hail MLK
I think it's rather ironic that i found out that Bhagat Singh was born in the same town as my grandmother on Martin Luther King Day. The town is Lyallpur, named after some British general dude Lyall. Now it's in Pakistan and called a different name - Faisalabad, after yet another ruler (King Faisal).
My grandmother is pretty cool. So was Bhagat Singh. And so was MLK. I just think it sucks when people are iconocized (?) into essentialist categories. Like 'Bhagat Singh was a violent revolutionary'. Or 'MLK was a nonviolent gandhian pacifist'. It really does a great disservice to the trajectory of their lives, the movements in their political thought and action.
Anyway, hail MLK, hail Bhagat Singh, hail ordinary folk like my grandmother, and long live the memory of their inspirational lives.
My grandmother is pretty cool. So was Bhagat Singh. And so was MLK. I just think it sucks when people are iconocized (?) into essentialist categories. Like 'Bhagat Singh was a violent revolutionary'. Or 'MLK was a nonviolent gandhian pacifist'. It really does a great disservice to the trajectory of their lives, the movements in their political thought and action.
Anyway, hail MLK, hail Bhagat Singh, hail ordinary folk like my grandmother, and long live the memory of their inspirational lives.
posted by burgers and durians at
7:53 PM
3 Comments:
my dad's family is from Lyallpur/Faisalabad. I even lived there for a while as a kid.
our histories make me shiver.
good luck in singapore and congrats on the blog :)
woh. that is crazy.
i'd like to visit someday, even if i'm sure things have changed a lot since partition.
good point.
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