Typing this as we discuss the Mahua Moitra, 7 Signs of Fascism. Amazing podcast; I’m convinced Mahua Moitra is the Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of Indian Politics.
Attractive, media-friendly and eloquent; a formidable combination. Exciting times ahead..
Day: July 13, 2019
Browncast Episode 55: 17 years in the blogosphere
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. I am toying with the idea of doing a patron Youtube Livestream chat, if people are interested, in the next few weeks.
Would appreciate more positive reviews!
On this episode, I talk to my old friend Aziz Poonawalla. Aziz and I have been in the “blogosphere” for 17 years, and we talk about its rise and fall, and our thoughts about the Twitter world. Aziz and I also differ on a lot of issues. He is a liberal observant Muslim (Bohra Ismaili), and I am a conservative atheist. So we end up the conversation talking about politics, and Aziz’s roots in the Dean campaign of 2003.
Super30, Casteocracy & Blacked Up Hrithik Roshan
We did a late night viewing of Super30.
The movie was inspirational and was pretty much in line with the recent theme of how uplift the lower castes of India. This followed through from Daughters of Destiny and our very own CAMbFIRE launch.
I found the idea of Hrtithik Roshan, who has the colourings a Greek deity, blacking up to play an OBC to emblematic of India’s Casteocracy.
The idea that an education system, designed by dead white men and then rapidly disseminated to all traditional elites in the world, can somehow uplift the masses is deeply problematic. The template of the IIT/IIM system suits rural and poor upper castes, who have a culture of education and enough urban access to understand how the system works.
It’s similar to Oxbridge & the Ivy Leagues, which are geared towards the aspirational segments of the petty bourgeois (the aristocrats don’t really need educational pedigree).
Other than that the movie had very interesting motifs; it was downright anti-Hindu. It quote a segment in the Mahabharat where the tribal Eklava, who was a better archer than Arjuna, had his thumb cut off by their teacher so that Arjuna could remain the best.
Every caste Hindu is a product of Casteocracy just as a white American is a functionary and beneficiary of the Republic’s early origins. This isn’t necessarily an indictment but merely a reflection of fact. We all carry privileges embedded within us.
As India Westernises and follows trends emerging in the West; will it too suffer the ongoing racial convulsions in the West. The idea of a white actor blacking up to play a role is now simply unthinkable.
I’m extremely involved in BAME activities in Cambridge; in fact I’m co-founder to two initiatives that are rapidly catching the University’s attention.
A lot of the Upper Caste Hindus are involved in BAME because they can’t tolerate being the equivalent to Dalits in the West.
In some ways I think Quaid-e-Azam and Allama Iqbal’s mistake was that they didn’t fuse their valid demands with linguistic representation. It’s very obvious that the replacement of Persian with English and the evisceration of Urdu into Hindi only reinforced the dramatic caste divides.
The idea of English as the elite language binding together South Asia creates an effective barrier to the rest of the classes. In Pakistan learning English doubles one wage immediately.
Open Thread – Brown Pundits
Please keep the other posts on topic. Use this for talking about whatever you want to talk about.