If you are deshi, interested in history and serious engagement with the present and possible futures of our communities, you may have heard of the activities of The Brick Lane Circle over the past years (if not decades). Its a tawhesive (unifying) platform attracting academics, activists and people of pretty much all ideological, ethnic and generational hues to qualitatively deepen eachother's perspectives on issues relating to Bangladesh and Bangladeshi people in the UK.
It is a precious and autonomous institutional resource which would be nice to see translated elsewhere.
Recently BLC's Battle of Plassey Young People's Project published a neat book of essays by young deshis in the UK. a new website building on this resource is based here.
Showing posts with label ganj. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ganj. Show all posts
2.11.10
22.10.10
Tower Hamlets Mayoral Election Result
Crybabies who squeal 'Islamofascism' to curry favour with allies who mean no good should not be allowed to prosper. You, Native Informant, yes you, you should win a prize. Look at the monster you have fed in the white is right backlash. Accept your loss, move on.
Alleged election game irregularities aside. We need to ensure that stupid schisms in Bangladesh politics do not penetrate our generation of political culture. We have great political traditions, but not of recent generations, lets skip it please. The Secularist-Islamist polarity is a useless one which doesnt need to exist, it empowers the imaginationless and the cynical exploiters of the spoils system that is Bangladeshi Moronarchy. It is redundant for us, yet continues to reproduce itself in us in a small borough of Tower Hamlets, and by extension the Glorious Sylhatians of Britain. I am glad that this incursion seems to have lost the latest electoral negotiation.
In desh, they (political and intellectual classes) havent really gotten very far in developing beyond year jiro jionijom, military nationalism and a motheaten limited islamism 1.0. Its developmentia I think, and our failings.
We've gotten really good at nose counting forms of political mobilisation since the early 2000s, but this needs to be re(de)fined. Rudeboyness fused with conservosocialism is eclectic, but not beautiful.
Alleged election game irregularities aside. We need to ensure that stupid schisms in Bangladesh politics do not penetrate our generation of political culture. We have great political traditions, but not of recent generations, lets skip it please. The Secularist-Islamist polarity is a useless one which doesnt need to exist, it empowers the imaginationless and the cynical exploiters of the spoils system that is Bangladeshi Moronarchy. It is redundant for us, yet continues to reproduce itself in us in a small borough of Tower Hamlets, and by extension the Glorious Sylhatians of Britain. I am glad that this incursion seems to have lost the latest electoral negotiation.
In desh, they (political and intellectual classes) havent really gotten very far in developing beyond year jiro jionijom, military nationalism and a motheaten limited islamism 1.0. Its developmentia I think, and our failings.
We've gotten really good at nose counting forms of political mobilisation since the early 2000s, but this needs to be re(de)fined. Rudeboyness fused with conservosocialism is eclectic, but not beautiful.
22.5.10
Awami Manipulation of Bethnal Green and Bro
The seat of Bethnal Green and Bro interests me more than most others. Never lived there, but it feels close to home.
That 5000 new voters appeared on the election roll before the election is being investigated, might just have been an effective voter drive ey? On top of this, or behind it, the foreign Minister of Bangladesh, Dipu Moni implored her party's youth wing, the Jubo League (including 40 year olds!) to ensure that Labour won at any cost. In Bangladesh we sigh at the shady foreign interests behind each of our elections. This slight reversal causes smiling.
There was no despatches programme on the matter at all. And I thought Gilligan and co actually cared about the Labour Party in East London.
As so many of the candidates were brown, the white working classes were nowhere as worked up by the events than the deshis. Respect and lib dems probably split the non-labour deshis vote. However, a simple vote addition still wouldn't put them in the lead. Ajmal Masroor (L-D) won more votes than Abjol Miah (R). Greens didn't do so well, and Tower Hamlets is due an elected Mayor soon.
Its a pity Respect hasn't unfolded like a row of blossoming cherry trees, its not a surprise either. But there's a Bangladeshi-heritaged female MP in the 'mother of all parliaments' you know.
Long Live The Ganj!
That 5000 new voters appeared on the election roll before the election is being investigated, might just have been an effective voter drive ey? On top of this, or behind it, the foreign Minister of Bangladesh, Dipu Moni implored her party's youth wing, the Jubo League (including 40 year olds!) to ensure that Labour won at any cost. In Bangladesh we sigh at the shady foreign interests behind each of our elections. This slight reversal causes smiling.
There was no despatches programme on the matter at all. And I thought Gilligan and co actually cared about the Labour Party in East London.
As so many of the candidates were brown, the white working classes were nowhere as worked up by the events than the deshis. Respect and lib dems probably split the non-labour deshis vote. However, a simple vote addition still wouldn't put them in the lead. Ajmal Masroor (L-D) won more votes than Abjol Miah (R). Greens didn't do so well, and Tower Hamlets is due an elected Mayor soon.
Its a pity Respect hasn't unfolded like a row of blossoming cherry trees, its not a surprise either. But there's a Bangladeshi-heritaged female MP in the 'mother of all parliaments' you know.
Long Live The Ganj!
26.3.07
New word : Ganjineering
I think a FAQ structure is appropriate here.
Ganj?
In Bangladesh, a lot of the towns and districts have the suffix 'ganj'. For example Sirajganj, Munshiganj, Zakiganj, Habiganj and (deep breath) Chapanawabganj. Farsi used to be the language of power in preBritish colonial times, until they banned it, and ganj means 'storehouse' in that language. Over the years the word ganj had transformed itself into more than a storehouse in my mind and those around me. Indeed the *Spirit of the Ganj* is a force to be reckoned with.
What is Ganjineering?
The processes and relationships through which we can interact organically with our ancestral homelands to learn and try to be of use.
You mean NGOgiri do you not?
Nope, though the waqf (the pious endowment), is an authentic means of engaging in collective action that we need to respect more if we expect our societies to advance. Ganjineers tend not to play on the poverty of others to assert any kind of ego trip and earn money using the Development Industry at the same time. They do not try to turn their communities into aliens from their religious heritage and culture, into savages to be civilised with fashionable empowerment speak, decontextualised development indices and glossy reports to donors.
Who are you to intervene? What makes you less imperialist than the NGO lords and sell outs that haunt you?
If you know your history, then you will know where you are coming from, then you wouldn't have to ask me, who the hell do I think I am. (Bob Marley)
Who does Ganjineering?
Ganjineers.
You pretentious fiend give us an example!
Ok, i feel that Akhtar Hameed Khan was the epitome of the Ganjineer. May we learn from people like him.
Ganj?
In Bangladesh, a lot of the towns and districts have the suffix 'ganj'. For example Sirajganj, Munshiganj, Zakiganj, Habiganj and (deep breath) Chapanawabganj. Farsi used to be the language of power in preBritish colonial times, until they banned it, and ganj means 'storehouse' in that language. Over the years the word ganj had transformed itself into more than a storehouse in my mind and those around me. Indeed the *Spirit of the Ganj* is a force to be reckoned with.
What is Ganjineering?
The processes and relationships through which we can interact organically with our ancestral homelands to learn and try to be of use.
You mean NGOgiri do you not?
Nope, though the waqf (the pious endowment), is an authentic means of engaging in collective action that we need to respect more if we expect our societies to advance. Ganjineers tend not to play on the poverty of others to assert any kind of ego trip and earn money using the Development Industry at the same time. They do not try to turn their communities into aliens from their religious heritage and culture, into savages to be civilised with fashionable empowerment speak, decontextualised development indices and glossy reports to donors.
Who are you to intervene? What makes you less imperialist than the NGO lords and sell outs that haunt you?
If you know your history, then you will know where you are coming from, then you wouldn't have to ask me, who the hell do I think I am. (Bob Marley)
Who does Ganjineering?
Ganjineers.
You pretentious fiend give us an example!
Ok, i feel that Akhtar Hameed Khan was the epitome of the Ganjineer. May we learn from people like him.
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