Alot of Brown Pundits focuses on the Hindustani question, which ultimately manifests as the IndoPak rivalry. I thought I would highlight sbarrkum’s thoughts:
3 Comments
BP needs more Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi, Nepali, Kashmiri contributors. That’s the only way we can move beyond the same old Pakistani-Hindustani debates. I don’t know about you all, but I’m getting frankly quite bored with the amount of Pakistan-bashing that goes on (though Zach bhai valiantly steps in to defend Pakiland and nos anscestres les Mughals)
What can be done about this?
BP needs more Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi, Nepali, Kashmiri contributors. That’s the only way we can move beyond the same old Pakistani-Hindustani debates.
Excluding Kashmiris, whom I shan’t take a gander at assessing, I would say with the others a HUGE problem is that the stronger sub-nationalities tend to make these folks more localized, and therefore do not view themselves as “South Asian” or “brown” in the same way they view themselves by nationality/ethnicity.
Part of this is by design, of course. Pakistan and India are far more diverse, larger, and both were built based on principles, rather than geographic/ethnic designation. So they have a more collective viewpoint. As well as the fact they take up 90+% of South Asia’s [in the ‘Desi’ sense] landmass, so any debate will tend to be Indo-Pak centric.
So don’t be too hard on yourselves. I could count the number of Bangladeshis who were interested in the overall idea of South Asia together in one hand. It was very much an “out there” concept, despite recognizing that the region is deeply connected on some levels.
West have alot of swag. They are into gangster culture and what not; completely different to their TN counterparts.
Refugees from the war torn north. Plenty of that type in TN, they cant claim refugee status in the West.
Also will see the upper class type who are into education etc. The concept of meek Tamils in the south.
Hmm, I assume none of commenters have been to Sri Lanka.
Seem to get the impression SL is part of greater India by the readers.
First and foremost we do not have upper caste varnas. The highest caste is Farmer/Govigama/Vellala. 50% of the society and within which old feudal class.
Almost on existent now among the Sinhalese. More prevalent among the Tamils.
Its a polyglot country where all and sundry have been visiting or invading over 2000+ years. 500 years under colonization, starting with Portuguese.
Of course everyone in this country is “Pure” Sinhalese or Tamil. Not much different from Americans. You are just supposed to become a Sinhalese (I am mutt, mainly Tamil/Kalinga)
Even with all that admixture, we are the darkest (in general) in South Asia and Asia. The Brahmin commenters run Sri Lankans/Sinhalese down as the low caste Dalits who emigrated from India with Aryan pretensions.
That said we dont seem to be doing too bad, even after a 30 year civil war. Compare and contrast the stats, Life Expectancy, Literacy. GDP/capita is no measure of the egalitarian country. The US has so much higher GDP/capita but misery and poverty of the inner cities has no comparison to rural poverty in SL.
ZachNote: I notice Sri Lankan Tamils in the West have alot of swag. They are into gangster culture and what not; completely different to their TN counterparts.
I copied the below data from Wikipedia; Sri Lanka, India & Bangladesh acquit themselves fairly well. Pakistan’s showing is absolutely disgraceful; shame on the Pakistani leadership. Also Pakistan’s behavior in Afghanistan has dragged down that country to the shits as well; I understand Afghanistan was a proxy in the 80’s but supporting the Taliban after that, well that was an absolute effing disgrace!
A rough calc shows South Asia to be a 3 trillion dollar economy for appropriately 1.8 billion people. That’s an absolute disgrace by comparison since East Asia is an 18 trillion dollar economy with a slightly less population (the US is a 20 trillion dollar economy with a sixth of the population). It may just be that the festering sore of Indo-Pak relations may have a greater human and economic cost than one-offs like the American Civil War, the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
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