[HN Gopher] My dad built a cool thing but never boasted about it
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My dad built a cool thing but never boasted about it
Author : ripe
Score : 268 points
Date : 2023-05-14 02:48 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (robotsinplainenglish.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (robotsinplainenglish.com)
| kalabilla wrote:
| To all talking anti war here, do you never talk about american
| veterans of vietnam war. Do you not remember their service
| positively while still being against the war? Let a man remember
| his father. Especially when he is talking about building bridges
| and not how valiantly he killed n enemy soldiers.
| vrglvrglvrgl wrote:
| [dead]
| ripe wrote:
| Dear HN: I am the author. Thank you for your wishes.
|
| I do see that a short obituary like this needs some context. To
| address some of the comments:
|
| * Why choose to disclose that my father was a Maharashtrian
| Brahmin: being brought up in such a household in the early
| twentieth century implies a lot of things. For example, rigid
| rules about non-violence and purity; not being exposed to other
| people's food and customs; avoiding leaving your country and
| going far away from home. These are huge barriers for a twenty-
| something signing up for a commission in the military. It's very
| relevant to reveal who he was and what choices he made. I should
| note that historically, certain groups sign up in the Indian
| army, and many groups don't. [1]
|
| Regarding objections to the word Brahmin being mentioned, I
| should clarify: the caste system was evil, particularly in the
| nineteenth century, and the government of India made it illegal
| as soon as it became independent. Despite that, discrimination
| continues in many places today. But to understand people, you
| need to know something about them. The word Brahmin by itself is
| not a precise enough descriptor. Indian castes are much more
| local than that. "Maharashtrian Brahmin", in particular
| "Chitpawan Konkanastha Brahmin", is much more precise, and these
| gruops have their own history. In Maharashtra during this period,
| these groups gave up their land under the land reform movement
| [2]. Brahmins no longer owned property or exercised much real
| power, especially not over other groups. They tended to be well
| educated but middle-class. It would be quite different from being
| an upper-caste landowner in (say) Bihar during this period.
|
| * Why say that the Bangladesh war was justified: again, looking
| at it from my father's point of view, I think it would be an
| important consideration for him. Not that he would have a choice
| in the matter---once you sign up, you have to fight. But he would
| need to justify it to himself.
|
| [1] The Indian Army: its contribution to the development of a
| nation, Stephen P. Cohen. https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Army-
| Contributions-Development...
|
| [2] The "Bhoodan movement", (donate-your-land movement) by
| Vinobha Bhave in the 1950s:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhoodan_movement
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > the caste system was evil, particularly in the nineteenth
| century, and the government of India made it illegal as soon as
| it became independent.
|
| I've heard this before, but can't find evidence of it. Does the
| caste system not live on to this day? I thought caste is a
| protected class in terms of legally discrimination, and not a
| thing that's been banned.
|
| Any present-day Indians able to clarify? My dad left India when
| he was three, so my knowledge is not current :-)
| jitix wrote:
| Caste based discrimination is illegal in India, but erstwhile
| lower castes are given academic and job reservations as a
| form of socio-economic equity. But as with a lot of
| government schemes this provision gets abused to some degree
| and many upper caste people claim that as "discrimination".
|
| That being said, there is no enforcement of the "no-caste"
| policy so in many smaller towns/villages the caste system is
| still widely practiced and lower caste folks
| discriminated/beaten/killed/etc.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| In terms of legality, it was banned in the Indian
| Constitution:
|
| Part III Section 15 of the Indian Constitution:
|
| _15. Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion,
| race, caste, sex or place of birth.--_
|
| https://cdnbbsr.s3waas.gov.in/s380537a945c7aaa788ccfcdf1b99b.
| ..
| OJFord wrote:
| Discrimination based on race, gender, socio-economic class,
| age, ... is illegal in the UK, EU, and I think the US (or at
| least California).
|
| Does that help? It's not exactly the same obviously, and I
| don't mean to imply that, caste system has (or retains) much
| stronger cultural roots.
|
| I do think the idea, Indophile though I am, that India was
| itching to get away from it, as though it was entirely
| imposed upon it, is a bit rich. As I understand, it was
| somewhat formalised by Britishers, for censa and whatever
| else, but the foundations are ancient.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| What's a law with no teeth?
| toast0 wrote:
| As an outsider, here's my take. The historic caste system
| included many restrictions on what people could do and who
| they could do it with. That's what was banned.
|
| That said, there are a lot of ways to guess at caste if one
| is so inclined[1], and some people choose to use these
| guesses to discriminate. That's why it's a protected class
| --- it's not permissable to discriminate based on caste.
| There's also affirmative action for historically repressed
| castes, with all that comes with affitrmative action, for
| better or worse.
|
| [1] caste related surnames and diet are the most easily
| understood by an outsider like me, but I think there may be
| caste related firstnames and other cultural indicators that
| I'm not aware of.
| mplewis wrote:
| The system even persists today outside of the continent:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-03-11/how-
| big-t...
| [deleted]
| Elixir22 wrote:
| Grateful for your dad's service
| rendall wrote:
| I do not see why this was downvoted and flagged.
| aaomidi wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35936716
| [deleted]
| themodelplumber wrote:
| > My father designed a "distribution beam girder," a rigid
| structure made of steel plates, to distribute the load on to the
| new pier. He got it made from a shipbuilding yard in Calcutta.
| They produced it overnight, and the army transported it and
| assembled it on site.
|
| Overnight production for this huge custom design sounds pretty
| intense to say the least. Wow.
|
| My condolences by the way.
|
| I was doing some digging in my own family lines in recent years,
| since I had previously mainly been taught to focus on and respect
| those ancestors who had been part of the religion into which I
| was born. When I decided not to practice it anymore, it was like
| I had to rediscover my own heritage.
|
| I was pretty happy to find a bridge-engineer in the family who
| didn't fit the same mold. It's fascinating to me that not too
| long ago, you could build a 600-foot rail bridge responsible for
| so many millions of tons of freight, without even getting a
| university degree beforehand.
| qingcharles wrote:
| It's amazing what can get made, and how quickly, when the will
| is there, without any interference.
| Gud wrote:
| You probably still can, if you have the chops. If you're a
| skilled x builder, you'll build x with or without a degree
| null_flavour wrote:
| My condolences.
|
| I wish the author could explain why he chooses to disclose that
| he is a _Bramhin_.
|
| The author seems to have emigrated to a different part of the
| world but still mentions labels used for the longest running
| discrimination of humans in history.
| Thorrez wrote:
| > he is a _Bramhin_
|
| By "he" do you mean the author or the author's father?
| shas3 wrote:
| What do you know about the caste system? Do you similarly
| police posts that say, "he grew up on a nobleman's estate in
| England," or "grew up on a farm in Alabama," just because those
| are associated with historical oppression?
|
| This smearing of Hindus and Indians with accusations about
| caste are ridiculous and par for the course on HN where Indo-
| phobia is pretty commonplace (see any discussion of US work
| visas, for example).
| rocket_surgeron wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| OP has answered this question in the (current) top comment,
| and others have elaborated further.
|
| Tl;dr "Brahmin" is a more complex and less unified category
| than you assume.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Certainly an interesting take. How do you measure this
| against white pride for example?
| rocket_surgeron wrote:
| Millennia of sectarian strife in a region that has always
| exceeded the population of the "white" world since Europe
| was covered by hundreds of meters of ice?
|
| I suppose you could measure a star against a lightbulb...
|
| ...I mean, they'll both burn you.
| atonse wrote:
| I don't know, sectarian conflict is a tale as old as time and
| afflicted pretty much any religion. But I guess in other
| cases it wasn't about "pride" but more animosity?
| unmole wrote:
| _Raised in a strict Maharashtrian Brahmin household_
|
| That sentance adds background about the father's upbringing.
| It's no different from saying someone grew up in a secular
| Jewish household or that their parents were born again
| Christians.
| Randomizer42 wrote:
| [flagged]
| yunohn wrote:
| Vouched for this purely because I'm confused what you're
| confused about.
|
| There are innumerable households where you follow certain
| traditions/culture, that come from previously religious
| influences, without actively practicing. This is common
| across all religions, across the world. Even within
| religious families, people end up moving on from some
| rituals while keeping others. Nothing odd about it, it's
| normal and expected the way society functions.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| This isn't really what the above poster was saying, but
| "secular Jewish" can also refer to practically
| nonpracticing ("atheist" or "agnostic") or even
| practicing a different religion entirely. Since Jews are
| an ethnoreligious group, the identifier often refers to
| people with a Jewish ethnic background, vs people who are
| Jewish as a religion.
| yunohn wrote:
| Well yes, that's an aspect of the same idea I'm
| explaining. The meaning of ethno-religious is that their
| culture is intertwined with religion.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| No, it's more about ethnicity and religion being
| intertwined. Judaism _also_ references an ethnic group
| historically tied to the practice of the religion, but
| not necessarily. If you want to talk about people who are
| "ethnically jewish" but not "religious jewish", you can
| say something like "secular jewish" or "nonpracticing
| Jew".
|
| I am a nonpracticing Jew myself. I don't identify with
| any of the religious or cultural aspects of Judaism
| (although I have some educational background). But as a
| Jewish person, I'm still eligible for citizenship of
| Palestine/Israel (though not interested for political
| reasons), and also eligible for targeting by white
| supremicists/neonazis
| yunohn wrote:
| > I am a nonpracticing Jew myself. I don't identify with
| any of the religious or cultural aspects of Judaism
|
| Well, that's exactly my point and what the parent
| commenter didn't understand was possible. I think we're
| talking past each other for no point...
| Thorrez wrote:
| I believe it means people with Jewish race and customs but
| not religion.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_Jew
| intrasight wrote:
| It means whatever you want it to mean - or nothing at all.
|
| I like to say that I'm a "secular Christian" - which also
| means nothing. Is merely a play on words.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > which also means nothing
|
| "Secular jew" is not meaningless at all, it speaks about
| ethnic and cultural heritage.
|
| Incidentally, before anyone says "if you're secular
| you're not Jewish" being "secular" does not exempt
| someone from prejudice, they would still be identified as
| "a jew" by racists, as this story of a Secular Jew, "born
| into a family of secular Jews" makes clear: https://en.wi
| kipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#1933:_Emigrati...
|
| > I like to say that I'm a "secular Christian"
|
| You could say that. Although Christianity is less rooted
| in ethnicity than Judaism is, but if your family are
| predominantly Christian for many generations, and it is
| your cultural background, then it would be accurate. Even
| meaningful.
| intrasight wrote:
| There is no more a Jewish gene than there is a Black gene
| or a Christian gene.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Firstly that is reductive, simplistic; ancestry and
| culture is not the same as "a gene". And lumping
| "Christian" and "black" as the same kind of category
| regarding genetics is just very odd indeed.
|
| Second it's not entirely accurate, as any online genetic
| testing service will give a good estimate at e.g.
| percentage of Ashkenazi heritage.
|
| Thirdly and most importantly, it's not an answer to the
| above even if it was true, as it doesn't engage with the
| real existence - both for good and bad - of the ethnic
| heritage as given in the recent historical example above.
|
| Or, as the other reply put it: "as a (secular) Jewish
| person, I'm still eligible for citizenship of
| Palestine/Israel, and also eligible for targeting by
| white supremicists/neonazis". Neither of those two groups
| are going to ask "how often do you go to temple?"
| regarding someone's perceived Jewishness.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious here. There's literally a wikipedia
| page linked below for that term. So what did you hope to
| gain by not even googling it before asking, in what comes
| across as a belligerent or dismissive way?
| CerebralCerb wrote:
| > He wouldn't hurt a fly, literally. If he caught a creature
| inside the house, he would carefully open the window and toss
| it out. Even when a cobra came out of the grass in the
| monsoons, he would not let us hurt it. Raised in a strict
| Maharashtrian Brahmin household and then in the College of
| Engineering in Pune, he was well-read but hadn't seen much of
| the real world before entering the Indian Military Academy in
| Dehradun.
|
| The first three sentences paints a picture of a man of unusual
| ethics. The tidbit about his Bramhin background explains why he
| is that way.
|
| An Indian might be able to infer the Brahmin tidbit from the
| first part. But as an European reader like myself, it is
| relevant to know that the ethics is rooted in religious
| upbringing and not just eccentricity (which would be the
| typical explanation for why a person would behave like that in
| Europe).
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| In the US, we might say "Upper class," or "Privileged," or
| "Established family."
|
| I suspect that was what he meant, but sometimes terms don't age
| so well. There's a whole bunch of terms that were commonly used
| throughout our South, that would be considered insults or
| racist dog-whistles, these days.
| atonse wrote:
| My condolences to OP.
|
| My guess is that it tied to the "don't harm anything" story? I
| was curious to see how people with these different extremely
| rigid belief systems adjust in the military.
|
| I'm also "Brahmin" by birth but a beef eating atheist so don't
| give a crap about it. But grew up around enough relatives that
| cared and never understood how they reconciled trying to be
| strict in some areas but being lax in others.
|
| That's why I was curious about how they adjust in the military.
| yunohn wrote:
| > never understood how they reconciled trying to be strict in
| some areas but being lax in others
|
| IMHO you're describing all humans ever. We all live with
| constant choices between conforming and rebelling -
| religious, societal, etc. It's not that surprising?
| sublinear wrote:
| [flagged]
| OJFord wrote:
| It didn't read like that to me at all. If anything more like
| the author's slightly pacifist (and actually, explicitly says
| of their father 'literally wouldn't hurt a fly'), making sense
| of their father's career.
|
| But as sibling says, it like any obituary needs some context;
| what do you expect for someone who spent practically their
| entire career in the military? I think pick almost any other
| and it will be 'worse', if you didn't like that.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of
| what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mocko wrote:
| I wouldn't say so. The story needs this context to make sense
| and outside a war, where else would one need to rebuild large
| bridges under fire. As a technical achievement it certainly is
| something to be proud of.
| [deleted]
| lostlogin wrote:
| > where else would one need to rebuild large bridges under
| fire
|
| Ukraine, now.
|
| But that doesn't diminish the achievement.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > and outside a war
| mandmandam wrote:
| From an outside and mostly ignorant perspective, it does look
| like that war was more justified than most.
|
| I don't know how any one could expect people to lay down and
| take what was going on - challenging election results with the
| military, making efforts to destroy the local language, keeping
| people in poverty, etc.
|
| From an Irish perspective - I get it.
|
| That said, it does rub me the wrong way a little that there's
| lines such as "If ever a war was justified, it was the
| Bangladesh war" in an obituary, where you have to be "that guy"
| if you want to challenge them. But when I think of how I'd
| react to such a line in an Irish obituary, it doesn't really
| bother me.
|
| Maybe that's bias. But I can believe that to this guy, he's
| just saying it how it is.
|
| There's also no intent that I can discern to influence current
| events. 'Propaganda' doesn't usually describe events from over
| 50 years ago, if anything that would be 'historical
| revisionism' - which I don't think this is.
| akudha wrote:
| All armies do fucked up things, but there are some armies
| that stand out for their brutality - Pakistani army is one of
| them. Here is a sample of what they did to their own citizens
| at the time
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_Bangladesh_L.
| ..
|
| Indian soldiers aren't saints either. But this particular war
| does seem a bit more justified than usual
| lostlogin wrote:
| > 'Propaganda' doesn't usually describe events from over 50
| years ago
|
| This is a good observation. It's rarely wrong. A notable
| exception is the Armenian genocide, but I'm sure there are
| others too.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| In the 1971 war there was a well defined good side and bad
| side. It is not "nationalism" to acknowledge that.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| Isn't that true for any war? The only issue is the sides
| can't agree who is good and who is bad.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| raping your enemies definitely puts you on the side of
| wrong no matter what.
| replygirl wrote:
| murder doesn't?
| oriettaxx wrote:
| During the war, Bengali nationalists also committed mass
| rape of ethnic Bihari Muslim women, since the Bihari
| Muslim community supported Pakistan.[18] Indian soldiers
| as well as Bengali militiamen were also identified as
| perpetrators of rape by scholar Yasmin Saikia.[19][20]
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_Banglades
| h_L...
| dinom wrote:
| Very cool; condolences.
| shmde wrote:
| People ITT should read about the Bangladesh Liberation War which
| the man's father here fought in. Pakistani troops mass raped
| between 200,000 and 400,000 women and killed an estimated 300,000
| to 3,000,000 people. And USA supported Pakistan.
| [deleted]
| yunohn wrote:
| > Indian troops invaded East Pakistan to help the Bengali
| rebels, forced the Pakistan military to surrender, and created
| the new nation of Bangladesh.
|
| AFAICT OP's father was on the side of the rebels, not the
| Pakistani troops you're talking about right?
| CrimsonRain wrote:
| "Bengali rebels" aka the freedom fighters where helped
| greatly by the Indian forces. Yes, his father helped the
| freedom fighters.
| AnnikaL wrote:
| Yes, America's involvement was pretty shameful, but the
| author's father was in the Indian army fighting against the
| genocidal Pakistani army.
| mkl wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_genocide
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Liberation_War
| pkphilip wrote:
| Interesting! It is not often that we get to hear about the
| achievements of the engineering arm of the armed forces in India.
| garganzol wrote:
| Bragging about war is not cool. Sorry. You still have to learn
| from your father.
| indrora wrote:
| If you read this as bragging about war, I absolutely ask you to
| reconsider your read here.
|
| This is tribute to a man who went "I'm bored, I'm going to go
| far outside my comfort zone," helped rebuild infrastructure
| destroyed by (war, negligence, etc) and solved a hard problem
| in a short amount of time that improved the lives of others.
|
| The ethics of war has many corners. If there is a war that may
| have actually been justified in its time, the freeing of
| Bangladesh may have been one of the few, but that's beside the
| point of the discussion entirely.
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(page generated 2023-05-14 23:01 UTC)