BrownCast Podcast episode 26: Surya Yalamanchili, all-American desi on politics, India, and culture

Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe at one of the links above.

You can also support the podcast as a patron (the primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone else…). Would appreciate more positive reviews.

Today we talk to Surya Yalamanchili, the author of Decoding The Donald: Trump’s Apprenticeship in Politics, a contestant on The Apprentice, 2010 Democratic candidate for Congress, and a successful entrepreneur. We talk about Indian politics, American politics, colorism in the South Asian community, as well as growing up in the 70s to 90s as a brown Amerian.

We try to explore in detail the polarized political landscape of the USA today, he from the center-Left, and me from the center-Right.

How the Baha’is lost out on Khushwant Singh-

I’m just shocked to read this, how idiotic of the Baha’is to lose out on the body of one of India’s greatest authors!

Typical Persian arrogance; I’m actually upset since this would have been such a Kudos to the Faith in Asia. Khushwant Singh was an incredible intellectual and one of the literary Lions of the Punjab.

It’s deeply insulting to have insisted on burying him in a row when common decency would have been to reserve him a distinguished honour. As I was telling V this is the silent racism endemic to the Baha’i community. The largest believers in the world are in India but the UHJ (Universal House of Justice) has only one Desi out of 9.

The Persians and the Persianate believers (lots of Desis become Persianised) owe an explanation for this; utter stupidity because of callous racism and fanaticism.

I used to be keen on a burial because with a burial you give back to the earth what you have taken. Now, it will be the electric crematorium. I had requested the management of the Bahai faith if I could be buried. Initially, they had agreed, but then they came up with all sorts of conditions and rules. I had wanted to be buried in one corner with just a peepal tree next to my grave. After okaying this, the management later said that that wouldn’t be possible and that my grave would be in the middle of a row and not in a corner. I wasn’t okay with that—even though I know that once you are dead it makes no difference. But I was keen to be buried in one corner. They also told me later that they would chant some prayers, which again I couldn’t agree with, because I don’t believe in religion or in religious rituals of any kind.

How To Live & Die

Podcasts incoming!!!

I just want to remind readers that if you are a patron of the podcast, I post them early on Patreon. Two podcasts were posted today, and two will be posted tomorrow. I’ll probably roll out the podcasts over the next week. I assume when I post the posts you get notifications, but usually, I post that I posted them early on the “open thread” if you are using an email you don’t usually check.

On one of the podcasts I posted Zach describes Pakistan as the Republic of Gilead!

Tomorrow I’m going to talk to Zaid Jilani of the Extremely Offline podcast. When I went to the iTunes page for his podcast, I noticed that Brown Pundits is one of the podcasts that subscribers to Extremely Offline also listen too!

It’s been a while, so I want to exhort those of you who listen through something like iTunes or Stitcher to LEAVE A POSITIVE REVIEW. I mean only a single Stitcher review, seriously?