[Reader-list] Fwd: HIV and male circumcision

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear Taha,

Let me join Sanjay in appreciating your post on circumcision. It made  
me think of the many ways in which identities unravel, entangle and  
sometimes masquerade, sometimes play, sometimes just run away from  
every attempt at naming and classification - and this despite every  
attempt - (like the unique identification cards that you have been so  
diligently tracking on this list) to marshall them into neat rows and  
columns.

Thinking about the confusions of identity and identification, leads  
me on to another tangent, and forgive me for rambling.

Several of my friends who are Jews, have always confessed to being  
'half Jewish', in the same sense as Ghalib was a 'half Muslim',  
(though they were all, fully, circumcised)  in that, while they do  
not keep Kosher (the very strict Jewish dietary laws) and are by no  
means 'observant' jews,  they still will not eat pork.

They will be the first to say that their abstention makes no sense,  
it is just some strange whisper from some ancestors. So, maybe, if  
you put a half muslim and a half jew together in one room,  you get a  
three quarters something else, one whole salami waiting to be eaten,  
and one quarter missing person?

Again, it is a cultural thing, something that doesn't let go of you,  
whether or not you want to let go of it.

Take for instance, the fact that, no matter how long ago some of my  
ancestors might have renounced their (in any case fragile) orthodox  
Hindu faith, if a book falls from my hands to the ground, I will  
still touch it to my forehead, because a book embodies 'Devi  
Saraswati' (the Hindu Goddess of learning), and one should never let  
the goddess of learning touch the dirt of the ground. and I have  
always known that this is what I must do if a book falls from my hands.

Perhaps it is just a strange combination of an attitude of affection  
and respect for the printed word, which is probably the only  
remaining space that I can make in my life for the fragmented  
inheritance of an everyday sense of the sacred. Some might call this  
a residual 'Brahminism'. Maybe that is what it is.

But what of it? Do the Portugese pirates, Santhal women, bandits and  
low caste Bengali weavers who probably occur in the lost, shadowy  
branches of my patrilineal and matrilineal family trees, along with  
the more publicly acknowledged teachers, priests and itinerant  
healers not tug at my self? And what of the wilder fringes of the  
same family trees where lurk Baghdadi Jews and Peshawari Sikhs (and  
believe me, this combination is not as uncommon in Bhadralok bengali  
family histories as might be thought of at first, so I guess it's  
mongrel contours can be mapped on to most ancestral narratives,  
mostly anywhere)

Of course they do. They make me a seafarer, an occasional forager and  
a spinner of yarns, besides being a worshipful devotee of the  
alphabet. I bet they talk to each other and argue in the dreams I  
never remember. I bet if anyone looked far back enough into their  
ancestries, the waters would get interestingly muddy. Foreskins would  
rise and fall with greater ease than people might at first consider  
possible

  I honestly don't know what to make of this. But the uncertainty  
doesn't make me feel either uneasy or uncomfortable.
  I say this only to wonder, whether or not we all share this sense  
of being half, or quarter of something or the other - sometimes  
knowingly, sometimes unknowingly, sometimes barely consciously.

I sometimes wonder what kind of conversations would occur if we all  
let our half and quarter selves talk to the half and quarter selves  
of other people. If fractions could discourse with fractions, what  
numbers might we dream up?

Perhaps (if such conversations were to happen more regularly) people  
would be less certain about what makes them so different from 'other'  
people. If, in place of certainty, there could be a proliferation of  
active conversational doubts about the self, it would be a little  
more difficult to condemn other people as 'mlecch', 'kafir',  
'infidel' or 'barbarian'.

This doesnt mean that there would not be any violence or  
misunderstanding, just that the quality and direction of the  
violence, disagreement and misunderstanding would be different,  
perhaps radically so.

I don't know if this makes any sense, but it does make me wonder,  
sometimes

Cheers (from some misbegotten quarter of my self)

Shuddha



On 30-Jul-09, at 4:51 PM, Taha Mehmood wrote:

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Sanjay Kak <kaksanjay at gmail.com>
> Date: Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 1:49 PM
> Subject: [Reader-list] HIV and male circumcision
> To: 2tahamehmood at googlemail.com
> Cc: reader-list at sarai.net
>
>
> Dear Taha
> Your many posts on the future of our digital identities has always
> drawn my silent admiration: for their alert doggedness, their range
> and their perspicacity.
> But this one on the truly fragile nature of our blood and skin (and
> foreskin) identities was a real jewel: I found myself laughing and in
> tears at the same time!
> Many thanks
> Sanjay Kak
>
> ps Cant seem to put this on the Sarai list for some reason?
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Taha Mehmood <2tahamehmood at googlemail.com>
> Date: Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 6:04 PM
> Subject: Re: [Reader-list] HIV and male circumcision
> To: Pawan Durani <pawan.durani at gmail.com>
> Cc: Sarai Reader-list <reader-list at sarai.net>, Tapas Ray  
> <tapasrayx at gmail.com>
>
>
> Dear Tapas, Dear Pawan and Dear All
>
> I think we just have to wait for a year before hopefully we will all
> have our UID numbers then perhaps rioters too will become more
> sophisticated. If these days RSS and VHP and BJP and SS goons go
> around an area carrying voter lists, as evidenced by systematic
> butchering of Mussalmaaans in Gujarat then later perhaps, they could
> be more precise by zoning in on fingerprints, area codes and what not.
> They might just ask for your thumb print and tally it on a machine
> before driving that sword down your throat. After all multi-purposes
> will have other benefits too.
>
> But to complicate the this argument let me tell you guys a real story.
>
> A cousin of mine from Ahmedabad once told his story of being a victim
> of riots. This happened during the Advani rath yatra time. He was
> traveling from Delhi to Ahmedabad that day.
>
> Just when he left the rail way station he realized that riots are
> happening in the city. There were no taxis or auto-rickshaws, so he
> started walking in the hope that he might come across some people be
> it Hindus or Muslims and they might give me a lift to his place.  He,
> by the way, didn't look 'Muslim' at all. He was clean shaven with
> urban looks and all. He could pass off as anyone. He was smart and
> suave and confident.
>
> By and by he crossed an area where came across a group of men who were
> hiding behind the entrance of a gully.
>
> They accosted him but he couldn't make out who they were either. For
> they were too, like him, clean shaven and without any visible mark of
> identification. So they asked him what his name was, so he said that
> his name was Ramesh, thinking that they were Hindus.
>
> Hearing this one of them drew a sword, 'Hindu hai sala'! They were
> Muslims. He thanked God and told them he was a brother like them too.
> They asked him to open his pants and show them his circumcision mark.
> Now here's the interesting bit because my cousin had never cared to go
> for a circumcision.
>
> He opened his pants, people saw his uncircumcised penis and thrust a
> sword in his belly with a nara-e-takbir accompanying the action. He
> let out a scream Ya Allah! That somehow made them realize that he was
> a Muslim. People do not wear any mask when they are in danger of their
> lives, it seems.
>
> They asked his name again and he told them that it was Arif. They took
> him to a hospital where the doctor initially refuse to treat him after
> getting to know that his name was Arif, it was only after examining
> his uncircumcised penis that the doctor was convinced that he was
> indeed Ramesh and treated him.
>
> What happened to Arif was unfortunate but it was also terribly funny
> too, in a way. The madness and social nervousness around identity was
> all apparent.  I think with the coming up of ID cards there must be
> systematic and equitable distribution of personal information amongst
> both Muslim and Hindu rioters. For it would be depressing to come
> across an Arif like case again. On the other hand I think as long as
> we in India are going to make a big fuss about who we are then there's
> definitely going to be someone who will be laughing all the way to a
> bank somewhere.
>
> Warm regards
>
> Taha
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Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net