Pandey’s Piled Higher and Deeper
This is in response to the post by Pyotr Periyar Pandey linked on Desipundit aptly categorized as humour. 
. Since I love responding to nice humour with a laugh or two, here’s my attempt at it.
Disclaimer: Please do note this no way means that I am pro-Brahmin.
I don’t think the disclaimer is necessary since it is a post which is response to Mr. Pandey’s humorous post.
At the very outset, I will accept with all humility that I cannot write or comment like Mr. Pandey. I can speak English with very few grammatical errors and I use this language for communication and not as a mode to attack people who ask logical and sensible questions. Well, that deserves another post in itself.
Let us start dissecting (soon to be Dr.) Pyotr Periyar Pandey’s article section by section.
One can become the Prime Minister of India, if he/she is elected the head of the largest parliamentary party after the elections. Since it has been a real long time since a single party obtained simple majority in the elections, the Government has been formed by an alliance. Here is the breakup of the 14th Lok Sabha. As everyone and most importantly soon-to-be-Dr. Pyotr Periyar Pandey can see, Bahujan Samaj Party whose leader is Kumari Mayawati who nurses ambitions to become the Prime Minister of India is in the 6th position with 18 members in the house. It is not required for soon-to-be-Dr. Pandey to know Ricci flows and to have proved Infinite Monkey Theorem to compute 18/552 which is 3% of the present Lok Sabha. It certainly isn’t uber-hard to understand that if Kum. Mayawati or her alliance gets a simple majority, no one can really prevent her from becoming the Prime Minister of India. It seems quite likely given the awesome combination she has been pursuing since a few years- Brahmin-Dalit-Muslim combination.
People who occupied Raisina Hill also had its share of non-Brahmins. Zakir Hussain, Muhammad Hidayatullah, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, B. D. Jatti, Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, Giani Zail Singh, K. R. Narayanan, Dr. Abdul Kalam and Pratibha Patil. If one sees the ratio of Brahmins to non-Brahmins of the occupants of Rashtrapati Bhavan, it is 5:9.
Now, where is the Great Brahminical conspiracy? Just as Aaron Levenstein said ‘Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive but what they conceal is vital!’, the author hasn’t really bothered to look into the concealed part of the statistics. I make a small attempt to reveal some of it, though revealing all of it would be a gargantuan task.
Let us take the ‘right’ parties first. Was the former president of BJP, Venkaiah Naidu a Brahmin? Was Bangaru Laxman a Brahmin? Is the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Damordas Modi a Brahmin? Is Yeddyurappa, CM of Karnataka a Brahmin? Raman Singh of Chattisgarh isn’t a Brahmin either. Uma Bharti who was one of the most vocal voices in BJP was a Lodhi Rajput. Lal Krishna Advani is a Sindhi. Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Syed Shahnawaz Hussain are Muslims. This is just the tip of the iceberg and to say that BJP is ruled by Brahmins doesn’t make sense at all.
Now, the so called ‘centre’ parties. Sitaram Kesri was a Dalit. Manmohan Singh is a Sikh. Ahmed Patel is a Muslim. Rahul Gandhi is half Italian and quarter Parsi and quarter Brahmin. (Of course, it is extremely convenient to call the whole family of Nehru-Gandhi Brahmin as the author fails to see the Parsi connection.). Laloo Yadav isn’t a Brahmin either. The same argument applies to RJD as well. RJD has 24 members in the current Lok Sabha and soon-to-be-Dr. Pandey need not learn to prove Fermat’s last theorem to calculate how much 24/552 is!
Let us come to the China-supporting ‘left’ parties. At the very outset, let me apologize to my esteemed comrades for having taken up the issue of their caste. Is Bardhan a Brahmin? How about D. Raja? Prakash Karat is a Nair. Jyoti Basu isn’t a Brahmin either! Biman Bose isn’t a Brahmin. P. Sundarayya who was one of the founding members of CPI(M) was a Reddy. Now, take these people away and every party will be left with a small bunch of Brahmins. Indeed, this is the Greatest Brahminical Conspiracy!
I am fairly convinced that the “meticulously-researched-not-conspiracy-theory” Great Brahminical Conspiracy of soon-to-be-Dr. Pyotr Periyar Pandey cuts across all the political parties and is aimed at preventing people like Kum. Mayawati, Laloo-ji and Mulayam Singh Yadav from becoming the Prime Minister of India. Further, this theory whose subsequent parts will be published by soon-to-be-Dr. PPP, will be highly awaited by people who read Wikipedia and other Indian newspapers, Communist or otherwise.
I won’t be a hypocrite here and I will admit openly that Brahmins have discriminated against lower castes in the past and some of my friends say that such practice exists presently. But, the bottomline is the fact that success of Brahmins in any field cannot be attributed to the Great Conspiracy Theory of soon-to-be-Dr. PPP
Disclaimer: People who want to comment are requested to comment in simple English and not use English as a way to attack people.
[...] posts a response to Pyotr Periyar’s fastidious, punctilious and methodical research on the The Great [...]
Reply to Pyotr Periyar Pandey | DesiPundit said this on August 6, 2008 at 12:33 am |
Great Post.. Does Justice.. This is Democracy. Everybody has a right to say but very few use the right to SWAY.
hmm, but Dr.Pyotr actually did not delve into the actual theory in his post at all..shouldnt you wait to see what the great conspiracy is?
Conspiracy does not mean that all posts will necessarily be occupied by brahmins..as long as some sort of control is exercised it could still be a conspiracy
@Raagaa
Thanks for your comment.
Please do note that the post is in the category of humour
@Bubblimas Chattopadhyay
Don’t you think that his previous post already sounds ridiculous enough? I am eagerly looking forward to the “well researched” conspiracy theory.
I understand that conspiracy does not mean all posts will be occupied by Brahmins. But as I said in my post, success of Brahmins certainly can’t be attributed to the Greatest Brahminical Conspiracy.
Even I did similar research when I read Dactar’s post.
I focused only on the left and found most of the Polit Bureau is non brahmin, of the 15, at least 6 are non brahmin.
I did not post a comment there as a dictionary was not available handy to decipher Daactaar’s replies.
>Prakash Karat- as you said Nair,non Brahmin forward caste
>V.S. Achuthanandan-Ezhava, OBC
>S. Ramachandran Pillai-Non Brahmin Forward Caste
>Pinarayi Vijayan-Thiyya,OBC
>Mohd. Amin-a Muslim
>Kodiyeri Balakrishnan -Nambiar, non Brahmin forward caste
All apologies to CPI(M) for digging their castes for this response.
-Nikhil
It is funny that someone is soon going to be given a phd for this work! sigh!
Oh forgot to post this. Info from http://www.cpim.org/party_com.htm
Thanks
Nikhil
@Nikhil
Thanks for your comment. Apologies to our fellow comrades for digging up the issue of their castes.
Beware Mr. Nikhil! Never call it funny. If soon-to-be-Dr. Pyotr Periyar Pandey reads it, you will be seeking asylum with a lexicographer!
I can’t help but wonder what exactly the scholarly research topic of the eminent… I’m sorry, I mean imminent dissertation of soon-to-be-Dr. Pande will turn out to be. Could it be the discussion of a certain ancient secret society or cult with weird customs, founded on Dan Brownian principles?
CALLING other people- casteist,such brains r in themselves
only caste oriented.
when i treat a patient,i simply see the ailment,BUT,
DR.PPP is always reding the school admission form,which in fact
should have never included CASTE-RELIGION column,at least after
1947.
Perfectly dissected article.
Best wishes
@ Chandan Kumar
Yes. It might be a discussion of an ancient secret society. Wait for soon-to-be-Dr.PPP’s thesis!
@Sudhir Sharma
Thanks for your comment
Dear Jatkesha,
My area of specialisation is the semiotics of popular culture as applied to politics, especially in the realm of international affairs and conflict. I cannot lay claim to the expertise my brother Pyotr possesses in the dynamics of political hegemony and dispossession, and the way it plays out in caste. However the gaps in your logic are so egregious that even a layperson such as myself can point them out.
As you have yourself pointed out, the non-Brahmin leadership of political parties is spread across a diverse number of castes. This diversity itself proves the Brahmin conspiracy – the fact that every non-Brahmin in a leadership position is the only example of his or her caste shows that Brahmins have systematically prevented all other castes from establishing a mass base and a power core. You are clearly not thinking semiotically. If you wish to understand the semiotics of this situation, please refer to that indispensable tract on the capture and preservation of power, Little Women.
I urge you to refrain from half-baked criticisms that are bereft of critical reasoning and a robust understanding of cultural power deficits before criticising the works of experts in the field such as Pyotr Periyar Pandey (B.A., Padmashree Dr. D.Y. Patil University, Navi Mumbai; M.A., Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi).
@Dr. Boris Bhartriraj Pandey,
With due regard to your specialisation and the interpretations you make out of your thought experiments, I would politely like to tell you something from Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book ‘I am convinced that there exists a tradable security in the Western world that would be 100% correlated with the changes in temperature in Ulan Bator, Mongolia.’.
For non-quants studying liberal arts in Wyoming and Parma, this means that the variation of prices in stock is not because of the temperature variations in Ulan Bator. In the present context, it means that if two things are statistically correlated, it doesn’t mean that it is the reason for the other. Coming to the present topic, just because Brahmins are high in number(for the moment let us go by the biased assumption which Mr. PP Pandey is trying to prove in his thesis) does not mean anything at all. It might be because of the ‘head start’ principle or because of the advantage they enjoyed during the pre-independence times but it is certainly not the conspiracy theory your brother has been churning out for his PhD.
Now coming to your brother’s assumption which he has been trying to justify by different means and wrong interpretation of data(possibly!), just like you readily distinguish Thakurs of UP and Bihar, Goundars of Tamilnadu, Vokkaligas of Karnataka, Naidus and Reddys of Andhra Pradesh though they are of the same caste(basically landlords), why not distinguish between Brahmins of Tamilnadu, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh? Make a quick analysis of the MPs from different states and correlate it to the population of that caste in that state and you will see that your brother has an assumption which is already biased! Here is the link so that you don’t have to Google for the list of MPs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Lok_Sabha#List_of_Members_.28by_State.29
I earnestly urge you to advise your brother to write fiction like Dan Brown based on some titbits of reality so that he can make more money from liberal arts than from the his PhD where he is trying to prove something biased and correlate it with data. Please do refer to the quote I used in the post. I reproduce it here for your benefit: “Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive but what they conceal is vital!”. Please make sure you look at the concealed bits as well before you try to make conspiracy theories and advise people to learn critical reasoning. Thanks for dropping by to read a layman’s blog.
PS: I read your ‘Raja-mandala Re-centred’ post. It is one of the most brilliant pieces I have ever seen in times! Keep writing!
By the way just so you are aware, L K ADVANI is a SINDHI – HINDU here SINDHI does not refer to his CASTE it refers to his mother tongue. SINDHI speaking HINDUS like all other HINDUS have the caste system applicable and to the best of my Knowledge ADVANI is a BANIYA or VAISHYA JATI.