This article was so bad, I decided I should do a thread to explain just how bad it is.

To begin with, Hoodbhoy’s arguments are entirely fallacious because he strawmans and draws false equivalencies throughout this piece. http://www.dawn.com/news/1565493/dont-tear-down-statues

Hoodbhoy presumes the tearing down of statues is the erasure of history but who told him that that is the motivation behind the statue-toppling exercise? After all, why would Black activists want to “erase” a past that is so deeply intertwined to their present conditions?

Black people know that the murder of George Floyd or police brutality, in general, that they suffer is not an isolated incident but only a continuation of the legacy of white supremacist oppression from colonisation to slavery to lynchings to Jim Crow/Segregation.

If “erasure” of history was the purpose behind toppling figures of racist white men then they would be erasing their own past as the oppressed & that would be the end of BLM movement all together for it symbolises the “post-racial” moment white liberals have been clamouring for.

Lest, Hoodbhoy is of the racist view that Black people are too dumb to be able to comprehend the paradox of taking such a position (“erasing” history by tearing down statues), it is safe to assume that the motivation that the former implies on their part isn’t actually true.

One could in fact argue that if the white national consciousness today is still occupied by a deep sense of pride & nostalgia for their historical past with a complete ignorance of or disregard for what such past entailed (& continues to entail) for non-White people (cont)

..then there is no history to be “erased” but only one to be reclaimed, by Blacks and other people of colour.

Exhibit A of white pride: http://theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/uk-more-nostalgic-for-empire-than-other-ex-colonial-powers

The act of defiling and toppling statues of dead slave owners/colonisers is a powerful way of dissenting against the self-aggrandising & narcissistic historical worldview that the white majority holds & that their hegemonic systems tend to produce/reproduce.

Blacks are, therefore, reclaiming their rightful place in the ethnocentric historical accounts of the ‘West’ by highlighting the rupture that their life represents, which is not captured in these linear & “progressive” narratives of the whites about themselves.

Hoodbhoy also draws false equivalencies such as comparing the toppling of statues with Hindutva ideologues destroying Babri Masjid or Muslim extremists attacking non-Muslim sacreligious places. Such a comparison is terribly out of place.

Blacks are acting out of defiance as historically marginalised minority against “heroes” of the historically privileged white majority; Muslim & Hindu extremists in India & Pakistan are only acting out of their perceived racial superiority & to assert their majority privilege.

Both Muslim & Hindu extremists have a view of their religious identity which gives them superior over the identity of other religious groups & both take pride in a highly distorted colonial-inspired imperial view of their *national* history (‘Muslim’ Empires & ‘Hindu Rashtra’)...

Both also paradoxically feel victimised by minority groups within their nation-states. Such characteristics make Hindu & Muslim extremists of countries like India & Pakistan more similar to white right wing neo-nazi groups in Europe & America rather than Black activists.

Hoodbhoy also uses the example of toppling of Saddam Hussain’s statue & its aftermath to make the argument that “eliminating symbols” is useless. Well it didn’t change a thing b/c what else did you expect out of a propagandist imperialist invasion by a megalomaniac super-power?

Such selective historical amnesia is surprising coming from an educated person like Hoodbhoy but also not that surprising because Pakistani liberal and secular elite does have a tendency to sanitise the image of the ‘West’ as a neo-colonial hegemon.

For Hoodbhoy Taj Mahal was built on classicist oppression of labourers but mustn’t be torn down still for the “cultural” and “aesthetic” values it signifies. What he fails to explain, though, is the aesthetic and cultural value of statues of racist/genocidal white men.

Apparently we must protect the right of lifeless statues to exist in a public space in order to preserve the “cultural” and “aesthetic” value they supposedly exemplify, when black people “can’t breathe” within those same public spaces, despite the human life that they signify.

He also puts Alexander, Chandragupta Maurya and Muhammad Bin Qasim on the same footing as the colonising Europeans without realising that the world we live in is shaped not by the developments that took place a thousand or so centuries ago under the said figures..(cont)

Nation states, neoliberal economic systems, governance by bloated bureaucracies, dichotomy between secular & religious, efficiency-enhancing technologies, liberal democratic systems are all distinctly modern developments, Bin Qasim & Alexander couldn’t have foreseen.

Not just modern but colonial. For the ‘West’ ofc it’s superiority lies precisely in its claims of being “modern”. The contemporary problems humanity faces are therefore, tied to the systems that Goras developed and then generalised across the world through colonisation.

It is hypocritical of Hoodbhoy to fetishise the “progress” of science & technology (advancements in which are uniquely modern & not comparable to the times of Maurya, Alexander or Qasim) & yet isolate it from the ways it has shaped modern human behaviour and institutions (cont)

to the extent that he’s willing make nihilistic blanket generalisations about the “human condition” (as if it is fixed and static and not contextual) even though such claims will fall flat in the face of “rigorous” & “empirical” scientific scrutiny that they themselves eulogise.

Lest we forget, scientific reification of human beings was essential in legitimising uniquely modern bigoritries such as racial Eugenics, the psychological palthologization of queers and of course the perceived biological inferiority of women.

In conclusion, Hoodbhoy should either stick to his discipline or just take a social sciences course before he writes on social issues.

Alternatively, someday I will do a thread to explain just how uniquely evil colonialism was so secular/liberal hot takes like these can end.

Lastly, for anyone who actually bothered to read this entire rant, please excuse my grammatical errors here and there. I had to condense this essay for twitter and failed to notice the obvious errors I was making in the process.