Daily Archives: June 4, 2021

Quirk SingularityJapanese Name

Kosei Tokuiten

The Quirk Singularity is a concept postulated by Dr. Kyudai Garaki about the danger posed by Quirks becoming stronger and stronger with each generation.[1]

About seventy years ago, Dr. Kyudai Garaki presented this theory, according to which, as the generations follow one another, Quirks blend and evolve, producing stronger and more complex Quirks. However, with this increase in power, the Quirks will also become more difficult to control, since the human body doesn't evolve quickly enough to keep up. Eventually, there will come a point when Quirks will become too overpowered and complicated, and no one will be able to control them anymore. This theory was originally called Paranormal Singularity Theory,[2] although over time it would also become known as Quirk Singularity Doomsday Theory.[3]

Back then, no one believed Kyudais thesis and mocked it, citing that they found it absurd and lacking in evidence, and eventually ignored it. In an era struggling to return an impoverished, conflicted world back to peace, no one believed there was anything to indicate the "collapse of the future". After his theory was rejected and he was ostracized from society as a result, Kyudai went missing.

However, there was one person who took his theory seriously: All For One. With his ability to use so many Quirks, the idea that his body was not able to adapt was a serious issue for him. For this reason, All For One approached Kyudai and offered him his help and patronage to continue his research and investigations in this regard. In appreciation, Kyudai became one of his most loyal allies.

With the passage of time, the Paranormal Singularity Theory began to gain notoriety. The early signs of Garaki's hypotheses started to appear among the fourth generation of Quirk users, although, even nowadays, the theory is considered fringe thinking reserved for cults.[3][1][4]

Read the original here:

Quirk Singularity | My Hero Academia Wiki | Fandom

Background

What is Singularity?*

"Singularity enables users to have full control of their environment. Singularity containers can be used to package entire scientific workflows, software and libraries, and even data. This means that you dont have to ask your cluster admin to install anything for you - you can put it in a Singularity container and run."

There are numerous good tutorials on how to install and run Singularity on Linux, OS X, or Windows so we won't go into much detail on that process here. In this tutorial you will learn how to run Singularity on Comet. First we will review how to access a compute node on Comet and provide a simple example to help get you started. There are numerous tutorial on how to get started with Singularity, but there are some details specific to running Singularity on Comet which are not covered in those tutorials. This tutorial assumes you already have an account on Comet. You will also need access to a basic set of example files to get started. SDSC hosts a Github repository containing a Hello world! example which you may clone with the following command:

> git clone https://github.com/hpcdevops/singularity-hello-world.git

Below is a typical list of commands you would need to issue in order to implement a functional Python installation for scientific research:

COMMAND=apt-get -y install libx11-dev COMMAND=apt-get install build-essential python-libdev COMMAND=apt-get install build-essential openmpi-dev COMMAND=apt-get install cmakeCOMMAND=apt-get install g++ COMMAND=apt-get install git-lfs COMMAND=apt-get install libXss.so.1COMMAND=apt-get install libgdal1-dev libproj-dev COMMAND=apt-get install libjsoncpp-dev libjsoncpp0 COMMAND=apt-get install libmpich-dev --userCOMMAND=apt-get install libpthread-stubs0 libpthread-stubs0-dev libx11-dev libx11-d COMMAND=apt-get install libudev0:i386COMMAND=apt-get install numpy COMMAND=apt-get install python-matplotlib COMMAND=apt-get install python3

Singularity allows you to avoid this time-consuming series of steps by packaging these commands in a re-usable and editable script, allowing you to quickly, easily, and repeatedly implement a custom container designed specifically for your analytical needs.

The diagram below compares a VM vs. Docker vs. Singularity.

Next, let's get some hands-on experience with Singularity. The following tutorial includes links to asciinema video tutorials created by SDSC HPC Systems Manager, Trevor Cooper (Thanks, Trevor!) which allow you to see the console interactivity and output in detail. Look for the video icon like the one shown to the right corresponding to the task you are currently working on.

First we download and upack the source using the following commands (assuming your user name is 'test_user' and you are working on your local computer with super user privileges):

[test_user@localhost ~]$ wget https://github.com/singularityware/singularity/releases/download/2.5.1/singularity-2.5.1.tar.gz tar -zxf singularity-2.5.1.tar.gz

If the file is successfully extracted, you should be able to view the results:

Next we configure and build the package. To configure, enter the following command (we'll leave out the command prompts):

To build, issue the following command:

This may take several seconds depending on your computer.

To complete the installation enter:

You should be prompted to enter your admin password.

Once the installation is completed, you can check to see if it succeeded in a few different ways:

You can also run a selftest with the following command:

The output should look something like:

The process of building a Singularity container consists of a few distinct steps as follows.

We will go through each of these steps in detail.

We recommend building containers using the same version of Singularity, 2.5.1, as exists on Comet. This is a 2 step process.

Step 1: run the script below to remove your existing Singularity:

#!/bin/bash## A cleanup script to remove Singularity

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/libexec/singularitysudo rm -rf /usr/local/etc/singularitysudo rm -rf /usr/local/include/singularitysudo rm -rf /usr/local/lib/singularitysudo rm -rf /usr/local/var/lib/singularity/sudo rm /usr/local/bin/singularitysudo rm /usr/local/bin/run-singularitysudo rm /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/singularitysudo rm /usr/local/man/man1/singularity.1

Step 2: run the following script to install Singularity 2.5.1:

#!/bin/bash## A build script for Singularity (http://singularity.lbl.gov/)

declare -r SINGULARITY_NAME='singularity'declare -r SINGULARITY_VERSION='2.5.1'declare -r SINGULARITY_PREFIX='/usr/local'declare -r SINGULARITY_CONFIG_DIR='/etc'

sudo apt updatesudo apt install python dh-autoreconf build-essential debootstrap

cd ../tar -xzvf "${PWD}/tarballs/${SINGULARITY_NAME}-${SINGULARITY_VERSION}.tar.gz"cd "${SINGULARITY_NAME}-${SINGULARITY_VERSION}"./configure --prefix="${SINGULARITY_PREFIX}" --sysconfdir="${SINGULARITY_CONFIG_DIR}"makesudo make install

To create an empty Singularity container, you simply issue the following command:

This will create a CentOS 7 container with a default size of ~805 Mb. Depending on what additional configurations you plan to make to the container, this size may or may not be big enough. To specify a particular size, such as ~4 Gb, include the -s parameter, as shown in the following command:

To view the resulting image in a directory listing, enter the following:

Next, we will import a Docker image into our empty Singularity container:

Once the container actually contains a CentOS 7 installation, you can shell into it with the following:

Once you enter the container you should see a different command prompt. At this new prompt, try typing:

Your user id should be identical to your user id outside the container. However, the operating system will probably be different. Try issuing the following command from inside the container to see what the OS version is:

Next, lets trying writing into the container (as root):

You should be prompted for your password, and then you should see something like the following:

Next, lets create a script within the container so we can use it to test the ability of the container to execute shell scripts:

The above command assumes you know the vi editor. Enter the following text into the script, save it, and quit the vi editor:

You may need to change the permissions on the script so it can be executable:

Try running the script manually:

The output should be:

Bootstrapping a Singularity container allows you to use what is called a definitions file so you can reproduce the resulting container configurations on demand.

Lets say you want to create a container with Ubuntu, but you may want to create variations on the configurations without having to repeat a long list of commands manually. First, we need our definitions file. Below is the contents of a definitions file which should suffice for our purposes.

%runscriptexec echo The runscript is the containers default runtime command!

%files/home/testuser/ubuntu.def /data/ubuntu.def

%labelsAUTHOR testuser@sdsc.edu

%postapt-get update && apt-get -y install python3 git wgetmkdir /dataecho The post section is where you can install and configure your container.

To bootstrap your container, first we need to create an empty container.

Now, we simply need to issue the following command to configure our container with Ubuntu:

This may take a while to complete. In principle, you can accomplish the same result by manually issuing each of the commands contained in the script file, but why do that when you can use bootstrapping to save time and avoid errors.

If all goes according to plan, you should then be able to shell into your new Ubuntu container.

Of course, the purpose of this tutorial is to enable you to use the San Diego Supercomputer Centers Comet supercomputer to run your jobs. This assumes you have an account on Comet already. If you do not have an account on Comet and you feel you can justify the need for such an account (i.e. your research is limited by the limited compute power you have in your government-funded research lab), you can request a Startup Allocation through the XSEDE User Portal:

https://portal.xsede.org/allocations-overview#types-trial

You may create a free account on the XUP if you do not already have one and then proceed to submit an allocation request at the above link.

[NOTE: SDSC provides a Comet User Guide ( http://www.sdsc.edu/support/user_guides/comet.html ) to help get you started with Comet. Learn more about The San Diego Supercomputer Center at http://www.sdsc.edu .]

This tutorial walks you through the following four steps towards running your first Singularity container on Comet:

Once you have created your container on your local system, you will need to transfer it to Comet. There are multiple ways to do this and it can take a varying amount of time depending on its size and your network connection speeds.

To do this, we will use scp (secure copy). If you have a Globus account and your containers are more than 4 Gb you will probably want to use that file transfer method instead of scp.

Browse to the directory containing the container. Copy the container to your scratch directory on Comet. By issuing the following command:

The container is ~805 Mb so it should not take too long, hopefully.

Once the file is transferred, login to Comet (assuming your Comet user is named 'test_user'):

Navigate to your scratch directory on Comet, which should be something like:

Next, you should submit a request for an interactive session on one of Comets compute, debug, or shared nodes.

Once your request is approved your command prompt should reflect the new node id.

Before you can run your container you will need to load the Singularity module (if you are unfamiliar with modules on Comet, you may want to review the Comet User Guide). The command to load Singularity on Comet is:

You may issue the above command from any directory on Comet. Recall that we added a hello_world.sh script to our centos7.img container. Lets try executing that script with the following command:

If all goes well, you should see Hello, World! in the console output. You might also see some warnings pertaining to non-existent bind points. You can resolve this by adding some additional lines to your definitions file before you build your container. We did not do that for this tutorial, but you would use a command like the following in your definitions file:

You will find additional examples located in the following locations on Comet:

and

It is best to avoid working on Comets login nodes since they can become a performance bottleneck not only for you but for all other users. You should rather allocate resources specific for computationally-intensive jobs. To allocate a compute node for your user on Comet, issue the following command:

This allocation requests a single node (-N 1) for a total time of 10 minutes (-t 00:10:00). Once your request has been approved, your computer node name should be displayed, e.g. comet-17-12.

Now you may login to this node:

Notice that the command prompt has now changed to reflect the fact that you are on a compute node and not a login node.

Next, load the Singularity module, shell into the container, and execute the hello_world.sh script:

If all goes well, you should see Hello, World! in the console output.

Of course, most users simply want to submit their jobs to the Comet queue and let it run to completion and go on to other things while waiting. Slurm is the job manager for Comet.

Below is a job script (which we will name singularity_mvapich2_hellow.run) which will submit your Singularity container to the Comet queue and run a program, hellow.c (written in C using MPI and provided as part of the examples with the mvapich2 default installation).

#!/bin/bash #SBATCH --job-name="singularity_mvapich2_hellow" #SBATCH --output="singularity_mvapich2_hellow.%j.out" #SBATCH --error="singularity_mvapich2_hellow.%j.err" #SBATCH --nodes=2 #SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=24 #SBATCH --time=00:10:00 #SBATCH --export=all module load mvapich2_ib singularity

CONTAINER=/oasis/scratch/comet/$USER/temp_project/singularity/centos7-mvapich2.img

mpirun singularity exec ${CONTAINER} /usr/bin/hellow

The above script requests 2 nodes and 24 tasks per node with a wall time of 10 minutes. Notice that two modules are loaded (see the line beginning with module), one for Singularity and one for MPI. An environment variable CONTAINER is also defined to make it a little easier to manage long reusable text strings such as file paths.

You may need to add a line specifying with allocation to be used for this job. When you are ready to submit the job to the Comet queue, issue the following command:

To view the status of your job in the Comet queue, issue the following:

When the job is complete, view the output which should be written to the output file singularity_mvapich2_hellow.%j.out where %j is the job ID (lets say the job ID is 1000001):

See the original post:

Singularity Tutorial - SDSC

SS&C Singularity is the first smart investment operations and accounting system a true cloud-based solution designed to support the operating model of financial institutions.Built from the ground up with embedded disruptive technologies including Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotic Process Automation, Intelligent Workflow Optimization and Advance Predictive Analytics, Singularity drives significant cost savings and continuous improvement through superior operational efficiency.

Singularitys robust multi-currency and multi-lingual capabilities are delivered through its single, integrated database and client-configurable interface. Unlike other solutions comprised of disparate applications that are stitched together, Singularitys operational functions and common services are pre-integrated components that can be seamlessly activated upon user request and automatically updated without disruption to ongoing business processes.

Singularity Foreign Exchange. Singularity FX is a functionality rich, best practices-enabled Foreign Exchangesystem that is fully scalable and suitable for any enterprise, regardless of size,business model or geographic location. The application delivers a robust collectionof features and capabilities to serve the needs of client portal/front office, middleoffice and back office users.

Gain agility:operates on a cloud-based platform that flexibly adapts to changing market and business needs.

A smarter system:learns from user behavior to suggest more optimal workflows and reduce manual processes over time.

Realize cost savings:eliminates the need for disparate multiple systems, offline workarounds and labor intensive and risky data transformations.

Continued here:

SS&C Singularity

Leakbench (twitter usuer) reveals the first benchmark of the GeForce Ti 3070 RTX in Ashes of the Singularity (AOTS).

Preset in High quality and accompanied by an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, this GPU achieves a performance of 150, 102 and 90 FPS at resolutions 1080p, 1440p and 2160p , respectively. Compared to its younger sister, the GeForce RTX 3070, the new graphics card gets 9% more performance at 1440p. You can see the detail of each test below.

The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti will be equipped with the GA104-400 graphics chip, equipped with 6144 CUDA Cores (256 more than the RTX 3070), 192 TMUs / Tensor Core, 96 ROPs and 48 RT Cores, accompanied by 8 GB of memory. GDDR6X at 19 GHz which, together with a 256-bit memory interface, provides a bandwidth of 608 GB/s. This new GPU is expected to offer 50% more performance than its predecessor , the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, as revealed by NVIDIA in its presentation. Finally, it will go on sale for $599 (suggested price) next Thursday, June 10.

See the original post here:

GeForce RTX 3070 Ti performance Leaks in Ashes of the Singularity - guru3d.com

We have our first glimpse at the performance of Nvidia's recently announced GeForce RTX 3070 TI, thanks to two leaked benchmark runs from Ashes of the Singularity and Geekbench 5. They were brought to our attention by @leakbench on Twitter. However, the benchmark results are about as vague as it gets, giving us a little indication as to the real performance of the 3070 Ti.

Unfortunately for us, the Ashes of the Singularity score in particular tells us almost nothing about the performance of Nvidia's new mid-range part, due to the system configuration and game quality settings.

The RTX 3070 Ti was paired with a Ryzen 9 3900X and 32GB of system memory, and the resolution used was 1080P with a high-quality preset (not the crazy preset). The 3070 Ti scores an average frame rate of 105.5 frames per second and a CPU frame rate of 105.9 fps.

While the frame rate looks good, this is probably one of the worst Ashes benchmarks to date, as the resolution is locked to 1080P and the teseter didn't even use the maximum quality preset. On top of that, the Ryzen 9 3900X is a Zen 2 part, and at 1080P there should be a noticeable amount of bottlenecking, enough to skew performance results when comparing graphics cards specifically.

What we really needed from the leaker is a better testbed with a more powerful CPU like a Ryzen 5000 series or a highly overclocked Intel 10th gen or 11th gen part. But most importantly, we would like to see resolutions of 1440P or 4K and have the game running at the crazy preset.

As it stands now, there aren't enough benchmarks on the high preset, with the same CPU and memory configuration to judge performance. For instance, the top result for the 1080P high preset benchmark results belongs to a system running on an i7-11700KF running 16GB of RAM, with an RTX 3080, which has exactly 1-2 FPS less on its score than the leaked RTX 3070 Ti test.

Hopefully, Geekbench 5's result can give us some better guesses as to the performance of the RTX 3070 Ti. Paired with a Core i9-11900K, the RTX 3070 Ti scored 155763 points in the OpenCL test.

For comparison, the RTX 3080 on Geekbench's browser earned a score of 183,452 and the RTX 3070 scores a 135,886. So the RTX 3070 Ti is sandwiched right in-between the vanilla 3080 and 3070, being 17% slower than the RTX 3080 and 14% faster than the RTX 3070, which is to be expected.

Take this result with a pinch of salt, until you see full reviews of the RTX 3070 Ti come online. This is especially true of Geekbench 5, which focuses on the raw compute performance of GPUs, which rarely applies to the actual gaming performance of Nvidia and AMD's graphics cards.

See more here:

RTX 3070 Ti Benchmark Results Leaked for Ashes of The Singularity and Geekbench - Tom's Hardware

The plot of "Fate/Grand Order Final Singularity" will mainly mirror that of the final story chapter of the mobile game. In the game, Ritsuka and Mash are tasked with traveling to a seventh singularity to face Solomon, the immensely powerful king of magecraft. If they fail, humanity is doomed. This actually lines up with the ending of "Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front," which makes sense given that the upcoming movie aims to continue where the anime series left off.

In the final episode of "Demonic Front," Ritsuka and Mash are successful in their battle against Tiamat, ultimately preventing her from restarting the universe (via Funimation). Everything looks good, and Gilgamesh awards Ritsuka and Mash with Urk's Holy Grail. However, before the two can really enjoy their feat of saving humanity, their return to Chaldea yields another objective:the Grand Temple of Time Solomon has appeared. Additionally, Romani announces that Chaldea must face the temple and the powerful being. Thetrailerfor "Fate/Grand Order Final Singularity" definitely indicates that this is the direction the upcoming movie will go in, as we see Ritsuka and Mash in battle and are given an image of Solomon smiling evilly atop his throne.

Go here to see the original:

Fate/Grand Order Final Singularity Release Date, Cast And Plot - What We Know So Far - Looper

A booming space industry is making it easier than ever to get into orbit, but Japan is betting that it could revolutionize terrestrial travel, too. The countrys science ministry has unveiled a plan to develop intercontinental passenger spaceships by the early 2040s.

The idea of using spaceships to travel from one point on the Earths surface to another has been around since at least the 1960s, but the cost and complexity of the idea have meant its been little more than a pipe dream.

In principle, the approach isnt that different from the one used by intercontinental ballistic missiles. A rocket is used to blast the payload, be it a nuclear weapon or a passenger spaceship, on a big looping trajectory into space before re-entering the atmosphere on the other side of the planet.

The approach could make it possible to travel between continents in under an hour, and now Japan has outlined its vision for how to make the idea a reality. In a roadmap unveiled at an expert panel earlier this month, its science ministry put forward a two-phase plan it predicts could support a 5 trillion yen ($46 billion) market for spaceships departing from and arriving in Japan.

Local reports on the strategy are light on detail, but it seems to rely on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) achieving dramatic reductions in the cost of launching vehicles into space.

The countrys next-generation H3 rocket, which is due for a maiden flight this year, costs roughly five billion yen, and the roadmap predicts that tactics like reusing rocket parts will allow them to halve that cost by 2030, and get it down to as low as 10 percent by the early 2040s.

They will then rely on private companies to develop transport vehicles that can carry passengers. They envisage two different kinds of spaceships: a spaceplane similar to the space shuttle that can land on a runway like a normal aircraft, and one that lands vertically like SpaceXs reusable rockets.

The Japanese arent the only ones becoming increasingly bullish about the prospect of intercontinental spaceflight. Back in 2017 Elon Musk suggested that SpaceXs Starship could be used to travel anywhere around the planet in under an hour, and in 2019 he speculated that the vehicle could carry as many as 1,000 passengers per trip.

NASA also recently announced a partnership with Virgin Galactic to develop a new vehicle for high-speed civilian air travel, which is likely to refer to the companys oft-stated goal of using its sub-orbital space planes to transport people across the globe.

If these ideas get off the ground, theyre likely to be incredibly expensivebut dont expect any first-class treatment. Musk compared the approach to an intercontinental ballistic missile traveling at Mach 25 that lands, and said the flights were likely to be all coach, with no toilets or food and the kind of restraints one might expect on a rollercoaster.

Others think the problems will go further than the lack of a drinks trolley, though. Humans simply arent built for the kind of acceleration and G-Force an intercontinental ballistic missile undergoes, Brian Weeden, from space advocacy organization Secure World Foundation, told The Verge, and could easily be killed on launch or re-entry.

Even if our bodies hold together, the vehicles themselves are far from reliable at present, and the safety of space travel is a long way from the rigorous standards set by commercial air travel.

The Space Shuttle program had two fatal disasters in 135 missions, which is a 1.5 percent failure rate, and both SpaceX and Virgin Galactic have had high-profile mission failures. In contrast, commercial aviation experienced just one fatal crash every 3.7 million flights last year.

The colossal cost of spaceflight compared to standard aviation also means it is likely to be difficult to achieve the kinds of passenger volumes required to justify the investment in vehicle development, spaceports, pilot training, and all the infrastructure required to support an entirely new form of travel.

On the flip side, though, many of the same arguments could have been made about the early aviation industry, which took its time to become a mainstay of our transportation networks. It may take some time to come to fruition, but dont be surprised if most peoples first trip to space comes on their way to their vacations.

Image Credit: SpaceX

Original post:

Japan Wants to Build Intercontinental Passenger Spaceships by the Early 2040s - Singularity Hub

At the heart of New Delhi, the capital of India, sits a Mughal-inspired monument that houses the seat of the Indian parliament. Built by the British architect Edwin Lutyens between 1911 and 1931, the parliament buildings and their grand roadways and water channels follow the form established by the Islamic rulers of Iran and elaborated by the Islamic sultanate of Samarkand and the Mughal rulers of India.

Lutyens designed perhaps the most important Islamic-inspired edifice of modern times. The buildings quote architectural emblems from Hindu temples and palaces, but the grand plan follows the design of Mughal-Islamic landscape with a light nod to Roman triumphalism. It is, in my view, the greatest set of government buildings anywhere in the world.

Unsurprisingly, the Islamic origin of these buildings offends the current regime in Delhi. It is why the tyrant Modi and his henchmen are destroying it. As I write, the destruction is under way. It is an abomination that Modis hate-filled campaign to de-Islamify India is allowed to continue via the destruction of a world-class monument. Astonishingly, the UN heritage forum is silent and world heritage bodies have kept their mouths firmly closed. Are they afraid of Modi, or do they not care what happens in India?

Modi has appointed third-rate Bimal Patel as his architect. Patel will design its replacement much in the way that Albert Speer followed his Fhrers lead, but, of course, Patel does not have an iota of Speers talent.

This ideologically driven, hate-filled destruction follows the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992 and the vandalism of Islamic and Mughal monuments all over India. Modi appears to want nothing less than the obliteration of all the Islamic monuments of India and the removal of the 200 million Indian Muslims. Let us not forget that he has already forcibly taken away Indian citizenship from many millions of Indian Muslims and rendered them stateless a crime for which he has not been brought to book, even though India is a signatory to the UN declaration of human rights, of which citizenship is a central tenet.

The pretence that the destruction of this grand vista is justified by a lack of space for parliament is flimsy. The National Museum of India, which is housed in one of the buildings to be demolished, is to be moved to a space inadequate for its marvellous collections, putting at risk many invaluable and fragile works of art. All this will be done at breakneck speed in order to have the work finished before the end of Modis term in office. The Indian courts have been pressured to acquiesce to this idiotic scheme and journalists and other commentators have been intimidated.

Tragically, Covid-19 ravages the country but uncaring ideology makes sure that the central vista project has $2bn in funding while hundred of millions of Indias poor and destitute have to fend for themselves. They are dying by the hundreds of thousands. Modi is building a vulgar monument to himself on the corpses of invisible and unnamed citizens.

I draw a comparison here with the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, who in the 17th century destroyed Hindu monuments and temples all over India in fervent religious hatred. Modi is an Aurangzeb for our times. His regime bears comparison with the Taliban in Afghanistan, who also attempt to rule with ideological fervour.

Modis Hindu Taliban needs monuments to itself in order to establish cultural acceptance and domination. Like all fascist-leaning politicians, Modi hopes that by controlling the images at the heart of the nation, he will form a new vision of his India, which places him at the centre alongside Mahatma Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel.

The ego displayed in this and other of his vainglorious projects puts Indian democracy at huge risk. Modi recently opened a cricket stadium named after himself, in laughable mimicry of Kim Jong-un in North Korea. He erected a monumental statue to Vallabhbhai Patel, the Hindu-Gujarati freedom fighter. It is four times bigger than the Statue of Liberty, unimaginably vulgar and cost over $400m. These are edifices for ultra-nationalist Modi Talibanists to rally around.

The British civil servant John Strachey declared in a lecture given at Cambridge University in 1884 that there is no such country as India and this is the first and most essential fact about India that can be learned. Seeking unified religion, culture and tradition in India, he could not find them. What he failed to see is Indias capacity for diversity, Indias inescapable multi-layered complexity, Indias refusal of singularity. He could not see India as forming a cohesive whole without a shared language or tradition. His nation-state mindset could not see unity and diversity living side by side.

British colonial endeavours to force Indians into one system led to famine and slavery. It forced Indians into cultural inferiority so Christian morality could dominate and British business interests could flourish. I believe the fascist government in India today is doing what the British could not. Modi and his neo-colonial henchmen are forcing Hindu singularity on the country.

The destruction of the parliament buildings represents the taking-over of the Indian psyche by a fascist regime. Its ultra-nationalist vision is of Hindu dominion over all Indians at any price, and Modi as its architect will rule India with his right hand raised in salute, palm open, mimicking the Hindu god Vishnu among others.

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Modis bulldozing of parliament shows him as the architect of a Hindu Taliban - The Guardian