VIDEO: TEDx talk about why Indians are shitting on our beaches

Agent 3 has a friend who has a rather posh cottage property on the shore of Lake Erie, not far from the US-Canada border. The friend has been complaining to the local council for years now about visitors from south Asia shitting on the beach. 

In spite of being shown not just photos but videos of brown people depositing their calling cards in the golden sand, council refuses to act, for fear of being called racist. Some liberal-minded folk (read: idiots) have even played the DEI card, arguing that open defecation is part of the culture of the shitters, and their culture must be respected. After all, "diversity is our strength", right?

In this TEDx Talk, given in 2015, Sangita Vyas, a grarduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton, shares the little understood reality of open defecation in India. Most of the open defecation in the world happens in India, yet social scientists and the government claim not to understand why.

Ms Vyas did a country-wide survey and came up with some answers to the eternal question of "WHY?" Spoiler alert: It's because of their culture and their heathen religion. Can you say "caste", boys and girls? I knew you could. But good on Ms Vyas for saying the quiet part out loud.

In her talk, given just over 10 years ago., Ms Vyas expresses the hope that as the modern generation becomes better-educated (and richer!) things will change. They have not. 

And the millions of Indians who come to Canada and the USA on the invitation of our liberal governments bring their millennia-old cultural and religious practices with them. As they say themselves, "You can take the Indian out of India, but you can't take Indis out of the Indian." 

Thanks to an anonymous member of the BCF community for showing us this video.

Indian priorities on display -- world's tallest statue

Here it is, dear readers, a photo of the World's Tallest Statue, unveiled just in time for Hallowe'en in India's western state of Gujarat.

Nearly 600 feet tall -- twice the height of the Statue of Liberty -- the "Statue of Unity" really is a biggie! Indeed so! It depicts Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (or "S.V. Patel" for short), a leader of India's independence movement. Mr Patel, who orchestrated the annexation of India's self-governing "princely states", is not exactly a champion of unity. His political philosophy fits better with the aggressive nationalism of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party than more famous heroes of independence, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who stood for the softer ideals of peace and tolerance. However, Mr Patel, like his millions of namesakes aroound the world, is a "Guj" -- a Gujarati. So that explains it.

Another prominent Guj is India's Prime Minister, Narendra Damodardas Modi, who was the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014. Prime Minister Modi is a member of the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Hindu extremist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Mr Modi's administration has been blamed for the Gujarat anti-Muslim riots of 2002 Gujarat riots, but a Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team found no evidence to initiate prosecution proceedings. So that's all right then.

Mr Modi's administration has also been criticized for failing to significantly improve health, poverty, and education indices in Gujarat, and now in India as a hole. [Ed., don't correct my spelling. Quod scripsi scripsi!] Which brings me the question of priorities. The Patel statue is said to have cost upwards of $400 million dollars. This in a country where according to the World Bank, nearly two-thirds of the people still defecate in the open. Makes you think, doesn't it? If you're an Indian politician, maybe not.

Further reading: "Shitting in fields leads to gang rape, hanging of Indian girls", WWW 30/5/14.

Footnote: Another famous Indian who, although he's not named "Patel", is almost certainly a Gujarati, is Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, who is being written out of The Simpsons following NPC criticism that he is just a racist caricature. In an episode last April, Lisa said to her mother, "Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?" Indeed.

Shitting in fields leads to gang rape, hanging of Indian girls

This week's posts about the "honour killing" of a 25-year-old Pakistani woman -- by her father and 20 other family members -- may have left the impression that abuse of women is endemic in Muslim (and Sikh) communities. And so it is. But you find the same barbarism in all over south Asia.

In mainly Hindu India, rape is an everyday occurrence, and is rarely reported, even more rarely punished. Not infrequent gang rapes do make the news, but the perps often get off scot-free, for reasons of culture and religion, notably the caste system with which Hinduism has burdened billions of Indians for thousands of years.

A particularly egregious case occurred this week in the village of Katra, in the impoverished northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Two teenage cousins -- members of the lowest harijan (untouchable) caste -- went to a field to relieve themselves, since there was no toilet in their home. ("Open defecation", as Indians call it, is still the norm for almost half of India's billion people.) They were caught with their pants down, literally, by a gang of men who gang-raped them, killed them, and then hanged them from a mango tree. Here's a picture.

The "strange fruit" was still hanging from the tree when the picture was taken because angry villagers refused to allow the bodies to be cut down, as a protest over the inaction of the police, who they said had done nothing to search for the girls when they were reported missing Tuesday evening. Quite understandable in light of what happened next.

The villagers allowed authorities to take down the corpses after the first arrests were made on Wednesday. Police arrested two men from the village and... wait for it... two police officers! Three more suspects are still being sought, or so the police say.

Meanwhile -- yes, there's more! -- police in the nearby town of Etawah have arrested three men for brutally attacking the mother of a rape victim after she refused to withdraw her complaint. The attack followed the May 11th rape of the victim's teenage daughter. A local man was arrested after the mother filed a complaint with authorities, but since the victims were of the lowest caste, the culprit's community felt that they were wrong to have complained.

So five men -- including the father, a brother and a cousin of the accused rapist -- followed the victim's mother away from her house and beat her relentlessly, demanding she drop the accusation. Police arrested three men on Thursday and are looking for two others... so they say. The mother is in critical condition in a local hospital, with numerous broken bones and internal injuries. The whereabouts of the raped girl is unknown, but at least she wasn't left hanging from a tree.

Footnote (31/5/14): If you doubt Walt's figure that nearly half of India's people practise "open defecation", and if you doubt that this poses dangers to women and girls, read "Why India's sanitation crisis kills women" on the BBC News India page. How fortunate for India that it freed itself from the evils of British rule two-thirds of a century ago and no longer has to tolerate such evils as proper toilets and sewers.