213 thoughts on “Open Thread – 05/22/2021 – Brown Pundits”

  1. Discussion starter for my fellow punditers

    Have we already passed Pax Americana?

    1. Have we already passed Pax Americana?

      Did we even have a Pax Americana? John Mearsheimer has forcefully argued that when the US became the sole superpower in the 1990s, it became more aggressive and unhinged when there was no counter-vailing force. People forget that sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s killed 500,000 people, and they were targeting the civilian population. To go down the list of all the crimes committed by the US empire would take us all day.

      I suppose I just reject the premise of there even being peace by the US to begin with. As for the staying power of the US, I wrote about that in the last OT. The TL;DR version is that China will likely be able to carve out a space in the ASEAN region but not much beyond it. The US has an enormous puppet network that China or any other country simply lacks. Even India is becoming more submissive to US diktat, which is the opposite of what you’d expect from a country that was supposedly rising.

      1. @principia
        First, Pax Americana in the global sense truly began with the end of the WWII (the US was always economically and militarily superior to the USSR, and Soviets knew this well), so one should take into consideration the situation of the world since 1946 rather than 1990 when assessing Pax Americana. Second, every pax is relative and is defined with respect to what came before and after (assuming there is an after). The world since 1946 is certainly considerably peaceful politically and militarily compared to the earlier part of the 20th century. This is in fact the most peaceful period of the known world history, more peaceful on a global or even Eurasian scale than even the times of Pax Romana and Pax Mongolica. The US surely has lots of things to criticize and I am no US sympathizer (I am a critic of the US on many issues in fact), but its contribution to world peace has been immensely greater than its harm to it in total.

    2. Is the idea even really a Pax Americana to begin with? We are the anchor along with the white Anglosphere and then the larger EU economies. There is a division of labor where the US spends about 2x the share of its GDP more on defense than the UK and France in this global security arrangement, but they possess enough technological competence to surge capacity effectively in anticipation of a deteriorating environment. My take is that nation-states don’t circumscribe political interest groups neatly in the west. From the distance of Asia or Africa, the US, Canada, Aus and UK are best considered one nation

  3. “Clubhouse is open on Android.”

    Not quite ready for prime time. I had to close it and restart it several times because it would just stop.

  4. The FM of Pakistan spoke frankly of the Israel lobby on US media, while being interviewed by a Jewish journalist. You might imagine how well that went down.

    He’s not wrong in his statements, but he’s acting like a bull in a China shop. Still pretty funny.

    1. That’s an incredibly low bar for anti-semitism, glad he didn’t back down.

      1. Historically the world had an incredibly low bar for what constituted fair treatment of Jews.

        1. A very specific part of the world, europe, that wasn’t tolerant of muslims either. Lord knows what they’d have made of hindus.

  7. In the thread on India’s agricultural hearths, someone mentioned the dispersal of African crops into India. This article places the dispersal’s origins in Sudan: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10061925/

    The Meroitic god Apedemak is leontocephaline and possesses four-arms, and wouldn’t be out of place in India. There’s also a relief of him as a lion-headed serpent emerging from a lotus, but that imagery far-off from the iconography of Hellenistic Egyptian deities. Still, there are tantalizing connections between the Sudan and India. Both countries are also the sites of the earliest cultivation of cotton: https://journals.openedition.org/ethnoecologie/4429

  10. Anand Sridharan, an investor at Nalanda Capital, has written a scintillating substack on the Indian vaccine makers who are quietly transforming the fight against Covid.

    https://buggyhuman.substack.com/p/makers-keepers-what-can-we-learn

    Excerpt

    We’re lucky to have Serum Institute and Bharat Biotech.
    Western vaccine triopoly retained ~90% of vaccines for home use. Outside of a few tiny countries, each slightly larger than Andheri, Big-3 made no difference to any country’s vaccination program. In no scenario could they have made a difference to India’s. Our only option in H1 of 2021 (and beyond) is to have our own Aatmanirbhar, global-scale, credible vaccine manufacturers.

    While I have always thought highly of Serum Institute, I didn’t realize how high they were in global pecking order until I studied Western peers. Serum is World’s #2 covid-vaccine producer. Serum makes as many vaccines out of Pune as Pfizer does out of its US site in Kalamazoo. Serum has achieved >2x scale of its parent AstraZeneca, while selling vaccines at half the price. That AstraZeneca is struggling to meet even a third of its commitment to EU (300M doses in H1) indicates how non-trivial Serum’s achievement is. Serum has sold >200M vaccines to India at $2/dose and will sell even more at $4/dose. Thanks to Serum, India can buy over half a billion doses at a price lower than Moderna’s material cost. Serum has exported 3x more vaccines to developing countries than Big-3 combined (>60M vs 20M). As it scales from 70M doses/month to 100M doses/month, Serum will maintain its World #2 status.

    Since I have focused on Q1, I spoke more of Serum than Bharat Biotech. However, Bharat Biotech is equally commendable. Their May production run-rate (30M/month) nearly matches AstraZeneca’s and is 3-months behind Moderna’s ramp-up. At 70M doses/month, they’ll match Moderna in a few months. That they did it without an MNC collaborator makes it even more creditable. To have two Indian companies amidst global top-5 in a highly-specialized niche is a phenomenal achievement (and blessing).

    ….This is as good as it can get, amidst a global pandemic. Thank you, Bharat Ratnas.

    @Vikram, @Bhimrao….take note.

    1. As a member of Capitalist Party of India, I have always had only admiration for these folks. I would have conferred Bharat Ratna on them.

      I am disappointed with the usual suspects: Indian people, what a bunch of pot-bellied, low-IQ retards and the Federal and State governments. Modi and his ministers abdicated responsibility, lied and expectedly shat in their pants when facing a real challenge and tens of thousands of my people are dying everyday. The pandemic has decisively proven (to me) that India will remain a shit-hole for decades to come and that hurts.

      1. LoL man – cynicism is a low risk, low budget activity. You would have expressed the same opinion if no Indian vaccines were researched and produced.

        1. Too many people are dying man, it is hard to be optimistic.

          I remember sparring with another commenter offended by me calling Poonawala a ‘dev-purush’, ‘God’ or some other honorific. I really respect and appreciate these heroes. Without them we would be Africa.

          1. don’t want to sound too glib, but a certain perspective/big picture thinking is needed if a region/people are to be sovereign. The entire Grant Trunk Road Belt seems to swing wildly and change courses just like some rivers. Change comes by incrementally, not 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Socialism/Capitalism are means not the end. People seem more wedded to Krantikari or RightWing economic ideas.

          2. @bhumiputra
            Good luck changing that mentality (which is celebrated) and good luck fending it off from taking over every other region of the country. In exchange we will learn real hindu asabiyah with mehndi covered hands and ghungat, lol

    2. Yes, barring major mutations, the fact that we have a decent pharma manufacturing industry should help us overcome the pandemic by the end of 2021. I think the point I was making was alluded to in another one of Sridharan’s posts, https://buggyhuman.substack.com/p/vaccicorns-an-improbable-rescue-mission.

      My question was why do we have not more vaccine candidates from India ? Sridharan says that there is insufficient support from the government. This is correct, but not the root cause.

      If you look at the journals where the inventors of M-RNA techniques publish (Journal of Biological Chemistry for example), you will see that publications from India are outnumbered by publications from the US by a 20 to 1 ratio. Of course, the US is much richer, but we can do better. The US simply has more manpower in this aspect than we do.

      1. There are other vaccine candidates from India. The Bharat Biotech one was just the first to get approved and pass phase 3 trials and go into production.

  11. @Razib
    Why do many Indians have very African/Black facial features?

    https://gumlet.assettype.com/nationalherald/2018-02/cf5d48db-5c8a-452c-9361-5b1062d9e41b/ayodhya-babri-masjid-ram-rath-yatra-mandir-politics-a-fixed-match-between-aimplb-and-sangh-parivar.jpg?w=1200&h=732

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/91390d2002681ddfee311e3eb377bda95bf9f70a/0_89_3500_2099/master/3500.jpg?width=1200&height=1200&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&s=2def95e0254d71717c3f562b011d18b3

    http://arjunmark.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/THE_MAN_Hardik-16-10-17_shot116178.jpg

    Has there been any recent African gene flow in India which has been overlooked?

    1. Except Afro hair, Indian populations have all range of colours, some as black as African. Actually the quesion is wrong. Africans don’t have a monopoly or copyright on skin colour or height or anything. So you have similar features in other parts of the world. Geneticist posit a type called Ancient Ancestral South Indian which is related to Andamanese and Nicobarese paleolithic tribes. These tribes have remained unmixed for 50000 years and part of the very early migrations out of Africa .This so called AASI is thought to be major component across all Indian , and Pakistani/Bangladeshi populations , more so in the south India. Google for these tribes
      having said that , some, perhaps few thousand Africans were brought to India in the last 500 years as part of Arab slave trade and they are integrated in Indian society

      1. I am talking about facial features, not skin colour. You also personally have very African features.

        1. What is the big deal about it. Different features are distributed across the world and across Africa also different features are distributed. Egyptian or Algerian have different features than Koisaan or Soth African or bantu or Nilotic. Variation and multiplicity of features across the world is the default condition and should not surprise anyone informed

  12. Time to get Curwen on BP podcast:
    Razib on Twitter:

    it’s the kali yuga and cowardice reigns supreme

    friend shall denounce friend

    child shall turn out parent

    but the day will come when the maryannu will say no more. wait for that day. for where the evil burns they shall rush, meeting the darkness with fire

    Curwen on his blog:
    https://aryaakasha.com/2021/05/22/khans-maryannu-invocation

    For context, this man is a prominent geneticist frequently commenting on matters pertaining to our field. The ‘Maryannu’ he references here are a rather intriguing group spoken of in the ancient Near East, that appear to have constituted chariot-borne warriors. Indo-European chariot-borne warriors, based around the speculated etymological link of “Maryannu” to Sanskrit मर्य [‘Marya’] – a term which connoted young men, eager for glory.

    The supposition is that, in line with very recent advancements in archaeology and archaeogenetics, the spread of these ‘Maryannu’ and their revolutionary chariot-borne warfare approach was an expansion of the Indo-Iranian, and more specifically Indo-Aryan clades coming down and heading *west* through the Near East. If you have read about the intriguing either Indo-Aryan or Sanskrit superstrate of Mitanni (an otherwise theoretically non-IE-base population that mysteriously seems to wind up with a ruling class speaking Indo-Aryan, utilizing Indo-Aryan deifics in their state religion, and employing horse-trainers that appear to have been quite directly linked to the Indo-Aryan civilization found further East … in fact with the entire confederacy built around such a corps) …

    Well, the Maryannu are those guys, we suspect.

    Khan is, of course, memeing quite hard about this. Yet all the best memes – they endure, precisely because they maintain an essence of truth.

  13. I have often mentioned how disappointed I am in Asian-American activism (or lack thereof). There are plenty of AA activists, but they tend to be involved in generic political causes. But pan-Asian activism has been too splintered and weak-sauce. Until now?

    https://twitter.com/lisahopeking/status/1395477096118554630

    A single Asian advocacy organisation raised 1 *billion* USD to raise awareness against the recent wave of hatecrimes. Their CEO is South Asian, which is a good sign (no segregation between yellow/brown folks). I hope this momentum will not fade once/when things calm down.

  16. is the new dmk govt. walking into a trap set by bjp et al, by taking on jaggi and temples issue. they had lots of work to do and this is a useless excercise.

    1. The real Dravidian party cant fight the urge of demolishing Hinduism in his backyard for long. So there is that

  17. jews are really lucky people. they have got an entire “ism” invented for those who dare to criticize them.

    i mean, if you criticize some other nation, say the british, you won’t be accused of “antibritishism” and sent on a guilt trip. nor will someone lay the blame of “antisinicism” on you for questioning china’s actions. but say one word against israel, and one will instantly be accused of antisemitism , which in turn means you will be branded a low-life racist by the liberal media, and you will not be considered fit enough to be in polite company.

    i am no holocaust denier or anything like that. i am far too well read for that kind of BS. but i do feel jews have mastered the art of playing the victim to the level of perfection.

    one would have thought that the traumatic experience of holocaust would make them more emphatic to other people’s plight. in reality it has made them exactly the opposite. they have turned into a deeply immoral and unscrupulous people.

    it is funny to see such a puny nation showing imperialistic airs. i mean, however much land they grab, they will not even become the size of an average european country like spain or france. so what is even the point of all that.

    a few extra sq miles won’t give them any security. israelis know very well that their ultimate security lies in america. but they go about pretending as if evicting more and more palestinian from their homes in jerusalem is an existential necessity. just wtf.

    .

    1. People like FM Qureshi (and most people) are coping by trying to get into Anti-semitism debate. It is not taboos against anti-semitism that is protecting Israel from Jihad.

      Regular ass-whooping does demoralize weaker adversaries, gives them more things to worry about. Look at how Indian Politicians speak so carefully about the Chinese now, not so long ago Mota Bhai was claiming Aksai Chin in the Lok Sabha. One tight slap and aukaat yaad dila di. All terrorist attacks have stopped post Balakot surgical strikes, so escalating violence does seem to work.

      Not that your (or my) opinions matter, imagine what Arabs would have done to Israelis if the tables were turned. See what Azeris did to Armenians.

      There is a massive difference in expectations from say Saudi Arabia (in Yemen) vs Israel simply because people think Israel can be forced into listening while Saudis are truly irredeemable.

      1. Israel is probably the only state in the world that is getting less and less accepted in the world as time passes by. A UN vote in 1947 mandated creation of Israel, a similar vote held today would not guarantee the same result. Israel is not the USA, it’s ability to inflict violence (usually on the hostage population within its control) does not deter its foes. That should signal that violence in of itself is useless if you cannot make your foes accept your dominance. The US is pulling a lot of strings to make Israel viable, from providing it billions of dollars in aid, bribing Arab dictators to maintain peace with Israel, or by manipulating the media narrative, to favor it and provide favorable trading links, tech sharing etc etc. Without the US, Israel would not be able to exist in peace for long unless they actually make peace with neighbors. They don’t have the ability to conquer and subjugate the entire Arab world.

        1. Like I said earlier idk the details about what is going on. I do not consider this a top-tier conflict in the league of Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan or even Libya. It is actually even less significant than Armenia or Myanmmar (in humanitarian terms). Muslim countries make noises as targeting Israel is convenient.

          I saw the Al-Aqsa police video, the police were just doing their job, they could not have been more humane. But Palestinians being Muslims tried to hoodwink the world into making it look like some terrible atrocity when it was lame compared to even Indian police lathi-charges.

          You already know it is not American bribes that stops Arab dictator, Iranian clerics or Pakistani generals from making war. It is the very real prospect of a crushing defeat or worse getting nuked. None of these guys are paragons of peace or restraint. If they had even a slight chance they would have taken it. They just know they will lose.

        2. \A UN vote in 1947 mandated creation of Israel,\
          Creation of Isreal did not come about by any UN resolutionj in 47. After WW1 , Ottomons collapsed and palestine , former province of Ottomons was put under UN mandate and the British were the administrators. The UN mandate ended in September 47 and there was vacuam of soveriegnty or jurisdiction as Arab parties rejected UN plans for partition. Palestine become No man’s land, so to say . In stepped Ben Gurion and the Jewish party who seized control when the mandate ended and proclaimed the state of Israel.
          That was quick action by Ben Gurion. Stalin thought Israel is a slap in the face of western countries, so USSR was the first country to recognise Israel. It took few years before the US warmed o Israel. Israel has deftly played international politics, not to speak of creation of a modern state. Israel has a resiliency which is not dependent upon US or other external support, not that it’s external support is about to diminish. Over years it has gained acceptance among most countries except some Muslim countries. I don’t think any non Muslim countries are yet to recognise Israel. It’s immediate bigger Arab countries Jordon, Egypt have recognised it.

    2. You have got everything backwards. There is no specific proximate relation to the property of “Jewishness” that causes the West or other entities to support them.

      Israel, Pakistan, KSA, UAE – these were all entities that were created as the West retreated from Asia. Just look at the borders of Syria-Iraq, Iraq-KSA or Israel-Egypt – straight lines. Many of these entities have no naturally occurring paradigms. Some of them have an ethnic and cultural affinity – like Israel which causes territory building.

      Now, take KSA, it shouldn’t exist. They have been existing only as a part of other empires in the last 800 years. Only with the great assistance of the British, they were able to throw off the Ottoman shackles and become an independent entity. But once they formed, they created a back-history to fill the gaps. Exactly like Israel.

      No state in the Middle East – apart from the Egyptians, Iranians or the Iraqis have any civilizational currency from the Bronze Age. They are all fiat states.

      I will give you another clue – the West never supports or subsidizes the civilization states – Iraq, Iran, Eqypt. Its only the fiat states which have deep military and economic links with the West – KSA, Israel, Jordan etc.

      1. @ugra
        I’m sure there are exceptions, and one can argue Egypt gets support or whatever, but very interesting point to explore further. What’s the initial hypothesis as to why this may be? Is it that the post-imperial west has no way of engaging meaningfully with populism? Its always fishing for an oligarchy or comprador class to work with. Its sort of why the US has never warmed up to India. Too unpredictable. Will the country even last they used to ask in the 50/60s The key people keep on changing, and they aren’t really products of *our* institutions. ect. With Pakistan you know which relationships matter. I’ve noticed in the state department circles in DC, they are always hanging around the diplomats of quasi failed states, because that’s the opportunity.

        1. @girmit

          Its mostly geopolitics that creates the value or, the lack of it, in an entity. By its very nature – a newly created state with artificial boundaries – seeks external allies to sustain its integrity. It’s vulnerability is useful in forming friendships. Therefore by creating an artifical state – you can seek to influence the newly formed elites of that group. In that sense – Israel – has a double vulnerability – new state and the elites are just one generation away from a European or a Russian ancestor.

          Talk to any Egyptian or an Iranian – the Muslim wrapper is just from yesterday’s dinner – they will exhibit modes of thinking that aren’t attuned to the exigencies of today’s politics. They were here since ages immemorial – and they aren’t easily slotted into mental pens.

          In this sense – Pakistanis and Israelis are exactly the same. Their entire philosophical sojourns extends only to existential questions. They are easily persuaded into camps (whatever they may be).

          Tolkien’s fantasy incorporates all elements of this civilizational aspect – the Elves are here since forever (I was there 3000 years ago meme), the Dwarves are invested in the loss of their historical habitat under Moria while the Orcs do not have any institutional memory. The Dwarves and Elves don’t like each other – they retain all the memories of ancient fights (territorial and kingly). They refuse to ally for any cause and go their own ways.

      2. What? Egypt, Iran (pre 1979) Turkey before Erdogan.. all are/were Western allies.

        1. @S Quereshi
          The West did try to establish relations – only the artificial states (KSA, Jordan, Israel, Pakistan) have managed to hold on and make these ties flourish. They need the West far more than the civilizational states. Survival is a powerful motivation.

          The civilization-states have retained the memory of standing on their own feet. Japan is an exception here – but Japan has been the only country to get nuked twice.

          1. I see your logic but it really does not translate to ground realities. China went full on communist wiping out its history, India is running on British political and judicial system, Egypt is a puppet dictatorship, Iraq is a foreign playground.. Only Iran seems to be really be independent of the West. This civilization-al continuity is just that: a memory.

  22. https://theprint.in/national-interest/can-2024-become-more-challenging-for-modi-yes-but-its-all-up-to-congress/662996/

    “It isn’t my case that the Congress or the Gandhi family don’t understand this. They might take the Modi-Shah BJP lightly only in the sense that they are contemptuous of them, and probably do not acknowledge why they keep winning by these humongous margins. The Congress has three key flaws in its thinking:

    – That the rise of Narendra Modi is still a passing aberration. The voters will see the light soon enough. They missed out in 2019 because of Pulwama, but now there is the pandemic and economic decline.

    – The most vulnerable aspect of the BJP — its Achilles’ Heel or, if we Indianise this by borrowing non-judgementally from the Ramayana, like Ravana’s navel — is the RSS and its ideology. An ideology is an amorphous entity. Personalities are for real. The Congress wastes its limited ammunition attacking RSS, cow-urine-dung trivia, Savarkar, Golwalkar. The BJP limits itself to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, and often says nice things about the other leaders of the Congress’ past and present.

    – The future of the Congress is now hard-Left. That’s why it allies with the Left Front and draws a blank in Bengal while fighting it in Kerala. If only it had aligned with Mamata instead, on whatever terms, it might have had a clearer pitch against the Left in Kerala, a state it could have won. And may have won at least a few seats in West Bengal. Anything would be better than zero. But this Congress, especially the younger ones, is besotted with the Communists. For evidence, watch who runs their social media operations, and how.”

    1. As the left becomes more radical, it will start to ally more and more with the most radical of islamists. The unholy alliance will manifest only deeper. India is in for a bad near future ride of communism and terrorism, as Modi’s popularity wanes with this pandemic, even given that no leader would have handled it particularly well. Hell the supposed “I love the poor” attitude of the UPA government charged that even the initial lockdowns were draconian and advocated for a lot more openess. If anything, under them this might have ended up getting even worse.

    2. modi’s pollitical demise appears premature. the bhakts are solid like indira gandhi’s voters. they will not flinch. others will be persuded by the following:
      1. pappu as an alternate will be disastrous.
      2. no tax increase in the next budget, effective reductions in the last two budgets.
      3. push on infra, including piped water etc. in addition massive house building can be started as trc did in telengana.
      4. more direct cash transfers, especially in the last year.
      5. ofcourse, ram mandir will be substantially completed, but will be kept in the back ground. not sure of kashmir, caa, nrc etc.

  23. https://youtu.be/_1Cy8OFDPc0

    The central assertion of this video is that Israel doesn’t need the US anymore (at least not to the extent that a lot of anti-Israel people think). The US military aid mainly goes to defensive stuff like Iron Dome and without such things Israel would be a lot more brutal as there would be more civilian deaths on their side. He also says that the current situation will persist until there is a global confict, when the Palestinians would be genocided under its cover.

  29. Modi’s net approval rating (red line at the top):

    https://morningconsult.com/form/global-leader-approval/

    Even during the depths of the pandemic, it is still overwhelmingly positive as of writing. Once India moves out of crisis, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t get back partially – if not fully – to where he was before. Modi has almost North Korea-tier adulation, except he doesn’t have to use the military or police to enforce his popularity. Anyone thinking Modi is toast is either a political operative or deluding themselves on wishful thinking.

    To me, Modi’s third term is basically a shoe-in. The real question is what comes next, as he is getting older and older. He has been very successful at eliminating potential rivals. The only real charismatic potential replacement in the BJP I see is Yogi, but he isn’t as suave among elites as Modi (who got good at it early in Gujarat). Yogi would also elicit a hugely negative pushback from the US, which influences India’s anglophone elites very substantially, much more so than it influences China’s elites or even Vietnam’s. Does that matter? I don’t know.

    1. if he wins the third term, he will govern for 2 years and then leave citing the 75 year bar.

    1. @Roy

      Question naturally arises why West Bengal does poorly inside India despite many decades of hyper-secular rule? Also, Bangladesh has seen a recent revival in religious fervor (though still much less intense than in Pakistan). But yes, with those quibbles aside, I agree that secularism and cultural moderation are essential ingredients to development. The true outlier was probably the USA in the early and mid-1900s, where the population was truly pious yet rich. Nevertheless, religion was never allowed to influence the political system even during Reagan.

      1. It’s not really clear that Bangladesh is doing better than India. Nominal GDP does not measure wealth in any meaningful way if the exchange rate is not determined by the market forces. Bangladesh imposes huge taxes on imported consumer goods to control the trade deficit, and this makes the economy look much bigger than what it is when measured in terms of nominal dollars. If you look at the PPP figures, per capita income of Bangladesh is still marginally below West Bengal and 20 percent below India.

    2. “Is secular nationalism more conducive to economic development than religious nationallism?”

      For the first 5 decades Pakistan beat India in per capita income

      1. People are arguing between whose more successful.. 2200, 1900 or 1500 while the world is more like 8000-10000-15000.. and the developed world is 40,000 or 50,000.

        This is like 3 retards stuck in a wheelchair arguing who is faster, while all our peers in Asia have left us far behind.

        2. I agree somewhat. The current flavor (retard stuck in a wheelchair) of the town is now Bangladesh, which would have posted similar performance under a Khalida Zia regime. Maharastra has been India’s no1 economic state under a left wing Congress regime for long. Gujrat under Modi performed similar to how it used to during Congress regimes.

          This whole idea of secular regimes being better is just hogwash.

        3. Agree with Qureshi. We’re theorizing too much over minute differences.

          The GDP/capita of Goa, the richest administrative zone in the subcontinent, is $7k which is less than the GDP/capita of the whole of China.

          1. Goa was not part of British India. It makes sense to compare the economic performance of the three successor states of British India. They started with similar socioeconomic conditions. More insights can be gained by analyzing the economic failures of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh than comparing India with China or South Korea which is tendency among Indian economists.

          2. How about two successor cousins of British India? East and West Bengal.

            West Bengal started as the economic power house and has been ruled by 3 secular parties for the last 70 years. East started as an economic laggard under Islamist rule till 70s and then 80s to mid 2000s under either Islamist dictatorship or Islamist parties.

            Would you like to compare the economic development of these two regions? I think not….

          3. You are right on a global stage all the south Asian countries are considered shitholes.

            But the poorest large states in India like Bihar have higher HDI than Pakistani portion of the Punjab (which is the highest HDI large region in Pakistan).

            Meanwhile Sri Lanka has higher HDI than almost all Indian states.

            I consider Sri Lanka to be quite undeveloped as well.

            But there are levels of shitholeness.

            (Source for sun national HDI numbers https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/shdi/)

        4. Using per capita income to judge disparate countries (size, political systems, multi-ethnic) is totally the rookie way to go.

          Bangladesh can do diddly squat other than produce banians and pantyhose. If Mr. Roy thinks that is the mark of greatness, then let him be. Also other people like Qureishi – stop acting like everyone is in the same bucket – I know it helps to cope.
          I have posted it before – the real way is to look at economic complexity ECI.

          India – ranked 42 (ECI 0.54)
          Bangladesh – ranked 108 (ECI -0.88)
          Pakistan – ranked 99 (ECI -0.68)
          Sri Lanka – ranked 78 (ECI -0.36)
          Iran – ranked 101 (ECI -0.71)
          Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, Burma – not even ranked.

          You can see the difference in every facet of life – countries with supposedly higher HDI/per capita income – cannot produce a Corona vaccine, create a GPS satellite constellation or produce autopilot software.

          1. //countries with supposedly higher HDI/per capita income – cannot produce a Corona vaccine//

            …and yet we have countries that can produce corona vaccine and still have people dying on the streets everywhere in such huge numbers than they cannot even be cremated.

            so ”stop acting like everyone is in the same bucket – I know it helps to cope”

            You have a humanitarian distaster on hand, the worst in the world by far.. and you are claiming some sort of upper ground on that

          2. Don’t teach ideological people, they will come up with “rhetoric and feelings”. I have tried that and all I got in response is ” you have no soul”. I am the Dark Lord now! Be that as it may, adding to your point, Bangladesh will go stagnant in few years when the market goes saturated and production stagnates, Bangladesh has no hedges in place and investment options like engineering goods etc which will make their income stagnated and no job prospects to improve income in future will produce social tensions and obviously communal rifts among the people which will result in another border crisis for India. Indians being stupid don’t do enough reading and Pakis don’t understand anything that is written from left to right comment and virtue signal on it.

          3. @ S Qureishi

            So your entire argument about economic comparison suddenly shifted to pandemic handling? 🙂 Well, I have news for you…..Somalia has a lower Corona fatality rate than India, so Somalia has the better economy, right? Qureishi, step up and claim your Economics Nobel!

          4. When @S Qureshi compares India with other SA countries, he does not take size into account. There are 2 Indias: One in gangetic plains — with per capita of $700 -800 — where 40-50% of India lives and remaining living in other parts whose per capita is around $4000-5000 and many times larger in size than Gangetic plains. The average becomes $2000.
            Not all of South Asia is as shitty as Pakistan and Bangaldesh you know to the dismay of muppets.

          5. If you consider half your country even shittier than the neighboring ‘enemy’ countries ”because GDP”, that’s just a sad state of affairs. LOL Who knew increasing female participation rate in formal economy increases the size of formal economy (a.k.a. GDP)? Your $4000 is pretty “shitty” too and nothing to brag about when rest of the world is way ahead.

  36. Is it just me or do you guys also see that (rich) Indians seem to have skipped Sedans and are moving from Hatchbacks to Crossovers. So many puny ‘SUVs’ on Indian highways, where are the City, Corollas and Accords? I can think of:
    1) Bad roads so high ground clearance.
    2) Usual big SUV arms race for crash safety.

    Because the entry level Maruti cars are so tiny, the miniature SUVs of India are actually the actual viable entry level cars. But still why not sedans? They handle better, are ‘cars’, save fuel. Or maybe the answer is that Indian crossovers are actually just fancy hatchbacks that rank below proper sedans. idk but too many Harriers, Cretas and S-cross on roads these days.

    Also, Mahindra’s automototive designs suck.

    1. @bhimrao,
      unfortunately our capitalists are also of the nakli or crony variety as are our socialists. our tatas/mahindras are at best good for repackaging foreign tech with “desi” stamp. Compare that koreans/japanese companies which used market protection and subsidies to capture eu and na markets.

      1. I liked Tata Nexon and Harrier. Looked like well built cars, nothing like the Safari and Indigo of old.

        What do you think about the Indian EV scene? Any chance for having our own Rivian, Xpeng, or Canoo? or will we have to make peace with secondshaadi.com founder/wannabe gurus (just joking I respect Warikoo) while the rest get their Zuckerberg and Jack Ma?

        ####

        Random musings:
        1) So a residential land holding of my family has been disputed by a land-grab mafia run by the son of our local BJP Member of Parliament. My family was a ‘soft’ target with the sons and sons-in-law not living locally and minimal (immediate) muscle power. They have faked land records and on enquiring with the lekhpal (who is involved with the mafia) we were told that despite tall claims about geo-tagging and digitization of land records the Indian government happily makes two registries for the same plot of land. Now, in the best case scenario if the MP sees we are no pushovers we will have to pay the mafia somewhere around 5 Lakh INR as compensation for his ‘troubles’ and he will withdraw, in worst case there will be a court case that runs for 30 years, where the judges, lekhpal and all kinds of government ‘servants’ will have to tipped. In the worst of worst and highly unlikely scenario there could be bloodshed. Preliminary negotiations show that we will have to pay the BJP ahem ‘social workers’. This is why there will always be caste politics and we will always vote SP.

        2) Something I have also been thinking about are the endless grocery stores in India. What a waste of time and effort ! Just like the one and a quarter of an acre farms.

        3) Someone explained to me that Gujjus and Marathi export-import company people from 1980’s-1990’s onwards had figured out what amateurs like me still don’t see – that making stuff, managing industry is a big hassle especially in a place like India where everyone- the bank, politician, labor union, bureaucrat, police… is after your pocket, where utilities, land and infrastructure are non existent and the workforce is neither trained nor talented or motivated. Building stuff is somehow looked down in UP+Bihar… We can retrofit explanations like legacy of foreign rule turning us into clerks in India aspiring at best to be code-monkey or doctors in the US.

        1. My family was a ‘soft’ target with the sons and sons-in-law not living locally and minimal (immediate) muscle power. They have faked land records and on enquiring with the lekhpal (who is involved with the mafia) we were told that despite tall claims about geo-tagging and digitization of land records the Indian government happily makes two registries for the same plot of land.

          Now, in the best case scenario if the MP sees we are no pushovers we will have to pay the mafia somewhere around 5 Lakh INR as compensation for his ‘troubles’ and he will withdraw, in worst case there will be a court case that runs for 30 years, where the judges, lekhpal and all kinds of government ‘servants’ will have to tipped. In the worst of worst and highly unlikely scenario there could be bloodshed. Preliminary negotiations show that we will have to pay the BJP ahem ‘social workers’. This is why there will always be caste politics and we will always vote SP.

          Reminds me of the old quote that “Indians don’t cast their vote but vote their caste”. I hope your family’s troubles get sorted out. Obviously even paying a bribe is outrageous for what is clearly a shakedown and blackmail attempt.

          1. That is life in India. How do you think are the election rallies funded by 2-5 solid candidates in each constituency? There are no industries or big farms here, trade is in commodities, and salaried people don’t do politics. Everyone knows and accepts that the money comes from contractors and mafias.

            To me Country>>>…>>>caste, therefore I keep harping against caste based reservation.

            But in my heart I know being the losers we are, without elections(democracy) and reservations(casteism) Republic of India will cease to exist.

        2. Similar ” Social Workers” are also doing excellent community service in our ancestral village. And caste politics is not a bad thing till it asks for violence! We all know there is a religious group pan India which votes in “bloc” with 90+ % voting on the day for a “particular” party. The only problem I have with caste politics is that division of votes happen and the “bloc”becomes the winner.

        3. @bhimrao,
          Dont know the specifics of those 2 tata models. But too little and too late in my view and most likely rub-off from the JLR acquisition. Every time I read “salt to software” conglomerate I roll over my eyes. In my view, India has adequate surplus and problem lies with elites. They just want to be local franchisee holders of some or the other super power. Not to say that masses are without blame.

          I hope/think/wish that Indians like us realize that escape is no more an option with wokeness being used to drive away asians+indians from west. Hope things work out for your family re the land issue.

          1. “I hope/think/wish that Indians like us realize that escape is no more an option with wokeness being used to drive away asians+indians from west.”

            I think there is a even bigger wave of Indian emigrants coming, much larger than the one US has seen since early 2000s, I do not see this trend reversing. India doesn’t offer the same quality of life or company of gora people.

            “Hope things work out for your family re the land issue.”

            Like I said we are no pushovers.

  37. 1. is trump already looking better for americans?
    2. can china be nailed for covid?

  39. Arvind Panagariya has a lot of interesting things to say about Indian cars in his latest book. He contrasts India’s relative success in the auto parts sector with its dismal failure to create any global brands. In his view, it ultimately comes down to huge tariff barriers which impedes competition and essentially ensures a captive market for Indian carmakers which allows them to barely innovate and still get decent sales numbers.

    By contrast, there are much lower tariffs on auto parts imports, which has forced the Indian ecosystem to be much more competitive and also gained a significant export share for some of these companies. Panagariya is a dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal, so his tonic would be wholesale liberalisation. But the South Korean experience showed that protective barriers can work to nourish “infant industries”. The problem for India is that these are no longer infants but overgrown adults in diapers. Another distinction is that the Koreans were very adamant about tying import barriers to export performance. If a firm wasn’t exporting, it ceased to get support. That is obviously not the case in India, where there is a cosy relationship between the car makers and the government of the day to continue to the status quo.

    1. Your assessment of Panagriya’s view reflects my assessment. I would add one point. When the taxation of particular good is alter to provide it benefit relative to “global” competition, the government forgets that the same altered tax produces unstable taxation which encourages production and consumption of that particular good which in medium term degrades the economy and leads to further job losses. So far as I can tell, no “Indian” economist of fame has written a good book on Indian taxation and it’s problems comprehensively. Some have produced good work but they are incompatible when taken at fiscal policy level. GST is a monumental failure as implemented by this government which is supposed to improve tax collections. For ex:- the automobile entire supply chain when assessed proves beneficial ONLY to the assembly company but manufacturers of components are going bonkers because stupid 4 slab has put them in positive input tax credit nowhere to be utilised. Most of these components manufacturers are SMEs. Since these industries have very low margins they have increased rate to compensate the tax credit which ultimately led to increase in auto components imports. AtmaNirbhar bharat my ass!

    1. Pakistanis are talented and creative at extracting money, in a petty, dodgy sort of way. Let us wait and see what becomes of China or what China makes of Pakistan.

      I am sure some PhD in made-up-economics would be behind this BS at WB/IMF, but still free money is free money.

  44. @thewarlock, @IsThisReal

    Since the discussion thread on “Steppe vs. AASI dick measuring” (see the comments following Razib’s archived “Lakshmi” post, May 16, 2021) ended with the nice compliment “Francesco is a moron”, let me use this Open Thread to show you how my contentions in that discussion are even supported by a five centuries-old, Kāmasūtra-based Indian text and a medical report dating from the close of the nineteenth century.

    From the Anaṅga Raṅga, an Indian sex manual written by Kalyāna Malla in the 15th or 16th century, translated by Sir Richard F. Burton (1885) at https://www.sacred-texts.com/sex/ar/ar05.htm :

    1) śaśa, or the hare-man, “is known by a liṅga which in erection does not exceed 6 [aṅgulas], or about 3 inches;”
    2) vṛṣabha, or the bull-man, “is known by a liṅga of 9 [aṅgulas] in length, or 4.5 inches;”
    3) aśva, or the horse-man, “is known by a liṅga of 12 [aṅgulas], or about 6 inches long.”

    An aṅgula (see at https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/angula ) is an ancient Indian unit of measurement defined as being “equal to a finger’s breadth.” Although its conversion to inches is somewhat problematic, two of the most often cited conversions proposed by scholars are the following:

    Stuart Piggott: 1 aṅgula = 0.5 inches (coinciding with the measurement proposed by Burton, see above)

    Axel Michaels: 1 aṅgula = 0.63 inches

    Thus, the “horse-man” penile length (the top one known in India according to the Anaṅga Raṅga) is remarkable only if one takes Michaels’ measurement of the aṅgula as the basis; it is NOT AT ALL remarkable (in worldwide standards) if one takes Piggott’s and Burton’s measurements as the basis.

    Moreover, I found the following medical observations in an old anthropological/sexological book written by a surgeon who was undoubtedly a thorough racist, but whose penis measurements on Indian patients, which he compares with those described in the Anaṅga Raṅga (see above), I have no reason to doubt (N:B: He also “measured” Arabs, Blacks, etc. with very different results). Here it is:

    “Dr. Jacobus X” (pseudonym of a retired French army surgeon), Untrodden Fields of Anthropology (Paris 1898) at https://archive.org/details/b20417238/page/282/mode/2up :

    “The average size [of the penis of Hindu men in Guyana] appeared to me to be about 5 inches long […]. Many are from 3.5 to 4 inches […]. Few are from 5.5 to 6 inches, which is nearly the European average, and which here appears to be the maximum. […] The result of my personal observations is, that the great bulk of the Hindoo coolies may be classed as ‘men-hares’, only a small number are ‘men-bulls’, and a smaller number still ‘men-stallions’.”

    Again, the maximum penile length of the Indians as recorded by “Dr. Jacobus X” coincides with that inferred for the Anaṅga Raṅga’s “horse-man” by Burton (see above).

    1. Show me a quality peer reviewed study from the modern literature. Citing old racist anthropology texts is dumb. Don’t waste my time.

      I cited the highest standard of data. You have no good response. You cited trash much like yourself. Good job. Your confirmation bias shows over and over. I am done addressing you and your penile obsession. You are grasping on straws, as expected.

      1. warlock

        The nature study you quoted is not drawn from the general population, it is drawn from participants who were actively sought sexual dysfunction treatment.. so that’s a big qualifier.. besides, average of 13 cm is nothing to brag about, it’s 5 inches erect. Since Kerala is one of the tallest states in India and penile length positively correlates with height, you can plausibly assume most other states don’t even hit the 5 inch mark when it comes to ‘dick measuring’.

        I’m all for equality of human race and what not but refusing to accept biological diversity in different groups of people is just some leftist bullshit.

        1. @Q
          “The nature study you quoted is not drawn from the general population, it is drawn from participants who were actively sought sexual dysfunction treatment.. so that’s a big qualifier.. ”

          I am not really sure what your argument is here. If anything, the erections might be weaker and this could be underestimate.

          https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19453888/#:~:text=There%20were%20significant%20positive%20correlations,(11.2%20%2B%2F%2D%201.5%20cm).

          “The average of fully stretched penile length in normal potent men is 12.9 cm, whereas the patients with ED tend to have significantly shorter penises (11.2 +/- 1.5 cm).”

          Here is what the data show ^. Impotent men had lower on average fully stretched penis length. And fully stretched penis length is correlated w/ erect length. So selecting this population actually might be low balling things.

          “besides, average of 13 cm is nothing to brag about, it’s 5 inches erect.”

          Indian penis size is slightly more, though not significantly so in the US study cited and significantly more than the Jordanian study mean. The Israeli average was only .5 cm more but significant. What exactly is your conclusion here? The US is a developed nation, yet averages range from 5.1-5.4in in most studies, with most around a 5.25inches. This one had these keralite men at a mean of 5.15 inches, so even if you compare to a broader number, this is well within regular range. Also, most US literature is heavily biased towards white male overrepresentation in the study.

          No one is arguing Indians have huge penises. That was never the contention. The contention is that there is a lot of biased nonsense that circulates around.

          The contention specifically by Franciso was that I am displaying some sort of “penis envy” about the fact that steppe men had bigger dicks supposedly. He provides 0 evidence for this. He has no hard evidence that AASI makes penises smaller. You have to have actual data. Also IVC people ranged 0-50% AASI and were 50% mesolithic iran HG related. That latter aspect is actually a greater portion of Indian ancestry in most than even AASI is. Regardless, absolutely none of this is taken into account. He than makes conflation of steppe ancestry back than with modern day Eastern Euro one. He provides no strong evidence in either direction.

          “Since Kerala is one of the tallest states in India and penile length positively correlates with height, you can plausibly assume most other states don’t even hit the 5 inch mark when it comes to ‘dick measuring’.”

          Here is the contention again that is quite flawed. First of all, penis length and height correlation intrapopulation has not been proven. Within the same population, there is a correlation but it is weak. Look up the nature study in turkish populations. They legit say “weak” correlation in the abstract.

          And Kerela is one of the tallest states because it is well fed. It is almost among the more AASI ones. Punjab is similar average height and one of the more steppe ones. Nutrition is correlated with height. These places don’t even have optimal nutrition compared to the West. So even if we bought into your height penis length correlation paradigm as perfectly applicable, if anything, penis sizes are underestimated in S Asia. Do we have data that the non -steppe people had worse nutrition than the steppe ones?

          Finally, Franciso’s contention is that AASI women were pleasured by larger Steppe penises. Do we know the nutritional status of both groups. Do we know which ones have larger penises? Actually looking at the data we have, we can’t conclude that. The data actually show an AASI heavy population, something you can really stretch as a very loose proxy for the “natives.” and a Euro heavy proxy like most American samples, something you use as an ultra loose proxy for “steppe,” are doing quite similarly, despite worse nutrition in the prior. In the end, the conclusion drawn does not support Franciso’s wacky hypothesis, even with the quite limited data we have.

          I know he bragged earlier about looking up Eastern Euro and Andamese dick pics and then went to old racist anthro journals, but despite all of his weird racial fetishes and fascination with looking at penises, the data just don’t support his point.
          “I’m all for equality of human race and what not but refusing to accept biological diversity in different groups of people is just some leftist bullshit.”

          I accept biological diversity. When there are facts stating that blacks have more ACTN homozygosity and that is linked positively with sprinting performance because of fast twitch fiber performance downstream effect, I accept it because there is hard data on it. Just like there is hard data on Dutch men or men from the dinaric alps being the tallest.

          When there is no data about something and it is all just nonsensical suppositions based on various confirmation biases of what the person wants reality to be rather than what any evidence shows, one cannot make the types of conclusions Franciso is making. It is clear that he starts with a premise and then goes about finding anything and everything that backs up, regardless of bias, methodology, quality, or applicability of the source.

          Do not straw man. I do not doubt biological diversity for physical traits between groups. But there has to be clear evidence for it. If anything, the only good data we have points against the assumptions that Franciso has. There is no “leftist BS” present here. If anything, your logical fallacy is the closest to it.

    2. Even if we were to look into your trash cited source,

      The guy looked at mens genital length and guessed. He straight up admits it. He had no sample size. No methodology. Nothing. He just says this stuff off of observation. How many did he see? How did he measure them? All of this is unanswered. He also makes some weird claims like Indian men are very hard with their erections but black men have weaker ones. Did you see that part on the next page? The guy is making all sorts of nonsensical claims.

      Also, you didn’t get that penis length stuff from an independent source for the ancient indian text. The measurements are given in finger dimensions not inches. And the racist author you cited extrapolates based on finger dimensions he doesn’t even measure but estimates and only extrapolates.

    3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32666897/

      ^Even a study on misconceptions of penis size average in the West. Looks like they have the same misconceptions of an average of 5.5-6inches in the West, with most studies showing averages in 5.1-5.5 inch range. The same nonsense you pushed. Data doesn’t show that. All the conclusions keep showing over and over again is that you are full of nonsense.

      You don’t know how to read modern scientific literature. You stick to what every quality dribble supports your confirmation biases you are a clown of the highest order.

      “belief is due, in part, to several often-cited studies that relied on self-reported measurements, with means of about 6.2 inches (15.75 cm) for heterosexual men and even greater for gay men. These studies suffered from both volunteer bias and social desirability bias. In this review, the combined mean for 10 studies in which researchers took measurements of erect penises was 5.36 inches (13.61 cm; n = 1,629). For 21 studies in which researchers measured stretched penises, the mean was approximately 5.11 inches (12.98 cm; n = 13,719).”

      I use real data to back up my conclusions. No racialist 18th century hate novels.

      1. LOL warlock,

        You are being completely dishonest here when you quote that British study about 15000 participants..

        The stretched length has n = 14 160, with a mean of 13.24  cm. (even greater than the erect length). The erect length has only n=691

        And if you compare the stretched length with the Kerala study – that one showed 10.88cm for India.

        The stretched length is actually a better indication of maximum penis size because not all erections are full erections.

        You copy pasting whatever study you find on google and cherry picking data that confirms your POV does not help. There is a serious lack of data on ”erect penis size” because its hard to measure and there are simply not enough studies to provide data because this could race controversies.

        The whole discussion is stupid, but obviously you give in to the race baiting because you feel this is some point of insecurity. Why do such race remarks not work the other way round and don’t have the desired effect? You know the answer.

        1. We discussed mean erect length data. The methodology for that is reported throughout. It is clear that by that data the kerela data is not statistically significantly different from the mean length in the UK and US studies cited. I cited multiple data sets. You cannot refute that. There is plenty of literature on mean erect length. I just cited a fraction of it.

          “Stretched penis data is more accurate.” You have 0 basis for the statement that is true about anything. There is correlation between stretched length and erectile length in some groups. That is all. And if you actually sat at read the methodology of most of these studies, they throughout the data points for the men who could not obtain proper erections. So your whole “not full erection” point is a non sequitur. You are the one who is cherry picking.

          Just because you cannot fathom the thought of a group having similar mean erect penis length as another because you want to validate points in another direction, does not mean it makes your reality true.

          I give evidence from modern studies for my perspective. Peer reviewed ones with methodology clearly stated.

          I am refuting the nonsensical claims that I see all over the place. That is all I am doing. I am not baited by anything other than setting the record straight and showing what conclusions actually have evidence. All of the nonsensical race stuff, including the racial looks hierarchies you pedal, fall into the same camp.

          If you want to believe that Indians have small dicks, in terms of mean erect length, compared to other groups, despite the actual published data showing the contrary, go right ahead. That’s on you.

    4. There is no way an angula is half an inch. 2/3-3/4th of an inch (or 17-19 mm) is consistent across ancient cultures for digit measurements (and my own finger width is ~0.75 inches).

      You could argue that Indians had much smaller fingers than literally every other civilization, but we also know that forearm length hasti was 24 angula (same as pretty much every other civilization), so a value of 0.5 inches for the angula would have required Indians to be dwarves (and magically grown by the time the British and Dutch came along and could observe that the hasti was normal sized at 42-47 cm across India and Indonesia: https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_zkErAAAAYAAJ/page/n25/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_zkErAAAAYAAJ/page/n27/mode/2up).

  45. Since Twitter’s local HQ was raided a few days ago in India, Koo is now raising $30 million.
    https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/koo-app-fundraise-tiger-global-twitter-social-media-it-rules-7330989/

    Indian nationalists feel that Twitter is putting its thumbs on the scale to favour the liberal forces. I don’t think they are wrong. But Modi thus far has shown little spine in taking on the US hegemonic outposts, of which Twitter is one. Most of what he’s done is theatrics, at least so far.

    1. It wasn’t even a raid. And the biggest beneficiary of twitter is “the bearded man” himself. He will not do anything to Twitter. As you pointed out, it’s all theatrics. “The bearded man” cares more about the white man’s validation than the leftists in India. Nationalists are furious at ” the Grand old man” for being full on Jaina muni when Bengal happened, Delhi riots happened and now corona 2nd wave.

  46. On dead bodies in Ganga,
    1) It is nothing new, obviously a lot of people are dying but the water burial happen all the time, it is not due to poverty.
    2) Many Hindus do not cremate their dead. There is a prominent Thakur family that I know who do not cremate their dead but do some nominal ritual with a burning cow dung cake and then dispose(?) off the body in Ganga.
    3) The most common variation is that the dead bodies of children are always buried instead of cremated, in the case of the bodies in shallow sand graves along Ganga in Prayagraj there is a regional practice there that involves burying in case of untimely death, also in case of death due to leprosy there is burial not cremation irrespective of caste or standing.
    4) The only variation I have personally seen is burning with cow dung cakes instead of wood. It takes forever (approximately 6+ hours compared to 2-3 hours with dry Mango wood) to do it and is popular around Jhansi. The reasoning given for the origin of this tradition is the lack of good wood as the region mostly has Babool trees and people believe that cremating with Babool condemns the soul to become a prait(ghost?).

  47. @S Qureishi, @thewarlock

    Thank you, Qureishi, for understanding what I am pointing out – kind of a “Sad Truth” if you want to call it so.

    I see nobody has picked up on my quote from the Anaṅga Raṅga, which is, after all, an important indigenous treatise about love & sex in the marriage relation elaborating on the Kāmasūtra attributed to Vātsyāyana (composed one thousand years before it), and cannot certainly be accused of “racist Western bias” – as if the racist French surgeon styling himself as “Jacobus X”, who measured the penile size of many Indians, Arabs, Black Africans, etc. in the late-nineteenth century, were to be accused of delighting, for unknown reasons, in deliberately lying to his Western readers about the smaller size of the average Indian erect penis compared to that of the average European, Arab, and Black African erect penises respectively. Does thewarlock interpret this as “racist anti-Indian bias”? Why did “Jacobus X” not show the same bias toward the Arabs and Black Africans, whom he despises and insults in his book far more than the Indians? I think that even a racist colonial doctor could measure penises scientifically without any bias. But evidently someone here interprets this “Sad Truth” as “Hindu-baiting”, à la Sangh Parivar! Has nowadays dick size become a matter of “national pride” versus “national shame” in Bhārata, and is any attempt to point out this obvious kind of genetic diversity between Indians and Europeans doomed to be declared a threat to national self-esteem? (N.B. Mind that there are some “Pakistani enemies” – or perhaps Indian Muslims, I don’t know – who are currently mocking Hindus on the Internet because of the latter’s “chota Arya-linga”, or perceived one! See, e.g., at https://www.urbandictionary.com/author.php?author=Moollah_Do_Pyaza .)

    You are right, Qureishi: average of 13 cm as recorded in the 2007 Kerala medical study idolized by thewarlock is nothing to brag about! That’s why I have tried to understand, out of scientific and personal curiosity, what the Kāmasūtra’s classical distinction between “hare-dick”, “bull-dick”, and “horse-dick” really means in comparative terms. The Kāmasūtra does unfortunately not provide any dick measurements, but the much later Anaṅga Raṅga by Kalyāna Malla does and, as I have mentioned in my earlier comment in this Open Thread, it states that the topmost Indian liṅga (the “horse-dick”) measures 12 aṅgulas, or about 6 inches according to its translator Sir Richard Burton. In worldwide standards, that’s really not much to brag about as if it were a “giant dick”, believe me… It would do better if an aṅgula corresponded to 1.6 cm as proposed by other scolars… But that question has not been settled… yet.

    1. Show actual scientific literature. There are no methodologies or sample sizes. There is no peer review. Am I supposed to just trust the word of some racist dude from the 18th century who is ranting about what he perceives to be dick size differences based on his inspection of random people? Just listen to yourself dude.

      You are the one fishing for random shit from even the most pathetic of sources to back up your view point. Seriously man, man I am still questioning your fascination with old racist texts, indian sex manuals, and searching for a posting andamese dick pics. You have a real penchant for the latter.

    1. Honestly, all I am doing is addressing the weird lies that Francisco comes up with and the odd bandwagoning Qureshi does about any intraracial discussions, probably stemming from his annoyance that I thoroughly steamrolled him in his weird “objective racial looks” hierarchy discussion, but again that’s just a theory.

      I’m not the one posting racist anthropology texts and making weird extrapolations from ancient Indian sex manuals. And I sure as hell am not the one bragging about going through eastern euro and andamaese dick pics and then posting 5 of the latter.

  52. @S Qureishi
    I don’t consider Pakistan and certainly not Bangladesh as enemy countries. The people there are simply misguided and follow a false, violent cult. Even your ancestors were most likely Buddhists (all Central Asia practically was). You are just a victim; and I can understand your schizophrenia. Don’t worry you or your descendants will be saved one day from eternal damnation.

    Also, it would surprise you: The person who died from covid that made me angry against Modi government was a Muslim. And I regularly criticise Modi Govt. as I want India to develop and not BJP to develop but as a reward for its performance.

    PS: I am from Gangetic Plains. But calling spade a spade is necessary.

    1. fulto

      Central Asians adopting ‘foreign’ Buddhism is not schizophrenia but South Asians adopting ‘foreign’ Islam is? I think if you thinking you and your ancestors follow ”local” religion, at least come up with a local name for it first. Majority of the people don’t even know the first name of their ancestor three generations ago (hell even I dont know and my family has a Shajra going back to the 13th century). Yet they somehow care so much about them or their beliefs. If your ancestor believed the earth is placed between the horns of a cow, will you believe it too? Now that would be schizophrenic.

      1. Is their evidence that Afghans and other Central Asians were converted to Buddhism by force?

        I was looking at the automobile industry in Pakistan, some thoughts:

        1) Why is stuff so costly? and here I thought cars were costly in India compared to the US. Pakistan is on a different level.

        2) The 2-wheelers look so disappointing, we had better stuff 15 years ago.
        3) Lots of assemblers, which is not too bad but these lazy people will never let local manufacturing industry flourish. The two tractor companies (Millat and Al Ghazi) look decent.

        Almost everything be it tractors or cars or bikes looks 10-15 maybe even 20 years behind India in build and design. I am guessing the reason for stasis is lack of time bound emission or safety standards like Bharat 6, EURO 6 and so on.

        Who are the EV kit companies you were talking about? I didn’t see any Pakistani company designing or manufacturing this stuff, I might be wrong but given even India is struggling I do not think Pakistan has the wherewithal to pull it off.

        Also, do people know Daewoo Pakistan is owned by Tata?

        1. Nationalisation in the 70’s wrecked the automotive sector, and we have had an oligopoly of the big three Toyota/Honda/Suzuki soon after continuing since then. They have given preferrential contracts to local auto producers to produce outdated cars at outrageous prices.Lot of corruption and kickbacks in this sector collusion with government officials.. Import duties and heavy tariffs and barriers to entry erected discourage other foreign manufacturers from setting up shop. These import duties kinda make sense since precious foreign reserves are spent on subsidizing fuel prices in Pakistan (by far the cheapest in the region) or buying toys for the army. So automobile choice get fucked.

          Most people use bikes anyway, and chinese entrants have made a mark selling cheap bikes. Regarding EV I don’t know, there are chinese Ebikes like Sunra, I heard lot of Jolta but they dont seem to operate in Karachi. I haven’t been on a bike in Pakistan since ages so I don’t know much about this industry.

          I dont think anyone knows about Daewoo, but then hardly anybody buys then anyway.. Japanese kei cars made a good entry in the market these days but not sure if the trend will last.

          1. S Asian nations have made idiotic socialist decisions from the start. India more than Pak for sure, for most of the history. The goverments are too incompetent to use socialism the proper way like say S Korea did to protect fledgling industries until they develop to become globally competitive. Neoliberalism leads to exploitation by greater powers, to some degree, but I think going along that path would jabe yielded better long term dividends. Socialist policies win the heart of people more easily because everyone wants free stuff and satisfies public opinion in the short term.

  53. A lot of Pakistani’s schizophrenia has to do with insecurity. As India (and now Bangladesh) keeps leaving them behind in each field, they have to come up with ways to cope. Because if India is better than Pakistan in each aspect, what purpose did partition serve?

    Pakistan’s GDP is already lower than Maharashtra’s (which has a per capita income 3 time’s Pakistan’s). In 5 years it will also be lower than UP, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Gujarat etc.

    1. @Manekshaw

      “If India is better than Pakistan in each aspect, what purpose did partition serve?”

      Better be a king in your own house than a servant in someone else’s? Money isn’t everything. From my reading of the primary sources, a running thread in all the agitations of the Muslim League was the fear that the moslem bloc would be outvoted (back then, the hindus had a greater share of the total subcontinental population) as well as outmaneouvered. Lahore and Karachi had a very strong Hindu merchant class which dominated commerce, and this created resentment.

      There have been many books published speculating about what if Jinnah had lived longer and/or was younger at partition, if he had been running the country as long as Nehru would Pakistan’s trajectory had looked similar. I’m skeptical. The unfinished business of Bangladesh’s eventual independence was going to loom large regardless. In many ways what was unnatural was the British Raj. The Indian subcontinent had been splintered and fractured like Europe for most of its history and the post-WWII partitions were just about reverting to the mean. (For similar reasons, I’m skeptical about the long-term trajectory of the EU).

      1. @principia @Manekshaw

        You guys are totally missing the machinations of the British. They played a very active role to suppress the Independence movement for a long time. They did this by overt and covert actions. They started up multiple breakaway factions all over India to dissipate the independence movement.

        There are some facts that will blow your mind – Gandhi spent a little over 12 years in jail, Nehru did 9 years, Savarkar did 10 years and every other doyen spent close on to a decade in prison. This was the standard.

        Jinnah spent 0 years in jail. Actually some people have corrected me in the past saying he spent 3 months for some action, others said it was 3 weeks. But the difference is stark for all to see.

        Pakistan just happened to be that wild thing that someone does for fun but it suddenly blows out of proportion (like Trump’s campaign and win in 2016). The British played a very leading role in this.

        1. //Jinnah spent 0 years in jail.//

          Conspiracy theories because he toed the British line until the very end ? He was against the Khilafat movement. He was pro British during WW2 and offered full support against the Nazis, while Gandhi and Congress leadership were agitating. Jinnah hardly ruffled the British feathers until 1945-46, and at that point, the British had lost any real power.

    2. // Because if India is better than Pakistan in each aspect, what purpose did partition serve?//

      We are not living in 1947. Nobody thinks about partition in Pakistan. When you guys say partition, we are thinking about partition of Punjab specifically and all the bloodshed. There is very little or no practical memory of being one country with India, especially for the younger upcoming generations. Besides, I am not sure about you but I would rather be part of Pakistan than India.. traveled to all major cities in all the provinces (except some remote and rural areas), and I felt quite at home in every one of them. Also met many Indians abroad and while there are many similarities, the differences are bigger (Bollywood was so wrong). Maybe this is simply because of the environment one grows up in, people you grow up with who are different still sound familiar while others you don’t grow up with sound foreign still even when they are not. And south India is just another country for us, not even on the radar.

      1. ayyo!! south india is alien to north indians too. some of them eat south indian, can understand south indian!?. for us south indians, even bombay and calcutta is north indian. really don’t know where pakistan is.

  54. It’s often said that caste – and not race – is what matters in India. Perhaps. But race still matters. There have been several incidents of streamers/online gamers throwing racial abuse at North-Easterners, calling them “un-Indian” and worse.

    Maybe we need to update our priors to include race – even in India.

    1. Just read the comments on this blog. It also matters in terms of North Indians vs South Indians. And Pakistanis vs the rest of South Asia. And Pashtuns vs other Pakistanis.

      But I would say religion matters the most, then caste / language (sort of a tie), then race (least important)

      1. I think religion matters only in heartland states ( Punjab for Pakistan , north India for India ). Outside of that in less Hindu/ Muslim regions of respective countries language/caste trumps religion ( Sindh/Pashtun- Pakistan, east/south India )

    2. Race absolutely matters. I have spoken of the Steppe: AASI ratio numerous times.

  56. A traditional Indian women from small town UP who migrated to the US after marriage talks to her Indian-American youtuber son. Some interesting insights in there.

    She wants the guy to be married to a vegetarian Brahmin girl.

    Arranged Marriages and Being A Disappointing Son: A Conversation with My Mom

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1oEfD1qoTE

    1. He is an interesting youtuber. Looks like a lot of his videos are about Nofap? Is that why he is famous? His impersonations seem good.

      1. He makes productivity videos and satirical videos paying homage to famous directors.

        Not sure about the nofap connection. Might have been a phase.

  58. https://fiftytwo.in/story/borders/

    ““In the 1950s and 1960s, and until the 1970s, we would also wear a bindiya with a sari, because this was a cultural thing,” Rumana Husain, a Karachi-based children’s author and artist, told me. “You don’t become a Hindu by doing it. When there was East Pakistan, whether you’re a Muslim or a Hindu there, it was a cultural thing. Putting flowers in your hair or wearing a bindi didn’t smack of communalism.”

    It was the cultural differences—the language, the culture, and perhaps, even, the sari—that West Pakistan wanted to decimate. “This is a war between the pure and the unpure,” a Pakistan Army major told the journalist Anthony Mascarenhas, who wrote an incredible reported account of military operations in East Pakistan for The Sunday Times of London. [7]

    The sari became a symbol of liberation and independence. “During the pre-war period, as West Pakistan continued to level threats against the East’s population, nothing seemed to symbolise the total commitment of the population towards the Liberation War more than to see women in saris marching with guns on their shoulders, preparing for the bloody struggle,” Saiful said.”

    1. The shopkeepers of Banaras Colony had answers: Pakistan has better fabric, more advanced techniques, more colours. Ahsan pointed out that the designs are different: “In India, you’d get elephants, peacocks. In Pakistan, we have paisleys, roses, flowers, jaals, motifs.” Salesperson Shoaib, whose family is originally from Uttar Pradesh, told me “their designing is good, but our fabric is much better.”

      I remember @girmit mentioned this in a past thread as well about the fabric quality in Pakistan.

      Is there a good article comparing fabric quality between Pakistan and India?

        1. I think we were talking about manufacturing capability in India/Pak/Bangladesh.
          It was probably not about quality of fabric but automation and efficiency in textile industry.

    1. Most geostrategy is bullshit. I don’t know enough but here :

      https://mobile.twitter.com/detresfa_/status/1392713717163384836

      What we (Indians not Indian Americans) can do at the end of the day is to make money that through taxation will reach the soldiers and through the size of our GDP reach the Chinese mind. The heart of the problem is we are not making enough things and it shows on our per capita GDP. Think about how seriously Indian leaders used to take Pakistan in the 90s versus how it is treated now.

      btw did you know that American MD degree and residency training is accepted by MCI for practice in India. So maybe build some big ass hospital here some day or start a medical devices company.

  66. Any thoughts on lab leak theory guys?

    Even if it is proven conclusively that Wuhan virus escaped from the lab, the entire world combined will still not be able to do jack shit against China.

    It will be a ‘So what?’ moment. As no one has the power to do anything about it.

    1. Hunch says not bioweapon. But could be lab leak from gain of function research to make virsues stronger in lab to develop stronger vaccines, coupled with breached proper safety protocols. Needs further investigation.

      And yes, no one will do jack shit. China has money and power. It can do mostly what it wants.

  67. @Qureishi
    When I said Central Asians were mostly Buddhists, do you know what they were before it? Since the dawn of civilization in India, Central Asians and Indians have had the same shared culture + belief. This has been so since atleast 3500 BC when urbanization started. Furthermore, before being Buddhists, they were Vedic Hindus as confirmed by both archaeology and also genetics. Buddhism is just a branch of Hinduism; and people at that time followed what appealed to them.

    1. What next? Makkah was a shiv temple? Thor’s Hammer, Poseidon’s Trident, Shiva’s Trishul sem2sem? At this point the whole world was Hindu with same culture and belief. Who could even argue that? Certainly not me.

      1. I think at least there is some connection b/w the Greek/roman mythos with Indo-Aryan mythos. Perhaps legacy of branching out of the same people

        1. No one can teach dump people anything thought-provoking. Don’t waste your efforts on such people. Its not their intention to listen, understand and then reply.

        2. Indo Aryan link is not deniable since its evident in the language, but this is not a license for someone to claim that those peoples are following the exact same religion. There are many similarities between most religions if you just look deep enough. On hand we have people claiming IVC was Hindusim, on another we have people claiming Steppes were also Hindus. At this point, everyone not following a monotheist religion is being considered a Hindu even if the remotest of links are found

    2. @Qureishi
      I am surprised, you are contesting facts that are well accepted. Rather than being a foot soldier of arab masters, you should spend more time on thinking. You visit this blog then you should be aware of the Indo-European debate. Europe + India + Central Asia had a shared language. Greek religion and Vedic Hinduism have a lot of similarities; this was noted by Alexander too. The identity of Central Asians following a version of Vedic Hinduism is also known.

      However, I can understand your shock, After being brainwashed by establishment, you must have believed that Hinduism was a 19th century phenomenon (lol). Or that Hinduism came to Pakistan after Buddhism. I have seen some Pakistanis believe they mentally live in Arabia, but physically live in Pakistan.

      A shocking fact for Pakistani psyche: Mughals (one of the names for later mongols) that you are so proud of were Buddhists at the beginning: also, they even wrote in Brahmi script at the beginning. Since you are spiritual heir of Mughals * as claimed by you * , you can also become a true spiritual heir of Mongols by being Buddhist.

      The fact remains that Islam remains a colonial imposition by Arabs.
      The influence on Southeast Asia by India remains a story for another day. India was a trendsetter for Asia once. What is wiser to choose? Arabia or India.

      1. Fulto,

        So let’s get this straight and I want you to answer this: You believe Mughals were ”invaders” *because* they were Muslims, not because they were Central Asians?

        Going by your expansive definition of Hinduism, calling Islam ”Arab colonization” is a misnomer. Did you know not that Arabs were also “Hindus” before they became Muslim? lol

        Why do you think that we will accept any pagan religion our ancestors followed, hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of years?

        Perhaps this your attempt at proselytization .. all I can say is, it’s pretty lame.

      2. @Qureishi
        **When have I said Arabs were Hindus? It is only you who think so; next you will say Judaism is also Hinduism so that you can cope with facts. And it is not me who is making connections but scholars.**
        Furthermore, all archaeologists agree that Central Asians were following *aryan aka authentic Hindu religion starting 2000 BC.* Arabs are/were not Hindus; they may have been influenced by it but they followed their own religion; but Central Asians were authentic Hindus.

        If this comes as a shock, you should read and study more. ** If Islam is a foreign ideology to Asia, what can I do? My suggestion to you: just lie and believe that it is not so or continue on believing that native traditions are a foreign imposition for confidence; better yet go on believing what Islam teaches you that pagans are the greatest satanic evil on earth for which the followers will receive eternal damnation. Anyways, you call your ancestors jaahil, i.e., fucking morons who took birth on this earth. And to take it one step forward: wage a jihad against your ancestors (fucking morons), pagans (satanic evil, their women are sexual slaves), coreligionists (not pious deserve to die), blasphemers (death by stoning) and the world (who remains?) to prove how pure/pious you are.** Or you can choose to break free of this brainwashing.

        1. fulto,
          //but Central Asians were authentic Hindus. //

          So if Central Asians were following ”aryan aka authentic Hindu religion”, why do most Indians follow Hinduism because clearly, Hinduism is not the religion of their ancestors before the Aryans. Or is it? Which one is it?

          //If this comes as a shock, you should read and study more. ** If Islam is a foreign ideology to Asia, what can I do? My suggestion to you: just lie and believe that it is not so or continue on believing that native traditions are a foreign imposition for confidence; better yet go on believing what Islam teaches you that pagans are the greatest satanic evil on earth for which the followers will receive eternal damnation. Anyways, you call your ancestors jaahil, i.e., fucking morons who took birth on this earth. And to take it one step forward: wage a jihad against your ancestors (fucking morons), pagans (satanic evil, their women are sexual slaves), coreligionists (not pious deserve to die), blasphemers (death by stoning) and the world (who remains?) to prove how pure/pious you are.** Or you can choose to break free of this brainwashing//

          If this is what you think the essence of Islam is, I am not here to convince you otherwise. Nothing you say is shocking to me though. It’s interesting that you have gone from ”foreign to India” to ”foreign to Asia”. Interesting

        2. Your understanding of Hinduism is too shallow: Vedic Hinduism is *just one branch of various Indian traditions*. These traditions are/were as old if not older as Vedic tradition. And we can see the proof of that not just in India but also Central Asia.

          1. So according to your logic, everything is Hinduism but Central Asian Hinduism is more ‘authentic Hinduism’ but it’s also a branch of Hinduism and Buddhism is also Hinduism yadda yadda. Such incoherence. If this is not, in your own words, ‘schizophrenic’, not sure what is.. You lump together vast number of pagan beliefs under a foreign name given to a foreign river by foreigners, and then say that we are the ones who are ”schizophrenic”. Take away that name, what’s left?

            And I think this is a first where I have seen someone imply that the Mughals were ‘invaders’ only because they were Muslims, not because they were Central Asian. Regardless I think its a discussion that is reaching its limit. I think I made my point. There is no ”gotcha” here.. I already know what you feel like typing.. just surprised you didn’t think it all through before.

          2. It is not me who called Central Asians Aryans you know, it was historians/archaeologists who did so first; go fight with them. Aryan is a term that Indians called themselves historically. Funny thing is whole Europe at one time started calling themselves Aryans, and you think there is some problem with Hinduism being a foreign name, lol.

            Furthermore, by authentic I meant Central Asians followed the religious practices of Indians as shown and proven archaeologically; if you think this is wrong, publish a paper to demonstrate why this is hogwash. But I know you want to twist my words to show that other followers are inauthentic *which I never said* just like what happens in Islam isn’t it? Do you want other worshippers to be stoned by death too for blasphemy or lynched for not being pious?

            FYI, Hinduism has always comprised various traditions. If not, why do you think there is so much diversity? regarding Buddhism, it is a school under Samkhya school.
            Wikipedia tells this about Samkhya:
            “Samkhya is one of the six āstika schools of Indian philosophy. It is most related to the Yoga school of Hinduism, and it was influential on other schools of Indian philosophy.”

            My sincere prayer for you: May you become educated one day.

            PS: Maybe you should read about Kushans and Rajputs. It will help.

          3. The only thing I have contested here is your claim that Central Asian were following the exact same religion as Central Indians in say 1000 BCE. I have not contested anything else. You can claim that this is a branch of Hinduism or that was a branch of Hinduism, because at this point you are simply appropriating all mlecchas into your group left right and centre. I am not sure why you feel the need to ‘educate me’ here, nothing you have said is news to me. Just the theories put forth as to what constitutes a religion – that is our disagreement.

    1. @principia

      If you think that this breakup had anything to do with Israel-Palestine, then I am going to assume the worst. That you (probably) never had a girlfriend 🙂

      2. Ugra, calling her homeland a third world shithole isn’t exactly what a boyfriend is supposed to do. I’m not saying it was the only factor, but I don’t think it was irrelevant. Perhaps you’re one of those people who will take slights very easily 🙂

  69. On the origin of COVID-19, there’s a third possibility. A deliberate lab/bio warfare attack. Ron Unz wrote a long series of articles on this theory, which has been suppressed even more than the lab leak hypothesis.

    https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-the-truth-and-the-whole-truth-on-the-origins-of-covid-19/

    Unz is controversial, but I find it important to consider all angles before making your mind up. It’s a long article, so the TL;DR is at the end of the text if you don’t have the time/energy to read it all.

  70. @S Qureishi

    “family has a Shajra going back to the 13th century”

    What does sharja mean here. Couldn’t find by simple googling

    1. @S Qureishi
      Does it say when your family converted or does it start after that and how accurately do you think it has been recorded

  74. I disagree with S Qureshi on many things but it is nice to have a reasonable Pakistani perspective on here about things.

  75. “What next? Makkah was a shiv temple? Thor’s Hammer, Poseidon’s Trident, Shiva’s Trishul sem2sem? At this point the whole world was Hindu with same culture and belief. Who could even argue that? Certainly not me.”

    CN Tower is also a shiv ling.

  76. There is difference of understanding of how Indian (mostly Hindus) and non Indian commentators look at relegion wrt to Indian origin religion and non Indian origin religion (Quereshi vis-v Fulto). And i sympathize with either view.

    Growing up in a highly ‘Hindu’ neighbourhood i used to find it bizzare that how anyone could be real to their roots with following a ‘foreign’ religion. But then when i met folks from North East India in my grad, and Americans during my masters, i started to understand the other view as well. Of how in their eyes, its not really foreign , or how what’s foreign really depends on who you ask. In the North East, for example, its Hinduism which is foreign, while Christianity is not.

    I think Razib discusses it some times, that how religion is sort of a tribal identity in S-Asia, while in US (where folks change religion) its far more fungible. Something which growing up in India make us handicapped to understand.

    1. Seems to me that religion is about tribal identity in most of the old world. Taleb talks about it often.

      It is America that is the exception here. Probably because people have already left their roots behind. I do think, though, that Americans will become more tribalistic as they become more diverse.

      Right now the population of all minority religions combined is ~5%

      Once there’s a group with a solid 5% type of population, you’ll start to see it.

      1. Isnt it crazy that judaism is followed more than Islam in US. I had this feeling that there are more muslims in USA than 1 percent . Or perhaps i subconscuisly count jews as christians 😛

        1. I don’t live in America so don’t know how it feels on the ground. From whatever I can glean from pop culture, it seems to me that Jews are quite assimilated in American society. They’ve been there longer and being white helps in blending in.

          American Muslims still appear distinct so probably seem more numerous. Also, I think media generally over-represents minority groups. Or probably media represents the demographics of New York or LA, which are very different from the rest of the country.

    2. You can substitute religion for language here and you will see the same phenomenon, a lot of people abandon their rural languages and adopt cosmopolitan languages, and they even see those languages as their own because they don’t consider it ”foreign” or “other” when they have been speaking it their entire lives. 2-3 generations later, those foreign languages will become their mother tongue.

      1. @Qureishi
        Out of curiousity, what languages do your folks speak?
        IIRC your family was from Bihar.
        Have they retained Bhojpuri/Magahi or is it only Urdu?

        1. I have seen all 4 grandparents speak only Urdu, while both grandfathers also knew English, one of them also knew Farsi. They also knew Bengali since they lived in East Pakistan for a while. One of my grandmother did use some vocabulary that did not sound like it belonged in Urdu (i was young then and don’t remember it now).. I have also heard women singing a common song at weddings in what I surmise is a Bihari language (I think would probably be Bhojpuri)

          1. Yeah i concur. State has this ability to put up institutions which shape your identity. While you own ‘smaller’ identity which is counter-state can only be reinforced only when there is a active movement going on. In Pakistan , Bengali identiity enforce a split , while Mojahirs seems to be subsumed within Pakistan, because the latter movement has been crushed. The younger Mohajirs are ‘more Pakistani’ than older ones.

            This is something which is true in India as well. In regions which were ‘less-Indian’ like Bengal and Tamil Nadu, the state has been able to engineer a pro-India constituency. Now i hear a lot of ‘what abt Hindu rights , Pakistan is enemy ‘ from these folks, something which one wouldn’t hear earlier. Even in non-Indian regions like North East one is seeing an identification with the Indian state, more and more. Albeit with China being the enemy there.

          2. Interesting. I assume your family would have been urban so lost native tongues earlier.
            I see a similar trend in my family but delayed by a generation. My grandparents could speak their native tongues in addition to Hindi (and Urdu in case of my dadi).
            My parents can somewhat understand but not speak. I can probably not even understand chaste Maithili.

          3. Yes they all seem to be born in urban areas so possible that it was 2 or 3 generations before theirs that they would have spoken a local language – or at least that seems somewhat logical to me. I am not aware of caste dynamics prevalent in India and how it affects mother tongues. Do Ashraf Muslims (and UC Hindus) in UP/Bihar also speak local, especially rural languages in India? If they do, is the percentage less?

          4. @Qureishi

            The vernacular languages of UP/Bihar are not taught in schools. So folks who have lived in cities usually lose the language in a generation or so unless they have regular contact with extended family in villages.

            Everyone understands a bit of Bhojpuri, though, because Bhojpuri movies/music are really popular.

            Also, this is one place where class is more important than caste. Generally, upper middle class folks look down upon local languages and lower middle classes find it aspirational to speak in standard Hindi-Urdu even if they falter at it. (people don’t differentiate as much between Hindi and Urdu in daily life as they do on the internet)

            That said, I do think Ashraf Muslims can have a slight Urdu-ish tinge to their language when in familiar setting. For example, I had this friend Salman who would say phrases like “Aaj tumhari cycle chalane ka kafi dil kar raha hai” and this would amuse others including other Muslim friends like one Yahya because it seemed very cinematic.
            (I don’t know if Yahya was Ashraf but he was definitely pretty dark and more middle class compared to Salman. Salman was Ashraf.)

            Similarly, you’d notice more Sanskrit vocabulary from Brahmins when they speak Hindi (as long as they are not completely deracinated ones in which case they’d probably talk to you in Hinglish).

            It varies a bit based on city as well. People from and around Benaras can usually speak very shuddha Hindi, although the local language is Bhojpuri. Folks from Lucknow can usually speak good Urdu compared to say Kanpur, which is just 90km away.

          5. Interesting, in my experience, Brahmins I have met abroad spoke a more Urdu version of Hindi compared to non-Brahmins.. One guy who (mock) interviewed me back in uni, I though he was Pakistani because we struck up chatting in Urdu, he was speaking in Karachi accent.. only later I saw his name he was Sharma, I asked where he is from in India and he said Delhi. I didn’t know then much about caste but been noticing in the last couple of years, that the Brahmins I have met speak more Urduized version of Hindi in daily conversation.. especially ones from West UP.

            This dialogue //“Aaj tumhari cycle chalane ka kafi dil kar raha hai”// seems quite normal to me, how would you say it otherwise? Only thing I can think of is that a Hindi speaker would exchange ‘dil’ for ‘mann’.

          6. > Brahmins I have met speak more Urduized version of Hindi in daily conversation.. especially ones from West UP

            That is because they lost their own language!! For e.g. very few speak in Braj Bhasha/Khadiboli today. The true language of Delhi would have been somewhere between Haryanavi and Braj.

            Unfortunately this is happening to Awadhi too. Fortunately hasn’t affected eastern Hindi languages like Bhojpuri etc.

            > This dialogue //“Aaj tumhari cycle chalane ka kafi dil kar raha hai”// seems quite normal to me, how would you say it otherwise?

            Aaj tumhari cycle chalane ka bada man kar raha hai.

          7. @Qureishi

            Re: Brahmins, Delhi, Urdu, West UP

            I don’t think Brahmins, controlling for other factors, speak in any noticeably more Urdu register. But Brahmins are on average more educated than the average Indian so they do have a broader vocabulary. I am not sure, though, if the average Brahmin in the west is any more educated than the average Indian there.

            Delhi is a pretty diverse mostly middle class city and the de facto official language is Hinglish. It is very hard to find even lower middle class people who can speak proper Hindi here. And most ‘people like us’ are hard pressed to even stitch together even two sentences in Hindi without interjecting English phrases. You can see this in commercial sign boards. Almost all are in the Roman script.

            But if you drive 50km in any direction outside, the majority of the signboards turn into Devnagari.

            There is a section of the population in Delhi (I’d say ~15% based on hunch) that is really into Mughal and Urdu culture since this is the high culture of the city. Most of them can’t read or write Nastaliq but they like to forward Urdu (written in Roman) shayari or listen to podcasts that explain the meaning of Urdu terms or attend Jashn-e-Rekhta kind of events. It is possible you might have run into some of these.

            West UP speaks khari boli which is the dialect of Hindustani that Urdu came from so it might seem more similar. I find the west UP register somewhat rude.

            RE:
            This dialogue //“Aaj tumhari cycle chalane ka kafi dil kar raha hai”// seems quite normal to me, how would you say it otherwise? Only thing I can think of is that a Hindi speaker would exchange ‘dil’ for ‘mann’.

            Most people will use ‘teri’ more than of ‘tumhari’ in an all male setting of friends and ‘mann’ instead of ‘dil’ and probably put ‘aaj’ at the end.
            “Teri cycle chalane ka mann kar raha hai aaj”

            I mean the original sentence is not that out of the ordinary but it is slightly affected. Most people will use it with a bit irony in day to day conversation.

    3. Well I agree with you. In India, Hindus have been the most introvert- “Vishwa guru” delusional community who didn’t care to go outside and learn about others. “Kitab al Hind” of Al beruni did mention that Hindus think themselves superior and don’t learn about others but their ancestors used to mingle with foreign blood. This is the phenomenon of late 8th century CE. Yet these Pakis don’t accept that Sakas, Parthavas, Yuechi invaders along with Huns adopted “Indic religion” absorbed themselves into larger Indian society. They adopted “Indian Titles” did not impose Eastern Iranian language on the Indian subcontinent. They “knew” how to run a multiethnic empire. These changed when Turkic Muslims invaded. And Turks are basically Altai mountain dwellers who wiped out the entire central asian Sogdians, Scythians and Yuechi people which are now concentrated in Tajikistan. Greeks and Romans who ruled West Asia for over 500 years adopted Egyptian and Assyrian Semitic Gods. When Christianity and Islam emerged, these changed. The Hun called ” Yashodaman” was a Siva devotee, he came from Central Asia! The Middle Ganges Rulers defeated him, did not accept him as the ruler of India. India has examples where the Foreigners are accepted and Foreigners are not accepted. Turks and Timurids were exceptions to these rule not in India but across West Asia. Timur destroyed ottoman empire but Turkish don’t go on naming themselves Taimur. Turks colonized of Arabian Peninsula made Arabs the enemy of the Turks. Why are Turks and Arabs enemies? They have the same religion. Why are Arabs and Iranians bitter enemy? They have the same religion. Why is Egypt and Arabs don’t have good relations? To cut long story short, Persian was imposed on Indians for 800 years. Indians have the right to call out such bullshit of Pakis.

  78. Fragment

    Haryanvi/braj are ancestor languages to Urdu/Hindi so have they really left their ancestral tongues? In a way they are still speaking it.. Use of English on the street seems a bit alien though.

    //Aaj tumhari cycle chalane ka bada man kar raha hai//

    I see. In Urdu bara is usually used to only mean big, so ‘bohat’ or ‘kafi’ would be used.. also mann is used very sparingly but dil is quite common..

    1. My Dad grew up in Delhi. His phrasing sounds like the way Q finds familiar.

      My mom grew up in Hyderabad. Her Hindi is a whole diff world

      1. @warlock
        What language do your folks speak at home – Hindi or Gujarati or a mix?

        1. My dad speaks hindi to his siblings and my grandparents (both passed recently, may they rest in peace [not COVID but other stuff in past two years and both lived till almost 90- they had been in Delhi for almost 70 years]). My mom speaks Hindi with her siblings. She spoke Gujarati with my maternal grandparents. My parents make fun of each others’ Hindi, moreso my Dad with my mom’s Hyderabadi Hindi, since he is uppity about his very apparently high class Delhi Hindi. He describes local haryanvi as a very rough language though. My mom makes fun of my Dad’s Gujarati. Saurasthra Gujarati is considered more polite, especially with emphasis on formal second person pronouns, like one would see in say Spanish from Spain vs. Spanish from Mexico (eg. Vosotros emphasis in prior).

          My mom and Dad speak Gujarati to each other. I speak English with my parents or sometimes Gujarati, just depends. I don’t know how to speak Hindi anymore. I lived with my grandparents from 1-4 in Hyderabad. I spoke Gujarati and Hindi at the time, as my first languages. I can understand a lot more Hindi than I can speak. Gujarati I can speak fluently, but people will know I am not a native. I speak a mix of Ahmedabadi and Kathiawari Gujarati but more so the latter, given I learned Gujarati from my maternal grandparents, who are from Saurasthra originally. Paternal side is from a village outside of Ahmedabad. But dialect wise, I speak city dialects. Patel Gujarati aka Gamadia is a bit different. But some of my best friends are Patel, so I learned some of that as well. I had a Memon resident working with me from Pak. His Gujarati was more Kathiawadi style. He could not understand the super thick accent of a very rural style speaking elderly Patel patient. Interestingly, she was a Muslim Patel.

          1. I don’t know how to speak Hindi anymore. I lived with my grandparents from 1-4 in Hyderabad. I spoke Gujarati and Hindi at the time, as my first languages.

            The situation is opposite with me. I lived in Gujarat from 1 to 8 and then later visited often. I can’t speak much Gujarati anymore but I can read and understand it.
            My parents speak near native level Gujarati but not sure what accent that’d be considered.

    2. @SQureishi

      >> Haryanvi/braj are ancestor languages to Urdu/Hindi so have they really left their ancestral tongues? In a way they are still speaking it..

      Yes, I think they have. Braj was spoken just a couple of generations ago i.e. grandparents of 25-30 year olds today. So they HAVE abandoned Braj and moved on to Hindi.

      One example I would like to give is Hindi spoken in Bhojpuri(or other Bihari language) twang is Hindi, but in 1 generation kids move to Hindi proper. Thus abandoning Bhojpuri altogether.

  79. Even I find Eastern UP dialect more polite, because they use more third person pronouns or they use the more respectful prounouns.. like using ”hum” instead of ”main”, or using aap instead of tum or tu.. and there is a level of respect in way of saying things that is not found in the West.. But perhaps thats a wrong impression, and it’s not ground reality, not sure?

    In Urdu, using tu/tere is considered quite rude and is only reserved to insult someone (ironically its also reserved to address God). Infact our mothers actively would scold us if we ever used it.. Younger boys sometimes use this form in playful banter (perhaps due to Punjabi & Hindi influence) and I myself used it with some friends in the past but if we used it even amongst ourselves in front of an older person we would have gotten a scolding.. perhaps your friend was just following convention lol

    1. I never use ‘tu/tere’ in front of my family or with females or even with people who are junior to me. I address most male friends of my age as such, though.

      But ‘tu’ is the norm in Delhi unless someone is old enough to be addressed as ‘aap’. When I first moved to Delhi, I found it a bit odd that guys would address girls using ‘tu’ and vice versa.

      But perhaps thats a wrong impression, and it’s not ground reality, not sure?
      I don’t think it’s entirely wrong. There’s a reason the dialect is called ‘khadi’.

    2. I would get in trouble for saying “tu” in Gujarati as well. The formal is “tha-meh.” In some regressive places, mothers are addressed with “tu” and fathers with “tha-me,” though the argument back will be that it isn’t about differential respect but a more on average personal relationship with mothers vs. Fathers, probably combo of both.

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