Great title, too.
He writes on the "debate" in Parliament over FDI in "retail," focussing his guns on Sushma Swaraj of the BJP, who sounds exactly like any "trained MAOIST" would. I found this particular sentence "revealing" - in the precise sense of a "hole in the head": revealing BRAINLESSNESS!
When she conjured up the image of “ships heaped with potatoes sailing into our ports” to supply McDonald’s, Pepsi and other nefarious multi-nationals alien aloo, Sushma-ji sounded as if she was quoting from Bram Stoker’s Dracula in which “the strange arrival of the derelict in the storm last night” describes the landing of a ship bearing a malevolent, foreign entity bent on sucking the life-blood out of unsuspecting locals.
Actually, the potato is NOT an "Indian" plant. I has come here from South America. And we scarcely "know" how to eat it. In India all potatoes are "aloo" - all the same - just as all coffee is "nescoffee" and all tea is "chai."
In Europe, it began as food for the very poorest - see old paintings of their first "Potato Eaters" - particularly in Ireland, but also in Holland. It was the failure of the potato crop that caused the Great Irish Famine. The poorest starved to death. Those who could, fled - to America!
Over time, Europeans slowly "learnt" to use the potato, and thus became "connoisseurs" of this humble tuber.
Today, in Europe, different varieties of the potato have different "names," and are meant for different preparations. Baked potatoes, grilled potatoes, potato soup, and roast potatoes, for example, each require a different kind of potato, and each kind has a "name."
If we want to enjoy these "potato delicacies" we will have to import these - and "learn" about them, within the usual market-based "division of labour and fragmentation of knowledge."
But why the potato - even the MIRCHI, the Hindustani word for "chili pepper" - has come to India from Mexico.
See the poster above - and how many VARIETIES they have.
It originated in South America - like the potato, and the CASHEW, which the Portuguese brought to Goa from Portuguese Brazil. The poster alongside displays varieties of Mexican corn - but our farmers today are growing other varieties, like "baby corn," because Chinese foods are popular in India.
Indeed, the TOMATO has also come from abroad.
And, today, our farmers are growing broccoli, the Kiwi fruit, barley, button mushrooms, and even VANILLA and STEVIA - all of FOREIGN ORIGIN.
If you want to know what "landlocked" Dilli - where this Central Parliament sits today - would have been like if maritime trade had not proceeded unhindered, do read The Babur Nama, in which he bemoans the absence of good fruits in the city he had conquered. Only bloody bananas and silly mangoes - and no MUSK MELONS at all! Where did that fruit come into our bazaars from - but from across the Khyber? And how is it now grown aplenty in the Agra region?
Dilli, then, was NOT any great "centre of civilisation" - unlike Kabul, which was COSMOPOLITAN, where SEVEN LANGUAGES were spoken in its bazaars, and which was well situated on Chenghiz Khan's "Silk Route."
Babur ruled SAMARKAND before taking Kabul - bang on the Silk Route - and he is buried in his favourite Kabul garden because even gardens did not exist in Dilli then, which is where he died.
This clearly shows that the "landlocked" Mughals never looked towards The Open Sea - and we, as a "civilisation," and not a "nation-state," are extremely fortunate that Europeans came to our shores, and all these "foreign crops" came along with them. Apart from so much more.
The BJP is always found to be referring to itself as a "party of traders" - but I knew they were FALSE decades ago, when I had the occasion to interview a BJP finance minister of Delhi on tv, and asked him the pointed question:
"How can you be a 'party of traders' when in Delhi you have monopolised the most lucrative trade of all - that for alcoholic beverages?"
And he replied, "Because alcohol is a SOCIAL EVIL!"
As far as this "hysterical opposition" to FDI in retailing is concerned, its actual motives are surely equally SINISTER, as indicated by this recent column in the ToI by Chandra Bhan Prasad, who writes on dalit issues, and Milind Kamble, who is chairman of the Dalit Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DICCI).
They write that the real motive is CASTE - that is, UPPER CASTES!
But their VISION - if this word applies - is of a Dilli before Babur.
Bananas - and mangoes.
FIN.
Having said that, let me turn to the other great MORON-on-TOP - on top of the Free Press, that is - Justice Markandey Katju, current Chairman of the Press Council of India, whom I DESTROYED only the other day: http://www.theantidoteblog.com/2012/12/do-miseducated-socialist-lawyers-turned.html
Well, he is in the news today - and these are the opening paragraphs of the HT report:
Press Council of India (PCI) chairperson justice Markandey Katju today said that the only solution to the Kashmir problem is reunification of India and Pakistan under a strong and "modern-minded" government which will not tolerate bigotry. "The cause of the Kashmir problem is the partition of India on a totally bogus basis - the two nation theory, that Hindus and Muslims are separate nations....I don't recognise Pakistan as a legitimate country because the whole basis is the two nation theory and I don't accept the two nation theory," he said.
"Therefore the one and only solution to the Kashmir problem or the militancy problem in Pakistan is the reunification of India and Pakistan under a strong, central, secular, modern-minded government which just doesn't tolerate bigotry," he said and added that such a government would deal with fanaticism with an iron hand.
I have emphasised two words: STRONG, and CENTRAL.
So, I guess the Abdullahs will rename their party, "International Conference" - when J&K is actually THREE different "nations" that ought to become REPUBLICS, as I recently explained: http://www.theantidoteblog.com/2012/11/republicanism-explained-and-then.html
Imagine - a Bigger Central Parliament - and a Bigger Supreme Court as well. And an even bigger Central State than either nation has today - with hundreds of Big Budget Ministries, including a Central Police! PARA-MILITARY. Which is what "strong central state" means in ACTION! Centralised Tax Collection.
Fuckin' Hell, if you ask me!
Not that Pakistan ever was ONE NATION - for the Bengali Muslims of East Pakistan separated many decades ago, and they were 3000 miles away from the rest, anyway - but even within what remains of the Pakistan "nation-state," Sindhis and Punjabis, for example, hate and deeply distrust each other.
Sindh was ANNEXED by the British long after they took over Punjab following the Anglo-Sikh Wars.
The only reason for the British Annexation of Sind:
Karachi - as the "natural port" for the Punjab.
Now, Advani is a SINDHI.
None of these MORONS-on-TOP know their OWN HISTORY.
Their heads are full of MYTHOLOGY.
Everything PHONEY - including RELIGION.
Back to Katju - and his "sense of History," for the same report I have cited above quotes him as follows:
Addressing a seminar organised by the South Asia Media Commission here, he said that the two nation theory was encouraged by the British post 1857 to create rift between Hindus and Muslims.
What complete and utter NONSENSE - actually "harmful for Indo-British relations" - from the Chairman of the Press Council of India!
Katju needs to be MUZZLED! - not the rest of us.
Read all about the "two-nation theory" in this wiki.
But even this wiki is not the "full story."
If we want the full story we must go back to Curzon's Partition of Bengal in 1905 - and the formation of the Indian Muslim League in 1906, the very next year, in DACCA!
And then, just as the CONgress was "taken over" by the Gandhi-Nehru "national-socialists," so too was the IML taken over by the two-nation nonsense peddlers.
All wanted nothing more than STATE POWER - for themselves.
Both sides wanted the same - CONgress, and the IML, too.
Look at India - and Nehru's cynical "re-organisation of states along linguistic lines" in 1956: itself proof that this is NOT a "confederation"; and the member-states of this quasi-unitary "federation" are ALL "creatures of the Centre."
What was the result of this linguistic chauvinism - in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharastra, and even Sri Lanka, where they followed his example the very same year and installed Sinhala as "official language"?
DISUNITY - and a 100-nation theory - like BODOLAND today!
The two-nation theory is NOT a "theory" in any scientific sense. It is only a "political doctrine" - and an utterly FALSE one at that.
They shouted it from the rooftops - as with all their other lies - like swadeshi, like the charkha, and all the rest.
ALL!
The only valid theory of an Open Society in a Free Trading City is that of a CATALLAXY - based on INDIVIDUALISM, and the openness to "peaceable strangers," all those with whom we can gainfully trade, from all corners of the globe.
As with TOURISTS.
All these "communitarian" theories of GROUP IDENTITIES are not just harmful - look at the Shiv Sena or the BJP today - they are also PRIMITIVE.
They have absolutely nothing to do with modern times, modern civilisation, and the market economy, which MUST be COSMOPOLITAN.
I have a column on "Catallaxy" as the "Key to an Open Society."
Therefore, I remain FIRM in my CONVICTION - based on both the correct praxeological theories, which are then applied to History - that the Only Solution is REPUBLICANISM: free trading and self-governing cities and towns, most of them on the TWIN COASTS.
And I do hope Karachiwallahs are tuning in, too.
