# Absolutely Random Notings on QM—Part 3: Links to some (really) interesting material, with my comments

The “pride of place” for this post goes to a link to this book:

Norsen, Travis (2017) “Foundations of Quantum Mechanics: An Exploration of the Physical Meaning of Quantum Theory,” Springer

This book is (i) the best supplementary book for a self-study of QM, and simultaneously, also (ii) the best text-book on a supplementary course on QM, both at the better-prepared UG / beginning PG level.

A bit expensive though, but extensive preview is available on Google books, here [^]. (I plan to buy it once I land a job.)

I was interested in the material from the first three chapters only, more or less. It was a delight even just browsing through these chapters. I intend to read it more carefully soon enough. But even on the first, rapid browsing, I noticed that several pieces of understanding that I had so painstakingly come to develop (over a period of years) are given quite straight-forwardly here, as if they were a matter of well known facts—even if other QM text-books only cursorily mention them, if at all.

For instance, see the explanation of entanglement here. Norsen begins by identifying that there is a single wavefunction, always—even for a multi-particle system. Then after some explanation, he states: “But, as usual in quantum mechanics, these states do not exhaust the possibilities—instead, they merely form a basis for the space of all possible wave functions. …”… Note the emphasis on the word “basis” which Norsen helpfully puts.

Putting this point (which Norsen discusses with a concrete example), but in my words: There is always a single wavefunction, and for a multi-particle system, its basis is bigger; it consists of the components of the tensor product (formed from the components of the basis of the constituent systems). Sometimes, the single wavefunction for the multi-particle system can be expressed as a result of a single tensor-product (in which case it’s a separable state), and at all other times, only as an algebraic sum of the results of many such tensor-products (in which case they all are entangled states).

Notice how there is no false start of going from two separate systems, and then attempting to forge a single system out of them. Notice how, therefore, there is no hand-waving at one electron being in one galaxy, and another electron in another galaxy, and so on, as if to apologize for the very idea of the separable states. Norsen achieves the correct effect by beginning on the right note: the emphasis on the single wavefunction for the system as a whole to begin with, and then clarifying, at the right place, that what the tensor product gives you is only the basis set for the composite wavefunction.

There are many neat passages like this in the text.

I was about to say that Norsen’s book is the Resnick and Halliday of QM, but then came to hesitate saying so, because I noticed something odd even if my browsing of the book was rapid and brief.

Then I ran into

Ian Durham’s review of Norsen’s book, at the FQXi blog,

which is our link # 2 for this post [^].

Durham helpfully brings out the following two points (which I then verified during a second visit to Norsen’s book): (i) Norsen’s book is not exactly at the UG level, and (ii) the book is a bit partial to Bell’s characterization of the quantum riddles as well as to the Bohmian approach for their resolution.

The second point—viz., Norsen’s fascination for / inclination towards Bell and Bohm (B&B for short)—becomes important only because the book is, otherwise, so good: it carries so many points that are not even passingly mentioned in other QM books, is well written (in a conversational style, as if a speech-to-text translator were skillfully employed), easy to understand, thorough, and overall (though I haven’t read even 25% of it, from whatever I have browsed), it otherwise seems fairly well balanced.

It is precisely because of these virtues that you might come out giving more weightage to the B&B company than is actually due to them.

Keep that warning somewhere at the back of your mind, but do go through the book anyway. It’s excellent.

At Amazon, it has got 5 reader reviews, all with 5 stars. If I were to bother doing a review there, I too perhaps would give it 5 stars—despite its shortcomings/weaknesses. OK. At least 4 stars. But mostly 5 though. … I am in an indeterminate state of their superposition.

… But mark my words. This book will have come to shape (or at least to influence) every good exposition of (i.e. introduction to) the area of the Foundations of QM, in the years to come. [I say that, because I honestly don’t expect a better book on this topic to arrive on the scene all that soon.]

Which brings us to someone who wouldn’t assign the $|4\rangle + |5\rangle$ stars to this book. Namely, Lubos Motl.

If Norsen has moved in the Objectivist circles, and is partial to the B&B company, Motl has worked in the string theory, and is not just partial to it but even today defends it very vigorously—and oddly enough, also looks at that “supersymmetric world from a conservative viewpoint.” More relevant to us: Motl is not partial to the Copenhagen interpretation; he is all the way into it. … Anyway, being merely partial is something you wouldn’t expect from Motl, would you?

But, of course, Motl also has a very strong grasp of QM, and he displays it well (even powerfully) when he writes a post of the title:

“Postulates of quantum mechanics almost directly follow from experiments.” [^]

Err… Why “almost,” Lubos? 🙂

… Anyway, go through Motl’s post, even if you don’t like the author’s style or some of his expressions. It has a lot of educational material packed in it. Chances are, going through Motl’s posts (like the present one) will come to improve your understanding—even if you don’t share his position.

As to me: No, speaking from the new understanding which I have come to develop regarding the foundations of QM [^] and [^], I don’t think that all of Motl’s objections would carry. Even then, just for the sake of witnessing the tight weaving-in of the arguments, do go through Motl’s post.

Finally, a post at the SciAm blog:

“Coming to grips with the implications of quantum mechanics,” by Bernardo Kastrup, Henry P. Stapp, and Menas C. Kafatos, [^].

The authors say:

“… Taken together, these experiments [which validate the maths of QM] indicate that the everyday world we perceive does not exist until observed, which in turn suggests—as we shall argue in this essay—a primary role for mind in nature.”

No, it didn’t give me shivers or something. Hey, this is QM and its foundations, right? I am quite used to reading such declarations.

Except that, as I noted a few years ago on Scott Aaronson’s blog [I need to dig up and insert the link here], and then, recently, also at

Roger Schlafly’s blog [^],

you don’t need QM in order to commit the error of inserting consciousness into a physical theory. You can accomplish exactly the same thing also by using just the Newtonian particle mechanics in your philosophical arguments. Really.

Yes, I need to take that reply (at Schlafly’s blog), edit it a bit and post it as a separate entry at this blog. … Some other time.

For now, I have to run. I have to continue working on my approach so that I am able to answer the questions raised and discussed by people such as those mentioned in the links. But before that, let me jot down a general update.

A general update:

Oh, BTW, I have taken my previous QM-related post off the top spot.

That doesn’t mean anything. In particular, it doesn’t mean that after reading into materials such as that mentioned here, I have found some error in my approach or something like that. No. Not at all.

All it means is that I made it once again an ordinary post, not a sticky post. I am thinking of altering the layout of this blog, by creating a page that highlights that post, as well as some other posts.

But coming back to my approach: As a matter of fact, I have also written emails to a couple of physicists, one from IIT Bombay, and another from IISER Pune. However, things have not worked out yet—things like arranging for an informal seminar to be delivered by me to their students, or collaborating on some QM-related simulations together. (I could do the simulations on my own, but for the seminar, I would need an audience! One of them did reply, but we still have to shake our hands in the second round.)

In the meanwhile, I go jobless, but I keep myself busy. I am preparing a shortish set of write-ups / notes which could be used as a background material when (at some vague time in future) I go and talk to some students, say at IIT Bombay/IISER Pune. It won’t be comprehensive. It will be a little more than just a white-paper, but you couldn’t possibly call it even just the preliminary notes for my new approach. Such preliminary notes would come out only after I deliver a seminar or two, to physics professors + students.

At the time of delivering my proposed seminar, links like those I have given above, esp. Travis Norsen’s book, also should prove a lot useful.

But no, I haven’t seen something like my approach being covered anywhere, so far, not even Norsen’s book. There was a vague mention of just a preliminary part of it somewhere on Roger Schlafly’s blog several years ago, only once or so, but I can definitely say that I had already had grasped even that point on my own before Schlafly’s post came. And, as far as I know, Schlafly hasn’t come to pursue that thread at all, any time later…

But speaking overall, at least as of today, I think I am the only one who has pursued this (my) line of thought to the extent I have [^].

So, there. Bye for now.

I Song I Like:
(Hindi) “suno gajar kya gaaye…”
Singer: Geeta Dutt
Music: S. D. Burman
Lyrics: Sahir Ludhianvi
[There are two Geeta’s here, and both are very fascinating: Geeta Dutt in the audio, and Geeta Bali in the video. Go watch it; even the video is recommended.]

As usual, some editing after even posting, would be inevitable.

Some updates made and some streamlining done on 30 July 2018, 09:10 hrs IST.

# Is it a QC?

This post began its life as a supposedly brief update to my earlier post [^] on D-Wave’s paper, but the text soon grew long enough to become a separate post by itself. So, here we go.

Predictably, a controversy concerning the D-Wave paper (and its coverage in the media) came up soon later, at Prof. Scott Aaronson’s blog [^]. At 300+ comments (as of publishing this post), there is a lot of speculation, skepticism, and hilarity of the usenet/slashdot kind going on over there, apart from also some commentary.

However, as far as I am concerned, the most interesting part in (re) examining the paper and the related claims, was the following doubt which the controversy helped highlight: whether this particular D-Wave device had actually succeeded in exploiting, at least in part, the specifically quantum-mechanical effects, or not; whether there was an engineering success in controlling, at least in part (and to a practically significant extent), the quantum decoherence effects, or not.

The controversy was not entirely unexpected; recall this bit from the first New York Times story [^]:

““There is no sense in which this is the definitive statement about quantum computing,” Ms. McGeoch said. “I’m more interested in how well it works, not whether or not it is quantum.””

Though they called it a “quantum computer” (and I repeated the term), the term obviously was being used in a somewhat loose sense.

And, yes, I will admit it: without going through the paper well, I rather relied on the peer-review process, and so certainly thought, at least at the time of writing my earlier post, that D-Wave had a more impeccable and comprehensive result than what now seems to be the case.

But returning to who is interested in what: Well, as far as I am concerned, the issue of whether they got any speed-up or not, is strictly secondary—it’s “just” a consequence!

(In fact, I even don’t care if a QC research group cannot factor any composite beyond some single digit number, as of today. So long as they demonstrate a practically significant control of decoherence, and some clue about how they expect to scale it up, even their success in factoring only a small number would still make sense to me. Any future value of a QC in cracking open secret codes, or in designing better drugs through quantum chemical modeling, would be “just” a consequence, as far as I am concerned.)

To my mind, the real issue is: whether D-Wave succeeded in building a quantum computer (with some promise of some significant levels of a future scalability), or not.

So, from this angle, the most significant comment at Aaronson’s blog has been this one [^] by Prof. David Poulin, alerting the appearance of a paper by John Smolin and Graeme Smith, both of IBM, at arXiv, yesterday [^]. In case you are wondering whether to give this paper a read or not, let me remind you that IBM is a (corporate-sector) competitor to D-Wave. And, if that isn’t going to help, let me quote a bit from the main text of the paper:

“Since classical simulated annealing is intrinsically random and ‘quantum annealing’ is not…”

[emphasis mine]

and a line from their conclusions section:

“The deterministic nature of quantum annealing leads to rather different behaviors than the random processes of simulated annealing.”

[emphasis mine]

Interesting, no? (LOL!)

Of course, my own interests are in the foundations of QM, in providing a proper conceptual explanation for (and even mathematical expression to) the specifically quantum-mechanical effects/paradoxes/oddities, and not in the details of this or that quantum-mechanical process, whether it has some/a lot of/very great merit in building a scalable QC, or not.

So, I am not going to look too closely into this IBM paper either. Or provide a commentary on the position(s) it takes, its merits, or any polemical value it provides in this controversy (or in any other!). Or, add in any other way, to this D-Wave-related  controversy. … That way, I am not totally averse to controversies, but as far as this one goes, I find that it is a greater fun taking a ring-side view, here.

For another thing, these days, I am also thinking of quite different (and between them, somewhat unrelated) things: diffusion, small dams and water resources engineering/management, and tensors. Expect a post or two on these topics, soon enough.

So, all in all, even if I am having fun watching this controversy develop and grow, I guess I am going to sign off blogging about it. I won’t write any further on this topic, unless, of course something even more funny (or definitive, even if a bit serious) emerges from it.

[E&OE]

# On BlackLight Power Inc., and QM

When was the first time I heard of Dr. Randell Mills and BlackLight Power, the company that he has founded? … I guess that was either in 2000 or 2001. Most likely, 2001, the first half of it (while I was still in the SF Bay Area, jobless, and much “targeted”…. Anyway…)

In case you don’t know who Dr. Mills is and what his company is about, see the following links: Wiki [^], a year 2005 coverage in The Guardian [^], and the company Web site [^].

Dr. Mills, his claims, and his company, all were controversial matters back in 2001 when I first read about them. They still is. Just Google on any, and you are sure to see a lot of comments and cross-comments. The subject matter itself is such that one gets intrigued. Though I could not come to a firm conclusion back then, I also felt that, right back then, there may be something to it—just the way there also may be something to cold fusion. I left it at that.

Then, sometime in recent years (I guess in 2008), I happened to remember this matter once again. This time round, I directly wrote an email to Mills. There was no reply (from him or from anyone from his company). None was expected anyway—Mills may not only be on to something big, he also is an American! How could he have written back to someone like me?

Anyway, in between 2001 and 2008, one of things that happened on my side of the things was that I also did my PhD. A part of it did concern QM.

However, my knowledge of QM is not yet advanced, comprehensive and, say, mature enough that I can even today draw any definitive conclusion about this matter.

Yet, when one learns something, one not only learns the concrete details of that specific subject area, but one also learns the methods of reasoning employed in it (at least in implicit terms, as a matter of a skill or a practitioner’s art). And something more. One also develops an ability whereby one is able to judge—accurately or otherwise—whether a given idea or a claim broadly falling in that area might “hold water.”

Now, the judgement itself may be only broad, preliminary; it may even be tentative in nature. Still, the point is, one is able to form at least broad judgments. People call these by such names as “intuition,” “hunches,” “gut feeling,” etc. (Philosophy is the primary culprit behind people using this kind of a terminology, if it can be called that.)

If your education happens to be in one of the physical sciences (say, physics, engineering, etc.), then you do develop the ability to make out or distinguish the scope of a given mathematical theory: what is the realm of application of a given theory, whether it is (or can be) be as comprehensive as indicated by its champions, etc. You can begin to tell that. Thus, you develop an appreciation of the nature of conceptual relations that exist between mathematics and physics. Further, you also develop an appreciation of the limitations of the two types of conceptualizations (the physical and the mathematical). You develop a kind of a “sense” about such things.

It is purely on the basis of such a “sense” that I have developed about physics, science and truth, that I think that there may be something to what Mills claims—his claims do not fall in the category of the arbitrary (the kind that can be thrown out of any cognitive consideration right at the face of it, without any second thought). Thus, there may be something to Mills’ output.

Note, this “something” may not turn out to be exactly as what Dr. Mills puts in words. The concepts he uses, the theory he puts forth, the nature of theorization that he follows, all may be partly incorrect/wrong. Yet, the important point here is that the claims that he makes do not seem worthy of an outright rejection.

Physics cannot progress unless the physicist recognizes the limitations of his theories. Professional physicists often do. Yet, when the claims seem to fall too outside of their developed common sense, most of them tend to shy away.

Of course, some do pick the controversial things up for a closer examination, to etablish truth-/false-hood in the case. Such intentions, undoubtedly, are noble. But intentions do not always translate very smoothly into the process or the end product: the criticism. Examples abound. We all know about the Wright brothers’ flights, and the refusal of some academics to even examine their claim that a heavier-than-air machine can fly. They refused to leave their ivory towers, visit the fields where the Wright brothers were conducting their test flights (a sort of exhibition also was there), and see for themselves. They trusted their theories more than their eyes.

Given the human nature, sometimes, criticism itself also is interesting in its own right.

It is true that quantum mechanics has been a very successful theory. But it does not mean that it is a logically complete theory. Indeed, I think, even an argument can be made to the effect that no theory of special sciences can ever become a logically complete theory. (I wouldn’t argue this position in reference to that popular “incompleteness” argument.)

Further, QM is a very special theory. It is a speficically 20th-century theory. As such, QM is, philosophically speaking, in a very bad shape.

Now, we may choose to ignore all the meaningless verbiage and blabber that, we are told, is logically implied by QM. We may, thus, choose to focus on only those aspects of the theory that do allow us to make whatever quantitative predictions that can still be made with it. Yet, developing this skill does not mean that we understand the inductive roots of the theory. (In fact, physicists are eager to inform us that doing so is in principle impossible!)

When the inductive roots of a concept are not known, when the proper conceptual context of a theory is not fully clear, one has to exercise even greater caution before rejecting some claim if it seems to go against the existing theory.

Here, consider Mills’ claim that quantum states corresponding to fractional principal quantum number, are possible.

Can we reject such an idea out of hand? Do we understand the physical reasons why the number must be an integer? Has any one bothered to at least name such reasons?

If we are so poor in understanding the existing theory that we cannot even name the required physical reasons (let alone explain them), and if we can manage to forget to tell the layman that the integer nature of the number has always been a postulate (even while never failing to repeat that QM theory is based on arbitrary postulates if it helps shake his belief in reason, causality, reality), then how justified we are to say that according to the rules of quantum mechanics, Mills’ idea (of fractional quantum numbers) is “theoretically impossible?”

Here, I hope that no one will give me an argument that (essentially) rests on the well-known limitations as to what kind of boundary conditions can at all be imposed, while solving problems such as the standing waves in a rope. I hope no one will give me that one. I hope people realize that QM particles and/or their trajectories aren’t the same as an ordinary rope (even though the behavior of the classical objects would be obtained from the nature of the microscopic entities, after a proper coarsening process). Since there is this essential difference regarding the very basic nature of abstractions in QM theory and the classical one, I hope, no one will give me an argument based on that. Even if, I anticipate, most objections of most physicists (even of well-experienced, working/teaching, professional physicists) would in fact be based on little more than what I have pointed out in this paragraph. It is a crucial point.

Anyway, today, I was browsing at random, and happened to pick up a link to a news item concerning the validation of Mill’s claims by a proper academic institution: the Rowan University in New Jersey, USA.  … One of the academics involved in the experimental verifications is a materials scientist by name Prof. K. Ramanujachary; he not only is an Indian (or an American of Indian origin), even his PhD is from India—from IIT Madras! I have not forgotten the claim to production of petrol of a few years ago. No. Still, I am happy to note that professional scientists are at least willing to reproduce Mills’ findings.

I have just downloaded the research summary paper, and haven’t yet gone through it (and probably won’t.) For all my capitalism, I still hate to see titles like “Executive Summary” in place of the usual “Abstract” or “Summary” in a scientific document reporting empirical details towards basic validation. However, the document seems to be detailed enough.

All in all, an interesting matter.

… Sometime in future—at least a few years later—it would be fun to see if I can develop a theory of the real phenomena (if any) operating here, using my own approach. (As of now, I am excited about my approach, but can’t be sure if it would not turn out to be rather useless for addressing this category of practical problems…) . … Of course, all that is way into future… For the time being, I am still learning QM, and I still am trying to understand the various theories of physics on which it is based. For instance, I have no idea how precisely Coulomb’s law fits in with, say, the QED theory (I mean, at a deep level)… And, I am at least one year away from even beginning to study QED proper. But, yes, study, I surely will. …

As of today, I think that many elements of Mills’ theory would turn out not to be correct—e.g., his idea that the electron in the form of a sphere—a surface at that, I think, might eventually turn out to be incorrect. This model of his may turn out to be just a working model that helps him perform some calculations, but it may not be an accurate physical description as such. But still, as the joke concerning the horse goes, doing so also sure would be physics 🙂

In case you don’t know that joke, it joke goes something like this: Say, you take a horse to an artist and ask him to make a model of it. The artist might choose to create a painting, and offer that as a proper model. You then take the horse to a sculptor, and again ask him to make a model. The sculptor may make a great sculpture out of it, as a model. Then, you take it to an engineer. The engineer might say: “We have two options here. Basically, we can create a scaled model and put it in a wind-tunnel. Or, we could also use CFD to simulate some aspects…” That’s what a typical engineer might say. Now, you take the horse to a physicist and ask him to make a model of it. The physicist will not say anything for some time. He will first think very deeply about it. And, then, finally, his eyes may brighten up, and he may leap to the black-board to draw something even as he tells you in an excited voice: “Let’s build a model to find the wind-resistance of a racing horse. … Let us assume that the horse exists in the shape of a sphere! …”

So, it may turn out that Mills’ electron is spherical out of a similar set of considerations. Which should make him into a physicist. … If so, then why so much of resistance? 🙂

Anyway, to close this post, the following line from The Guardian’s report seems pertinent:

…While the theoretical tangle is unlikely to resolve itself soon, those wanting to exploit the technology are pushing ahead…

As far as I can see, doing so indeed is the best path they (Mills and his people) can take, given the culture of it all: the US government, academics, and physics.

Just two more points: BlackLight Power, Inc., does not seem averse to go the US government for raising research funding. … And, GreenPeace seems to be trailing them already!

* * * * *   * * * * *   * * * * *

Just one more matter: In case you missed it, I am on the twitter now, as @AjitRJadhav

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A Song I Like:

(Marathi) “saanj ye gokuLi, saavaLi, saavaLi…”
Singer: Asha Bhosale
Lyrics: Sudhir Moghe

[The post before the last still is to be updated. As to this post, though it is in a fairly good shape right away, I may add a few links to Mills’ supporters and critics, later on, sometime over the upcoming week-end.]

[E&OE]

# Trivia Like the M. F. Hussain Controversy and the Women’s Reservation Bill

0. With this post, I once again resume blogging…

First, I need to quickly get a few things out of my system before I am ready to write on some of the things I have wanted to write about. … So, here we go with the more trivial (but far more discussed) matters first…

(1.) About the M. F. Hussain Controversy…

There was a spike of discussions concerning this particular controversy about one/two weeks ago. So many interesting angles got thrown up that it would be impossible to even summarize them. I felt like jumping in, but instead, just kept on reading on the ‘net and otherwise, to get the “lay of the land” before I wrote. In a way, this turned out to be a good decision.

After all, I did find a very highly quotable position post which explains most of what I had wanted to say anyway. By that, I mean the post on the topic by Dr. Atanu Dey, here [^]. Please do read it. Highly recommended.

Not that I agree with every nuance of every point he states. Speaking in overall terms about his blogging about other matters too, I suspect that there might be a difference among us in that I might look at something from a moral/judgmental viewpoint whereas he wouldn’t, necessarily. That hardly matters here, though…

Here, I find his ability to think in principles, and the straightforward way in which he puts his thoughts, marvelous! And I completely agree with all the essential points of this post of his.

Just a couple of points I shall add to what Dey has already said.

(1.a) Dey says that “[he is] not much of a paintings person, anyway.” But I am, to a certain extent. And used to be one to a major extent about two-three decades ago. So, I can add a bit about this matter.

The question I very briefly address here is: how great is Hussain, as a painter (i.e. artist)?

Even a casual glance at his paintings would tell you that he has an extraordinary mastery over the line. He is an abstract painter—which, to my mind, generally speaking, doesn’t qualify as art to begin with. This applies as much to Hussain as also to Souza, or Gaitonde, or Anjali Menon, or even Sujata Bajaj, or anyone else of their kind—which means, about 99% of today’s painters: they, too, are not artists.

But keeping this aside for a moment, the next question is: Doesn’t he show at least some elements of great art in his work?

Here, I think, as a craftsman, his defining skill is not at all light and perspective, certainly not color, nor even subject, but it’s: his line. His painting unmistakably show that had he chosen higher goals, he would have made for a recognizably great artist—and, despite spending 95 years of his life, he still has not managed to even become an artist let alone a great one.

But why do I say it’s the line which really defines his craftsmanship? Just look at the lines that define the contours of his horses, and the women he paints. His line is capable of bringing to life the sheer life power, the very unruly dynamic, of a horse. Just one apparently careless stroke of a brush in the right place while drawing the eye of a horse, and that raw, unruly energy of the horse begins to jump at you. Similarly, consider the fact that despite carrying the crudeness of the abstract technique, his straight lines still perfectly capture the contours of the feminine form, whenever he manages to slip-in to the remnants of the better elements of the technique he must have been taught at the JJ School of Arts.

So, here is a very curious phenomenon. You have a gifted craftsman—at the level of the line. But this same guy, then, refuses to use that gift to paint a picture—i.e. to create a work of art. Instead, he uses his more abstract powers to mangle the elements like the objects making up those lines, the color and the perspective etc, deliberately disorients them all, throws them together to deliberately create incoherence or even un-intelligibility in his work of “art.”

Consider its counterpart in other forms of art, for example, literature, for example, poetry. What Hussain’s approach would yield is not a poem but something like a poem. Of course it would be called a “free verse.” But the matter doesn’t end there—it gets worse. What Hussain would give you would be a collection of in-principle disconnected bunch of lines, some phrases of which being extraordinarily brilliant on counts such as drama, innovation of expression, metaphor, imagination, etc. Mind you, the brilliance would be restricted only to phrases, not even to lines—the mangling would begin right at that level. And, the lines, taken as sequence, would all be disjointed, hinting at something which, in principle, cannot at all be known, not in toto. The hints themselves could at times be grotesque, at other times sly, at other times profane (and this term is to be taken in its objective sense, not necessarily in connection with this religion or that)… You could, if you try, easily locate Hussain’s parallels in modern “poetry” too. The point isn’t that. The point is to convey what Hussain really is like, when taken as a painter. Namely, that he isn’t one.

(It would be an error to compare Hussain’s paintings with the strokes produced by a student studying at a school for the mentally retarded—the first has the ability to do better, the second doesn’t, and the deliberateness of the rebellion against integration is the crucial difference.)

(1.b) Another point that many people seem to have missed is this. I ran across a court judgment that did agree with the opponents of Hussain in all other points. However, it refused to try Hussain on a point of legal technicality. And, that brilliant piece of the legal technicality was supplied by the current Central Government of India minister Kapil Sibal. … The less I say, the better it will be to my health and life…

(1.c) Nevertheless, we must stop and ask ourselves one question. If merely brilliance in respect of an element like the line-work can be enough to qualify a guy to be counted as an artist, even when ample evidence from his art-work as well as his interviews exists that he has deliberately followed a policy of working against proper integration as required by a proper piece of art, then, following the same standards, why not also consider those millions of anonymous Indians whose “work” adorns the walls of all our public urinals to be artists in their own right, too? [And, I deliberately use the word “urinal” rather than “toilet” or “rest room,” because only the former can adequately convey the strength of the stink in question.] Why not decorate also them with those Padma awards?

(2) About the Women’s Reservation Bill

First of all I want you to note that here I am going against many politicians I otherwise respect, first and foremost, Sharad Pawar. Also, many other politicians I fear. … The reader must excuse me here; there would be too many to name them to list them individually. …

The best commentary—and the only reasonable one—that I saw in print or on monitor, came from one Mr. Parsa Venkateshwar Rao, Jr., in a column he wrote for DNA, here [^]. The only other media/blog to highlight it (in my limited browsing) was “Churumuri,” here [^].

… As usual, at least one qualification. What Rao calls “politics of identity,” I would call such things as “politics of narrowness/of insularity/of divisiveness.”

And, here’s the extraordinarily brilliant part of Rao’s comment, expressed so tersely but so well:

…Women’s reservation bill too is supposed to promote gender equality but what it really does is create yet another special interest. And society is turned into a bureau of cubbyholes. And the power of the State is increased yet again. …

Thank you for saying it, Mr. Rao!

To Swamy of Times of India, regarding his today’s column. Nope, Swamy, you don’t get it right. Hmm…

Back to basics. There are three pillars of a nation state: (i) legislative (L for short), (ii) judicial (J for short), (iii) executive (E for short). In India, the mangling of the E branch began right with the original version of the Constitution (C for short)—it’s just for five years, no principled, i.e. unreserved respect/acknowledgment of the individual rights, etc. As such, the J, if pushed to the wall, would have been helpless, in principle. For the aforementioned reason (viz. the absence of an explicit ack. of the Individual Rights), the Constitution always had been sufficiently vague—i.e. weak–that if L grew, it could not only overpower the E but also effectively restrict the J in various indirect ways. Enter the mixed ideals of Nehruvian socialism. L had become powerful. In Indira’s semi-dictatorship, it changed C and systematically weakened L and then also J. With the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of USSR, there seemed to be a reversal of sorts, but it was necessarily doomed because C was weak to begin with anyway so there was poor theory, and, in fact, Indira’s years had weakened the level of the public discourse to such low levels. So much so that on this issue of reservation, all major parties—Congress, BJP, and the communists—they all agree. (Also all the rest of them: they simply fight for greater reservation—not less). Ok.

Against this background what would this Bill do? There are certain implicit grounds for negotiating any kind of agreement in any free society. Due to a better past—and interactions with better countries like the USA and UK—despite the systematic abuse of the above sort and all the weaknesses of the Constitution and legal codes, the common implicit grounds in India actually tend to be better. This is the reason why gays (as much the “chhakke”s as the more hype urban ones) could at all live without having cases slapped against them. This is the reason why in Maharashtra, the ANS-sponsored Bill gets halted. (The reason I oppose it: What standards would permit an ordinary police officer to distinguish between proper private practice of religion and blind faith as prescribed by ANS?) This is the reason why business can at all in fact function even if enough legal codes exist that in theory it would be impossible to run a business without breaking some or the other legal code. That implicit ground is important.

In a country with as huge illiterate, semi-literate, and literate-but-uneducated population as India, a country where to run the elections you have to use symbols—not candidate’s names—it does matter a lot what kind of signals we project to all those people.

When reservations in jobs came into force, it actually did not matter to large parts of population: most of the labor is in agriculture or unorganized sector, and even in organized sector, job reservations applied only to government jobs, not private. It was bad, but it was limited in terms of impact. When the Constitution got mangled almost with each successive amendment (some of which being more deeply mangling than the others), it rather affected the upper echelons of the society—their effects on that implicit negotiating grounds that I alluded to above was at least initially minimal; in any case, their effects would have to slowly trickle and diffuse.

But when you introduce a Reservation Bill of this sort—whether on the caste basis, gender, or any other, it matters not in principle—what you do is that you not only mangle the L branch of the government out of its shape, but, since the common illiterate man, right since the Freedom Movement, has always been an active part of the political process, you also affirm to him that divisive agendas like that are alright so long as ratified by an overwhelming majority, as led by the likes of Sonia Gandhi and Sharad Pawar and Advani and others.

In other words, you affect that implicit understanding of what kind of state one lives in, for that common illiterate man. In essence, you tell him: It’s perfectly “sarkari” to be prejudiced against any innocent man. It is perfectly OK to be prejudiced. It is perfectly OK to be so even at the level of elections for law-makers. It is perfectly OK to follow the blind politics of special interest groups.

The first implications of this kind of a message has already emerged, in the form of the opponents to the Bill. … And, Sharad Pawar, and Sonia Gandhi, and Nitin Gadkari, and Brinda Karat and their lesser colleagues all find a cause to celebrate for. What a tragedy!!

. . . . .

[BTW, if someone from NCP or Indira Congress comes and asks me (which is very unlikely), rather than give them a lecture on principles and all, I am just going to be a bit smart and raise a few points in turn: (i) Why did “Sakal” stop carrying the news of new PhD awards precisely around the time I was awarded one—and why does, through other columns, it does sometimes (even if rarely) does cover the news of other PhDs… Is “Sakal” ashamed of the kind of work I had submitted for my PhD? (ii) Why did I not get that job in COEP—even after my PhD defence? [^]  (iii) Why did the IIT Bombay Conference ICCMS09 reject my paper (citing such flimsy grounds that I had used the grammatical first person while writing the abstract)? Who gave them the encouragement to behave thus anti-intellectually? (iv) Why did CERN reject my paper?. I think this might keep them busy for a while… We could discuss principles and all later on…]

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Things I Wanted to Write About

Now that the trivia are out of my system, here is a word about what I have been wanting to write about for quite sometime, and may write in near future (not necessarily in the next post):

On the political side: The magnitude of the black money kept abroad by Indians, Why no Maharashtrian could become a PM thus far.

And, then, of course, Physics: A simple but important example illustrating how, in Physics, it is impossible to get rid of certain basic assumptions delineating the nature of your theory.

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A Couple of Songs I Like

1. (Marathi) “kase kase, haasaayaache…”
Music: Hridaynath Mangeshkar
Singer: Asha Bhosale
Lyrics: Aarati Prabhu

2. (Hindi) “jaaye to jaaye kahaan…”
Singer: Talat Mahmood
Music: S. D. Burman
Lyrics: Sahir Ludhianwi

PS: As usual, I might edit/streamline this post a bit, later on…