December 2020
-
Book Review: Islamic Empires- Fifteen Cities that Define a Civilization
Reviewing Justin Marozzi’s Islamic Empires, the reviewer argues that Indic and Islamic civilisations contrast in how they value the urban: Dharmic thought favours solitude and the forest, while Islam has…
-
Indian Americans are exceptional; no shit sherlock
A dismissive response to an Atlantic piece on Indian American exceptionalism, calling it a husk of clichés in a social justice frame, and arguing that an Indian American who had…
-
Open Thread – 12/19/2020 – Brown Pundits
Open thread, 19 December 2020: the poster announces the next BrownCast, with Glenn Loury, already available to patrons and cross-posted to his Substack, and praises Loury as an important public…
-
On caste and a new Hinduism
The author argues that caste is closely tied to Hinduism and the subcontinent, and that although Nicholas Dirks’s Castes of Mind stresses British rationalisation of caste, the striking genetic structure…
-
Open Thread – 12/12/2020 – Brown Pundits
Open thread, 12 December 2020: the poster plotted direct-to-consumer samples from people with four Indian-born grandparents against 1000 Genomes, and found no southern Dalits in the sample.
-
The Self-Hating Prophecy of Indian Elites
The author argues that India’s post-independence elites live out a self-hating prophecy, seeking Western approval while denouncing local traditions as primitive, in contrast with confident ancient elites, and that this…
-
Browncast: Abhinav Prakash and Karol Karpinski
Two BrownCast episodes: economist Karol Karpinski, who lived in Dhaka for two years, on economics and his brush with the Dhaka ISIS attack, and Abhinav Prakash on the farmer protests,…
-
Sharing a continent
The author notes the subcontinent and China hold over 40 per cent of humanity yet know little of each other, and argues that Indian claims of a continuous ‘pagan’ civilisation…
-
Open Thread – 12/05/2020 – Brown Pundits
Open thread, 5 December 2020: the poster is about to interview Tim Mackintosh-Smith for the podcast, and notes a patrons-only episode with Karol Karpinski about his time in Dhaka with…
