Browncast Episode 90: With Kushal Mehra, Indian lockdown, Covid19, Things to come..

Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on LibsynAppleSpotify,  and Stitcher (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe to one of the links above!

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In this episode we talk to Kushal Mehra of the Carvaka podcast, about lockdown in Mumbai, Indian response to Covid19, Covid 19 in general, and what comes next…

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Omar Ali

I am a physician interested in obesity and insulin resistance, and in particular in the genetics and epigenetics of obesity As a blogger, I am more interested in history, Islam, India, the ideology of Pakistan, and whatever catches my fancy. My opinions can change.

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Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
4 years ago

Dr. Fauci’s interview on COVID-19 in the US.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksi9rL2sDXo

7:02 min

“We had a bad (regular) flu season in 17-18. We lost over 60,000 people just in the seasonal flu.”

Now they are projecting 100-200,000 deaths in US alone. Scary.

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
4 years ago

German state financial minister kills himself over coronavirus ‘despair’

https://nypost.com/2020/03/29/german-state-financial-minister-kills-himself-over-coronavirus-despair/

VV
VV
4 years ago

What I got out of this:
– Leaders are doing the best they can given situation and acting in good faith.
– haters be haters.
– Common Indian is an eddy in these turbulent times.
– nobody knows anything conclusive on the science, or the economy. winter is coming.

Dravidarya
Dravidarya
4 years ago

A balanced and informative podcast. Thank you.

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
4 years ago

England
22453 infected 1411 dead =6.2%
Gernany
66, 8855 infected 645 dead =0.96%
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Is there a lesson for the American people here? You bet.

Numinous
Numinous
4 years ago

I thought Kushal’s report on how well the lockdown was going on was a little rosier than it is (or maybe things are working better in Mumbai?) Where I live in Bangalore, regular grocery stores closed as of yesterday saying no more supplies were coming in. (Personally, I’m stocked for another week.) Let’s hope the authorities can figure out how to get supply chains going soon.

Didn’t have too many quibbles beside that. I’m less trusting in the Modi govt’s competence and less uncharitable towards how the foreign media reports on him than Kushal is, but it’s a matter of degree.

I also agree with him about the lockdown now having to get extended because of the migrant laborers fiasco. Also, if you all read, a fundamentalist Islamist group congregated together just before the lockdown in Delhi, and its members have now spread the virus to different parts of the country. (Stupidity can’t be contained; it will inevitably manifest)

Saurav
Saurav
4 years ago
Reply to  Numinous

Tablighi are not Islmist bro, they are legal.

What i was surprised for Hindu nationalist Govt , India still sees footfall of foreign Muslims and their religious gathering. That too when India does not have any famous mosque or Islamic icons or anything.

Mobbywick
Mobbywick
4 years ago
Reply to  Saurav

Tabligi are considered hardliners even in Deobandi circle. These morons have spread the virus throughout the country.

AnAn
4 years ago
Reply to  Saurav

Have not read the above comments or heard the podcast yet.

Saurav,

“Tablighi are not Islmist bro, they are legal.”
Tablighi are Islamist and legal.

Muslims can be partly sorted into four big camps (with porous boundaries):
1) Liberal muslims (many lbgtq, Muraqabah Sufi Irfan, and agnostic/atheist/ex muslims fall into this category)
2) Conservative muslims who do not want to impose their conservatism on others (majority of muslims fall into this category)
3) Islamists who want to take over global society over the very long run, even if by mostly nonviolent means
4) Militant Islamists (who want to define, interpret and implement God’s will on earth by force)

About a quarter of the world’s muslims are Islamists. They are legal and they should be legal. Non Islamists (muslim and nonmuslim) should engage them in dialogue.

“What i was surprised for Hindu nationalist Govt , India still sees footfall of foreign Muslims and their religious gathering.”
What is Hindu nationalist? About a third of Indian muslims ally with the non left. Are they Hindu nationalists?

Many Indian muslims complain vociferously about the footfall of foreign muslims and their religious getherings in India. And they are completely correct. There are large difference between foreign conservative Sunni-ism and Indian Islam.

“That too when India does not have any famous mosque or Islamic icons or anything.”

Is this a joke? India houses two of the 5 largest muslim pilgrimage sites in the world and a a larger fraction of the top 100 muslim pilgrimage sites in the world than any other country.

India and Indonesia are the world’s two largest, most influential and most important muslim countries and the natural leaders of the muslim world.

Indian/Indonesian Dharmic tilted Islam is Islam. It is probably closer to what the 5 eternal beings (Hazrat Fatima, her husband, two sons, and father) emdodied and taught than any other stream of Islam.

Note that Mohammed pbuh, hazrat Fatima and Imam Ali taught Muraqabah. The world’s first mosque was built in Kerala. After Mohammed was poisened and passed away in 632 AD much of his family fled the Takfiri Jihadis trying to kill them to India. India has always been the natural home and protector of Ahl al-Bayt . . . the family of the prophet. India has always been the natural home and protector of Muraqabah Irfan Islam. How is India (and Indonesia which is part of greater India) not the global center of Islam?

Saurav, India has many impressive muslim leaders. Arent’ they global muslim leaders?

Saurav
Saurav
4 years ago
Reply to  AnAn

I am not sure what does India posses as important site of Islam. Of course it houses some important site for desi muslims, which is expected.

But wrt to world wide Muslim community i am not sure which Turks/Indonesian/Arabs/Persian would like to visit India for any pilgrimage sort of thing.

Razib Khan
Admin
4 years ago

the think with tabligh is they are officially apolitical quietists. one of my uncles was pretty high up before he died. he was big about avoiding politics cuz he wanted everyone to grow a goat beard…

AnAn
4 years ago
Reply to  Razib Khan

Many Tabligh are apolitical queitists. This is true. I am not an expert on the Tabligh. Should have written that “SOME” are Islamists and some are conservative sunnis who don’t want to impose their views on others or global society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablighi_Jamaat#Connections_to_terrorism

What are Tabligh’s formal relations with the Chisti, Qadiri, UP Irfan Shia, Kabir Panthis, Shirdi, Nund Rishi silsila, Baba Farid silsila etc.? They are at least slightly connected with the Muraqabah Irfan Sufis, as most Indian muslims are.

VV
VV
4 years ago

I had never heard of these Tablighs before, but whether it not they are Islamists seems less relevant with respect to current situation. They showed callous stubbornness in following rules in India (massive congregation with known foreigners among them) and Pakistan (stabbing a cop). I guess the latter is also a crime (I think?).

VijayVan
4 years ago
Reply to  VV

Why blame tablighis alone? In India the state is soft . Even by march 20th CAA protests were still held and had to be persuaded to go home. There were Hindu congregation also on March 20th

https://www.opindia.com/2020/03/kerala-temple-procession-thousands-attend-defy-social-distancing/

Kerala: Thousands defy social distancing guidelines to celebrate ‘Arattu’ festival in Thiruvananthpuram amidst coronavirus outbreak.

A purposeful govt would not have allowed Shahin bagh protests and blockage of roads to go on for months and would have clamped down on any gathering , religious political or cultural, from early March.
Modi “implemented” total shutdown and within 2 days tens of thousands of migrants had gathered to go home,; the whole purpose of lockdown is lost

VijayVan
4 years ago

Why blame tablighis alone? In India the state is soft . Even by march 20th CAA protests were still held and had to be persuaded to go home. There were Hindu congregation also on March 20th

https://www.opindia.com/2020/03/kerala-temple-procession-thousands-attend-defy-social-distancing/

Kerala: Thousands defy social distancing guidelines to celebrate ‘Arattu’ festival in Thiruvananthpuram amidst coronavirus outbreak.

A purposeful govt would not have allowed Shahin bagh protests and blockage of roads to go on for months and would have clamped down on any gathering , religious political or cultural, from early March.
Modi “implemented” total shutdown and within 2 days tens of thousands of migrants had gathered to go home,; the whole purpose of lockdown is lost

VV
VV
4 years ago
Reply to  VijayVan

In general yes I agree. Indian cynical politics through the first part of this year didn’t help the case. They were suddenly gun shy in enforcing rules during this pandemic given how out of control the riots went and how the fire was fuelled by anti-muslim allegations (again), with dispicable journalism as icing on top…

But first survive the pandemic… Then go back to fixing the Law and Order deficiencies. Hence picking on Tablighi right now, and anybody who is empowered to follow rules, yet doesn’t.

Poor / uneducated are exempt from moral judgement (but not the rules).

VijayVan
VijayVan
4 years ago

Rana Ayyub , after inciting anti-govt riots for months and large scale gathering of people

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/28/social-distancing-is-a-privilege/

says “Last month, while much of the world—including next-door neighbor China—was raising the alarm about the fast-spreading coronavirus, India was making global headlines for a bloody carnage in the country’s capital in which 54 people were killed and hundreds injured. And all of it was spawned by hate speech by top-ranking ministers in Modi’s cabinet”

What about the hate speeches by given by ppl like Rana Ayyub and make Indian Muslims into cannon fodder for their political ends

thewarlock
thewarlock
4 years ago

Pakistan’s strategy to “bleed India by 1000 cuts” is not new. Radical Islam has been doing that for millennia. It just got a more official state sponsor when Pak ramped up the effort.

thewarlock
thewarlock
4 years ago

well not millennia but centuries lol

arjun
arjun
4 years ago

Early in the podcast Mehra says India has not got any virus infections directly from China, but that they have come from Europe and Iran.

This is incorrect so fas as I know. The earliest cases in Kerala were of Indian students returning from Wuhan.

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