A Bit More Detail

• Bad Astronomer considers how a stellar-mass black hole of 70 solar masses got so unaccountably huge.


• Alex Tolley at Centauri Dreams considers the colours of photosynthesis, and how they might reveal the existence of life on exoplanets.


• The Dragon's Tales shares some links on humans in the Paleolithic.


• Jonathan Wynn at the Everyday Sociology Blog considers the scripts of jokes.


• Gizmodo reports on the repurposed China-Netherlands radio telescope operating from an orbit above the far side of the Moon.


• JSTOR Daily considers the political rhetoric of declinism.


• Language Log considers the controversy over the future of the apostrophe.


• James Butler at the LRB Blog notes a YouGov prediction of a Conservative majority in the UK and how this prediction is not value-neutral.


• Marginal Revolution shares a paper from India noting how caste identities do affect the labour supply.


• Ursula Lindsay at the NYR Daily considers if the political crisis in Lebanon, a product of economic pressures and sectarianism, might lead to a revolutionary transformation of the country away from sectarian politics.


• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections looks at some of the many complicated and intermingled issues of contemporary Australia.


• The Planetary Society Blog reports on the latest projects funded by the ESA.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel shares ten beautiful photos taken in 2019 by the Hubble.


• Strange Company reports on the strange unsolved disappearance of Lillian Richey from her Idaho home in 1964.


• Window on Eurasia shares a Russian criticism of the Ukrainian autocephalous church as a sort of papal Protestantism.


• Arnold Zwicky considers the positive potential of homoeros.

• The Conversation notes how New Brunswick, with its economic challenges and its language divide, represents in microcosm the problems of wider Canada.


• This Los Angeles Times article notes how Rohingya Hindus see themselves, rightly, as sharing a different fate from their Muslim coethnics.


• This New York Times article looks at how the Internet censors of China are trained, by letting them know about the actual history of their country first.


• Bloomberg reports how on the Iranian government tries to engage selectively with the social networking platforms, like Instagram and Telegram, used by the outside world.


• Bloomberg notes that the concern of Japan that the United Kingdom, Japanese companies' chosen platform for export to the EU, might engage in a hard Brexit is pressing.

• MacLean's argues that, in Canada and arguably the West generally, it is much too soon to rehabilitate the swastika.


• Global News reports on a proposal to rename Nova Scotia's Cornwallis River.


• This effort to engage in a minimalist, non-misleading restoration of a Spanish castle is controversial.


• The argument that human history goes back millions of years, and encompass a huger area than thought, is compelling.

• Antipope's Charlie Stross wonders if the politics of Trump might mean an end to the British nuclear deterrent.


• Centauri Dreams shares Andrew LePage's evaluation of the TRAPPIST-1 system, where he concludes that there are in fact three plausible candidates for habitable status there.


• Dangerous Minds shares the gender-bending photographs of Norwegian photographers Marie Høeg and Bolette Berg.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at the 1980s HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States.


• The Extremo Files looks at the human microbiome.


• Language Hat links to an article on Dakhani, a south Indian Urdu dialect.


• The LRB Blog looks at policing in London.


• The Map Room Blog notes that 90% of the hundred thousand lakes of Manitoba are officially unnamed.


• Marginal Revolution looks at the remarkable Akshardham Temple of New Delhi.


• The Planetary Society Blog notes how citizen scientists detected changes in Rosetta's comet.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer provides a visual guide for New Yorkers at the size of the proposed border wall.


• The Russian Demographics Blog links to a paper taking a look at the history of abortion in 20th century France.


• Torontoist looks at the 1840s influx of Irish refugees to Toronto.


• Understanding Society takes a look at the research that went into the discovery of the nucleus of the atom.


• Window on Eurasia reports on Belarus.


• Arnold Zwicky shares photos and commentary on the stars and plot of Oscar-winning film Midnight.

India's ruling BJP’s General Secretary, Mr. Ram Madhav, recently said in an interview to Al Jazeera that the RSS, his core organisation, still believes that one day Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, “which have for historical reasons separated only 60 years ago, will again, through popular goodwill, come together and ‘Akhand Bharat’ will be created”. The idea of Akhand Bharat is a dream of the RSS, and of the BJP, which is a right-wing party with close ideological and organisational links to the former, and of other Hindutvadi organisations and their adherents. I am not going to speak for Pakistan. But, whether future generations of Bangladeshis will reunite their country with India will depend fully on those generations that are probably yet to be born.

If we recall history, we see that despite innumerable attempts by the Muslims of the unpartitioned India, they failed to ensure and protect their politico-economic, socio-religious, cultural and other rights in the midst of the overwhelming Hindu majority population, and under the 27-month-long Congress rule following the general election of 1937. In every Hindu majority province, the Muslims were victims of serious riots and oppression.

A separate State was not in the minds of the Muslims at the beginning. But the Congress’ intransigent opposition to any measure by the British Government aimed at benefiting the minority Muslim population – like the 1905 partition of Bengal, grant of separate electorate for the Muslims, giving power to the Muslims in those provinces where they were in majority – compelled them to demand a separate homeland. The Congress repudiated all British government plans that stipulated power-sharing with the Muslim League – the party that at those times epitomised the aspirations of almost all Muslims of India.

Have the basics of the Hindu-Muslim relations changed in India over the last 68 years? One proof that they have not changed much is the fact that right-wing Hindutvadi cultural and political organisations such as the Hindu Mahasabha, RSS, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, BJP, etc., that envision India as a Hindu country, still wield enormous popular support and influence. In effect, they regard Muslims as outsiders. Even after about 70 years of existence of the democratic and constitutionally secular India, Muslims are killed there for eating beef. The Muslims in India could still be coerced into converting back to Hinduism under the Ghar Wapsi programme. Celebrity actors like Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan felt insecure and alienated in an atmosphere of growing religious intolerance in India in recent months; and they faced severe backlashes for voicing their sense of insecurity.

At the behest of the then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a High Level Committee, chaired by Justice Rajindar Sachar, prepared and submitted a report on the socioeconomic and educational status of the Muslims in India in November 2006. It’s not possible to mention all of the findings of that committee in the extremely limited space of this article. But some key ones were: the unemployment rate among Muslim graduates was the highest among all the socio-religious categories and participation of Muslims in jobs in both the public and private sectors was quite low. The number of Muslims in Central Government departments and agencies was “abysmally” low at all levels. “There was not even one state in which the representation of Muslims in the government departments matched their population share (around14 percent)”, states the report.

In October 2015, the University of California, Irvine, announced the creation of an endowed chair—the Thakkar Family-Dharma Civilization Foundation Presidential Chair in Vedic and Indic Civilization Studies—supported by a $1.5 million grant.

As reported in this article in a local newspaper, following pushback from faculty and students because of the suspected Hindu nationalist or Hindu-right sympathies of the foundation, and concerns about excessive interference in the hiring process, the plans for the chair seem somewhat uncertain at present.

Compared to the shenanigans of Hindu-nationalist organisations and their supporters, the controversy, thus far, appears relatively tame, more of the order of a dull tussle between faculty and administration about procedural autonomy than about anything else.

The interventions of the Hindu right in the academic field, in India and more broadly, have generally fallen into the category of the absurd or the violent. The former is exemplified by the routine claims of the achievements of the ancient Hindu civilisation—Vedic aeroplanes, plastic surgery, intergalactic travel, and so on. The recently concluded 103rd edition of the Indian Science Congress, for instance, featured a bizarre conch-blowing performance by an officer of the elite IAS (Indian Administrative Service), ostensibly as an act of impeccable scientific merit.

India is in the midst of a war of sorts — a war over eggs. To eat them, or not to eat them. Actually, it's more about whether the government should give free eggs to poor, malnourished children.

It all began in late May, when Shivraj Chouhan, the chief minister of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, shot down a proposal to serve eggs in government-run day care centers (anganwadis) in some tribal areas.

These communities have high rates of malnutrition, says Sachin Jain, a local food-rights activist in the state. "The idea behind the proposal was to address the gap in protein deficiency through ... eggs," he says.

But Chouhan wasn't convinced. As Indian newspapers reported, he publicly vowed not to allow eggs to be served as long as he was minister.

Why this vehement opposition to eggs? Well, the local community of Jains, which is strictly vegetarian and also powerful in the state, has previously thwarted efforts to introduce eggs in day care centers and schools. Chouhan is an upper caste Hindu man who recently became a vegetarian.

And the state of Madhya Pradesh is mostly vegetarian, as are some other states, like Karnataka, Rajasthan and Gujarat. For years, the more politically vocal vegetarians in these states have kept eggs out of school lunches and anganwadis.

But here's the thing: While these states as a whole may be mostly vegetarian, the poorest — and most malnourished — Indians generally are not. They would eat eggs, if only they could afford them, says Dipa Sinha, an economist at the Center for Equity Studies in New Delhi and an expert on India's preschool and school feeding programs.

Anecdotally, we’d all agree that the last ten years are likely to have seen a huge jump in the number of English-speakers; English is now the second biggest language of instruction in primary schools after Hindi.

So India’s official language numbers, over ten years old now, are almost certainly an underestimation of the number of English speakers. Even so, there is little comparison between the number of English and Sanskrit speakers.

In terms of primary languages – what we commonly understand as the “mother tongue” – both English and Sanskrit were miles away from India’s Top 10. Of the123 primary languages counted by the Census – 23 scheduled and 100 non-scheduled – Sanskrit was fifth from bottom in terms of primary languages spoken, with only Persian, Chakhesang, Afghani/ Kabuli and Simte less commonly spoken. English, meanwhile, was the 45th most commonly spoken primary language.

Narendra Modi’s first official visit to the United States, which ended on Sept. 30 was quite a spectacle. There was a campaign-style appearance before 18,000 adoring fans at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Jumbotrons in Times Square broadcast an extravaganza that featured Bollywood dancing, convention-style balloon-drops, and a receiving line of dozens of U.S. congressmen. Modi was working hard, it seemed, to introduce himself favorably to Americans and the Indian expatriates who live among them.

But he wasn’t just speaking to the people on this continent. In fact, the symbolism and rhetoric of this trip were carefully calibrated toward his Hindu nationalist base at home (and here, too). This was old-fashioned dog-whistle politics, and it was a master class. The message: I may nod to tolerance and openness, but I’m really still with you.

For starters, take the jacket Modi wore on stage in New York. It was in a color that his personal tailor, Bipin Chauhan, has called a “silent” variation of saffron. The color is a favorite of Modi’s. Many of his iconic calf-length shirts, now rebranded as #ModiKurtas (yes, they have a hash tag), and other accessories sport some shade of saffron. In India, saffron has deep connotations for Hindus, symbolizing sacred fire, sacrifice, asceticism and a quest for light and salvation. But the color has also been co-opted by Hindu fundamentalists. The armed Hindu mobs that roamed Gujarat in the 2002 riots that led to the death of over 1,000 people, three-quarters of them Muslim, wore saffron. Modi was Gujarat’s chief minister at the time. While evidence exists of state complicity in the riots, he personally has not been found guilty. Still, given the loaded iconography surrounding the color, Modi’s style choices seem awfully brazen.

In his speech on Sunday, the prime minister evoked yet another symbol of India — the river Ganges. In asking for help from affluent Indian Americans in the audience to clean up the polluted river, he referred to the river as Maa Ganga or Mother Ganga, an honorific routinely used by Hindus who revere the river as a Goddess and believe its water is holy. He exhorted the audience to watch a film that is a paean to Hindu rituals associated with the river. His reclamation project has been named NamamiGange; Namami is a term borrowed from Sanskrit prayers and means “obeisance.” Namami Gange translates as, “We bow to you, Ganga” — a sentiment that the hundreds of millions of Indians who depend on the arterial river may not share. In contrast, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s cleanup mission was simply called the Ganga Action Plan.

To say that Canadian Hindu Advocacy lends Ron Banerjee credibility is an understatement—its reach, or rather the reach he claims it has, is the sole basis for it. Mere months after its founding, Banerjee called CHA “the largest and most prominent Hindu advocacy [group] here in Canada” at a rally, and he hasn’t stopped saying as much since. ”We are a national organization of professionals,” reads the homepage of CHA’s website, “most of whom have left other groups to join together and form an entity that really stands up for traditional Canadian and mainstream Hindu values.” In a letter to Maclean’s on behalf of CHA, Banerjee wrote, again, that “we are a large national group.”

Never mind, for now, that Canada’s Hindu population numbered 297,200 people as of 2001 [PDF], and that even in Toronto Life’s feature about the Valley Park Middle School protests against school prayer that Banerjee helped orchestrate, he claimed a paying membership of only 930, which is 0.31% of that. Never mind, for now, that Banerjee, who is alternately referred to in the press as a director of CHA and its spokesperson, is apparently the only member of the organization who’s ever referred to in the press at all. (Combined, the Toronto Sun and National Post have published dozens of news articles quoting Banerjee, and he’s also a recurring talking head on Sun News Network’s The Arena with Michael Coren, and has been a guest on AM640′s John Oakley Show and Jim Richards’ Newstalk1010 Showgram.)

[. . .]

I tell Banerjee that I’m trying to find any evidence of the hundreds of paying members he claims the group has, and I ask if I can talk to any of them. He says, “I wouldn’t know how to do that without disclosing the names of the people and stuff like that.” He sends me this video, which he says shows other members (“senior directors” and a few of their “more active members”). It doesn’t look like a large national group; I count only about ten people standing with Banerjee in it. He promises to send me the names of other members and supporters, some of whom I say I’m willing to keep anonymous. I tell him that, either way, the more he can send me, the better, and that it’s my job to not take him on his word. I give him a day. He sends me five.

I was asking Banerjee for members of Canadian Hindu Advocacy because I’d spent a week looking myself, and hadn’t been able to find any.

When I spoke to Pandit Roopnauth Sharma, the president of the Canadian Hindu Federation, which represents temples across the country, he wasn’t surprised. “Other than knowing Mr. Banerjee by name, I know of no one who’s in the group,” Sharma said. “I don’t know of anyone that I’ve come into contact with who’s said to me, ‘By the way, I’m the president,’ or ‘I’m the secretary,’ or ‘I’m the treasurer.’” Half-serious, he asked for a favour: “When you find somebody, please, I would be interested to know who they are. And if you find members of his executive and things like that, it would be nice to know who they are.”

Dr. Budhendra Doobay, the chairman of Richmond Hill’s Vishnu Mandir and the founder of the Canadian Hindu Federation, says he doesn’t “know of any Hindu [Banerjee] represents,” either. “As far as I’m concerned, his views do not represent the views of Hindus in the GTA.”

CHA’s Facebook group is little help. As of September 28, it has a mere 111 members, only 18 of whom, including Banerjee, were active in any way between June 1 and September 18, 2012 (whether posting anything to the group’s wall themselves, posting a comment alongside something anyone else posted, or Liking anything). Of those 18 members, 7 don’t appear to live in Canada—their home cities are listed as places like Delhi, India. Or Kyoto, Japan. Or Chicago. Of the group’s five administrators other than Banerjee, two appear to be living in India. Still, I sent private messages to all of the administrators and all of the active members whose privacy settings allowed it, asking each one i) whether they were Hindu, ii) whether they were Canadian, iii) whether they were a member of CHA, and iv) what they thought of the decision to screen Innocence of Muslims. After a week, none had replied to me except for one woman, Cutler Hill. She says she’s Canadian, but not Hindu; she described herself as an “evangelical Zionist.” She continued: “I am not part of the decision commity [sic], but if I was I would vote in favour of it.” It was beginning to look an awful lot like Canadian Hindu Advocacy had an abundance of neither Canadians nor Hindus.