#indiawallahs

The Laws of Manu is one of the most exemplary texts of ideology in the entire history of humanity. The first reason is that while its ideology encompasses the entire universe, inclusive of its mythic origins, it focuses on everyday practices as the immediate materiality of ideology: how (what, where, with whom, when…) we eat, defecate, have sex, walk, enter a building, work, make war, etc. The second reason is that the book stages a radical shift with regard to its starting point (presupposition): the ancient code of Veda. What we find in Veda is the brutal cosmology based on killing and eating: higher things kill and eat/consume lower ones, stronger eat weaker, i.e., life is a zero-sum game where one’s victory is another’s defeat.

Sixteen-year-old Rudyard Kipling returned to India after a miserable childhood, and slightly less miserable adolescence in England, to take up the perfect job for a precociously gifted but possibly unemployable son of empire. He was to be 50% of the editorial staff – as he describes in his memoir Something of Myself – of the Civil and Military Gazette, the newspaper for Anglo-Indian Lahore society.

Nattikafirka, a small fishing town in Kerala, once witnessed battle runs of Tiippu Sultan in one of the fiercest episodes in his head-on clash with mighty East India Company in 18th century. Later days saw the British colonial enterprise asserting its ascendancy in South Indian coast. Old timers still attach the British-era description for the revenue sub-division, firka, whenever they mention Nattika.Early this year, MA Yusuffali, an Indian businessman with a quick smile, hailing from Nattika, bought a bulk of the company shares in a historic twist. Call this revenge of the empire, if you like.