> 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.
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.
> 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 :-)
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.
It’s been ten years since I was last in India but I saw evidence of discrimination when I was there… some seemed related to caste and other related to religion.
Not sure it was any worse than what I’ve seen in the UK though
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.
The caste system in India is illegal, but lives on in California gig work. Almost all the Indians are kind polite and intelligent as a rule, mostly kind. But every so often, you will see someone in a business setting acting like a toddler. B. Confirmed.
The closest thing we had was that tennis player who broke rackets.
I should drop names, as they are still running around, but I would rather talk about the best of them. Nice V.P of engineering at E. He had an office so I was a bit more polite. Turns out he was more nice than brilliant, and he was really brilliant so things went very well.
I would guess that adherence to the system is a maturity
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.
Caste system is still widespread in India. Just ask anyone if they are married to the person with the same caste or not? and 95% of time they would say yes. Even if your father left India when he was 3, you still belong to a caste. Its not a system enforced by the government but people themselves. Religion & Government have limited power in India, Society is basically what determines everything in India, and it enforces caste. Caste system is associated with hinduism but even Christians, Muslims and Sikhs in India have a caste. Only people I know who are not following caste system are Affluent Muslims, Jains & Tribals, but they have their own systems.
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.
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.
If there was ever a just war, that war was one. The evil West Pakistan delivered upon East Pakistan staggers the mind.
It started with secret police abducting, torturing and murdering intellectuals, academics, community leaders, any Bengali in East Pakistan who might lead a nationalist movement.
Then it got even more crueller and vicious. Massacres of civilians, weaponised rape, all inflicted upon their co-religionists.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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
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.
> 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).
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.
"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.wikipedia.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.
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.
I'm sure I have a lot of Ashkenazi in me. And of course I'm proud of my genes. And proud of my ancestors. I'm fine with people self-identifying as Jewish, or Black, or (myself) Read-headed. The risk is when other people put those labels upon you. When you label your tribe, you not only label yourself but also those who may prefer not to be labeled.
I am certain that "race", as meaningful, well defined categories with clear, sharp edges, exists only in the minds of racists.
From the rest of us, don't ask for a simple definition, as it's an illusionary, fuzzy concept.
But it's all very well to say that you "prefer not to be labelled", that it's simply a matter of "self-identifying". It would be good if that was all it was, But you might not be able to avoid categorisation. You can't entirely ignore the definitions of racists who wish you harm.
I seriously do count my blessings that there's no racism against red-heads where and when I live. I know there was in medieval times. I can easily imagine such nonsense still existing.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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?
No but in this case it’s seemingly dogmatic stuff, like hey cook meat in different pans from the pans used for vegetarians, but then eat at restaurants where you couldn’t obviously enforce that.
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.
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).
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?
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...
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.