What’s going on?
I have a 6000-word piece on Indian genetics coming out on my Substak in the next few days (waiting on some maps that were commissioned).
Update: The pieces (had to break into two) are ready to go. Part 1 today and part 2 tomorrow. I commissioned some simple maps and created an infographic. Since these will be “paid” (you have to subscribe), I’ll post the infographic for people here:
Is there/will there ever be a discussion on the cosmopolitan nature of Islam and how it has uniquely shaped the genetic make up of Muslims? It seems that it’s highly overlooked how much religion has played a role in the historical destinies of particular groups. Muslims living in the Middle East and South Asia commonly differ from their non-Muslim neighbors in certain ways, as in having much more heterogenous streams of ancestry.
-In the Middle East, Arab Muslims in the fertile crescent and Egypt are distinct from most of the non-Muslim minorities in the region. Iraqi Arabs show high Arabian and Iranian input relative to Chaldeans/Assyrians and Sabians. Levantine Muslims show much more Turkish, Arabian, and Egyptian input compared to the nearby Druze, Christians, etc. Both groups also have minor SSA ancestry as well. Egyptian Muslims on the other hand are much more SSA than their Coptic counterparts.
-In South Asia, Muslims in the interior(India and Bangladesh) are normally mixed caste and that often implies highly divergent streams of ancestry i.e. low caste+high caste. There also seems to be mixture between regions i.e. mixing between north and south Indian muslims. Not to mention, some urban Muslims have a degree of foreign ancestry, usually Pashtun but sometimes Persian, Turkic, and Arab.
Muslims living in the Middle East and South Asia commonly differ from their non-Muslim neighbors in certain ways, as in having much more heterogenous streams of ancestry.
it’s a minority component tho. it’s not HUGE. but it’s quite distinct and clear.
re: muslims in india. do you have evidence that they are mixed like bangladeshis? my sample sizes are not large enough
Heterogenous can mean many different things. The way I’m using it, for the most part it refers to admixtures within the respective region. So mixed between groups considered south Asian in the case of south Asian Muslims and mixed between middle eastern groups in the case of ME Muslims.
From the G25 results I’ve seen, Indian Muslims often score both high tribal/AASI and upper caste/northern shifted groups.
Even if that’s not the case, they might be mixed between castes of similar profiles let’s say Nair and Brahmin. This is because the caste system broke down among Muslims in India.
Foreign ancestry is typically diluted, obviously.
South Asia has an interesting history regarding Islamic migrations and converts.
The Muslims castes vary in terms of their ancestral castes they decend from. Some are a mix of different castes while others mirror certain castes around them, whether high caste or low caste.
South Asian Muslims would marry out of their castes more so then their Hindu neighbours, but again it wasn’t common. I would say rare in the case of UP and Bihari Muslims. Majority would have stuck to their castes. Things are changing now and people are marrying outside their castes in general.
In terms of foreign ancestry such as Arab, North African, Persian, Pathan and Central Asian. Yes some Muslims do have a bit of admixture. But it is diluted. A small percentage. Majority of the admixture is South Asian in origin. My guess is that most foreign people who came to South Asia were males who intermarried with local converts. There were females too but I think it was less common. Many of the males were part of Muslim armies, Sufi’s, beuracrats etc.
Tbh the most reliable indicator of foreign ancestry is determining ones Y-Haplogroup or mtDNA. These cannot be diluted. If the Haplogroup is from outside of South Asia then you can say the individual has foreign ancestry.
In terms of foreign ancestry such as Arab, North African, Persian, Pathan and Central Asian. Yes some Muslims do have a bit of admixture. But it is diluted. A small percentage. Majority of the admixture is South Asian in origin. My guess is that most foreign people who came to South Asia were males who intermarried with local converts. There were females too but I think it was less common. Many of the males were part of Muslim armies, Sufi’s, beuracrats etc.
yes
there are a few groups that seem endogamous tho. ayatollah khomeini doesn’t have indian genetic ancestry even though his paternal family lived in india (lucknow i think?) for a 100 years. they married within the persian community
https://twitter.com/Nidhi/status/1350024214997155840
There are so many things off with this that I don’t know where to start. How did a journalist of 20+ years not do the due diligence of primary research to check whether the school she was teaching in existed or not? Harvard doesn’t have a school of journalism as some of the others on social media pointed out, and consequently no professors of journalism.
This raises other concerns, if she couldn’t verify details on such an important matter, then how did she verify the news everyday when she was a reporter? Her father was the former Editor-in-chief of the Press Trust of India. It wouldn’t be surprising if some strings were pulled to get her into NDTV, especially given the kind of investigative skills she displayed in this fiasco.
She also mentioned in her twitter statement: “Separately I have written to the Harvard University authorities and urged them to take the matter seriously.” If this scam was by a third party then what is the university supposed to do? They’re not responsible for this, and the advice given to prospective students to these colleges is to only correspond with university email addresses (i.e. the name of the college after the @). If she did receive emails from a Harvard ID, then she could have checked up the source via the university website or her many contacts in the corridors of power.
What the story brings to the fore is that many of these individuals who start of as newsreaders can’t make the jump to serious reporting because they don’t follow the structured process of research that is the most basic skill required in this business.
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On a related note, many of those in the Indian public-facing elite (especially academia and journalists) have a habit of name dropping any prestige-related things they’ve done or places they attended at the drop of a hat, and this is especially true whenever the Lutyens crowd interacts with the hoi polloi. This is why a more apt term for this class of people would not be old money, but newly moneyed old money.
By comparison, I’ve found the European old moneyed class to be more down to earth, and even when they attended prestige universities or did other elite things, they would keep it to themselves unless they were asked for that information. It’s almost as if they have an internal barometer of “would this be considered showing off?” for everything they do, and act accordingly to avoid themselves from being perceived as such in all the interactions they have.
Scamming is a co operative endeavour. Both the scammer and scammed want the scam to happen. Credits are in order for both Nidhi and X – this is high quality satire of Indian journalists.
What does that mean? Other Hindutva people I know are saying similar things: that Razdan herself was trying to scam people. But I fail to see the logic. Where’s the upside for her from this? The best she can hope for now is that NDTV will take her back. But for a lot of people like me, this should completely discredit her qualifications as a journalist.
Back in the day (20 years ago) when I was applying to US graduate schools, I got an email purportedly offering me a fellowship to one of the schools I had targeted. It didn’t take long for me to inspect the email and figure out that it was a fake, likely one of my classmates pranking me. But even if I had gotten overexcited and pursued the matter, I’d have figured out soon enough that it was a scam. The lack of official offer letters or other paperwork would have made it clear. (And this was a time when the internet wasn’t as accessible as it is now; we used to manually pass URLs to each other, and sometimes use old-style search engines.)
The fact that Razdan didn’t even bother to visit the website of the university and department she was supposedly going to be teaching at displays a stunning level of stupidity.
Scammers are mousetrap builders – they are master social psychologists. The trick is to create a reality where the deepest fears of the scammed subject is extinguished and the deepest aspirations are awakened. The scammed person then voluntarily engages in self deception.
Calling it phishing is underwhelming. Nobody gets phished continuously for 8 months. Phishing is more hit and run. This is more on the lines of a “romance scam” – building a relationship where the target really believes they have caught the eye of someone who is clearly out of their league. But they desperately want it to be true.
Like you said, her credibility (and also NDTV’s) is gone….poof. Send a journalist to jail and their credibility goes up. But send them to fake Harvard… then 🙂
Ah…I missed your post while dropping a comment about this very topic further below.
One of the few silver linings I see (or hope) from the recent Hindutva takeover of our country is that this kind of status-seeking behavior will be blunted or even discredited in Indian society. And I agree that Razdan was doing just that. Who quits a job as a prominent long-time TV anchor based on offers sent purely through emails? She displayed a level of naivete that should be discrediting in any journalist.
“that this kind of status-seeking behavior will be blunted or even discredited in Indian society”
I don’t think the status-seeking behaviour would change, though in the future it would have to be backed up by actual performance. India is ultimately a status-seeking macro-society (with some exceptions in the deep south and the north-east) and people would continue distinguishing each other by some means to determine who marries whom or which family gets an apartment in a housing colony.
Something I’ve noticed is that those who show off their degree as a matter of argument (for example, responding to critique by saying they are from such-and-such university or company, thus implying they’re above rebuke from those without similar hefty credentials) are often the ones who’re more insecure about their own achievements.
The ones who’re more secure would rather take the argument head-on and answer based on data and facts rather than name dropping their institutions. They would prefer to speak about the things they’ve done, like the papers/books they published or other goals they achieved, over naming the college they attended as an end in itself.
In the nineties and early noughties, many of these people were above criticism, as they held much control over the levers of power, at a time when journalism was mainly one way – from the reporter to the reader/ TV viewer and before the era of social media when the only way to respond would be via letters to the editor that would appear tucked away on the inside pages of a newspaper.
It’s the mass availability of the internet and two-way communication via social media that showed that many of these credentialed public figures weren’t as smart as they were made out to be. Things they said could be verified in a jiffy and any attempts at misusing data or mischaracterizing information would lead to open fact checks and end with them being called out for what they did.
Any thoughts on Nidhi Razdan and her fake appointment at Harvard? Overall, I found it rather funny. She’s supposed to be a journalist and she fell for this? Aren’t journalists supposed to know how to do research? Lots of people on the right probably dislike her already, but to me, this kind of thing is far more discrediting than any political bias.
This piece seems to be doing the rounds among American journos/bloggers (at least the ones I follow): https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/everything-is-broken
But I wasn’t impressed by it. Begins with a standard critique of neoliberalism down to the usual talking points, completely ignoring all the good globalization and free trade have done in the past 2 generations while solely focusing on the bad. It then bizarrely descends into neo-Luddite arguments about recently developed technology enabling seamless communication on a global scale (aka “flatness”). Blaming all the foibles and poor choices of the woke elite on technology. I’d imagine people wrote similar manuscripts back in the 15th century about the evils of the printing press, but probably in German or Latin.
Begins with a standard critique of neoliberalism down to the usual talking points, completely ignoring all the good globalization and free trade have done in the past 2 generations
Branko Milanovic’s infamous “elephant graph” would clear this up for you. The western middle-class have seen stagnant incomes for the past 25 years. The biggest winners were the middle classes in India and China, and some ASEAN countries. The attacks on free trade and globalisation in the West reflects that fact.
It then bizarrely descends into neo-Luddite arguments about recently developed technology enabling seamless communication on a global scale
Subtle call for more censorship and “moderation”. Again, another feature of “edgy neoliberals” who portray themselves as above the fray (Bari Weiss or Matt Yglesias). Often the same people who bemoan cancel culture until it’s someone who they vehemently disagree with. Yglesias supported the removal of Trump from Twitter for e.g. These people LARP as different but become very conventional when it matters.
I saw Milanovic’s graph many years ago, and am aware of the relative decline of the Western middle and lower classes. Though I’d argue income is only part of the story. One can have a higher standard of living at a given income now than 2 generations ago (adjusted for inflation). For example: airfares were much higher until the 70s, from what I hear, whereupon deregulation happened. So today most people in the US can afford to fly even though I believe their parents back in the 70s couldn’t, but their incomes feel lower than what their parents made (or at least not much higher.)
I do have sympathy for those left behind by globalization, but as people like Kevin Williamson of the National Review have pointed out, there are a lot of self-inflicted wounds. And as you yourself said, globalization has been an almost unmitigated boon to the middle classes of poorer countries.
So when I express irritation at the critics of neoliberalism, it’s because they don’t seem to have any ideas other than the rolling back of whatever has happened in the past 2 generations. The result will be immiseration of poorer countries and some standard of living hit to Westerners as well, but these people don’t seem to acknowledge that this is what they are demanding. And also, they tend to look at the 50s and 60s through rose-tinted glasses.
People whose jobs got shipped off to Asia don’t care about airfare getting cheap or whether a modern smartphone has more computing power than a 80’s supercomputer or whether US GDP is highest ever or whether stock market is doing good. These things are quite useless at measuring the real standard of living for the average bloke. What matters to most people is whether they got gainful employment, whether they can afford the house they live in, whether they got a functional family, whether their neighborhood is thriving, and where people feel a sense of belonging. Globalization has only benefited the elite and the upper middle classes in the West, and made them filthy rich, while the rest of the working classes have their jobs shipped off while their communities that once thrived are destroyed.
Now it takes two working individuals to raise a family, and financial stress in a marriage along with modern feminist/woke culture is responsible for skyrocketing divorce rates and increasing drug abuse in a lot of these communities.
So when a guy like Trump comes along and openly speaks about these issues when nobody else wants to, no wonder he will be popular amongst a lot of people. The system is not working for these people in their own country, increasingly it works for the benefit of the elite and the foreign immigrants that are needed to support this. Sooner or later, there is going to be a backlash. Trump was just the start.
Again, I know all of this, so you don’t have to give me a lesson. I’m well aware of the politics of these issues, which I have been following for almost two decades now. What I was trying to say was that globalization, when looked at from a global perspective, has decidedly produced net benefit, and that if it is rolled back, there would be serious negative consequences to people who live in poorer countries.
There is no policy that will produce benefits for everyone. Someone will end up losing. It’s of course very easy to argue politically that citizens must be favored absolutely and let foreigners go to hell, but even if a country were to build a fortress around itself, whatever policy it would then end up instituting would help some of its citizens and hurt others. The losers wouldn’t be able to then argue on nationalistic grounds and will be left licking their wounds.
This happened in the US in the mid-20th century, when businessmen (especially in the textile industry) shipped jobs from the high wage unionized New England to the low wage South where right-to-work laws existed. The losers there complained, of course, but couldn’t really do anything about it and instead went along with a transformation of their economy. Today New England is still doing very well and is one of the most prosperous regions of the US (and the world). I have no doubt West Virginians and Ohioans can do something similar if they wouldn’t stew in their own victimhood and weren’t led by populist snake oil-selling leaders.
Finally, I’m a libertarian on economic issues. To me, jobs are jobs and ought to go to people offering the most skill (and value) for the least price. That’s the equilibrium of the market. As far as I can see, the US Constitution does not guarantee anyone a job (other countries’ constitutions might; I don’t know). The notion of “American jobs” is purely a political construction designed to rile some people up and emotionally blackmail others.
One more thing: though there definitely are losers in the globalized economic game, their numbers are quite low compared to the outrage they generate. This is all a function of modern mass media (it’s not just the internet but the 24/7 cable news cycle that accompanied it). For example, if one American techie loses his job to an Indian and (to compound injury with humiliation) is forced to train his replacement in order to get benefits, you are going to have 10000 (maybe a hundred thousand techies) hear that news and think: this could happen to me. Even though 95% of them will likely never face that scenario and will have fruitful careers.
This kind of angst would have been impossible to generate in earlier eras even if people made less and had fewer employment opportunities.
Globalization has produced a ”net” benefit to world production as a whole, but we are not talking about machines, we are talking about humans that don’t see the world in utilitarian terms. They see winners and losers and the losers are surely the Western middle and lower classes for all the reasons I mentioned above. 70 million people voted for Trump after 4 years of his shenanigans, this is not just background noise that can be ignored.
It’s easy to say that people should just adapt, tell a recently unemployed 45 year old oil worker to learn to code, how is that going to work out? I am not sure that any point in US history did any generation see negative growth from their parent’s generation unless in wartime, without any hope for the future. Vast swathes of the US ”flyover” states resemble very much like a destitute third world country with poverty, obesity and hard drugs.. this is not the picture of an economic superpower.
If enough Americans have a feeling that they are being screwed over by their own elite, there will be more and more unrest. It does not matter what the American constitution or the law says, when enough young males are frustrated and jobless, they pick up arms and revolt, and there are a lot of arms in America and a lot of young jobless males.
I am not saying this is imminent, but it’s just adding another angle to this discussion that neo-liberals miss out one when they do their global net benefit analysis. Neoliberalism itself has its uses but only upto a point, after which it is more harm than good. We don’t live in a global word without borders, movement of labor is restricted whereas movement of money and goods is not. Politicians can be bought and sold, countries can be looted without any use of arms, all in the guise of free trade. But this is a discussion for another time
@S Qureishi:
It’s easy to say that people should just adapt, tell a recently unemployed 45 year old oil worker to learn to code, how is that going to work out?
You are assuming I’m likely to spout the usual talking points of my side (i.e., the pro-globalization side). But I agree with you that the above expectation is ludicrous, and I would never suggest it as a panacea. I have a lot of sympathy for people who lose their jobs in middle or higher ages through no fault of their own. I understand very well (looking at people near and dear to me) how hard it is to change after a certain age; this applies to me too, as I am in my 40s.
Clearly there is no ideal solution for this metaphorical oil worker except to roll back the system that has caused him pain. But as I think you and I both agree, that would result in immiseration of a different set of people in a different part of the world. One could offer a lifetime pension to such people, but as you point out, they derive self-worth from being employed, so…. So I’ve picked my poison (growth and “progress” coupled with job insecurity). All I ask is that my opponents (the populists) be candid about what they are seeking rather than spout rhetoric in self-righteous and moralistic terms.
Fascinating discussion. Agree with parts of both SQ and Numinous
Well I am not arguing with you per say based on ideology, just bringing another angle to this globalization debate. What western working classes are going through is not going to be limited to the west, but it’s coming East as well in a few decades. There is no doubt that free trade and globalization lifts people out of extreme poverty, but it is what happens after that is what interests me.
@numinuos,
the populists are explicitly making the argument that citizens of a country should care about the welfare of their fellow countrymen rather people on the other side of the world. Hence the big debate about open borders vs closed borders in recent election. I think it is time for pro-globalization side to acknowledge that the upper crust in western countries and relatively well off in Asia have been the winners. Rather ack and try to mitigate the impact, the pro-globalization elite in west has turned ON identity politics on steroids. Like others on this blog, I have been a beneficiary of globalization, but can’t help notice it’s a un-sustainability.
@Qureishi:
Point taken. I’d just like to re-emphasize that there is never going to be a perfect solution. There will always be competing interests and people should be cognizant of this and honest about it. My observation is that most people, and populists definitely, see everything in zero-sum terms, which is not a good reflection of how the world works. In game-theoretic terms, the general Nash equilibrium is the most suitable framework for such analysis. If one looks dispassionately at globalization, I think it’s clear that it produces a net benefit to everyone. Rolling it back would mean privileging a certain group of people (non-college educated people living in Western countries).
@Bhumiputra:
I have no problem with people caring more for fellow citizens than outsiders. I do the same. But I don’t want it forced down my throat. I don’t want it enforced by law. Heck, I don’t even want to hear rhetoric about how that’s treasonous behavior and how I am Benedict Arnold (or Jaychand in the Indian case), etc. Live and let live. Let peoples’ business be their business. That’s the libertarian way.
Also, though I recognize that the upper crusts of various societies have benefited the most from globalization, they are not the only winners. There are a lot of other people who have benefited, but who either don’t recognize or acknowledge it (or, as I mentioned above, think that they are in a more precarious position than they are and that the world is going to hell in a handbasket).
https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/bhakts-or-liberals-friendship-changed-in-modis-india-tech-will-make-it-worse-for-genz/585570/
“This lazy and simplistic labelling, which is the hallmark of the growing ‘woke’ movement, will only become stronger in the decade ahead. We have crossed a line and there is no turning back. Is it that, as our lives and worlds have become more complex, we have developed a ‘with us–against us’ binary paradigm as a defence mechanism to simplify our existence? But simple and simplistic are hardly the same thing. The latter is the sign of a sluggish mind. The former unearths clarity from the clutter.
But, looking ahead, one can only see the rise and rise of the ‘simplistic’, with more and more friendships locked in echo chambers. Our filter bubbles, aided and abetted by technology, will grow ever more resilient to osmosis. By 2030, most friendships will hardly resemble what Aristotle defined as ‘true’. We will essentially be gangs, though we will not look and speak the way we imagine gangs do. This will be a return to primitive times, when humans formed ‘bands’ to survive and thrive.”
That article is pretty well written. I was talking to a commie girl from a dating app recently. We were getting along quite well apart from the politics but she couldn’t eventually handle that I don’t consider every RW person malicious and greedy.
Anyway, one line she told me stuck with me because it seemed straight out of some Bolshevik dystopia:
“My politics is very important to me. I have lost friends because of it but in return I have gained comrades.”
Makes me chuckle every time I think about it.
People complain about anxiety and whatnot but refuse to talk to their friends because of some misguided ideology. What a shitty way to live a life.
Prats, all the data I’ve seen have shown that left-wing people are much more likely to ghost and even block friens due to politics than right-wingers. This is a consistent finding across countries. So what you experienced was simply that taking place in front of your eyes.
I wonder why leftists are so much more militant about their politics.
I used to laugh at these incidents and thought that these events (folks breaking decade long friendship over politics ) are exaggerated.
….. And then it happened to me. LOL
Razib, is any ethnic group ever genetically predisposed to do good or bad things? Or is it all culture?
May I jump in, Razib can correct me; good question although some may say that the answer is unscientific. Well, it seems that R1b must have genocidal genes considering that they started almost all wars and conducted many genocides in last 5000 years since Yamnaya people left Russian steppes and invaded Europe which for couple thousands of years before that did not have wars. I believe that some research statistics one day will scientifically confirm this.
The answer is Jatts. And Serbs.
I think Razib indicated on Twitter that the IVC proportion of DNA in present day Indian populations has not received the same amount of coverage as steppe.
My question is there a variance in IVC derived DNA among different populations of India.
https://mobile.twitter.com/swati_gs/status/1350348638816407555
Link to the court order posted in the tweet
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/14/imran-khan-taliban-afghanistan-islam
“Imran Khan says Taliban’s ‘holy war’ in Afghanistan is justified by Islamic law”
Old but gold. Liberal biased media tiny bit better then
https://theprint.in/india/will-stand-with-farmers-punjab-farmer-leader-bhupinder-mann-quits-sc-farm-laws-panel/585560/
Just sad
https://scroll.in/article/984100/interview-alice-evans-on-why-india-s-big-feminist-demand-should-be-labour-intensive-growth
Interview: Alice Evans on why India’s big feminist demand should be labour-intensive growth
https://theprint.in/national-interest/neither-udta-nor-padhta-punjab-question-is-how-indias-no-1-state-in-2003-fell-to-13/586413/
“Punjab, once India’s richest state, has slipped and fallen behind. MSP and subsidies should continue, but it needs to rediscover its entrepreneurial impulse”
” Punjab and Punjabis have their apprehensions, distrust and grievances over the farm laws. The state, especially its proud Sikh population, also has a defiant view of ‘Dilli Durbar’, ever since the days of Emperor Aurangzeb, who executed Guru Tegh Bahadur at what is now Gurdwara Sis Ganj (because he was beheaded there), in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk. In the mid-19th century, there were the vicious Anglo-Sikh Wars. In the 20th, there have been a series of mass protests generally against what’s been seen as the bullying, or ‘dhakka’ of Dilli Durbar. That’s why the Akalis came up with the Anandpur Sahib resolution on Baisakhi Day, 1973. It sought a new definition of federalism that we could describe as Article 370+++.
The consequences were bad, most of all for Punjab, where several tens of thousands died in terrorism between 1981 and 1993. It was also a time when a crippling flight of talent, capital and entrepreneurship took place”
They will use capitalist diaspora income to fuel protests in favor of socialist Indian policies that frankly are just aristocratic ones. This is not all of them by any means or even a majority, but a majority of those who are pulling the strings of the power, the master puppeteers.
The Gurus would likely be disgusted at their selfishness
Absolutely agree. A friend ran into a Punjabi Sikh “farmer” who also happens to own a fleet of trucks in California. This guy drives an expensive BMW, lives in Atherton (among the most expensive areas in very expensive Bay Area) and was arguing against the new farm laws. Turns out he owns acres and acres of land in Punjab, using his income here to buy up more land every year.
This is the reality of the “poor” farmers in Punjab who are fighting with all means, fair and foul to protect their entitlements and to continue leeching off the taxpayer. Sikhs are masters of the PR game.
https://www.opindia.com/2021/01/haryana-kaithal-anti-farm-law-protesters-attack-covid-19-vaccination-center/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Fucking sick. As a healthcare workee, just appalled
https://twitter.com/vjgtweets/status/1350551495163318272
“The State of California has asserted that the caste system is ‘a strict Hindu social and religious hierarchy,’ and therefore an integral part of Hindu teachings and practices.
Now step back for a moment and consider what’s actually happening here: A state government agency in AMERICA is making an assertion in a court of law regarding what constitutes an “integral part of Hindu teachings and practices” 2/n
Put differently: the State of California is insisting that it has the authority to DEFINE the religious beliefs of a billion+ Hindus independent of the views of actual practicing Hindus themselves. The latter are evidently immaterial. 3/n
This is– to put it frankly– absolutely fucking insane and should shock ALL Americans. Can you imagine a state agency rolling up to court and insisting that Christianity and Islam enshrine prejudice against “non-believers”? 4/n
They’d rightly be laughed out of court and excoriated for their prejudice. More importantly, the average American would recognize this as fundamentally averse to the first amendment and freedom of religion. Why is this not the case when it comes to Hinduism? How is this OK?”
The retarded-ness of foreign courts when it comes to understanding India related issues reminds me of this case from a few years ago.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world/bollywood-bad-influence-helps-indian-man-escape-conviction-for-stalking-aus-women/story-iuoSfczLoZKSbPJKkz6NeK.html
“A 32-year-old Indian man in Australia, accused of stalking two women, has escaped conviction after a court considered that he had been wrongly influenced by Bollywood movies.”
I am a Hindu and I don’t believe in caste discrimination.
Screw the california court.
Just imagine if the court had ruled that Homophobia is a part of Christianity.
(You actually have American Christians bakers trying to agrue they should be exempt from having to make gay wedding cakes, on that basis
There are no American Hindus arguing for caste discrimination and yet the court see it fit to impose this top down, on Indian traditional religions that are grouped under the Hindu umbrella.
Fuck that court. Guaranteed radical islamoapologist leftist lobby +/- minor khalistani influence at play.
The hypocrisy as pointed out above is mind blowing. This is going to be a rough ride. Biden presidency will only make it worse.
https://araingang.medium.com/do-indian-muslims-have-middle-eastern-ancestry-eec802c7d2e2
Troll has stockholm syndrome. Just lovely. Haleems are largely mutually exclusive from halals. But the wannebeism grasping at a couple percentage points among a small minority is pretty funny to watch.
https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/winter-vigils-mobilized-minorities-offer-reliable-resistance-to-bigotry/cid/1803911
Dravidian writing in a Bengali paper about Sikhs and Muslim ‘resistance’
All less-Hindu groups uniting.
https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/art-and-culture/auspicious-kolam-drawings-mark-the-kickoff-of-biden-harris-inauguration-ceremony-7149823/lite/
Auspicious Kolam drawings mark the kickoff of Biden-Harris inauguration ceremony
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-16/two-of-india-s-richest-men-caught-in-crossfire-over-farming
Good read and international comparatives.
even chidambaram and tavleen singh are now behind a premier wall in indian express.
even chidambaram and tavleen singh are now behind a premier wall in indian express.
Fantastic infographic- I may have to actually buy in to that sub stack now.
doing revisions on part 1 and part 2. delayed by a day or two (in case ppl are wondering)
Is there any info on where the Eastern Iranian farmers in the IVC ancestry are specifically from? or are these farmers from Central Asia due to their WSHG ancestry?
The one known eastern Iran HG (Hotu) is notable in having more ANE than Ganj Dareh (West Iran herder which is basically the same as Tepe Abdul Hossein West Iran farmers). If GD is 22% ANE, then Hotu is likely around 33% ANE.
Other than, that there was some talk of Hotu having more basal eurasian back in 2016 but Hotu’s basal affinity has not been re-evaluated by Iosif Lazaridis in the 2018 pre-print so it is hard to say if that has changed or not.
Is there a good review paper with thess data? Or do you largely rely on primary literature? If so, and honestly regardless, good job. You back up what you say.
I get the GD ANE% from Lazaridis 2018 preprint. It is actually 21.8% not 22% but I rounded it. As for the extra ANE in hotu if you try and model hotu as GD only then the distance is pretty big meaning that the model is not accurate. If you try to model GD as hotu + ane then the distance is the same. This means that GD does not have more than than Hotu. But if you model Hotu as GD + ANE then the fit improves considerably. Playing with different ane inputs it seems that hotu prefers ag3 over ma1 or tyumen. AG3 is more recent than ma1 but tyumen is even more recent than ag3. It probably means that the extra ane in hotu is entirely just ane as opposed to ane + minor east asian (tyumen).
no one knows. but they seem pretty distinct from western iranian farmers by the beginning of the holocene
Speaking in Aesop’s language what is yank-pundits’ impression of living in 1937?
Big brain Pundits:
What is the best Covid-19 vaccine to take based on current data ?
I am a low risk non-medical worker, also in a place with low covid so will delay taking it for a while.
In the absence of experts, I present my readings. Pfizer sell, market and produce the vaccine developed by Turkish company in Germany. It is a non-standard vaccine, more a genetic therapy. Under strong pressure from US power circles was registered in US, Britain and EU. Many countries were forced to abandon the first developed Russian vaccine (e.g. Hungary). The vaccine is a logistic nightmare requiring -80 degree of Celsius. Results are pretty bad, 23 (older) people in Norway died, 10 in Germany, in Israel dozen got face muscles paralysed (Pfizer said – temporary). In Serbia, 125 out 151 people (old and employees) in a home for elderly got covid 14 days after vaccination (Pfizer said that resistance starts after 21 day). It seems that immunity lasts btw 4-6 months. Pfizer CEO sold his company shares few days after the vaccine was registered when share prices exploded. I would not recommend.
Moderna – less information but itseems it is similar to Pfizer. Russians developed and registered three different vaccines. Sputnik is a classical vectors vaccine technology developed decades ago, characterised that 90% of vaccine is a common platform where specific modules for specific viruses are added and the platform is ready for all future viruses. They say that immunity will last for 2 years. No nus products. Will be produced in India, too. In high demand among countries which can resist US pressure – Mexico, Philippines and dozen other countries.
Chinese – not much information but it seems that it is sufficiently efficient (Hungary was pressured to abandon Russian vaccine and they switched to Chinese). Oxford vaccine has a similar concept as Sputnik, two of them will make a joint vaccine in spite of all problems in politics.
If I am in a western country, I would not probably have opportunity to choose a Russian vaccine. I would choose Oxford vaccine.
Doses of the “Modern” vaccine series 041L20A are suspected to cause “more side effects than usual” and therefore they should be removed from use before the end of the test, the California Department of Public Health announced.
The incidents appear to have been discovered at a clinic that was reportedly closed hours after adverse reactions were reported. A series of a total of 330,000 doses was given to 287 suppliers across California, and this is the first time that an allergic reaction has been recorded, said Dr. Erika S. Pan, California state epidemiologist.
An acute allergic reaction was previously reported in Boston, in December, after the doctor received the “Moderna” vaccine. At the same time, the American medical authorities are investigating several cases of serious reactions to the “Pfizer-Biontek” vaccine against the corona virus.
The Russian sector for the protection of patients, Rospotrebnadzor, announced today that, based on clinical tests, it has been determined that the second Russian vaccine against the corona is 100 percent effective, reports Tanjug.
Russia has started mass testing of the EpiVakKorona vaccine, which was developed by the Siberian Vector Institute in November, Reuters reported, writing by the TAS S agency.
Earlier, the Russians approved Sputnik V, which proved to be 92 percent effective.
In SWITZERLAND, five elderly people died after vaccination.
They all received the American Pfizer vaccine.
However, the Swiss public health regulator Suissemedic announced that “there is no concrete evidence that the vaccine caused their death.”
As expected, he even made the claim: “They are more likely to have died from diseases that usually occur at their age.”
At the same time, he admitted that another 16 vaccinated people then had “serious side effects”.
>>>> It is interesting that after receiving a vaccine, for all who died doctors say that they died from other (their basic chronical) illnesses but before, all who died were described as they died from covid19. (Sumit, can you digest all this information?)
Pfizer seems to give the best results based on the results I am seeing. There has been a big decrease in Israeli hospitalisations and deaths since they started mass vaccinations with it. Astra Zeneca\Oxford seems a bit more variable. Sinopharm no one really knows.
I do have three acquaintances in Dubai who had the first jab of the Sinopharm vaccine. Their entire household got Corona before they could have the second jab. They tested positive but had no symptoms at all while rest of the household got hit bad.
Who are “East Iranian Farmers” exactly? As I understand it the early farming centers in the region were in Southwest Iran, and shortly afterwards in Mehrgarh (in modern Balochistan). Were the people of Mehrgarh at that time what you would call “East Iranian”? Or were there some early farming sites in Eastern Iran that I’m unaware of?
Part – 1
A western Indologist puts the “cart before the horse”
In October 2020, Asko Parpola, the noted western Indologist published an article on the Chariot Burials discovered at Sinauli in the Studia Orientalia Electronica.
https://journal.fi/store/article/view/98032
The article is notable for the conclusions it seeks to make and the arguments which are drawn upon to impress the reader.
This commentary is a combination of Parpola’s lines of arguments mixed with my own commentary on the circumstances in which they seem to be derived. We will begin with the piece de resistance.
Parpola contends that the Sinauli “chariots” are bull yoked and they are carts rather than chariots. A host of circumstantial evidence is provided for this. But the main crux seems to be the similarity to the Daimabad bronzes (A pair of zebu oxen pulling a pedestal cart with a man standing in it). The lead excavator of Sinauli, SK Manjul, thinks that this was a horse pulled based on the geometry of the axle, body and yoke. Parpola notes this.
After what seems to be sort of denouement in which Parpola has convinced himself that the chariots are carts, he proceeds to his second argument – which frankly astonished me. He contends that, just like the chariot culture was preceded by cart culture (with solid wheels) at Yamnaya, BMAC, Tepe Hissar and the Pontic Steppes, a similar development chronology must have occurred in India. He also provides similarities of the wooden coffins at Sinauli to Sintashta and Yamnaya (Bolshekarahanskij cemetery). In line with the waves of migrants theory he proposed in 2015, he now concludes that the burials are Indo-Aryan and the Sinauli site is actually the first wave of Aryan immigrants into India and concludes they were already in India by 1900 BC.
Part – 2
A western Indologist puts the “cart before the horse”
Just so to make it clear again, no Indian archaeologist (including the Sinauli team) have reached these conclusions.
First of all, the claim that the supposed “Aryan migration” took place 400 years earlier than the mainstream AIT/AMT date (1500 BCE) is in itself a significant assertion. I have seen other AIT/AMT campers make the plaintive cry that a window shift of four hundred years is not that relevant. I disagree. That interval of time is a significant period in the archaeological time-scale, in human development. In that mere span of four hundred years, cultures rise and fall. Material innovations happen that can totally transform a landscape. The European colonial transformation of India lasted less than 400 years. The Greek interaction with Classical India lasted a little over 300 years. The whole OCP material culture adjacent to Late Harappan in northern India lasted only 500 years. Parpola’s window shifts are highly irregular and stem from a different reason. We will come to this again a little later. For the moment, we will move to the Daimabad bronzes.
The Daimabad bronzes were discovered on the edge of the Deccan plateau in Maharashtra. It is conjectured that they might belong to the Late Harappan (1800 BCE onwards). The real focus of this article is on the engineering approaches to the chassis used in the Daimabad bronze and the SInauli chariots. First of all, the Daimabad bronze is a miniature of a real ox cart. Assuming that the modeller built it realistically to scale (after all, miniatures sometimes leave out details for the purpose of craft simplification), then the first thing one notices is that an X type chassis is used. The yoking power of the draught animals are transferred horizontally to the wheels and also transversely to the top via the X structure – perhaps to maintain structural rigidity of the yoke and provide an additional anchoring point for load transmission. This is what is called a semi monocoque structure. Where the superstructure of the vehicle also bears a part of the transmitted loads from the vehicle to the ground.
The Sinauli chariot on the other hand is not a semi-monocoque structure. It is a body-on-frame construction. There are no load bearing members from the yoke to the superstructure. This design will perhaps increase the weight of the frame but easier to build. Automobile makers have also progressed along the same technology roadmap – first, body on frame – then, monocoque. One can see a typical progression from Indian makers as well – Tata and Mahindra motors initially built body on frame chassis (Safari, Bolero etc) before proceeding on to monocoque designs (XUV500, Harrier etc). Therefore one can see that the linkage of the Sinauli chariots to the Daimabad bronzes have no basis in mechanical or engineering similarity.
Part – 3 (final)
A western Indologist puts the “cart before the horse”
Having disposed of Parpola’s ham-handed attempts at vehicle technology identification, we can proceed to the main part of his “Aryans came in 1900 BCE” conjecture. Parpola states that the earliest Indo-Aryan immigrants to India came with bull drawn carts via BMAC and were closely associated with the Copper Hoard culture. He argues, specifically, that only the second wave of Indo Aryans brought the horse and chariots with them. The second wave stemmed from the Sintashta culture while the first wave (without horses) were from the BMAC. He also states that these cart-riding Aryans were pre-Rgvedic. The contributors to Rgveda divinities (including the Ashvins) are supposed to be the second wave Indo-Aryans.
If we read the sub-text correctly, Parpola is stressing that the first wave of Indo-Aryans who came to India did not have the horse, either as a draught animal or as a divinity. If there was ever a volte-face, this is it. It really is – apparently Parpola has dropped the centrality of the horse to the Indo-Aryan expansion into India!!
Many of Parpola’s claims do not hold up to scrutiny. As Allchin and Allchin remarked in the 1980s, the Indian archaeological record is ominously “silent” about migrations in the second millennium BCE. Sinauli buttresses that again. No artifact at Sinauli gives us pause to reconsider.The OCP culture has been continuously attested to be autochthonous to the Indian subcontinent from quite a long time. The Sinauli necropolis fits the geography, time zone and material culture of the OCP. However this is the first time such chariots have been found in the context of OCP. Generally when a break is observed in such finds, it is quite possible that established knowledge is revisited. However the graves themselves do not exhibit a break with the OCP’s or its neighbor, Harappan burial practices.
The business of “narrative-pushing” is in full flow. The Wikipedia article on Sinauli has been sanitized – the findings of the archaeological team have been airbrushed. Instead readers are treated to Parpola’s “findings”. The principal investigators of Sinauli have put on record what they think about the site. It’s time to follow them.
Parpola’s contortions – first converting the Sinauli chariot to an ox-drawn cart and then calling it to be of Indo-Aryan provenance – is quite blatant – really putting the cart before the horse. The free-sliding (from 1500 BCE to 1900 BCE) narrative of Aryan migration into India reconfirms to us what we have known all along – AIT/AMT is not archaeologically attested and emerging evidence is pointing to another set of conclusions that is in harmony with the textual tradition of the Vedic corpus.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8_eeavqZ8V8
A real liberal
https://news.abplive.com/news/india/abp-news-c-voter-2021-opinion-poll-live-updates-kaun-banega-mukhyamantri-assembly-election-5-states-wb-election-opinion-poll-kerala-election-opinion-poll-puducherry-tamil-nadu-manipur-opinion-poll-results-stats-1439900/amp
ABP-CVoter Election 2021 Opinion Poll LIVE: People In Bengal Satisfied With Mamata, TMC To Regain Power
https://www.opindia.com/2021/01/gurnam-chaduni-khattar-govt-topple-congress-ticket/
Just pathetic
The subscription fees (for the substack) are a bit too high for Indian readers (purchasing power). Is this piece gonna be something similar to your gnxp posts after the Narasimhan et. al paper? Would love to read some excerpts.
not right now but i am talking to substack about special pricing for indians (foreign IPs?).
i feel bad about charging but it’s 7000 words and i’m taking up an editor’s time and maps and charts.
i don’t know if you will learn that much of you are a reich-lab completist but i have some cultural commentary and other things that i think ppl will enjoy
So Razib have you posted this on the sub stack yet or still waiting? Or is it an email thing?
Also will future podcasts be up on both the Patreon and sub stack or will there be separate content?
mohan, my wife didn’t like my infographic. we’re doing something better 🙂
within 6 hours 4,000 word ‘part 1’ will post.
re: podcasts. i’ve been posting a lot of them on patreon. may not do all of them but have been doing most of them. the patreon goes to subsidize browncast, but i duplicate a lot of the costs so i figure might as well (the storage and zencastr)
https://amp.scroll.in/article/984271/a-womans-account-from-1800s-reveals-the-plight-of-indian-indentured-labour-in-the-caribbean
A woman’s account from 1800s reveals the plight of Indian indentured labour in the Caribbean
I wrote about this before when I presented Irish slavery. Thousands of Irish men, women and children were sold by English as slaves in Caribbean and US.
https://www.opindia.com/2021/01/jack-ma-missing-safe-sound-laying-low-primavera-ceo/amp/
‘Jack Ma is safe and sound’, is ‘laying low’ claims founder and chairman of equity firm Primavera Capital Group
It is interesting how Sintashta appeared from nowhere in 2700BC? Did they come with Sanskrit (and Rg Veda) and how they developed this in barely 700 years? Or maybe the upper part of its stick (before 2700BC) is on some other map?
https://www.siasat.com/biden-names-indian-american-uzra-zeya-as-under-secy-at-state-dept-2069775/
Another pro separatist. Biden is gonna be bad for India
Considering that US pundits voted in a huge majority for Biden (according to some comments here) what should I know about pundits? Is there expectation that undergoing onslaught on whites (from student enrolments up to the corporate boards) would improve the relative positions of pundits?
congrats on the indian win in australia. well done!!!
Hi Razib,
I read the blog where you showed that 10-20% of SEA’s genepool was Indian and that there was an intermixing around ~1000 CE.
A few questions :
a ) Is this intermixture class stratified ? Brahmins and Royals in the region have historically claimed Indian heritage – did the upper classes intermix more with the Indians – who came mostly as traders (?).
b) What do you think caused the break in endogamy – and why was it maintained initially ? Was it the rise of Buddhism, the fall of SIndian Power in the region, instability, famine etc. ? Was the endogamy used to perpetuate a version of caste in the region ?
c) Any good places where I could read about Indians in SEA ?
Thanks.
Abuse not acceptable in any workplace: Greg Chappell’s open letter to Tim Paine
After the SCG Test, Australia Test captain Tim Paine was severely criticised for his behaviour on the field.
greg chappell has become a gentleman. as the bollywood said many years ago-” sala toh saab ban gaya….”!!!
Is that your daughter playing Bohemian Rhapsody on the intro and outro of the substack podcasts?
https://www.quora.com/q/armchairgenerals/GLOBAL-FIREPOWER-DECLARES-PAKISTAN-IN-TOP-10-LIST-OF-WORLD-MILITARY-POWERS?ch=10&share=79f0b39e&srid=u6vS8
CCP is assisting S Asian jihad gang
https://www.opindia.com/2021/01/uttar-pradesh-sex-trafficking-racket-aftab-lures-rapes-and-sells-victims-forced-conversion-to-islam/
Absolutely sickening
https://swarajyamag.com/insta/almost-60-per-cent-of-protesting-farmers-doing-open-defecation-at-protest-sites-in-delhi-survey
Munda Tati Kudiya Congressi
https://nation.com.pk/20-Jan-2021/modi-a-threat-to-peace
lmfao this reads like araingang wrote it