of professionals, but it is also an intimate part of personal identity and a critical element in social belonging. It is learned in multiple dimensions of everyday life. Scholarly publications, and arguments communicated in a variety of settings by professional historians are, at best, only one source of anyone’s convictions about the past. This is because arguments from history become justifications for, and explanations of, public policy and public life more generally. My correspondent, the chemical engineer, bases his views of Muslims on history. I argue back that in postcolonial India, the Muslim citizens of India have suffered grievously in part precisely because of faulty misapprehensions about the past.

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Barbara Metcalf

The Na’avi characters from James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar, a visually spectacular (if cliché ridden) allegory of imperialism, seem to be becoming an icon of protest.

In the village of Bil’in on the West Bank a group of Palestinian, Israeli and Arab activists protested against the building of an Israeli barrier by costuming-up as the blue-skinned Na’avi  from the blockbuster movie (albeit the women wore hijab) . The protesters at Bil’in, who consider the barrier a land grab by Israeli security forces, equated their struggle to the intergalactic battle for Pandora, the Na’vis homeland which humans try to forcibly occupy for its mineral resources.

Via The Lede:

Batsheva Sobelman of The Los Angeles Times reported from Jerusalem that last month “a screening of ‘Avatar’ erupted into a small ruckus in a suburb when one moviegoer loudly announced that the Palestinians should learn from this movie what to do to the Jews, causing a commotion and angering others in the audience.” Ms. Sobelman explained that the “opinionated moviegoer was Juliano Mer-Khamis,” an actor who was “Born in Nazereth to a Jewish mother and Arab father.”

Mr. Mer-Khamis told the Israeli newspaper Maariv:

No one dares to make the real analogy. ‘Avatar’ is one of the bravest films made. It portrays the occupation, but people aren’t making the analogy. Many would like to be like the blue people but don’t understand the meaning. This is why people got angry at the movie theater. It is no secret that I think the Israelis are occupiers and the Palestinians occupied. Israel sits forcefully on lands that belong to others and this is exactly what the movie is talking about.

Check out the video. Also, there are reports of state-meddling in the screening of Avatar in China since the government considered the movie to be close to ’sensitive issues’ in China. However, other reports suggest that this maybe simply because of the Chines governments policy of helping local cinema by keeping Hollywood blockbusters out.

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This survey, which uses an analysis of over 100 million Facebook accounts across the world and provides country wise information about popular brands and user networks, hints to something that I have long held true: Megan Fox (and, to a lesser extent, Vin Diesel) have the power to unite people across cultures and biases.

The actress tops the list of ‘likes’  across cultures and continents, bridging even bitter rivalries such as that between India and Pakistan (her popularity amongst South American and African nations seems significantly lesser though, perhaps a hint of cultural preferences)

The graphic also elaborates on another interesting aspect: how Facebook users across the world are linked. Europe and North America show high degree of regional connections. This is also true with China, whose population seems to be connected to those of East Asian countries. On the other hand such connections seem to be absent amongst South Asian nations, who seem to be significantly more connected to the US and UK.

It also highlights how historic and diasporic links between nation are reinforced in people-to-people connections (except in the South Asian case). It also shows that the sun may have set on the British Empire, but the UK still seems to have the most globally-connected population.

Link via ChapatiMystery

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The last couple of months have seen intense debate on European society’s openness towards Muslim immigrants. Following the Swiss ban on minarets and the French proposal to ban the burqa in public life, fears have been expressed over the exclusion of Muslims from European social and political life. Politicians have gained enormous capital by channeling fears over Islam and immigrants, and populist measures such as the burqa ban in France.

Which begs the question: does Europe have a problem with Islam? Are European politics and society inherently at-odds with the values of their Muslim citizens? One thing is clear: European politics has become increasingly obsessed with controlling and regimenting its Muslim citizens. The successful campaign in Switzerland to ban minarets, as well as the growing influence of far-right politicians in Austria and the Netherlands are testimony to the popular appeal of anti-Islam populism in Europe.

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Europe, immigration, Islam

Daniel Cooper writes in on the dilemmas of radicalism, LA and post-post-graduate life.

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Nitpickers would say that the decade is not over yet (it ends on Dec 31, 2010) and valid questions would undoubtedly be raised about the benefits of dispensing history in bite sized doses. However, none of this would stop us in indulging ourselves in a bit of pop-history. The Noughties (as British tabloids imaginatively christened the 2000s) present an exciting case and, after all, who better to go to for a decade review than global historians right (everyone seems to be doing it so why should we not weigh in)?

At first glance there seems little to cheer about- 9/11, two wars, the recession and climate change were the big global issues. The decade saw the end of American supremacy, with the rise of the non-western nations, particularly China. This went hand in hand with the demise, almost to the point of being discredited, of the neo-liberal ideology. Government control of the markets increased in the west, while  it saved India and China them from a great degree of damage during the recession. At any rate, new great powers entered the scene.

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A tragi-comedy of greek proportions seems to have played out at Bratislava airport this Wednesday:

In what no doubt seemed like a good idea at the time, Slovak officials decided to test airport security in Slovakia on Saturday by concealing plastic explosives in eight suitcases and waiting to see what happened next.

Here’s what happened next: airport security workers intercepted seven of the suitcases but failed to detect 96 grams of the plastic explosive RDX loaded into one bag, which belonged to a Slovak electrician who lives in Ireland and had no idea his luggage had been tampered with. The man boarded his flight to Dublin, retrieved his bag and went home to his apartment.

The man then unpacked but, The Irish Times reports, “the explosives had been concealed so well that he did not find them.”

Three days later, on Tuesday, it apparently occurred to someone in Slovakia that the fact that one of the explosive-packed bags had gone missing was a problem and Slovakian airport authorities contacted their counterparts in Dublin to ask for help.

On Tuesday morning, the Irish Army’s bomb squad paid a visit to the apartment of the Slovak electrician in Dublin and secured the explosives. (NYT)

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The beginning of the New Year can be a time of changes and a time of re-assessment of life’s decisions. In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, BB tells his daughter:

For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.

While the movie was a tad longer than necessary, what was nice and sincere about it was that that it makes you look at the concept of time differently, because instead of getting older like everybody else,  Benjamin keeps getting younger. For most of us, as we get older we get a vaguely uncomfortable feeling that somehow, time is running out. Actually, time is just the way it always has been. What’s really running out is you. And with this comes that inevitable realisation that you want to do something meaningful before you get run out or run over.

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Apparently “the whole of English speaking India woke to this message today”.

Talk about hopeful beginnings. 2010. Bring it On

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