Quote Of The Day

Here's Pastor Rick Warren, who will host/moderate the first real debate/conversation between John McCain and Barack Obama this weekend:

The difference is that there are no death squads in America. The worst you can get here is that you can get blogged, you can get Lewinskied, on the Internet. There is a difference between that and living under oppression, living with fear for your life. That's why whether or not they found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is beside the point. Saddam and his sons were raping the country, literally. And we morally had to do something. If you have a Judeo-Christian heritage, you have to believe it when God says that evil cannot be compromised with. It has to be resisted, it has to be overcome.

Hear, hear. We really don't have enough people speaking truth to power nowadays. Anyone who says "whether or not they found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is beside the point" has my full support.

Rent Boys for Defence Aunties, Revisited

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Amir Taheri Makes Me Want to Impeach Musharraf

I am not exaggerating when I say that Amir Taheri’s column criticising the impeachment drive against General Musharraf contains more factual errors than any column ever written by anyone not named William Kristol. It really is quite staggering.

To pass, impeachment needs two-thirds support in each house of parliament. In the lower house, the parties behind it can't master more than half of the 440 seats. In the upper, they may lack a simple majority.

Three errors here. One is understandable, the other could only be made by someone who has only a passing interest in Pakistani politics and I guess the third is a typo or brain fart. First, according to article 47 of the Constitution, the two houses of parliament will meet together for impeachment proceedings and the motion will have to be passed by a two-thirds majority. They don’t need a two-thirds majority in each house, just in total.

Secondly, to say that the parties behind the impeachment ( PPP and PML-N) don’t have more than half the seats in the lower house is absurd. They have 215 seats out of 340 and when you include defectors from the PML-Q and the PPP-S that number increases even further. Hell, just for fun I’m assuming the ANP sits out the impeachment proceedings.

The third error is that the lower house of parliament has 340 seats and not 440. I guess Taheri just included the 100 Senate seats as part of the lower house.

Anyway, lets move on:

His more recent eviction of senior High Court judges pushed the edge of illegality. And his decision last year to declare a state of emergency (later cancelled) can surely be painted as a violation of the spirit if not the letter of the constitution he himself wrote.

I guess it’s a matter of opinion if dismissing the Supreme Court judges and declaring an emergency is unconstitutional or not, but Taheri’s opinion is wrong. But there can absolutely no doubt that no matter how many amendments Musharraf might have made, he didn’t actually write the constitution back in 1973.

And the very next sentence:

That said, Musharraf was fairly elected president by direct (if not totally unblemished) vote.
And he's done something no other Pakistani military ruler ever did: preside over free and fair elections that swept his political enemies to power.

Yes he was directly elected to a five-year term as president back in the 2002 referendum, although not having anyone else on the ballot may be one of the ‘blemishes’ Taheri refers to. But in 2007, he had himself appointed president for another five-year term by the assemblies. It was in no way a direct election. Oh, and just for the record, Yahya Khan presided over free and fair elections but since he didn’t allow Mujib-ur-Rahman to take power you get half a point for that.

He seized power without bloodshed and didn't fill the prisons with political rivals.

For the validity of the second part of the statement just ask any senior member of the PPP and PML-N.

He's also the only military figure to secure a political constituency of his own. Polls put his core support at about 23 percent - not great, but still enough to put him ahead of any other Pakistani politician today.

Yeah, that’s more popular than any other politician only if you don’t include Nawaz Sharif, Asif Zardari and even Amin Fahim.

Speaking of Amin Fahim, we get this ridiculous paragraph:

Last winter, Sharif walked out of the coalition, threatening the government with collapse, because a coalition partner, the Pakistan People's Party, wasn't so keen on impeachment. (In fact, the PPP's elder statesman, Amin Fahim, has publicly denounced the impeachment move and served notice that he and his friends will vote against it.) Sharif rejoined the coalition only when promised an impeachment drive.

First, a small point of order. Nawaz Sharif didn’t walk out of the coalition, he just withdrew his ministers while keeping the coalition intact. More importantly it is disingenuous to say that the PPP as a whole is opposed to impeachment because Amin Fahim is. I trust all our readers know about the Zardari/Amin Fahim saga so I’m not going to bother elaborating on that.

Ironically, Musharraf arranged for both Sharif and Zardari to escape prosecution on charges of corruption, money-laundering and embezzlement. Thanks to him, the two won't face any further probe of their activities while they were in power before 1999.

This is totally false. The National Reconciliation Ordinance only covers cases that were heard between 1986 and October 1999. The cases against Nawaz Sharif were initiated after Musharraf came to power.

Celebrating Murder With The Disgusting Jamaat-e-Islami

It’s been ages since I last posted anything on the blog and I don’t really have any valid explanation as to why; hopefully I should be writing a bit more regularly now. I thought it would be most apt if I began by writing about my favoritest people in the whole world – the Jamaat-e-Islami.

My mother spent much of her maiden life in Hyderi, an area situated in North Nazimabad, Karachi that has sizeable Bohri and Aga Khani communities. My mother and her siblings were heavily influenced by these communities, so much so that they all understand Gujrati – my aunt even learnt how to speak it. One of their neighbor, a staunch Sunni, however was not so keen about the dangerous influence that these communities were having on young Sunnis. Her name was Ayesha Hassan and she was the wife of a chap called Munawwar Hassan.

My mother’s family had gotten quite used to Ayesha ‘appa’ making bigoted statements about the Bohris and Aga Khanis but were too polite to confront her. Ayesha would spend a considerable amount of time telling my mom not to be friends with Bohris and Aga Khanis as they were infidels, once she even likend the Aga Khanis to Satanists because they had bake sales in their Jamaat Khannas! One day, Ayesha invited my grandmother over for tea, my grandmother was in no mood of going so she sent over my mother. As my mother entered their house she was welcomed with a "Mubarak Ho" and handed mithai, she assumed someone had gotten married or given birth etc., so she happily ate the mithai. She soon found Ayesha and asked her what the mithai was for, Ayesha replied “Bhutto ko phansee lag gaee” (Bhutto’s just been hanged). My mother left their house without uttering a word and no one from my mother’s family went over to their house again. To this day my mother regrets not saying anything.

In the ensuing years Ayesha appa’s charming husband, Munawwar Hassan, became the General Secretary of the Jammat-e-Islami and was elected to the National Assembly on their ticket. You can view a video of him here and read his views here.

Quote Of The Day

Sindh Minister for Culture and Tourism Sassi Palejo in the Sindh Assembly yesterday:

It will be Musharraf’s misfortune if he is impeached. It is better if he leaves. He should be tried for treason and face accountability. His human rights violations are worse than Hitler’s.

Ok.

My Second YouTube Video: A Massive PPP Motorcade In Karachi

Old-time readers may or may not recall my first YouTube video (with a rating of one star), featuring AKS and myself laughing hysterically at a recording of Zahid Fazal taking a great catch at fine leg and then being mobbed by some nutter giving him ZamZam water. Anyway, a couple of days ago I managed to catch this massive throng of motorbikes, buses, trucks and cars with PPPers in and on said modes of transport. Make sure to note the two extremely lame police mobiles at the tail end of the video; in particular, watch out for the pathetic siren right at the end in an attempt to show some (non-existent) authority. The dismissive laugh you hear is, quite naturally, mine.

Excerpt Of The Day

This excerpt is from page 13 of one of my favorite books - Eugen Weber's Peasants Into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 - where the writer is discussing the destituteness that pervaded the French countryside in the nineteenth century.

One evidence of poverty, often cited by contemporaries, was the sale of women's hair. This was particularly widespread in the center and the west, where the hair of countrywomen was periodically harvested to be exchanged in the market for a length of cloth, a couple of kerchiefs, or simply a few centimes. The midsummer fair at Limonges was especially dedicated to this trade, attracting buyers from as far as Paris; so did another important center, Treignac, in Correze. The practice waned as prosperity spread after the 1880's, and as Chinese competition drove the market down, a development that saw the value of a kilogram of hair drop from 100 francs in the early 1880's to only 50 in 1902.

It's great to see that the Chinese have been driving down prices of goods for even longer than I had previously thought.

Kung Fu Fighting and Vegetable Dildos

To be filed under stupid things Muslims do:

A few days ago I mentioned how scary it was that Altaf Hussain was urging kids to arm themselves. Well, now you can colour me unscared. All he was trying to do was indulge his Kill Bill fetish.

“Women should learn how to shoot and even they should take karate classes.

And perhaps they could send him videos of their karate lessons. Altaf bhai likes to keep his right hand busy.


Al-Qaeda’s anti-women drive is expanded to prevent them from using vegetables as dildos.

Besides the terrible killings inflicted by Al Qaeda on those who refuse to pledge allegiance to them, it has lost credibility for imposing a series of rules imposing their way of thought on the most mundane aspects of everyday life. They include a ban on women buying “suggestively-shaped” vegetables, according to one tribal leader in the western province of Anbar, according to the Daily Telegraph. Sheikh Hameed al-Hayyes, a Sunni elder, told Reuters: “They even killed female goats because their private parts were not covered and their tails were pointed upward, which they said was haram. “They regarded the cucumber as male and tomato as female. Women were not allowed to buy cucumbers, only men,” he added

I Know I Complained About Bilawal Going To The Olympics, But It Could Be Worse: We Could Have This Fool Representing Us

I mean, really:

Via Matt J. Duffy.



Photo credit: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty (via Sullivan)



Photo credit: Cameron Spencer/Getty (via Sullivan)

Will He Stay Or Will He Go Now? Impeachment Proceedings Set To Kick Off Tomorrow

So impeachment proceedings against Pervez Musharraf are set to get underway this week. I have to say that when the news first broke, I was highly skeptical of anything substantive actually materializing. It is not as if we had not heard this song and dance before, and I interpreted it as merely another step in the seemingly endless political two-step that Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif have been treating us to since February this year.

It appears that things are different this time. While Sherry Rehman's claims of having 350 votes for the impeachment, with more coming "every hour", are almost certainly exaggerated, it is clear that one way or the other, the political impasse that has plagued Pakistan - centering on the judiciary and Musharraf questions - has come to a head. For the first time in six months, the main players in Pakistan have important decisions to make.

Let's start with Musharraf. Broadly speaking, he has two options. The first option is to resign, negotiate a golden handshake almost invariably involving amnesty, and figure out where he wants to live - according to this report, he'd like to retire in Pakistan because he can't afford to live abroad. The second option is to take this challenge head on, and hope that the PML-Q, MQM, and pissed off dissidents and their sympathizers from the impeaching parties can somehow cobble together enough votes to obviate his removal from office. I have maintained for a while now that I would like to see Musharraf take the first option, if for no other reason than the fact that his presence is a political millstone and does not allow normal and regular governance to proceed (or as normal and regular as governance can be in Pakistan). He's too much of a distraction, and it would serve the greater good if he would simply leave of his volition. Given his commando-type personality, however, I fear that he will not see it that way, and go ahead with the second option: roll the dice, and see what happens.

Nawaz Sharif too has important decisions to make. The most critical of these, for his party's electoral and political future anyway, is whether or not he would be willing to trade Musharraf for Iftikhar Chaudhry. Put differently, will he accept a watering down of his hitherto unyielding position on the PCO and pre-November 3 judiciary for the PPP's finally climbing on board with respect to moving against Musharraf? Right of center and anti-Musharraf political forces (not always the same thing) like the PML-N, the Jamaat-e-Islami and Imran Khan have up to this point held the judiciary and Musharraf questions as two sides of the same coin - by hoping to get the judiciary restored, they wished for Iftikhar Chaudhry and the rest of the judges to take care of their Musharraf problem. Now it appears that there is a disjunct between the Musharraf question and the judiciary question, and that one might compromise the other. The lawyers and Imran Khan have made clear which side they feel is more important: the restoration of the judiciary. But Nawaz Sharif seems to have placed his bets the other way. It certainly seems plausible that the Nawaz-Zardari marathon talks a couple of days ago featured some sort of quid pro quo: Zardari finally agrees to move against Musharraf if Nawaz finally agrees to stop yammering about an independent judiciary.

Finally, Asif Zardari too has things to think about. Most important among these is how sure he is of having that magic number of 295 votes in the assemblies. Impeaching the President is kind of like asking a girl out - you better be damn sure beforehand unless you want to feel like a complete idiot later. In this case, the worst possible outcome for Zardari is to proceed with the impeachment process and then lose, horse-trading and all. For one thing, such an outcome would instantly confer upon Musharraf a degree of legitimacy that he has not enjoyed since March 9, 2007 (admittedly not a high standard, but you know what I mean). Furthermore, Zardari and the PPP would feel considerable embarrassment if the impeachment measure were defeated with the help of certain high-profile members of the PPP. Finally, failure to impeach Musharraf will raise concerned and angry voices among the public by providing a symbolic rallying point against a government which, in its extremely short time in office, has failed to meaningfully address any of the problems facing Pakistan. Under such circumstances, it is easy to imagine an emboldened Musharraf squeezing the PPP on one hand and Nawaz Sharif and the PML-N pressuring it on the other, making its government ineffective and rudderless (or even more so than it is now).

Today's Links

I am frightened of many things. Talibanisation scares me. Altaf Hussain urging kids to arm themselves to fight Talibanisation is another. Back in the late-80's, Altaz advised Muhajir teenagers to sell whatever they had to buy guns to fight the Sindhi menace. And we all know how that turned out.

At a time when no country wants to tour Pakistan do we really want to go out of our way to insult the Kiwis?

Pakistan’s one-day series against New Zealand at home this month is unlikely to go ahead of because of security fears.

But the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is not worried about it, a Board official told ‘The News’ on Friday.

“If they (New Zealand) come here and play the series, they would be more than welcome,” said the official, who requested anonymity. “But if they want to skip then it would be their decision. We are not desperate for the series,” he added.

There is nothing strange about a Russian academic writing an article on the occasion of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's death. But it is slightly odd that Nikita Khrushcheva would go out of her way to praise Nikita Khrushchev.

The paradox is that, in the Soviet era, his art was used, briefly, as a force for liberation, because Nikita Khrushchev allowed the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in order to buttress his anti-Stalin thaw...Under Khrushchev, however, Solzhenitsyn’s work was used to liberate the country from the grip of Stalinism. In choosing to allow One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to be published, Khrushchev knew that he was undermining the entire Soviet era up to that point...Yet Khrushchev, isolated and in disgrace, continued to see a bond between himself and the great author. As Solzhenitsyn wrote in his memoir The Oak and the Calf: “as late as 1966, he [Khrushchev] sent me New Year’s greetings — which astonished me because I was on the brink of arrest. Perhaps (in his disgrace) he did not know.”

Might Ms Khrushcheva have seen fit to mention at some point that she is she the granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev?

Bilawal (Bhutto) Zardari Goes To China

For the Olympics of course. Check out this report:

BEIJING, Aug 8 (APP) - Pakistan People’s Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said here Friday that he would work to further enhance and cement Pakistan-China relations and carry forward these bonds to a new height. He stated this during a meeting with Minister of International Department of Communist Party of China (CPC) Wang Jiarui.

Bilawal said founding Chairman of PPP Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto laid the foundation of Pak-China friendship and his mother Shaheed Benazir Bhutto further cemented these ties.

“Not only at the Government to Government level, but I would also work to strengthen our relations at party to party level,” Bilawal said. "Especially after I did so well on the Calc II final, I think I'm up to the task of managing important geo-strategic relationships in a time of great peril for our country."

Ok, I made that last part up, but the rest is really true: we have a nineteen year old who hasn't finished college yet meeting seasoned bureaucrats from the Chinese Communist Party on an official state visit. Since I don't really have anything else to say about that, I'll leave you with an image instead. Thousand words and all that.

Apologies For The Lack Of Posts

I will let the others make their own excuses, I've simply been too busy this week. I do have a couple of posts on the mental white board though, and should hopefully get them both out by the weekend. In the meantime, read these two funny stories from The Onion if you haven't had the chance to look at them already.

The Case of the Imploding Dollar

Thanks to The News, I learned that my good friend and former boss Mohammed Hanif has been nominated for the Booker prize for his brilliant debut novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes. I also learned that people aren't joking when they say the dollar is weak.

‘A case of Exploding Mangoes’ by the Okara-born author is competing against publications of 12 other leading writers for the prize of 50,000 pounds (US $ 1 million).

Zardari, Nawaz To Not Make Or Break Anything. Anything At All.

The News reports that:

PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari and PML-N Quaid Mian Nawaz Sharif will meet on Tuesday (August 5). This could be a make-or-break meeting between the two leaders to decide the fate of the four-month-old ruling coalition.

They should be getting pretty good at these "make-or-break" meetings, those two, what with all the practice they've had. They had one in February

The apparent breakthrough came as the leaders of the two parties, the victors in parliamentary elections on Monday, held make-or-break talks in Islamabad.

and April

The leaders of the coalition are due to meet tomorrow in what could be a make-or-break summit on the judges’ issue. It is not a dry constitutional debate: last week a clash between lawyers and members of a pro-Musharraf political party in the southern city of Karachi left at least 10 dead.

(twice)

[Nawaz] holds make-or-break talks with Zardari today

and May

Make-or-break day for coalition

and July

Pakistan People’s Party co-chairman Asif Zardari is expected to leave Dubai for London in a couple of days to meet PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif for what political analysts believe may be the make-or-break talks on the issue of reinstatement of the deposed judges.

With all these meetings, however, isn't it reasonable to expect that something be either made or broken?

Optimism On Indo-Pak Relations

I know most of you are probably consumed by the recent downturn in Indo-Pak relations marked by India accusing Pakistan of sponsoring an attack on its embassy in Kabul, Pakistan issuing the inevitable denial and promise to investigate, and India's Foreign Secretary saying relations are at their worst point since the beginning of the detente in 2004. I think, however, that that is to adopt a very myopic view of things. Over the long run, as The Onion reports below, the shifts in tectonic plates below the earth's surface guarantee a peaceful and lasting solution to all disputes.

Volatile India-Pakistan Standoff Enters 11,680th Day

Female Suicide Bombers

Just wanted to give a shout-out to Lindsey, one of my closest friends (and sometimes commenter here on Rs.5) who yesterday got published on the New York Times op-ed page with an article on female suicide terrorists. The only drawback was that the NYT chose a relatively somber title, as opposed to some of the suggestions Lindsey received a while ago for an academic paper on the same topic, a sampling of which I blogged about (examples include "Does this belt make me look fat? A study on female suicide terrorists" and "She Bangs, She Bangs"). Boring title and all, make sure to check it out.

Things Academics Say

Given that I will hopefully be on the academic job market in three years time, and that the names hereunder are pretty significant in the field, I am reserving comment on the following tidbits.

The following sentence is from pages 27-28 of Samuel Huntington's The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. The context is that Huntington is reviewing the literature on the question of whether or not it matters if a country is democratic.

A substantial scholarly literature, for instance, suggests that much public policy is shaped more by a country's level of economic development than by the nature of its regime. Corruption, inefficiency, incompetence, domination by a few special interests are found in all societies no matter what their form of government. One widely read book on comparative politics even begins with the claim that "The most important political distinction among countries concerns not their form of government but their degree of government."

The footnote on the quote from the "widely read book"? Samuel Huntington's Political Order in Changing Societies.

Moving along, please allow me to reveal to you the title of Alex Wendt's latest (co-authored with Raymond Duvall) article, which is in the latest issue of Political Theory. Ready? Here it is:

Sovereignty and the UFO

Here is the abstract:

Modern sovereignty is anthropocentric, constituted and organized by reference to human beings alone. Although a metaphysical assumption, anthropocentrism is of immense practical import, enabling modern states to command loyalty and resources from their subjects in pursuit of political projects. It has limits, however, which are brought clearly into view by the authoritative taboo on taking UFOs seriously. UFOs have never been systematically investigated by science or the state, because it is assumed to be known that none are extraterrestrial. Yet in fact this is not known, which makes the UFO taboo puzzling given the ET possibility. Drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, the puzzle is explained by the functional imperatives of anthropocentric sovereignty, which cannot decide a UFO exception to anthropocentrism while preserving the ability to make such a decision. The UFO can be “known” only by not asking what it is.

The "key words" of the article, picked out for reference/search purposes, are as follows: sovereignty, UFOs, state of exception, undecidability, epistemology of ignorance, Agamben. Here is a link to a summary of a talk given on their article.

Quote Of The Day

Yao Ming lives up to every Chinese stereotype while thinking about Ron-Ron's arrival in Houston. Honestly, if Sun Tzu or Confucius played a team sport, wouldn't they have said something like this?

For some reason, I like him. Because in the games we play against him, I hate him.

As I told Nikhil in an email, this move is guaranteed to destroy the Rockets. Rick Adelman, his "player's coach" reputation notwithstanding, is not as able a people-manager as Phil Jackson. Tracy McGrady, moreover, is not the you-better-not-fuck-around-or-I'll-rip-your-goddamn-throat-out alpha dog that is Kobe Bryant. The result will be Ron-Ron being Ron-Ron, which ultimately means he will be involved in every single trade rumor in January and February.

Britain Has A National Orgasm Day?

Yes, it does, and the only way I found out was this gem of a headline:

Women's health campaign reaches climax

More On Obama

It is difficult to decide whether this is a great example of investigative journalism, or one giant waste of time. The NYT has managed to get the syllabi, final exams, reading lists, and answer memos (all in PDF format) for a number of classes Obama taught at the University of Chicago Law School, ostensibly to learn more about him.

As some of you may well know, the Law School at U of C is one the more conservative in the U.S.; it is particularly one of the more conservative elite law schools. Having read a number of articles (like this one, among others) that deal with Obama's decade-plus as a lecturer and senior lecturer at the school (he was offered a tenured position but did not take it because he was busy with his other job, being a state senator in Illinois), it is always striking to me to hear conservative law professors talk about how willing Obama was to go beyond established ways of thinking, and engage critically with his students and the material. From my understanding, his seminars were very popular with law students, despite their odd timings (he would have class either ridiculously early Monday mornings or late in the workday on Friday because of his State Senate career).

The NYT piece linked here is a little less glowing, mainly because they seem to have used a number of Richard Epstein's quotes in the article, and the latter just seems cranky (especially about Obama not attending workshops, which was only because of his political career in Springfield). In any event, it is really interesting to go through this stuff, and perhaps it would be even more so for the law students/lawyers in our readership. It's also clear that he has a sense of humor; he asks his students in one final exam to hypothesize that they have just passed the bar in a state called Nirvana (so he gets to write sentences like "the state of Nirvana just last year passed a number of laws") or to imagine that they work in the general counsel's office for the Governor of Utopia, Arnold Whatzanager.

UPDATE: Check out this diary at DailyKos for a debunking of some of the criticisms and quasi-criticisms directed at Obama in the NYT piece.

THIS Guy Is Angelina Jolie's Dad?

How can someone who says this spawn a goodwill ambassador to the UN?

Sen. Barack Obama has grown up with the teaching of very angry, militant white and black people: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, William Ayers and Rev. Michael Pfleger. We cannot say we are not affected by teachers who are militant and angry. We know too well that we become like them, and Mr. Obama will run this country in their mindset.

The Democratic Party, in its quest for power, has managed a propaganda campaign with subliminal messages, creating a God-like figure in a man who falls short in every way. It seems to me that if Mr. Obama wins the presidential election, then Messrs. Farrakhan, Wright, Ayers and Pfleger will gain power for their need to demoralize this country and help create a socialist America.

Link via Andrew Sullivan.

Blog Recommendation: Grand Trunk Road

If you guys like to read about the sort of stuff we talk about here on Rs. 5 (especially the Pakistan side of things), then you should check out Grand Trunk Road. It's a good blog.

Feminism Is No Longer Relevant

Not because equal pay in the workplace or a real division of labor at home is widespread throughout the world today, but because women have reached the true mark of equality: they have shown they can be as idiotically juvenile as men on a basketball court:





Anyway, speaking of great basketball videos, please watch this great 10-minute clip of Obama and his relationship with the sport. In particular, watch out for him telling us "My actual talent was my first step...I could get to the rim on anybody." Classic.

Excerpt Of The Day

This is from Barrington Moore's canonical Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. The relevant passage (pp. 350-51) deals with Indian customs that "deeply offended British consciences."

One of the latter was sati (also spelled suttee), the term for the custom of burning or otherwise killing a widow as soon as her husband died. It revolted many British. In Bengal generally a widow "was usually tied to the corpse, often already putrid; men stood by with poles to push her back in case the bonds should burn through and the victim, scorched and maimed, should struggle free." In the vast majority of cases, at least in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the woman went to the flames in fear and horror. Many people know the remark of one famous British officer in the 1840s, in reply to Brahmans who argued that sati was a national custom: "My nation also has a custom. When men burn women alive, we hang them...Let us all act according to national customs."

Of course the English also used to hang women for being witches as recently as a hundred years before this exchange, but who wants to let facts get in the way of a great line like that?

Anyway, speaking of widows, did you guys know that the word "raand" (which is either the origin of, or the technical term for, "randi" [whore]) means "widow"? As I told NB the other day in an email (for some reason, we were discussing the same thing) "examine for yourself the cultural connotations of associating one whose husband has died, with one who places her body on the open market for the sexual gratification of others. A woman is simply assumed to - nay, damned to - be of little virtue and possess no moral compass whatsoever in the absence of a Man to make sure the woman is Good."