In the 1925 text, The Culture of the Abdomen, author Fredrick Hornibrook states that medical authorities of the time were outspoken about the flawed new sitting toilet/commode designs that were launched just decades earlier. (1/4)
Sitting toilets or commodes were designed by cabinet-maker Joseph Bramah and plumber Thomas Crapper. There was no consultation with medical authorities at all, despite them raising the issues of faulty designs and suspected health consequences. (2/4)

in pic (Thomas Crapper)
But the sitting toilets were convenient for the dresses of Europe, with their pockets and tight fittings. Also, the chair toilet spoke to the European love of monarchy; Henry VIII had a sitting toilet constructed for him after he had become obese. (3/4)
But with the wars at the turn of the 20th century, replacing the chair toilet was a low priority and often financially not viable. A generation was created that preferred the sitting toilets, not learning how to manage themselves while squatting. (4/4)
There is also a business logic behind the sitting toilets becoming a popular choice.

In the US and western Europe, manufacturers quickly adapted this preference, as it required more porcelain, several parts to assemble, and thus rendered more profit.

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More from @Anuraag_Shukla

20 Dec
McKim Marriot’s anthology India through Hindu Categories (1990) is an important work that necessitates an intellectual recapitulation and explains why there are no equivalent western categories for many Indian conceptions and realities. (1/5)
Indian thinking, he argues, does not distinguish between the material & ideological, or between nature & culture. One does not find mutually exclusive, oppositional binaries as material vs. spiritual, body vs. soul, true vs. false, fact vs. fiction, sacred vs. profane, etc. (2/5)
Thus, a person is thought to be made of koshas (sheaths) which interpenetrate- annamaya (food-filled), manomaya (mind-filled), pranamaya (breath/life filled), vijnanamaya (wisdom/science-filled), and anandamaya (blissfilled). (3/5)
Read 5 tweets
11 Dec
By reading Indian History through multiple sources, it can be argued that the entry of Gandhi into Indian politics by the mid-1910s actually delayed the efforts for gaining swaraj from the British for another 20 years (instead of augmenting it).
The moderates had lost significant ground (both morally and intellectually) to the extremists. Even long-term moderates like SN Banarjee and Ghokhle had given into the demands of young political leaders. The passing away of many moderate stalwarts also created a political vacuum.
Moderates were being attacked left and right, and there was a consensus emerging among young leaders that the functioning of the congress sessions had become merely performative, where leaders met annually to only pass some meaningless resolutions.
Read 7 tweets
5 Dec
Reading about MN Roy makes me wonder how he could not achieve the same revered status Marx & Lenin have among Indian communists?

In 1915, he scoured South East Asia for ammunition & funds as a lieutenant in one of the most powerful anti-colonial insurgency networks of Bengal.
By 1920, he had reached Moscow as a delegate to the Second Congress of the Communist International. His 1920 ‘supplementary theses on the colonial question’ are included in official communist publications as an addendum to Lenin’s own official writings on the subject.
Roy helped found the Mexican Communist Party and was a leading Comintern envoy to the revolutionary attempts in Germany in 1923 and China in 1926–27. He was briefly a member of the Frankfurt School, collaborated with Max Horkheimer in 1930.
Read 7 tweets
5 Dec
What happened at Sialkot is the result of a sustained radicalization that has been going on in Pakistan for decades.

Even in the newly released textbooks under the country's single national curriculum (SNC), Islamic instructions form a significant part of compulsory subjects.
Anjum James Paul, a Catholic professor at the Postgraduate College Samundri in Faisalabad Diocese, examined 58 textbooks published in 2019 and 2020 and approved by the federal government. Image
There is a need to not only acknowledge affective indoctrination in schooling but also to explore and take measures how to minimize the extent to which indoctrinal teaching may be facilitated through cultivating certain affects and emotions.

tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…
Read 4 tweets
30 Nov
According to one of the Shilpa Shastras, “the Shilpan (artificer) should understand the Atharva Veda, the thirty-two Shilpa Shastras, and the Vedic mantras by which the deities are invoked, piously acquiring a knowledge of various sciences, such a one is indeed craftsman.”
Elsewhere it is said, “the painter must be a good man, no sluggard, not given to anger; holy learned, self-controlled, devout and charitable, such should be his character.” It is added that "he should work in solitude, or when another artist is present, never before a layman.”
In this connection, the artisan or artist possessed an assured status in the form of a life contract, or rather a hereditary office. He was trained from his childhood as his father’s disciple and followed his father’s calling as a matter of course.
Read 5 tweets
26 Nov
While founding the Ceylon Social Reform Society in 1905, Ananda Coomaraswamy talked of two essential pre-requisites that needed to be fulfilled before any social reform could be ushered in Ceylonian society.
First, the basis of the revitalization of society should be cultural pluralism. Hence, all Sri Lankans should be taught Sanskrit, Pali, Sinhala, and Tamil to truly appreciate their culture. And the understanding that Sri Lankan heritage could not be separated from the Indian one.
Second, what was ideally the requirement for modern times was the blending of the superior features of Eastern civilization with the best features of the West.
Read 7 tweets

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