The Computer and the Telegraph: Influence Channels Between Technology and International Relations

JEFFREY DING

J.C.R. Licklider, a pioneer of computer science, once said the computer is also the direct descendant of the telegraph as it enables one… “to transmit information without transporting material.” Separated by centuries of innovation, the computer and telegraph were revolutionary technologies that undeniably had significant effects in the domain of international relations. To better understand those effects, it is important to specify influence channels between technological developments and the conduct of international relations. This post starts with the computer to outline three general spectrums in which technological developments affect military strategy and warfare. Then, it specifically examines how the prospect of cyberattacks disrupts traditional threat assessments, based on the offense-defense paradigm. In the latter half, it highlights the development of the telegraph and its effects on international institutions and globalization. 

Technological change is intimately linked to military strategy. From the Lee Metford rifle, which enabled the British army to fell the Sudanese Dervishes in 1898, to the U.S. nuclear weapons monopoly in World War II, technological change has played an important, sometimes decisive, role in many conflicts. To more coherently conceptualize technology’s impact on warfare, this post sketches out three broad spectrums of influence: quantitative and qualitative improvements, independent and derivative effects, power diffusion and power concentration. Quantitative changes, operationalized as marginal increases in indicators such as force mobility or payload, are more likely to affect the tactical level of warfighting. For instance, one can see how computers enabled efficiency improvements in war simulations by tracing war gaming from sand tables drawn by Roman war generals to strategy board games to mathematical algorithms resembling calculators to digital programs.

On the other hand, qualitative improvements, which fundamentally affect how war is fought, are more likely to influence strategic decisions in military affairs. For instance, computers are essential for the operation of precision weapons, which Cohen argues ushered in the end of the mass army age. The quantitative-tactical/qualitative-strategic relationship is a tendency rather than a strict function. For instance, a quantitative change in reducing the “launch-to-target” timeframe for a nuclear missile launch may the tip the balance of whether a state could credibly threaten a retaliatory second strike, thereby shaping the other state’s strategic decision regarding a nuclear first strike.

A clear-eyed assessment of how technological change affects military strategy also requires an understanding of the spectrum between technology’s independent and derivative effects. Three main theories explain the emergence of military technology: the “corridor-and-doors” theory (military planners just need to walk down the corridor, unlock doors, and pick up chests of tech), the “form follows function” theory (military technology evolves to meet specific military needs), and the “form follows failure” theory (military technology is produced as a response to some failure in existing technology). Technological changes explained better by the second and third theory are positioned on the “derivative” end of the spectrum, and they put more weight on the surrounding material contexts rather than the technological innovation itself.

As for the “corridor-and-doors” theory, the independent effect of technological change is more readily identifiable. One possible test to differentiate between independent and derivative emergence is to consider whether the technology came from the civilian sector or the military realm. Innovation from within the military will be based on existing strategic considerations, whereas innovations from the civilian sector are not constrained by the status quo military context. For example, both the computer and telegraph were civilian technologies, originally designed to reduce human error in solving complex mathematical problems and facilitate long-distance communication, respectively. When applied to the military sphere, their contributions fundamentally altered the existing assumptions of the possible scale of warfare, as evidenced by the telegraph’s influence on the rise of the mass army as the dominant unit of war. In contrast, Germany’s use of motorized armor during World War II could be viewed merely as an epiphenomenon of their blitzkrieg doctrine to avoid a prolonged war and their military needs to overcome French machine guns, trenches, and barbed wire. Once again, the relationship between this civilian-military test and the independent-derivative spectrum is fuzzy not crisp. The development of nuclear weapons by the U.S. military is a notable exception; it has produced a rich body of literature focusing on nuclear weapons themselves as an independent variable.

But far too often, research into the effects of technological change in international domains focuses solely on military applications. There are two ways in which technological change influenced the development of international institutions. First, revolutionary communication technologies like the telegraph create coordination problems, which serve as demand pressure for international institutional development. The telegraph certainly revolutionized interactions between peoples, dropping communication times between Britain and India from six months in the 1830s to the same day in the 1870s. However, electronic telegraphy also presented significant coordination problems, such as one described by Ruggie concerning what happened to messages when they reached a border. Eventually, the European communications complex evolved from a series of bilateral treaties into several multilateral arrangements and, finally, into the International Telegraph Union (ITU). The ITU was the first standing intergovernmental organization, representing the rise of permanent institutions of global governance. This trend holds for other technologies as well; Murphy notes that a new generation of international organizations emerged as a regulatory response to revolutionary communication technologies, citing the ITU, the Radiotelegraph Union in 1906, and the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization in 1964. But the ITU set the precedent for the shape of multilateral arrangements to come: it codified rules of the road regarding the network of telegraph lines connecting Europe (and later the world), it established a permanent secretariat to administer those rules, and it convened periodic conferences to review the rules.
 
The second pathway of technological influence on international institutions and order is more intangible. While there were concrete effects of communication by telegraph – e.g. diplomats could send and receive messages without long delays– the intangible effects of virtually instantaneous communication may be more significant. Buzan and Lawson argue that the telegraph created a qualitatively different interaction capacity, linked peoples in a more intensely connected global economy, and generated a “19th century discourse” that shrank the world and allowed humanity to view themselves as one global body. Snapchat and Tinder have had a similar impact on modern love, changing the choice capacity of our romantic entanglements and resulting in interactions defined by transience, as noted by the influential thinker Aziz Ansari.

Indeed, technological innovations have significant effects on the military strategy and the development of international institutions. In the military domain, the type of influence, the independence of influence, and the power distributional effects of influence are important dimensions to examine, as demonstrated by military applications of the computer. The revolutionary impact of the telegraph is reflected in two channels – coordination problems as a push factor for international institutional emergence and change in how people conceive of the world and international order – through which technological innovations have altered international relations.  

Passage from Africa: a continent stifled by foreign ‘benefactors’

JOEL SILVERSTEIN

Between 1980 and 2009 the African continent, the world’s second most populous land mass, lost approximately US$1.4 billion (adjusted for inflation) owed in taxation that foreign governments and multinational corporations had illegally evaded. Today these illegal transfers of money out of the continent amount to three times as much as they valued at the start of the century — growing to more than US$50 billion a year.

The US$1.4 billion figure, which excludes money lost to organised crime, and thus underestimates the extent of the illicit outflows, roughly equates to Africa’s GDP today. The loss of this much-needed capital for some of the world’s poorest and most unstable economies has stymied national investments into development projects and the provision of basic services. The result has been a vicious cycle of underdevelopment that has had profound social, political and economic impact upon people across the continent.

Such is the extent of the capital flight, its forms multifarious; smuggling, money laundering, trade mispricing, and profit-shifting mechanisms that conceal taxable revenues, that despite the perception that Africa has received vast quantities of foreign aid and private-sector investment, and that little has been received in return, Africa has in fact been a net creditor for decades, with the illicit outflows of capital from the continent — arranged by governments and multinational corporations — valuing more than the total amount of foreign aid reaching Africa. Moreover, the Global Financial Integrity (GFI) think-tank has estimated that whilst perhaps only 3% of illicit outflows stem from bribery and embezzlement — activities which feature strongly in the public imagination — this is dwarfed by the estimated 60-65% of capital flight caused by multinationals seeking to avoid taxation.

Although it is broadly clear what needs to be done: there must be greater effort to eradicate corruption, increased transparency in the extractive resource sector, and a clampdown on financial institutions that participate in fraudulent transfers of capital, a recent report by the African Union and the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) accused both African and non-African governments, and private-sector corporations, including oil, mining, banking, legal and accounting firms, of continuing to participate in money laundering schemes and corporate tax avoidance. 

Indeed, during a UN financing for development summit in Addis Ababa in 2015, the US, UK and Japan blocked efforts to upgrade the current UN tax body to an intergovernmental one — claiming that such a move would interfere with the work that the OECD (an economic group of high-income economies) already conducts on tax. However, for Jayant Sinha (India’s Finance Minister), “the lack of an ambitious decision on upgrading the UN Committee of Experts on international cooperation on tax matters into an intergovernmental body … is a historic missed opportunity,” since it would have given less developed nations greater influence over policy decisions on global tax arrangements made at the UN. Ultimately, there has been little appetite on the part of rich nations to intervene to the perceived detriment of their own corporations — who hold considerable domestic political influence.

Ironically, despite the West’s opposition, regulations that would improve anti-money laundering institutions would help prevent funding reaching terrorist groups like Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram, while a global tax body would remove the confusion and inconsistency from international trading, halt the race to the bottom when it comes to tax loopholes and incentives, and put an end to the phenomenon of individuals being taxed in two jurisdictions.  

With countries from across the continent, whether it be in West Africa where it is believed that Nigeria has lost over US$220 billion since 1970, or in an East African nation like Ethiopia that is losing as much as 11% of its production to illicit financial flows each year, such a pernicious economic problem — man-made by the world’s most powerful nations — is clearly overdue rectification. It has long been time for members of the OECD to take meaningful action on the international stage in order to level the economic playing field for all nations — ending an unjust, neocolonialist power dynamic which has improved the lot of rich nations at the direct expense of those that are less developed.

What is Britain For?

RUARI CLARK

Renewed calls for Scottish independence, the looming possibility of the severance of Ulster from the United Kingdom, and the departure of Britain from the EU again bring to the forefront questions of national identity and the purpose of the British state. Those who desired this departure, but who wish to maintain the Union of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland have some serious questions to answer. I was one of these people. I still am one of those people. But only a fool would deny that Brexit has potentially serious consequences on the Union. In light of this it is once again necessary to state what we see Britain as being for. That it is actively for something used to be accepted without question. But the last seventy years have changed that, possibly forever; the loss of Empire, Britain’s entry into the EEC and then the EU have both damaged the British state.

Following the loss of Empire, Britain was famously ‘yet to find a role’. Its politicians mistakenly saw its role as part of a European state, and so undermined the British state’s own claim to loyalty from all its subjects. That, combined with its defeat to Irish nationalists following the Good Friday Agreement, and the unnecessary and damaging creation of a Scottish ‘Parliament’, has created a situation in which the attempt to restate the sovereignty of the British state endangers the unity of our country. But Brexit is not a cause of this division, Scotland and Northern Ireland were being torn away from the rest of Britain long before June 2016. People in Scotland and Northern Ireland (and indeed in England and Wales) rightly question what the purpose of Britain is in the modern world. For seventy years their leaders have doubted its purpose, have denied its claims to loyalty, damaged its confidence in itself, attacked its history and its institutions. Is it any wonder that people argue for its dissolution?

The threat posed to the Union is a direct result of Britain’s self-abasement in European and world affairs. In 1902 Lord Curzon made a famous speech in Birmingham where he stated his belief in the necessity of an international role for Britain. For what would be the fate of the people of Britain if they retreated from the world stage? They would be reduced to a people ‘with no aspiration but a narrow and selfish materialism’, without the Empire, Britain would ‘become a sort of glorified Belgium’. Even earlier, in 1871, R.D. Nash warned in ‘The Fox’s Prophecy’ that:

Trade shall be held the only good,

And gain the sole device;

The statesmans’ maxim shall be peace,

And peace at any price.

Her army and her navy

Britain shall cast aside;

Soldiers and ships are costly things,

Defence an empty pride.

Such predictions have, in many respects, come to pass. Britain has, for many decades, denied its own history and, in doing so, has led to its very existence being placed under threat. When a country ceases to have pride in itself, it is little wonder that people should wonder why bother defending it.

The source of the current instability of the British state is, then, a direct consequence of the failure of British pride in itself as an international power and its inability to exist as ‘merely’ the union of four independent nations. The stresses and strains, the complexities, the inconsistencies, are too great to be ignored without a sense of driving purpose. Such drive and purpose existed when Britain was an expanding power, or when it fought in wars which threatened its shores. But, now, the memories of such power and such wars are – regrettably – distant enough that the bonds they created can be ignored by significant chunks of the population.

Such bonds have been further weakened by policies pursued by politicians, in their infinite wisdom. The divisions between England and Scotland are exacerbated by the fact that so few Scottish students study at English universities. The sense that we are one people is lessened by an ignorance of our own history. I am a British person – born in Scotland, educated in England, with an English father, a Scottish mother, and Irish ancestors. So it perhaps no wonder that I am in favour of the Union. But what are the bonds uniting us today, as opposed to the memories of previous bonds? What is being done today, to re-forge the unity that undoubtedly existed in previous times? Can anything be done? It is hard not to be too pessimistic when one wonders at the failures of the British state to defend itself, to support itself, and to make itself necessary to all the people of these islands.

We are left asking what is Britain actually for? If we provide economic answers then we are doomed to failure. No country can sustain itself by simply saying that it makes one richer. As Curzon knew, ‘narrow and selfish materialism’ cannot be enough to stir hearts in the way that is necessary to create a nation that is confident in itself. If we provide merely historical answers then we are also doomed to failure. Whilst we should not be shy of stressing our historical bonds and our historical achievements, such facts of history cannot be used indefinitely.

Answers might, however, be found when we look at post-Brexit Britain. Paradoxically, the opportunities afforded by an independent, sovereign Britain may allow us to re-create the dynamism that characterised the Union in the past. Our role in international affairs may yet enable us to rescue our sense of ourselves. The next few years are fraught with danger. There is a possibility that Scotland will vote for independence before we have even been able to begin reasserting ourselves. That is a risk that has to be taken. Continued membership of the EU made the dissolution of Britain inevitable. But we do now have an opportunity to change the course of history and reverse the inevitable.

Nash’s poem ‘The Fox’s Prophecy’ painted a bleak picture. In some respects this is reassuring, since Britain was able to last as a coherent nation for a hundred years after it was written, and able to weather two of the greatest and most disastrous wars in human history. Nash, while pessimistic, does give us hope:

Taught wisdom by disaster,

England shall learn to know

That trade is not the only gain

Heaven gives to man below.

The greed for gold departed,

The golden calf cast down

Old England’s sons again shall raise

The Altar and the Crown.

Britain is for something. It has been for something in the past and can be so again. The rediscovery of that purpose can be found in the wider world. To limit ourselves is to invite disaster and disunion. We must look to the role Britain can play in the world in order to demonstrate to ourselves the desirability of this union of nations. To do otherwise is to ensure that the Fox’s prophecy will have an unhappy ending.

The Study of Syrian Refugees: From the Academic to the Actual

Dunya Habash

Out of the baking desert heat, I stepped into the even hotter eight-by-three meter corrugated metal box stamped with UNHCR’s logo. Eight faces turned to look up at me as I stumbled across the room with my camera equipment. I bowed in respect to the family’s father and kissed his wife on both cheeks in an attempt to thank them for allowing my intrusion into their cramped lives at Zaatari Syrian Refugee Camp. The mother ordered her daughter to prepare the coffee as I set up my equipment. I was nervous and the sweat rolling down my neck only made the situation worse. After months preparing for this moment I found myself hesitating to turn the camera on: Maybe I should chat with them first before starting the interview? I turned to a young girl sitting in the corner holding a baby. “What’s your name?” I asked in Arabic. No response. She stared blindly at the floor. I found out later that she was fourteen and the baby was her son, only three days old.

I met this teenage mother, Amira, the summer of 2014, while filming my documentary about Zaatari, itself only two years old.  Built in 2012 to accommodate the thousands of Syrian refugees who were crossing the border in search of safety, the camp now houses about 80,000 Syrian refugees in the middle of the Jordanian desert.

Recounting Amira’s story will reveal a tragic narrative of war, violence, death, and displacement--a narrative that almost justifies her decision to marry young. Almost. However, my intention is not to add yet another story to the plethora of violent snippets we receive about the war in Syria and the mass exodus it created. Our newsfeeds do a good job of this already. I want to illustrate the resilience of the Syrian people, their willpower to survive and succeed despite the world standing against them. Thinking about Syrian refugees in this way, seeing the beauty in their survival, will help us empathize with them more than when seeing them as victims,  or worse, seeing them as beggars who can do nothing more than wait for international handouts.

And Amira’s story is not the only one I have about Syrians living in camps in Jordan or who made it to Europe.  There are more.  All gathered first-hand.  All true.  None romanticized for a good read.  The details are real.

Ameer was sixteen when he left the love of his life in Damascus to cross the border into Jordan with his family in 2013. At the time, Zaatari was barely a year old and most people were still living in tents. As the oldest son, he worked hard to help rebuild his family’s life in the camp, trading what he could to upgrade the free tent from UNHCR to a corrugated metal trailer known as a caravan, registering his family members with all the NGOs in the camp so they could have access to various services such as healthcare and schooling, and, most importantly, finding a store to purchase minutes for his cell-phone so that his family could stay connected with loved ones left behind in Syria.  The thought of Tasneem never left  him, no matter how busy he was with bettering his life in this new home.   He often replayed the scene of his final night in Damascus, the one at his aunt’s house because she lived in the same building as Tasneem’s family. After everyone went to bed, he left the flat  and called  to her, imploring her to join him outside. They spent the next few hours in each other’s arms, arms that would soon be empty. In Zaatari, Ameer uses this memory to ease--and to sustain-- his yearning.

Rana left Aleppo about a year ago. She watched her father cry at the doorway of her childhood home as he said goodbye to his only daughter. He didn't stop her from leaving. She couldn’t stop from leaving.  She spent about a week traveling through Turkey via bus and train, crossing the Aegean Sea by inflatable boat and continuing through Eastern Europe until she made it to a "camp" in Austria. There are now dozens of these camps across Europe, housing refugees until their ‘status’ is determined. My aunt, who lives in Linz, offered to host this young refugee so that she would not have to live alone in one of these camps. I recently met Rana while visiting my aunt between terms. At first, I did not believe Rana had taken this journey, but the details of her story were too sharp, too vivid, not to be true. She told me how she barely slept for a week, afraid to miss a bus stop or have her only bag with all her belongings stolen. She told me about the mud field she crossed on foot, walking for hours without rest, trying to help the older women who were making the same journey alone.

“How did you feel crossing the Aegean sea on an inflatable boat?”

“I didn’t. I couldn’t feel or think. I was just moving, trying to get as far as I could as fast as I could. Being with other Syrians making the same journey gave me some comfort.”

Back in Zaatari, Ameer dutifully called Tasneem at least once a day. He did this for a year, holding on to the hope that her family would decide to cross the border and move to Zaatari one day. He asked her to wait for him.  Someday, he promised her, he was going to be with her again, and they would get married. He didn’t know how or when, but he knew it would happen. In the meantime, he found a job with one of the NGOs and used his paycheck to help his family improve their situation in the camp. The little he could save for himself, he put away for his future life with Tasneem. Time passed. One day, he heard the news that would change his life--his girl was moving to Zaatari.

Rana got married a few weeks ago to a Syrian refugee working as a chef in Linz, Austria. Their wedding was cozy and elegant, full of love, friends in exile, and good Syrian food. I held Rana’s cell-phone throughout the evening so that her family could see the wedding via Skype. I watched her mother cry as she watched her only daughter’s wedding through a computer screen thousands of mile away, back in war-torn Aleppo. I watched Rana beg her mother to stop crying as she, herself, could not hold back the tears on her wedding day. Even so, she looked so beautiful.

Yes, Hindi and Urdu are the same language

Sparsh Ahuja

"We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say." - Pico Iyer

If you sat a Hindi and an Urdu speaker next to each other in a bar and asked them to have a ten-minute conversation in their native tongues, chances are that both would understand each other without hesitation. Nonetheless, many across the subcontinent consider these two languages to be fundamentally different - and it is often a matter of honour for native speakers to assert this difference when asked what language they speak. This is not unexpected - in India and Pakistan, the language you use ties you not only into a specific culture, but frequently a religion or moral framework with which you supposedly identify. Yet, whilst this feeling of belonging has led to the patronage of a beautiful literary tradition whose influence spans well beyond the subcontinent, it can often have the ugly consequence of creating false division. With Hindutva on the rise and Kashmir suffering the flames of sectarian tension, it is pertinent now more than ever that we take another look at a bitter linguistic debate that undoubtedly shaped the largest mass migration in human history. Are Hindi and Urdu really different languages?

The answer is deceivingly simple - No. According to linguists, Hindi and Urdu, whether spoken in Chandni Chowk in New Delhi, or the old Walled City of Lahore, are standardised registers of the same language. This is not to say that contrasts do not exist between the two registers - indeed, at the most basic level, each are written differently, with Hindi adopting the Devanagari alphabet and Urdu the Perso-Arabic script. In the most formal of settings - the high echelons of literature, for example, or religious ceremony, “shudh” or “pure” Hindi tends to borrow far more heavily from Sanskrit and Prakrit whereas prestige Urdu draws a significant stock of its lexis from Persian, Arabic and Turkish influences. This is, however, as far as the differences go - the grammar and base vocabulary are practically identical, and, insofar as mutual intelligibility is concerned, all of the language in between the two poles - the vernacular Hindustani of the bazaar - is employed far more often than any highly formalised equivalent.                                

Despite these commonalities, it is not hard to find Hindi speakers who would rather display affinity to a liturgical Sanskrit than to the flowing nasta’līq that adorns road signs across India, conveniently ignoring the fact that just over a century ago, there were twice as many Urdu newspapers circulated in the British Raj than Hindi ones. It is equally as frequent to hear their Urdu counterparts argue that the register is a direct descendant of Persian and Arabic whilst classification clearly places it in the Indo-Aryan language family. Across the subcontinent, sibling communities - communities that could be rejoicing in the togetherness of their poetry and prose - are increasingly becoming polarised by a dangerous mix of nationalism and linguistic purism. Unfortunately, much like any tension in the region, one simply has to reflect on the past to figure out why this is the case.

When the Delhi Sultanate reached its zenith in the 13th century, it infused the local Khari Boli languages with a mass of loan words from Arabic, Persian and Chagatai origins. As the Sultanate was replaced by the Mughal empire, this Persianised culture grew stronger, and the “prestige” dialect that emerged from this amalgamation was known as either Hindustani (language of Hindustan) or Dehlavi (language of Delhi). Some of the most famous poets of the subcontinent, such as Amir Khusrow, flourished during this period, writing in Persian and the newly hybridised Khari Boli. The military influence continued to grow as the empire expanded, and by 1800, another name for this same language, written in the Perso-Arabic script, had emerged – Zaban-e-Urdu (language of the army) – a result of the interactions between Persian speaking soldiers and locals in Old Delhi. Each of these terms were used interchangeably.

The divisions began after the collapse of the Empire. Recognising that Persian, the official language of the Mughals, was rarely spoken by the common people, the government of the newly colonised British Raj decided to replace it with Hindustani, written only in the Perso-Arabic script. This triggered a reaction from Hindus across the subcontinent, for many who had grown up with the local Devanagari alphabet now felt pushed aside by the new policy. Politics started erecting linguistic barriers between communities who were heretofore united. This was not because of the contents of the dialects themselves, but because Muslims were simply more likely to be familiar with the Perso-Arabic script and thus benefited from the change. It wasn’t long after that the terms Hindi and Urdu started to take religious connotations – with Hindi being seen as a language for Hindus, and Urdu for Muslims.

The steady divergence of these two communities ultimately resulted in the bloody Partition of 1947, and the Hindustani language was unfortunately caught in the crossfire. Linguistic purism is not endemic to the subcontinent -  however, few would argue that the heavy Sanskritisation one sees in “shudh” Hindi today is a natural evolution of the language. Rather, politically motivated ‘standardisations’ are often recursive attempts at purging common Arabic and Persian loanwords in the hope of ‘de-Islamifiying’ the prestige dialect. Similarly, official Urdu, as spoken in Pakistan today, is being pushed to absorb more and more vocabulary from Arabic as it seeks to shed its colonial roots. It has come to the stage where even the longstanding word for goodbye, “Khuda hafiz”, a Persian borrowing literally translated as “may God protect you”, is being attacked by a Deobandi religious movement asserting that the Arabicised “Allah hafiz”, pointing to the Qu’ranic conception of the divine, is purer. Not all differences are politically motivated - an average speaker in Karachi will inevitably use more Perso-Arabic terms than one in Madhya Pradesh, even in normal conversation, but this is expected - each language exists on a continuum. The danger of intolerance arises, however, when we feel the need to isolate a particular dialect of that language from the rest of that continuum – because, let’s face it - neither Hindi, nor Urdu, would exist as they are today without the beautiful fusion of Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit that shaped their development.                                                                                              

Does knowing any of this history entail losing pride in our linguistic heritage? No, of course not. Urdu speakers can still rejoice in the words of Iqbal and Khusrow much like their Hindi speaking brothers and sisters draw strength from Kabir and Tulsidas. Nonetheless, it is up to our generation, increasingly attuned to global values, to push this line just that little bit further. Last week, I was speaking to a mufti from Gujarat, who seemed surprised that my father, a devout Hindu, enjoyed listening to the Urdu qawwalis of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, a prominent Pakistani Sufi musician. Yet this never struck me as something strange – the poetry speaks to his heart as much as it does to the Lahori youth who carry Nusrat’s flag today. Embracing the monolith of South Asian culture does not necessarily mean stripping oneself of all identity.  

Perhaps, however, as a self-identifying Hindi speaker, I should think again before I brazenly assert my individuality over the dinner table when asked whether I speak Urdu or not. For in the end, it is my gratitude towards my language that matters, not whether I say “dhanyabad” or “shukria” to express it.