On the contrary W-Bengal should have been given to E-Bengal. The Pak Punjabis would have straightened those commies out. Put the fear of Durga in them.
Gangetic Indian valorising Mussulmans. Like fathers, like sons. After all, why not?? their ancestors fought to have Mughal rule re-installed in 1857. And more recently, the Gangetic OBCs put up a good political resistance to RJB. Although they didn’t have enough spunk to outwit Gujjus.
UP, Bihar OBCs – cream of Dhimmis, the masters of political dysfunction, the connoisseurs of broken temples…..
You pass chewtie comments on every other state and region in India. When someone returns the compliment, you hide behind the fiction that nobody else can understand your state. You just keep hitting new levels of debating impotence!!
Ex-communist Bengal has higher levels of HDI and GDP per capita than your state for a very sustained period now. In line with Maslow’s political development theories – societies that have been materially sated advance to experiment with newer economic and cultural philosophies.
It is not just the OBC’s of UP who suck at the cultural game. While Nehru – the classic Allahabadi – was forcing the Liaquat-Nehru Pact on Bengali Hindus, Syama Prasad Mukherjee opposed it. He then left the Government and founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the predecessor of todayś BJP.
So the BJP was born out of a fight between a cultural Bengali Hindu and a cuck deracinated UP-ite. Just because you don’t read anything, don’t assume that others have the same handicap.
Ugra bhai, how do we know that West Bengal is a hell hole? Because poor Maithils from Kishanganj Araria etc. would migrate all the way upto Kerala instead of going to Kolkata.
Remove Kolkata and there isn’t even a good 2nd tier city in West Bengal. Bihar and UP are only going to go up. Kolkata is in perpetual decline. That GDP per-capita and HDI of Bengal are lagging indicators. They are good since before independence. I will even bet that Rajshahi(a poorer Bangladeshi division/state) would develop faster than West Bengal.
Pak Punjabi majority army committed atrocities numbering by some estimates as worse than partition. Their commitment to systematic extermination rivaled that of the Nazis, literally. It is hard to come up with actual relevant comparison to Nazis, sans sounding hyperbolic; this instance is one of those exceptions. When generals say stuff like mass rape will “aryanize” the locals, it is pretty apt. 3 million dead and disproportionate targeting of Hindus. It was the biggest acute exposition of the racialism present in S Asia.
Lol that’s not true. If anything the right is helping Bengalis by bringing the post poll violence into light and trying to give justice to the people who have suffered because of it
Have you seen the kind of things that people in the Indian RW have been saying lately about Bengal and its people? It sounds like the kind of things you’d imagine a West Pakistani soldier was saying during ’71.
The RW has its racist clowns. But the Left is the one actually committing atrocities against primarily Bengali Hindus. The post poll violence is very much a religious pogrom w/ political flavor. Both are wrong but the latter is several degrees more wrong.
Ummon Karpe
3 years ago
I’ve been nerding out over the paleolithic and am now mulling a sort of out of India theory that would seem to be reasonably consistent with the genetic and archeological evidence we currently have:
1) Anatomically modern homo sapiens migrated out of Africa into the middle east and India a long while ago (100k+ years).
2) Toba supervolcano erupted 75k years ago, devastating South Asia; a small number of people survived this event in India and were particularly resilient and adaptive due to the selection pressure they had gone through; they soon spread throughout eurasia, australia, and back into africa, mostly replacing most of the old lineages of homo sapiens, neanderthals, and denisovans around the world
Bhimrao
3 years ago
China alone now makes 60% of world’s steel and a third of all automobiles manufactured in the world. SAIC, Geely, Changan, Dongfeng, and BAIC are HUGE and yet there are not enough books being written about their nitty gritty details or their ‘kaizen’, ‘six sigma’, ‘GE way’ or some other MBA nonsense. If it was some American company, bullshit would be spewing left and right about how innovation of a people and fortitude of one man changed history. Heck even our leading coconut pundits would be peddling it. Or other bullshit on what made Detroit or Pittsburgh special.
Americans are a fat and indulgent people, they like stories of greatness and success, something that sounds reasonable, something whose ending they already know. When their side is losing and the answers are inconvenient they pretend nothing is wrong and they are not losing or make up excuses to cope. Zero self reflection, just empty sloganeering or at best populism. This country is increasingly unfit to rule.
So many pundits well read in History and yet America continuously shames itself at war all around the globe. Makes me think the emperor is naked and beneath the confident handshakes (and stolen land) Americans are just another stupid disorganized people. Billions that could instead have been used as incentives for industry have been wasted but will Pentagon ever answer? Where is accountability? Will senators who gave billions to Pakistan be asked tough questions? Will the stupid generals have their pensions and medals taken back?
Indians another disorganized people, call out Krishna Menon, Nehru and Karan Thapar’s Abba-jan for failing the nation. Why is G.W. Bush, McNamara, Kessinger and other warmongering fools not held accountable for loss of American power and prestige?
Menon was a joker of highest order. India was suffering from famines and droughts and joker was trying to ‘solve’ the Suez canal crisis. Though without Nehru he was a nobody.
Its not surprising that his namesake goes around justifying India’s non action after Mumbai terror attacks as great diplomacy.
1) Money making is moving away from machine floors and factories. I remember how army-like my lathe-smelting-welding-milling-cnc training was, everything neatly laid out, no stupidity tolerated, follow the instructions and safety procedures or be thrown out. There isn’t much left to innovate in streamlining industrial production, Operations Research has been figured out down to crazy smart dynamic programs. Same thing with structures, from laminated-carbon-composites to micro-fractures everything that the industry would ever use in next 20+ years was already figured out 20+ years ago. The big successes of our times are all into the business of selling us things or selling our information to others so that they can sell us things. Google, FB, everyone is in the business of advertising. Advertising to sell us things we don’t even need at inflated prices.
2)People (in west) are already satiated with sex, clothes, healthcare, education and housing. Crudely speaking I am almost 100% sure that our grandfathers would have felt the same high masturbating to sleazy Mastram paperbacks that the 2000s teens will find in HD porn.
(1) means smart people realize that hustling, and working in the juicy bits of selling things is the more fruitful activity compared to hard industry (2) means less talented (or in some other ways constrained) people are no longer interested in trying hard at producing goods.
Chinese industry is not being studied and copied in the US because (a) all the good theory is already known, now it is down to how much can one hustle and (b) Americans have a habit of running away with their eyes closed and tails between their legs when facing real fair competition wherever their advantage of enormous capital doesn’t save them. They are closing their eyes to what is a certain defeat, in 20 years they will make excuses and rationalize.
I don’t know enough about steel but something is rotten in America if GM can’t sell cars in even India when the Chinese MG can.
Sumit
3 years ago
What are the chances West UP separates from East UP in the next couple of decades?
Also do west UP people have a sense of racialized Indus people style sense of superiority over East UP people?
Since wealthier and also more Steppe. (Bucking the overall south Asian geographic trend of higher steppe areas being poorer)
Actually Mayawati did propose a division of Uttar Pradesh into 4 parts in 2011 – Purvanchal, Bundelkhand, Awadh and Paschim Pradesh.
There has been another proposal to have Western UP as Harit Pradesh – mainly backed by socialists and agricultural OBCs. This “Harit Pradesh” would have almost 28% Muslims – remember the Gangetic Belt is the most Arabized and dysfunctional political economy of India.
Again the people of UP haven’t evolved any kind of “consciousness” in terms of culture or a societal project. They have been accustomed to “being ruled” – never ruling others. Because the OBCs or elites of the Gangetic Belt have never enforced their will on the minorities of their land. Rather they have reached a detente with them.
Again this region is quite critical – because of its proximity to the capital and the spillover effect. The highest votes for the Muslim League (a proxy for creation of Pakistan) in the Provincial Elections of 1946 came from these Provinces.
No chance of UP breaking up. The only way it breaks is when any political power has a lopsided presence in one region and not the other. For example Bihar(lalu)-jharkhand(bjp).
All the 3 major parties of UP don’t have any motivation to do that. Breaking up of a state is political decision not an administrative/financial one.
Dividing UP would give us our fair share of IIT, NIT, AIIMS, PSUs etc, plus boost to new capital cities.
My uncle (who watches Zee News and India News all day) thinks that only and only UP is real India, and due to how the bordering semi-India states (Bengal, Punjab, TN, Maharashtra) behave and treat us poorly despite UP never asking for it’s fair share in farm procurement or government funding, the country could see calls for partition from semi-Indians. He was especially shocked by how Bengalis whitewashed post poll violence and ganged up against Marwaris. He thinks remaining united as a state is very important. He spent much of his working life in Uttarakhand and was very disappointed with the state-ism of newly separated paharis, especially even after UP gave up Haridwar in charity. He extends his subnational loyalty to MP, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Bihar and Chattisgarh.
I don’t buy his theory but seeing what Haryana is doing with state reservations, I don’t think partition would be easy to sell. It can be done from top down but not bottom up.
I have said this before, there are five groups that think they are core India: Hindi heartland (obviously), Punjab (contrasts itself with Pakistan and currently occupies Delhi), Maharashtra (obviously), Bengal (general self-importance and modern history) and TN (truest, undiluted, untouched, most Hindu…). All claim that they are real India, I have heard Bengali friends joke something on the lines that the rest of India is their colony, people they are supposed to civilize.
All think that other semi-Indians are taking undue advantage of their patriotism.
Suspicious of Muslims: Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Tamil
Suspicious of Chinese: Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi
Suspicious of Gora people: Hindi, Marathi
Of ur five groups , couple of them seceded from india in 47 , while the third failed while doing so.
That leaves marathi and hindi heartland. And till marathi has no PM to call it’s own, It will play second fiddle to us. It’s ownership still lacks substance.
Nice summation of 5 groups. Feels like the roving bands of Ronin in feudal Japan. You left out the most successful group – Gangetic Muslims – the 6th group. And of course – Gujarat are part of the Maharashtra group.
Although keep in mind – the last big national event – Partition – was a complex interplay of 3 out of these 6 groups.
The Gangetic Muslims wanted sub-nationalism. Punjabis and Bengalis opposed it. The Gangetic Hindus agreed to it – after all they didn’t lose any land.
Maharashtra group got pissed off to the extent that they assassinated a Gujju. They even start a new philosophy – Hindutva.
Bengalis and Punjabis get fucked over by Gangetic Hindus. But there is still one more stupid act they do. They do not send away all the Gangetic Muslims. Many of them stay back to do further sub-national mischief. Ambedkar clearly points this out.
All in all, the group most comfortable with Muslims are the Gangetic Hindus. They create a new philosophy called “secularism” with Gangetic flavor and impose it on the whole of India.
This Gangetic philosophy survived until the arrival of the Maha/Guj group in 2014. This group already captured power in 1999 but made the mistake of appointing a Gangetic Hindu – Vajpayee – as it’s leader. Vajpayee would have finished the career of Modi. He survived due to Advani.
TLDR – Gangetic Hindu is a pappu. Western Hindu is da man.
1. Hindi (incl. Urdu) speaker culture is hegemonic just due to sheer population. (~600 million). So they are the most archetypal Indians, imo.
Ugra is right in that they do have the most archetypal South Asian Muslim high culture.
Saurav also right in that they also have some of the most influential Hindu people and most important sites historically despite 800 years of Muslim rule.
They are just a hugely influential bunch, followed by Punjabi, Bengali and Tamil speakers in South Asia overall in my opinion.
2. Please inform MNS and Shivesena in Mumbai that Gujjus are part of the Marathi sub-national identity.
There is affinity of course, but I think both Gujaratis and Marathis speakers probably feel as strong affinity with Hindi speakers esp from neighboring states like MP or Rajasthan as they do for each other.
The film industry in Mumbai makes Hindi movies for a reason.
My tier list of Hindu sites:
1) Puri
2) Badrinath, Rameshwaram
3) Dwarka
4) Kashi
5) Jyotirlings (Mahakaleshwar>Baidynath>Pashupati>Tryambakeshwar>Kedarnath>Somnath…)
6) Mathura-Vrindavana
7) Tirupati
8) Kamakhya and Kalighat
9) Meenakshi Amman
10) fill-in-the-blank
Then there are heavyweights like Ranganathaswamy, Padmanabhaswamy, Prayag, Gaya, Pandharpur, Sabarimala, Kailash, Vaishno-devi,…
Followed by middleweights like Ayodhya, Annamalaiyar, Pushkar, lingaraja…
Then welterweight like remaining shaktipeeths, Naimish, Gangotri, a-lot-of-fill-in-the-blanks…
Then lightweights like ones with grand structure but little provenance like Brihadeshwara or Chaturbhuj
Below them are thousands and thousands of flyweights.
South has more grand temples still standing, north has better provenance.
If we consider Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists to be Hindus then Maha bodhi and Golden temple would make it to God tier. Top ranked Jain places (Shikharji, Gomateshwara and Ranakpur) will maybe make it to middleweight.
agree that hindu leadership bungled big time during partition. it was really not a big task to get whole of india at independence. a simple “divide et impera” recipe would have sufficed. my playbook would have been like this-
1. declare that independent india would voluntarily relinquish claims on regions west of indus, and pashtuns and baluch will be free to become independent countries, or join afghanistan if they so wished. this would have immediately cooled any pashtun passions towards pakistan project.
2. prop up a puppet shia leadership that would fan the fears of sunni domination in an independent pakistan.
3. orchestrate large protests by “nationalist muslims” against pakistan movement. crowds don’t cost much in india. present rate is 500 rupees per person per day. it was even cheaper in 1947.
but on second thoughts, why would we want to keep the regions that became pakistan. muslims from overcrowded E bengal would have flooded whole of india, and this time as *legal* immigrants. and landless sindhi and punjabi jutt peasants would have been a nuisance.
the only region worth having from the original pakistan proposal is kashmir, which we already have. ha ha.
I think an important reason people question the indo-gangetic plains / Hindi speaker dominance is they are disproportionately economically backward.
So for erg. the “BIMARU” (acronym for low income states which sounds like the Hindi word “bimar” meaning sickly) are all Hindi speaking states.
So people from other states associate them with povery, crime, uncouth behaviour etc.
Overall this is a problem for India, it’s most culturally hegemonic linguistic group is the also most economically marginalized.
I think much of the economic issue is geographic. These states don’t have access to a coast, but very large population, due to high carrying capacity due to agriculture on the fertile gangetic plain.
Sadly I don’t see an easy way out for the BIMARU states.
Not much worried abt UP. It still has a western region which is doing OK. In the long term its other regions will benefit from that. That’s how rest of the states have grown on the back of a mega city.
The worry is Bihar, which is surrounded overall by dysfunctionality (to add to its own dysfunctionality)
Indian left wing is busy doing genocide murdering people in Bengal, changing Assam and Bengal demographics since 1950 from 15% to 27% in 2011 in Bengal and 17% to 34% in Assam is something to be proud about. Kerala the hub of Indian left saw the demographic changes in Malabar region(North Kerala) from 18% to 28% in the same period is not something to comment about.
Punjab is going demographics changes where Sikhs are getting converted to Christianity and the Asia’s largest church being constructed in Jullunder is not something that Indian right wing should comment about.
South Karnataka (Bengaluru and Mysore region) showing demographic changes over last 20 years is something Indian RW should not talk about.
Left wing is busy about talking poverty, economics when they were in power for 60 years did absolutely nothing but full fledged socialism nationalization and full on ‘Licence Raj’ to kill business in India but when non performing public sector companies are sold to private sector is seen as “neocolonialism” by Indian left.
Using I phones, macbook and all the fruits of capitalism but supporting socialism is “Socialism with Indian characteristic called hypocrisy and Irony”
saurav, have to said, ugra is getting the best of you in that exchange. but perhaps you are so confident in your position that you are chill about coming out looking like the fool?
Nah, we can have a conversation when someone is not living in a fantasy land. I can even understand when Dravidians have a ‘Dravidian idea’ of India, but when someone has a different ‘Hindu idea’ of India diametrically opposite of what’s actually the reality of India is, then there is not much to say
The PEW research already shows what India is. And what Hindu Indians really are. There is not much to add.
The story of modern Indian politics – Gangetic Hindus (secular co-existence with Muslims) Vs Western Hindus (Hindutva).
Ronin politics – Trinamul, DMK, AIADMK, Communists, TDP, NCP – oppose Congress and Hindutva – opportunists – have allied at times with both. Perfection!!! Horses for courses.
Gangetic Hindus have been losing in two ways – at the idea of politics and also the HDI game. They now serve as drivers, maidservants, farmhands, cooks and handymen in all of Indian regions. There is not a single Indian city – East, West or South – where there is no UP-ite or Bihari.
This has two direct outcomes. One, these migrant men and women take ideas of development and cultural imperialism back to their state and clamour for change – further eroding the dominant streams of secularism.
Second outcome – Hindutva is increasingly imposing it’s choices on the defeated regions. Example – Yogi Adityanath is a handpicked man by Western Indians to lead UP. He was not the CM candidate at the time of the elections but rather a parachuted CM. That is not sustainable – we have to see if the Gangetic Hindus like him at the next polls. Hindutva could face a setback for its forced choices.
It’s fine if Saurav pretends that somehow the Gangetic Hindus are victorious at life and philosophy. They haven’t tasted any meaningful success for quite some time.
Pretence and a make-believe world are useful crutches for struggling people. Let’s not kick the crutches from their arms.
Lol this is true. I was recently watching an episode of family man 2 and couldn’t help but notice that Tamil Nadu might as well be some other country, it didn’t look or feel like India at all.. Bengal and Maharastha still seems familiar .. Tamil Nadu? Not really. So when Ugra says he is more Indian than someone from the Gangetic belt.. its funny.
After independence , UP gave two options for its name. ‘Aryavrat’ and ‘Hindustan’. Aryavrat was rejected due to obvious Nazi connections. Hindustan was rejected because other states opposed that it would mean UP is India. Which deep down everyone knows and acknowledges, but still fights against it. Finally it was Uttar Pradesh which was least opposed name and was chosen.
Though i see it as a victory overall that other regions of India now fight themselves as more Indian/Hindu. That’s the final triumph of an ideology. Just like how Iran/Pakistan now style itself as citadel of Islam.
UP derives it name from its former colonial name “United Province”. A “Hindu” is what Islamic Rulers called their Dhimmi Subjects in the Northern Parts of the Sub-Continent. The Indian identity is a British invention, India is just a state that the British created. To fight over who’s “More Indian” or “More Hindu” is like fighting over who’s the biggest Dhimmi or who’s the biggest Anglophile.
Perhaps, i’m mixing up 2 things here?? You’re probably saying that the Indian State(created by the brits) currently belongs to UP. Well, India is currently a Westminster style Liberal Democracy. Rest of India isn’t under servitude to your community, remember Freight Equalization Policy and the Delimitation Commission?
Scorpion Eater
3 years ago
i understand that different people can have different levels of “hindu consciousness”, but usually it is a function of individual communities rather than any geographical distance from putative hindu heartland.
for e.g., jats from haryana and western UP, supposedly the core of aryavarta, have always been indifferent sort of hindus. OTOH, tamil brahmins from deep south can be deeply conscious of their hinduness.
gujrat is supposedly a very hinduised state. and yet, there was a significant inflow into gujrati memon, bohra and lohana muslim communities from hindu agrarian castes *post islamic period*, when there was no apparent pressure on them to leave the fold of hinduism. (jinnah’s ancestors belonged to these converts).
the reality is much more complex. simplistic analysis can be misleading.
” jats from haryana and western UP, supposedly the core of aryavarta, have always been indifferent sort of hindus. OTOH, tamil brahmins from deep south can be deeply conscious of their hinduness.”
Brahmins of ALL regions have deep conscious of their hinduness The Jats have been at the bare minimum indifferent OBCs , though i would contest that, be that as it may. What is the record of OBCs of other regions?
Afghan Taliban says it sees China as a ‘friend’, promises not to host Uyghur militants from Xinjiang: Report
Saurav
3 years ago
BTW have u folks noticed that Pakistan seem uncharacteristically cagey with Taliban gaining control in Afghanistan? What could be the reason. Is it just performative or are they really concerned. And if its the latter than for what?
“The DG ISPR said guns cannot decided the future of Afghanistan. “Guns could not decide in the past 20 years, so how could they decide now?”
When a journalist pointed out the recent onslaught by the Taliban, he replied: “That is just a phase. Eventually they will have to sit down and decide, otherwise this will convert into a civil war which will not benefit anyone.””
I think Ghani would have happily accepted all of Pakistan’s reasonable demands in exchange for peace. Par inhein ungli karni hai, hum iski kadi ninda karte hain.
“Pakistan seem uncharacteristically cagey with Taliban gaining control in Afghanistan?”
multiple reasons…
1. 2020s is not 1990s. the world has burnt its fingers with islamic fundamentalism, and will not allow it again. even after US troops leave afghanistan, the big 3 powers (US, russia and china) will keep afghanistan on a tight leash. these 3 powers have just one thing in common- they all are sure to come to harm with islamic fundamentalism. you don’t need boots on the ground to maintain control. military technology has advanced enough that the control can be maintained from the skies.
2. pakistan needs illiterate afghan mules that it can pump into kashmir. but again, 2020s are not 1990s. india has a much firmer grasp on security situation in kashmir than it had back then. kashmir s borders are much more tightly secured. so mining afghanistan for cannon fodder in kashmir is not gonna be profitable.
3. taliban, with some justification, can claim that they drove out the americans with their blood and sweat. having gained victory after a grueling 2 decades long war, they are not going to do the bidding on some bureaucrat sitting in rawalpindi.
4. pakistan might be wary, again with lots of justification, that a taliban victory in afghanistan will give a boost to pakistan talibans too. not a very palatable thought. after all, taliban are as much a pashtunnnational movement as an islamic movement.
in fact, it is in every party’s interest that taliban capture kabul peacefully, let its president flee and seek asylum in US/turkey/pak, and establish a nice little islam-light government in afghanistan. unfortunately, things never go as planned in afghanistan. only time will tell how things pan out.
Hoju
3 years ago
Thread should be renamed: Ugra DESTROYS Gangetic Plains Supremacist.
Ghani doesnt even accept the international border the whole world accepts.. it doesn’t get more unreasonable then that. Infact now that he sees defeat written on the wall.. he is appealing to the Taliban to not accept the Durand line.
I dont think anyone in Pakistan really cares about the Durand line as long as Afghanistan is friendly towards Pakistan. It is failure of Afghan Nats to accept reality as they are still under the delusion that they have claim on half of Pakistan.
This is a lame excuse for violence. Afghans do bakchodi just like Pakistanis or Indians. Pakistan is causing bloodshed because it can and it has too many ‘geostrategists’.
Sannu ki? Sab Lad Maro!
true. afghans have been fighting each other for the last 500 years (or is it 5000 years?). nobody gives a shit about afghans, as long as they keep their friendly little bam-wham within their borders.
Taliban are ambivalent about it and are not hostile, while Ghani and his ilk of AfgNats are more concerned about Pasthun lands in Pakistan than in administering their own non Pasthun populations in Afghanistan. Most Pakistanis don’t care about Durand line either as long as it’s not bringing in arms or terrorists in their cities. Afghan refugees actually have it quite good in Pakistan in terms of reception with the non Pasthun host population compared to what refugees usually get in other countries.
If Afg nationalists are rooted out, Durand line may eventually cease to matter once Pakistan does not see a threat from Afghanistan.
I know the people behind this. They plan to build an equivalent of Stanford Research Institute for India. Still early days. Very excited to see where this goes.
AMS 212
3 years ago
I did read the discussion you guys are having and to be honest,the core areas having the most political power is quite a volatile position.
For instance,during the early Vedic Age,Sapta Sindhu region was political centre of India.
In Iron Age,Haryana and West UP gqined ascendancy.
In Mayryan Era,Magadh.
In Maratha Empire,Maharashtra.
In British era,Bengal.
And now the power is in the hands of UP.
Tbh,I dont know how long will it last.
One thing for sure is that those who demand akhand bharat will also have to think about being Punjabis and Bengalis getting more numerous,which maybe Gangetic Elites would not like and will try to preserve the status quo.
Why India’s new environment minister is sparking some cheer
Brown
3 years ago
now sharad pawar has sort of approved u p population law. others will soon follow suit, as sharad pawar is a reputed weather vane in indian politics. shiva sena will be forced to do some thing similar.
I’m not so sure about it. If it happens it’s good. Maharashtra is facing full scale “Hijabization” among Muslims. The parallel exists only in Kerala. It seems better socioeconomic conditions imply “Hijabization” of Muslim women.
Radical haleemification and radical leftism are the two cancerous growths for which India has found no cure. Treatment expectations have at least moved from purely palliative to now bordering on intent to cure. But it can teeter back at anytime.
” We should not be comparing the IPL to the English Premier League. The proper analogy is another football code on another continent: America’s NFL or the National Football League.
Like the IPL in India, the NFL is a vast country’s highest grossing league. Like the NFL, the IPL is based on franchises not Premier League style clubs with their long histories in local communities. Like the NFL, the IPL’s principal audience (and therefore its revenues) is local: it basically needs Indian eyeballs. The NFL, like nearly all American sports leagues, whether it is baseball or basketball, is a domestic competition played between local teams staffed with mainly American players. And here’s the thing: the absence of international competition and the absence of national teams makes no difference to the superheated, militarist nationalism that virtually defines the NFL. Like India, the US is a continental nation, large enough to have an insular celebration of itself through sport regardless of the absence of other countries.
The NFL is a good way of thinking about the future of nationalism in Indian cricket because it demonstrates how much scope there is for militaristic chauvinism in a domestic league in a democratic country. It is also an excellent illustration of the ways in which corporate media, politicians, celebrity players, fans, and franchise owners use nationalism as a magic sauce to grow the game and make it (and everyone involved in it) richer.
Where does that leave the Indian spectator who might prefer watching cricket at a less feverishly patriotic temperature and watching cricketers less mortgaged to the nation state? Let us return to Hobsbawm’s take on sport and nationalism Notice that his insight was carefully gendered: “even the least political or public individual can identify with the nation as symbolised by young persons excelling at something practically every man wants to be good at.”
earlier there was a idea that tamil nadu can be split with madurai being the capital of south tamil nadu. it was said that this will solve the ‘property’ issue between stalin and alagiri. now b j p has let the cat amongst the pigeons by hinting at kongu nadu which is essentially the western districts of tamil nadu. if this takes shape coimatturu can become really big. the weather is also good here. also kongu nadu is considered more ‘ cultured’ and more refined than the other regions of tamil nadu.
It’s mostly pressure tactic by BJP. Same thing is happening in Bengal as well.
Indian states are divided when both the ruling party and the party in the state acquiesce. Neither in Bengal or Tamil Nadu does bjp gain by dividing the state.
“Pratima Roy’s picture from her NASA internship swells my heart with pride.
The attacks directed against her reeks of Hinduphobia. Science and Sanatana Dharma can co-exist because our civilization isn’t/has never been dogmatic beyond reason.”
There is seriously something up in Karnataka. Seems its churning out more Hindutva folks than the state can handle. First Venkatesh Prasad, and now this. Half expecting Dravid might be next, since India’s cricket coach job is up in the air. He comes from MP anyways.
In the North its mostly washed up celebrities who take to politics, it seem the opposite in the South. Is Karnataka Hindutva’s attock fort to conquer the South?
Pakistan, After Rooting for Afghanistan’s Taliban, Faces a Blowback
“For two decades, a large part of the Pakistani security establishment rooted for the Taliban in the Afghan war. Now that the Taliban are taking over vast tracts of the country and seem to be on the cusp of seizing power, panic is spreading through Pakistan’s halls of power.”
Something which i was pointing 2 couple of days back.
Muddying the water. Don’t fall for this. Pakistanis love throwing bullshit ‘in this context, that context, left alone, betrayed, history baggage, Frontline state, blah blah…’
What else can they do? They like talking, there is nothing else to talk about. Does their talking change their behavior? Some Pakistanis said something-something when Mumbai happened, does that mean that they changed their hearts. No! They still house, arm and train the Taliban.
Everyone knows it will be clusterfuck in Afghanistan but unless Pakistanis get really hurt like APS attack I don’t think it really bothers them enough to change. They don’t care about Afghan lives.
Everything from Alaska to Kurils from Japan to Korea, from Mongolia to Tajikistan to every Laos to every island and atoll from Indonesia to Kerlugens to New Caledonia to Caribbean, even Paraguay and Angola, even Niger and Greenland EVERYTHING is strategic if one wants to think it is.
Strategic as a term is useful BS to justify annexing some territory like say Gilgit or Nagarparkar in exchange of reasonable amount of bloodshed but it should never be taken seriously when OTHERS use it. Jiski Lathi uski bhains, Geo-strategy is retrofitted bullshit.
Pakistan is surrounded by poor countries, it has zero natural resources that others covet, it’s claim to fame are the nuclear suicide and terrorism. There is nothing that Pakistan offers that Iran or India can’t outdo ten times over.
//There is nothing that Pakistan offers that Iran or India can’t outdo ten times over.//
So why have they not done it already? More incompetence?
India is only good at providing access to Central Asia on it’s government produced maps, otherwise no its location was pretty useless for the West until very recently when China became their number 1 enemy (and even here it has been outflanked by China preemptively so it’s usefulness to the powers that be are limited at best). As for Iran, it’s actively hostile to Western interests and has been so for last few decades and situation does not seem like it’s gonna change.
Pakistani geo-strategists have mostly made the right alliances, and with shift towards milking China, this is turning out to be another successful home run.
@Qureshi
people are tweeting about a lot of Pakistani soldiers KIA (or attained martyrdom, not sure if Pakistan army enforces the distinction). Any chance of this being Afghan retaliation or are they local people? Any chance of surgical strikes into Afghanistan? Pakistan might as well test it’s new drones on ISIS’s ass.
Nominal GDP of entire central Asia is about 300 Billion USD. That is about the same as Tamil Nadu. No one gives a fuck about Central Asia, they are a resource pit at best and a nuisance at worst. The future of Indian people will be written in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Dhaka, Karachi and maybe even Dubai.
That’s too much bania influence, counting coppers while ignoring geopolitics. UPites should be above this shit. Not everything revolves around GDP or potential GDP. If Central Asia is not important then please explain how Pakistani geo-strategists are able to milk the West for so long.
//Any chance of surgical strikes into Afghanistan? Pakistan might as well test it’s new drones on ISIS’s ass.//
I don’t see it happening anytime soon, not as long as Imran Khan is PM. Only if the Taliban fail at consolidating power and Afghanistan is completely free for all.. then maybe Pakistan will start to more actively join the fray. But as it stands, I don’t see that scenario as likely.
//The future of Indian people will be written in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Dhaka, Karachi and maybe even Dubai.//
Allying with the US on one level was smart, but on another level bad, too. The US used Pakistan and spit it out. The US is rarely “friends” with anyone, just uses countries insofar as it helps them advance their interests. Look at how the Cold War + War on Terror policies of the US caused havoc in Pakistan. I would have even less faith in China.
I think Pakistan has been smart and prescient in identifying the superpowers and being on their side, but I also think they have gone too far and become quasi-colonies of those superpowers at times. It’s good to be friends with the right people, but also just as important to be able to maintain some degree of independence. India has had the opposite issue to some degree, being idealistic or choosing the wrong superpowers at the wrong time (Soviet Union before, now the US just as China is becoming a hegemon). But it has maintained its independence, which has helped it not be used by the Soviet Union or the US, as applicable.
…..Pakistani geo-strategists have mostly made the right alliances, and with shift towards milking China, this is turning out to be another successful home run….
Too many words to describe the function of a condom.
…counting coppers while ignoring geopolitics. …..Not everything revolves around GDP or potential GDP.
Last week Pakistan sold a 30 year sovereign bond in the foreign market for 300 million USD at 8.45% to finance their budget deficit. That’s like the deep end of junk territory. Basically Pakistan borrowed that money from foreigners and promised to pay them six times that amount in 30 years. All for financing one annual budget. Not going to have an happy ending.
I am more with Qureshi on this, though i dont think the reason Afghanistan is coveted is because of C-Asia. During the first Afgan war, the reason was to make it Russia’s Vietnam. And the 2nd the reason it took so long for US to pull out was part ego (that they didnt want to lose), and part bureaucratic sloggishness. That;s the reason why US could wrap up easily and go back home quickly, once it was established there is no poltical cost of leaving Afghanistan. So much so that folks who wanted US to get out (both on liberals as well as China/Pakistan) side are now getting jittery.
It was never about C-Asia or pipelines or trade ever. It was just a ruse to make all those investement made in Afghanistan have some economic logic. No one in their right mind will invest billion of dollars on trade and stuff connecting C-Asia. China has tried with BRI and it has been described as roads leaving no where to no wheres. That’s y i feel even CPEC is overwblown since it joins the most laggard regions of China to C-Asia, Pakistan rather than its Eastern sea-board. That;s y not sure if its Pakistan milking China or vice-versa.
On India;s importance (wrt to Pakistan) to the west i think its usefullness cannot be fully judged unless India becomes a full fledged ally of the West akin to what Pakistan was. Like providing bases etc. If India would want it can provide even “better” strategic ally considering it can hem (not defeat) China’s ocean as well as land power, something which no other country can simultanesuly provide.
Bhimrao
3 years ago
Austin and Pittsburgh will soon become major hubs of US tech industry especially in robotics and computer vision. On par with Boston and Seattle.
I don’t know the specifics but I have product manager friends at Amazon, Adobe and Nvidia who seem to be doing very well, the Nvidia one even said that it is a comparatively easier profile with less work hours and and systems architecture type of work compared to rising up the Engineering hierarchy. Seattle is a great city, there is Amazon, MS… Everyone from say Portland State and UW-Seattle goes to work for Amazon.
If someone is determined they will get a job. USCIS are not known for their efficiency or consistency, one of my advisors once told me that one out of three Americans wants you out of this country, sometimes this one guy will be in charge but the other two (out of three) will do you more good than three out of three good meaning people from any other country. For H1B dependents there is this joking observation that San Jose State University, University of Illinois Chicago, University of Houston, Stevens/NJIT… are universities for Indian spouses.
From my friend circle’s info, product manager roles tend to be less stressful than developer/engineer roles, but pay less as well, especially in startups. Since you will be coming from India, you will have to carefully negotiate salaries, $ 100,000 is a lower middle class salary in areas like Seattle and Bay Area. It sounds like a lot, but it isnt really. Austin is more manageable, but the pay will be lower.
L1 spouses cant work, however L1’s can apply for the green card in a faster queue than most Master’s level engineers. While you are doing that, your spouse can try and get an H1B visa or continue her education.
Startup funding is still overwhelmingly concentrated in the Bay Area, $ 32 billion last year. The only real competitor is NYC with $ 14 billion. The money stays mostly where there is already a critical mass of labor and the VC’s like to live.
I have family in tech in a few of those places. I enjoy medicine, and I didn’t like programming in school (I know there is a lot more to tech than programming but still), so I am happy where I am.
But it really is incredible to see the lifestyle/comp balance of the elite American engineering crowd. I have relatives in decent level positions at google, apple, and amazon in their early 30s. They are doing amazingly well. One is an IIT grad who married into the family.
When one gets down to the numbers the best deal for an Indian is to not work too hard in cram school, don’t take drop year, just go to a decent private engineering school to do Computer Science like Manipal, SRM or VIT and move to the US at 22, get into a mid-rung affordable state university which has a familiar name that gives MS for about 50K, preferably near tech industry, Gpreferably not in places like Oklahoma or Iowa. Do lots of leetcode. At 24 start in SF at around 120-130K and climb up to ~200K by the time you are in early 30s. Try to marry a fellow Indian H1B immigrant who has a similar career interest. Wait in H1B line for 20+ years. Raise angraiji speaking kids who your relatives in India will adore.
This is the simplest most repeated money making plan ever.
The mistakes people make:
1) Dating in late teens. It never works.
2) Thinking their IIT degree makes them deserve more.
3) Studying anything other than Computer Science if the goal is maximizing money. Civil engineering MS people make about 70-90K starting salary, Electrical people make 90-110.
I came because I loved this one specific field and could not afford to pay for MS. Have received top education from the very top peoe in a field where there is a lot of scope for starting something. I see OK-ish people who scored a C on the class I TA-ed chilling out at Apple. It is hard not to think ‘Chutiya Sala!’ about them. Maybe because I did not make much money and had to make big personal sacrifices. My friends in Bangalore are all making well into 30-50 LPA (USD 40-70K) that’s a lot of money in India. So a very mixed bag I would say in terms of money. On the other hand I will be playing with multimillion dollar toys in a few months which would not have happened in India.
A debt free alternative would be to do undergrad from VIT, RVCE etc and then join a startup. Gain some work ex and keep applying to FAANG on the side. You’d be in the India offices one of these companies by 25. You can then move to the US within a couple of years by getting into the right teams.
I gave a long interview for Google X last year, did not get in. They do some pretty open ended projects, a lot of really smart people. Lack of pressure to deliver end results makes them soft in some ways.
I have a friend who works for Amazon Robotics in Boston. They seem to have more sense of direction.
principia
3 years ago
Things are going down in South Africa between Indians and blacks.
@Narasingha
Catalysts cannot change the enthalpies of reactions. At the end of the day Ethane/Methane/Butane… + Oxygen equals Water+CO_2+Energy, because of the difference in the bonds between C-O, H-O vs C-H and O-O. There is no escaping giving this energy released back if you want to reverse the reaction. Thermodynamics is a bitch, with lots and lots of free maybe solar energy maybe it is possible to take CO2 out of atmosphere and make it into Hydrocarbons but it would be like supplying subsidized electricity and cars to our ancestors.
rest of country can learn from sports investment/culture in these places, particularly haryana. South is doing better than East and West too. East and West need to stop sucking so hard at this stuff.
Actually Manipuris are the biggest per / capita chads based on that map. If they had the same population as haryana or punjab there would be 50 athletes from that state
I think this picture has a lot to do with recruitment for the army. States with a culture of seeking armed forces jobs probably have more youth participating in athletic events.
LOL, again i don’t claim Gangetic folks as chad or anything. Everyone knows we aren’t.
We are BIMARU and more-Hindu. Punjabis can be less-Hindu and chad (if u feel so). Both things can simultaneously co-exist.
“If Central Asia is not important then please explain how Pakistani geo-strategists are able to milk the West for so long.”
you must have heard the common quip – pakistan is the condom US needs to enter afghanistan.
this is all there is to the strategic value of pakistan. this also explains why pakistan has disproportionately larger number of geo strategists than any other country. the west seems to want to enter afghanistan more and more often, and pak geo strategists have their hands full devising new features that heighten the pleasure of both parties.
So what is stopping them now from cutting all ties, and punishing Pakistan for it’s ”treachery” all these years Scorpion? US intelligence agencies are not oblivious to the fact that Pakistan was playing a double game.But clearly, that’s not on their agenda right now. Even after all this while, India has not been able to extract any concession from the US on Pakistan. Wonder why?
No it’s not because of Afghanistan’s $3trillion mineral wealth deposits or some oil pipelines. It’s plain old geo-politics. Pakistan is the gateway to Central Asia, and Central Asia is the backyard of both of US’s prime enemies: Russia and China. They are not going to rattle relationship with Pakistan as they will lose that leverage entirely (like they lost Iran). Pakistani establishment has also shown them they can play ball if the prize is big enough. So the most you are going to get is a couple of slaps on the wrist for ”terror” financing but that’s about it.
Yeah. Indians have several layers of brainwashing for various reasons that leads to irrational disdain for tropical features and darker skin. The sad part is that they think this societal propaganda is some sort of immutable objective biological hierarchy. They sincerely believed they are DNA hardwired to think this way. It looks pretty cringe to others when you view yourself as innately inferior. But that’s on them.
Their cope is “looks aren’t everything.” Well yeah the same thing can be said about intellect. But studies show better looking people earn more, commit less crime, are happier, tend to more educated, tend to get more promotions, tend to have fewer divorces, etc. It isn’t everything. But when you set society up with artificial looks norms that pretty much put most of your population below your recent colonizers and a small segment into an acceptable attractive class, based on their lighter skin and relatively more caucausoid features, traits that when isolated alien populations tend to first encounter, they tend to find weird looking, just like all different traits, in many documented historical accounts, you set up a situation of massively preventable inequity.
This will be very hard to organically change. But you are seeing it very slowly happen. Historical dominance hierarchies put layers and layers of lighter and more caucasoid people into positions of power in the subcontinent, from the aryans to the British and the many in between.
Genius test. Yes. Most will find Pinto just average. Actually there was a post with deepika without makeup and most Indian commentors found her quite average. But I noticed foreign commenters still calling her quite beautiful.
And yeah that’s true about Ranbir too. Basically, the less AASI you look or conversely the more steppe, the better.
The IVC iranic component is not as variable across S Asian populations. But steppe and AASI are. As I have previously stated, that ratio matters the most on S Asian looks hierarchies.
But then, most women would look way uglier, no matter the geography, if makeup didn’t exist, which explains why women over 25 in the past were considered quite old. These days, they can stretch their youthful looks to 35 or so with some decent makeup..
she is pretty. 90% of women without makeup, age controlled and across geographies, are uglier IMO. Indians are just brainwashed to find darker skin and non caucasoid features ugly.
Terra Motors joins hands with FCC Corp to develop EVs, parts in India
Brown
3 years ago
south africa burning. indian men are fighting with guns and women are lighting diyas. was it so difficult for these governments to provide housing and schools for the blacks as a minimum? south africa is a rich country comparatively.
Pretty sure my boy and current S-Africa PMs BFF Gupta ji will save Indians
Brown
3 years ago
south africa burning. indian men are fighting with guns and women are lighting diyas. was it so difficult for these governments to provide housing and schools for the blacks as a minimum? south africa is a rich country comparatively.
The second order effects of US withdrawal from AFG have begun. 6 Chinese killed in a bombing at KP province. Islamabad denies that it is a bombing, while China is insisting that it is (shades of Balakot).
For the last 35 years, the world’s superpowers were involved in AFG providing a secure armour to Pakistan who protected the supply lines into landlocked AFG.
Now there is no-one’s supply line to protect and be protected. In the past, US would pressurise India to behave in PoK because Pak would threaten retaliation on the AFG front. So there would be diplomatic and SD pressure on India to sim the stove.
Now there is no such safety valve. This is how geodynamics operate – in second order, not first order. Ideally China should would step up and provide stability in the form of troops. But it’s not going to happen – Hans only brandish their weapons like a Sun Tzutiya. No stomach for a real fight.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts should have gone to India. I think their fate would have been better in Northeast India.
On the contrary W-Bengal should have been given to E-Bengal. The Pak Punjabis would have straightened those commies out. Put the fear of Durga in them.
Pak Punjabis would have straightened…..
Gangetic Indian valorising Mussulmans. Like fathers, like sons. After all, why not?? their ancestors fought to have Mughal rule re-installed in 1857. And more recently, the Gangetic OBCs put up a good political resistance to RJB. Although they didn’t have enough spunk to outwit Gujjus.
UP, Bihar OBCs – cream of Dhimmis, the masters of political dysfunction, the connoisseurs of broken temples…..
Lol. As I have said, it will take another lifetime for non N-Indians to understand the RJB movement. But till then carry on….
You pass chewtie comments on every other state and region in India. When someone returns the compliment, you hide behind the fiction that nobody else can understand your state. You just keep hitting new levels of debating impotence!!
Ex-communist Bengal has higher levels of HDI and GDP per capita than your state for a very sustained period now. In line with Maslow’s political development theories – societies that have been materially sated advance to experiment with newer economic and cultural philosophies.
It is not just the OBC’s of UP who suck at the cultural game. While Nehru – the classic Allahabadi – was forcing the Liaquat-Nehru Pact on Bengali Hindus, Syama Prasad Mukherjee opposed it. He then left the Government and founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the predecessor of todayś BJP.
So the BJP was born out of a fight between a cultural Bengali Hindu and a cuck deracinated UP-ite. Just because you don’t read anything, don’t assume that others have the same handicap.
Oh yes of course the cuck talk. Lol
There is a india which exists and then there is imaginary one of the dravidians.
Ugra bhai, how do we know that West Bengal is a hell hole? Because poor Maithils from Kishanganj Araria etc. would migrate all the way upto Kerala instead of going to Kolkata.
Remove Kolkata and there isn’t even a good 2nd tier city in West Bengal. Bihar and UP are only going to go up. Kolkata is in perpetual decline. That GDP per-capita and HDI of Bengal are lagging indicators. They are good since before independence. I will even bet that Rajshahi(a poorer Bangladeshi division/state) would develop faster than West Bengal.
Jai Hind. Jai Uttar-Bharat.
“Jai Hind. Jai Uttar-Bharat.”
☝️ More Hindu= More Indian region
“That GDP per-capita and HDI of Bengal are lagging indicators.”
From 1990 to 2018, Bengal’s HDI increased more than UP’s HDI, even though Bengal started from a higher position.
https://mimamsa.substack.com/p/indo-pak-hdi-change-1990-to-2018
Saurabh chutiya, uttar-bharat = more Hindu gandu = BIMARU region
Bro, they would have been genocided
Pak Punjabi majority army committed atrocities numbering by some estimates as worse than partition. Their commitment to systematic extermination rivaled that of the Nazis, literally. It is hard to come up with actual relevant comparison to Nazis, sans sounding hyperbolic; this instance is one of those exceptions. When generals say stuff like mass rape will “aryanize” the locals, it is pretty apt. 3 million dead and disproportionate targeting of Hindus. It was the biggest acute exposition of the racialism present in S Asia.
The Indian RW is chomping at the bit for another Bengali genocide.
Lol that’s not true. If anything the right is helping Bengalis by bringing the post poll violence into light and trying to give justice to the people who have suffered because of it
They wont get it. That’s y i had proposed to leave them to their misery. Let their elites fight for their people. Y should we care?
Have you seen the kind of things that people in the Indian RW have been saying lately about Bengal and its people? It sounds like the kind of things you’d imagine a West Pakistani soldier was saying during ’71.
The RW has its racist clowns. But the Left is the one actually committing atrocities against primarily Bengali Hindus. The post poll violence is very much a religious pogrom w/ political flavor. Both are wrong but the latter is several degrees more wrong.
I’ve been nerding out over the paleolithic and am now mulling a sort of out of India theory that would seem to be reasonably consistent with the genetic and archeological evidence we currently have:
1) Anatomically modern homo sapiens migrated out of Africa into the middle east and India a long while ago (100k+ years).
2) Toba supervolcano erupted 75k years ago, devastating South Asia; a small number of people survived this event in India and were particularly resilient and adaptive due to the selection pressure they had gone through; they soon spread throughout eurasia, australia, and back into africa, mostly replacing most of the old lineages of homo sapiens, neanderthals, and denisovans around the world
China alone now makes 60% of world’s steel and a third of all automobiles manufactured in the world. SAIC, Geely, Changan, Dongfeng, and BAIC are HUGE and yet there are not enough books being written about their nitty gritty details or their ‘kaizen’, ‘six sigma’, ‘GE way’ or some other MBA nonsense. If it was some American company, bullshit would be spewing left and right about how innovation of a people and fortitude of one man changed history. Heck even our leading coconut pundits would be peddling it. Or other bullshit on what made Detroit or Pittsburgh special.
Americans are a fat and indulgent people, they like stories of greatness and success, something that sounds reasonable, something whose ending they already know. When their side is losing and the answers are inconvenient they pretend nothing is wrong and they are not losing or make up excuses to cope. Zero self reflection, just empty sloganeering or at best populism. This country is increasingly unfit to rule.
So many pundits well read in History and yet America continuously shames itself at war all around the globe. Makes me think the emperor is naked and beneath the confident handshakes (and stolen land) Americans are just another stupid disorganized people. Billions that could instead have been used as incentives for industry have been wasted but will Pentagon ever answer? Where is accountability? Will senators who gave billions to Pakistan be asked tough questions? Will the stupid generals have their pensions and medals taken back?
Indians another disorganized people, call out Krishna Menon, Nehru and Karan Thapar’s Abba-jan for failing the nation. Why is G.W. Bush, McNamara, Kessinger and other warmongering fools not held accountable for loss of American power and prestige?
Menon was a joker of highest order. India was suffering from famines and droughts and joker was trying to ‘solve’ the Suez canal crisis. Though without Nehru he was a nobody.
Its not surprising that his namesake goes around justifying India’s non action after Mumbai terror attacks as great diplomacy.
Narayanan, Menon and now Jaishankar.
May Mallu God help us.
South Indians do not have visceral hatred for Pakistan because they don’t understand the language.
I can only hope that Mallus do not cause as much harm as economists from Bengal.
Well they already have.
I think Jaishankar is a Tamilian.
Same “stock”
This is accurate. Damien Ma wrote a good piece about this issue last year, for those interested.
https://macropolo.org/china-inc-japan-inc-influence/
Thanks.
Some thoughts since my last comment:
1) Money making is moving away from machine floors and factories. I remember how army-like my lathe-smelting-welding-milling-cnc training was, everything neatly laid out, no stupidity tolerated, follow the instructions and safety procedures or be thrown out. There isn’t much left to innovate in streamlining industrial production, Operations Research has been figured out down to crazy smart dynamic programs. Same thing with structures, from laminated-carbon-composites to micro-fractures everything that the industry would ever use in next 20+ years was already figured out 20+ years ago. The big successes of our times are all into the business of selling us things or selling our information to others so that they can sell us things. Google, FB, everyone is in the business of advertising. Advertising to sell us things we don’t even need at inflated prices.
2)People (in west) are already satiated with sex, clothes, healthcare, education and housing. Crudely speaking I am almost 100% sure that our grandfathers would have felt the same high masturbating to sleazy Mastram paperbacks that the 2000s teens will find in HD porn.
(1) means smart people realize that hustling, and working in the juicy bits of selling things is the more fruitful activity compared to hard industry (2) means less talented (or in some other ways constrained) people are no longer interested in trying hard at producing goods.
Chinese industry is not being studied and copied in the US because (a) all the good theory is already known, now it is down to how much can one hustle and (b) Americans have a habit of running away with their eyes closed and tails between their legs when facing real fair competition wherever their advantage of enormous capital doesn’t save them. They are closing their eyes to what is a certain defeat, in 20 years they will make excuses and rationalize.
I don’t know enough about steel but something is rotten in America if GM can’t sell cars in even India when the Chinese MG can.
What are the chances West UP separates from East UP in the next couple of decades?
Also do west UP people have a sense of racialized Indus people style sense of superiority over East UP people?
Since wealthier and also more Steppe. (Bucking the overall south Asian geographic trend of higher steppe areas being poorer)
Actually Mayawati did propose a division of Uttar Pradesh into 4 parts in 2011 – Purvanchal, Bundelkhand, Awadh and Paschim Pradesh.
There has been another proposal to have Western UP as Harit Pradesh – mainly backed by socialists and agricultural OBCs. This “Harit Pradesh” would have almost 28% Muslims – remember the Gangetic Belt is the most Arabized and dysfunctional political economy of India.
Again the people of UP haven’t evolved any kind of “consciousness” in terms of culture or a societal project. They have been accustomed to “being ruled” – never ruling others. Because the OBCs or elites of the Gangetic Belt have never enforced their will on the minorities of their land. Rather they have reached a detente with them.
Again this region is quite critical – because of its proximity to the capital and the spillover effect. The highest votes for the Muslim League (a proxy for creation of Pakistan) in the Provincial Elections of 1946 came from these Provinces.
No chance of UP breaking up. The only way it breaks is when any political power has a lopsided presence in one region and not the other. For example Bihar(lalu)-jharkhand(bjp).
All the 3 major parties of UP don’t have any motivation to do that. Breaking up of a state is political decision not an administrative/financial one.
Dividing UP would give us our fair share of IIT, NIT, AIIMS, PSUs etc, plus boost to new capital cities.
My uncle (who watches Zee News and India News all day) thinks that only and only UP is real India, and due to how the bordering semi-India states (Bengal, Punjab, TN, Maharashtra) behave and treat us poorly despite UP never asking for it’s fair share in farm procurement or government funding, the country could see calls for partition from semi-Indians. He was especially shocked by how Bengalis whitewashed post poll violence and ganged up against Marwaris. He thinks remaining united as a state is very important. He spent much of his working life in Uttarakhand and was very disappointed with the state-ism of newly separated paharis, especially even after UP gave up Haridwar in charity. He extends his subnational loyalty to MP, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Bihar and Chattisgarh.
I don’t buy his theory but seeing what Haryana is doing with state reservations, I don’t think partition would be easy to sell. It can be done from top down but not bottom up.
Your uncle is not wrong abt UP being India, though ?
I have said this before, there are five groups that think they are core India: Hindi heartland (obviously), Punjab (contrasts itself with Pakistan and currently occupies Delhi), Maharashtra (obviously), Bengal (general self-importance and modern history) and TN (truest, undiluted, untouched, most Hindu…). All claim that they are real India, I have heard Bengali friends joke something on the lines that the rest of India is their colony, people they are supposed to civilize.
All think that other semi-Indians are taking undue advantage of their patriotism.
Suspicious of Muslims: Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Tamil
Suspicious of Chinese: Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi
Suspicious of Gora people: Hindi, Marathi
Of ur five groups , couple of them seceded from india in 47 , while the third failed while doing so.
That leaves marathi and hindi heartland. And till marathi has no PM to call it’s own, It will play second fiddle to us. It’s ownership still lacks substance.
@Bhimrao
Nice summation of 5 groups. Feels like the roving bands of Ronin in feudal Japan. You left out the most successful group – Gangetic Muslims – the 6th group. And of course – Gujarat are part of the Maharashtra group.
Although keep in mind – the last big national event – Partition – was a complex interplay of 3 out of these 6 groups.
The Gangetic Muslims wanted sub-nationalism. Punjabis and Bengalis opposed it. The Gangetic Hindus agreed to it – after all they didn’t lose any land.
Maharashtra group got pissed off to the extent that they assassinated a Gujju. They even start a new philosophy – Hindutva.
Bengalis and Punjabis get fucked over by Gangetic Hindus. But there is still one more stupid act they do. They do not send away all the Gangetic Muslims. Many of them stay back to do further sub-national mischief. Ambedkar clearly points this out.
All in all, the group most comfortable with Muslims are the Gangetic Hindus. They create a new philosophy called “secularism” with Gangetic flavor and impose it on the whole of India.
This Gangetic philosophy survived until the arrival of the Maha/Guj group in 2014. This group already captured power in 1999 but made the mistake of appointing a Gangetic Hindu – Vajpayee – as it’s leader. Vajpayee would have finished the career of Modi. He survived due to Advani.
TLDR – Gangetic Hindu is a pappu. Western Hindu is da man.
1. Hindi (incl. Urdu) speaker culture is hegemonic just due to sheer population. (~600 million). So they are the most archetypal Indians, imo.
Ugra is right in that they do have the most archetypal South Asian Muslim high culture.
Saurav also right in that they also have some of the most influential Hindu people and most important sites historically despite 800 years of Muslim rule.
They are just a hugely influential bunch, followed by Punjabi, Bengali and Tamil speakers in South Asia overall in my opinion.
2. Please inform MNS and Shivesena in Mumbai that Gujjus are part of the Marathi sub-national identity.
There is affinity of course, but I think both Gujaratis and Marathis speakers probably feel as strong affinity with Hindi speakers esp from neighboring states like MP or Rajasthan as they do for each other.
The film industry in Mumbai makes Hindi movies for a reason.
“some of the most influential Hindu people and most important sites historically despite 800 years of Muslim rule.
They are just a hugely influential bunch, followed by Punjabi, Bengali and Tamil speakers in South Asia overall in my opinion.”
“There is affinity of course, but I think both Gujaratis and Marathis speakers probably feel as strong affinity with Hindi speakers”
☝️ As said, People who know India already know this, despite the assertations of fertile mind of some folks on the blog.
My tier list of Hindu sites:
1) Puri
2) Badrinath, Rameshwaram
3) Dwarka
4) Kashi
5) Jyotirlings (Mahakaleshwar>Baidynath>Pashupati>Tryambakeshwar>Kedarnath>Somnath…)
6) Mathura-Vrindavana
7) Tirupati
8) Kamakhya and Kalighat
9) Meenakshi Amman
10) fill-in-the-blank
Then there are heavyweights like Ranganathaswamy, Padmanabhaswamy, Prayag, Gaya, Pandharpur, Sabarimala, Kailash, Vaishno-devi,…
Followed by middleweights like Ayodhya, Annamalaiyar, Pushkar, lingaraja…
Then welterweight like remaining shaktipeeths, Naimish, Gangotri, a-lot-of-fill-in-the-blanks…
Then lightweights like ones with grand structure but little provenance like Brihadeshwara or Chaturbhuj
Below them are thousands and thousands of flyweights.
South has more grand temples still standing, north has better provenance.
If we consider Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists to be Hindus then Maha bodhi and Golden temple would make it to God tier. Top ranked Jain places (Shikharji, Gomateshwara and Ranakpur) will maybe make it to middleweight.
correction: Pashupati is not a jyotirling. But still ranks very high.
agree that hindu leadership bungled big time during partition. it was really not a big task to get whole of india at independence. a simple “divide et impera” recipe would have sufficed. my playbook would have been like this-
1. declare that independent india would voluntarily relinquish claims on regions west of indus, and pashtuns and baluch will be free to become independent countries, or join afghanistan if they so wished. this would have immediately cooled any pashtun passions towards pakistan project.
2. prop up a puppet shia leadership that would fan the fears of sunni domination in an independent pakistan.
3. orchestrate large protests by “nationalist muslims” against pakistan movement. crowds don’t cost much in india. present rate is 500 rupees per person per day. it was even cheaper in 1947.
but on second thoughts, why would we want to keep the regions that became pakistan. muslims from overcrowded E bengal would have flooded whole of india, and this time as *legal* immigrants. and landless sindhi and punjabi jutt peasants would have been a nuisance.
the only region worth having from the original pakistan proposal is kashmir, which we already have. ha ha.
I think an important reason people question the indo-gangetic plains / Hindi speaker dominance is they are disproportionately economically backward.
So for erg. the “BIMARU” (acronym for low income states which sounds like the Hindi word “bimar” meaning sickly) are all Hindi speaking states.
So people from other states associate them with povery, crime, uncouth behaviour etc.
Overall this is a problem for India, it’s most culturally hegemonic linguistic group is the also most economically marginalized.
I think much of the economic issue is geographic. These states don’t have access to a coast, but very large population, due to high carrying capacity due to agriculture on the fertile gangetic plain.
Sadly I don’t see an easy way out for the BIMARU states.
Not much worried abt UP. It still has a western region which is doing OK. In the long term its other regions will benefit from that. That’s how rest of the states have grown on the back of a mega city.
The worry is Bihar, which is surrounded overall by dysfunctionality (to add to its own dysfunctionality)
Seems like in this brand of Indian RW, credibility is measured by how many other groups you hate and how much you hate them.
Indian left wing is busy doing genocide murdering people in Bengal, changing Assam and Bengal demographics since 1950 from 15% to 27% in 2011 in Bengal and 17% to 34% in Assam is something to be proud about. Kerala the hub of Indian left saw the demographic changes in Malabar region(North Kerala) from 18% to 28% in the same period is not something to comment about.
Punjab is going demographics changes where Sikhs are getting converted to Christianity and the Asia’s largest church being constructed in Jullunder is not something that Indian right wing should comment about.
South Karnataka (Bengaluru and Mysore region) showing demographic changes over last 20 years is something Indian RW should not talk about.
Left wing is busy about talking poverty, economics when they were in power for 60 years did absolutely nothing but full fledged socialism nationalization and full on ‘Licence Raj’ to kill business in India but when non performing public sector companies are sold to private sector is seen as “neocolonialism” by Indian left.
Using I phones, macbook and all the fruits of capitalism but supporting socialism is “Socialism with Indian characteristic called hypocrisy and Irony”
saurav, have to said, ugra is getting the best of you in that exchange. but perhaps you are so confident in your position that you are chill about coming out looking like the fool?
Nah, we can have a conversation when someone is not living in a fantasy land. I can even understand when Dravidians have a ‘Dravidian idea’ of India, but when someone has a different ‘Hindu idea’ of India diametrically opposite of what’s actually the reality of India is, then there is not much to say
The PEW research already shows what India is. And what Hindu Indians really are. There is not much to add.
The story of modern Indian politics – Gangetic Hindus (secular co-existence with Muslims) Vs Western Hindus (Hindutva).
Ronin politics – Trinamul, DMK, AIADMK, Communists, TDP, NCP – oppose Congress and Hindutva – opportunists – have allied at times with both. Perfection!!! Horses for courses.
Gangetic Hindus have been losing in two ways – at the idea of politics and also the HDI game. They now serve as drivers, maidservants, farmhands, cooks and handymen in all of Indian regions. There is not a single Indian city – East, West or South – where there is no UP-ite or Bihari.
This has two direct outcomes. One, these migrant men and women take ideas of development and cultural imperialism back to their state and clamour for change – further eroding the dominant streams of secularism.
Second outcome – Hindutva is increasingly imposing it’s choices on the defeated regions. Example – Yogi Adityanath is a handpicked man by Western Indians to lead UP. He was not the CM candidate at the time of the elections but rather a parachuted CM. That is not sustainable – we have to see if the Gangetic Hindus like him at the next polls. Hindutva could face a setback for its forced choices.
It’s fine if Saurav pretends that somehow the Gangetic Hindus are victorious at life and philosophy. They haven’t tasted any meaningful success for quite some time.
Pretence and a make-believe world are useful crutches for struggling people. Let’s not kick the crutches from their arms.
“They haven’t tasted any meaningful success for quite some time.”
LOL. We are the country, bro. Your people just happened to live in it.
If that’s not success, what is?
One of my arrows hit the troll 🙂
Bruh, you guys had to beg Muslims for over 20 years to build a temple in your own State. Let that Sink in…
Man u folks are really delusional. I mean, i knew Dravidians are delusional, but to this degree?
But i guess i shouldn’t have been surprised. The NRI S-Indians seemed more Hindu than their counterpart back home.
Lol this is true. I was recently watching an episode of family man 2 and couldn’t help but notice that Tamil Nadu might as well be some other country, it didn’t look or feel like India at all.. Bengal and Maharastha still seems familiar .. Tamil Nadu? Not really. So when Ugra says he is more Indian than someone from the Gangetic belt.. its funny.
@S Querishi
….So when Ugra says he is more Indian….
I have never said or implied this in any context. Read the arguments carefully.
After independence , UP gave two options for its name. ‘Aryavrat’ and ‘Hindustan’. Aryavrat was rejected due to obvious Nazi connections. Hindustan was rejected because other states opposed that it would mean UP is India. Which deep down everyone knows and acknowledges, but still fights against it. Finally it was Uttar Pradesh which was least opposed name and was chosen.
Though i see it as a victory overall that other regions of India now fight themselves as more Indian/Hindu. That’s the final triumph of an ideology. Just like how Iran/Pakistan now style itself as citadel of Islam.
UP derives it name from its former colonial name “United Province”. A “Hindu” is what Islamic Rulers called their Dhimmi Subjects in the Northern Parts of the Sub-Continent. The Indian identity is a British invention, India is just a state that the British created. To fight over who’s “More Indian” or “More Hindu” is like fighting over who’s the biggest Dhimmi or who’s the biggest Anglophile.
Perhaps, i’m mixing up 2 things here?? You’re probably saying that the Indian State(created by the brits) currently belongs to UP. Well, India is currently a Westminster style Liberal Democracy. Rest of India isn’t under servitude to your community, remember Freight Equalization Policy and the Delimitation Commission?
i understand that different people can have different levels of “hindu consciousness”, but usually it is a function of individual communities rather than any geographical distance from putative hindu heartland.
for e.g., jats from haryana and western UP, supposedly the core of aryavarta, have always been indifferent sort of hindus. OTOH, tamil brahmins from deep south can be deeply conscious of their hinduness.
gujrat is supposedly a very hinduised state. and yet, there was a significant inflow into gujrati memon, bohra and lohana muslim communities from hindu agrarian castes *post islamic period*, when there was no apparent pressure on them to leave the fold of hinduism. (jinnah’s ancestors belonged to these converts).
the reality is much more complex. simplistic analysis can be misleading.
” jats from haryana and western UP, supposedly the core of aryavarta, have always been indifferent sort of hindus. OTOH, tamil brahmins from deep south can be deeply conscious of their hinduness.”
Brahmins of ALL regions have deep conscious of their hinduness The Jats have been at the bare minimum indifferent OBCs , though i would contest that, be that as it may. What is the record of OBCs of other regions?
https://m.timesofindia.com/world/south-asia/afghan-taliban-says-it-sees-china-as-a-friend-promises-not-to-host-uyghur-militants-from-xinjiang-report/amp_articleshow/84294990.cms
Afghan Taliban says it sees China as a ‘friend’, promises not to host Uyghur militants from Xinjiang: Report
BTW have u folks noticed that Pakistan seem uncharacteristically cagey with Taliban gaining control in Afghanistan? What could be the reason. Is it just performative or are they really concerned. And if its the latter than for what?
https://www.dawn.com/news/1634300/pakistan-facilitator-of-afghan-peace-process-not-guarantor-ispr-chief
“The DG ISPR said guns cannot decided the future of Afghanistan. “Guns could not decide in the past 20 years, so how could they decide now?”
When a journalist pointed out the recent onslaught by the Taliban, he replied: “That is just a phase. Eventually they will have to sit down and decide, otherwise this will convert into a civil war which will not benefit anyone.””
Ghariyali aansu. Fool me once…
I think Ghani would have happily accepted all of Pakistan’s reasonable demands in exchange for peace. Par inhein ungli karni hai, hum iski kadi ninda karte hain.
“Pakistan seem uncharacteristically cagey with Taliban gaining control in Afghanistan?”
multiple reasons…
1. 2020s is not 1990s. the world has burnt its fingers with islamic fundamentalism, and will not allow it again. even after US troops leave afghanistan, the big 3 powers (US, russia and china) will keep afghanistan on a tight leash. these 3 powers have just one thing in common- they all are sure to come to harm with islamic fundamentalism. you don’t need boots on the ground to maintain control. military technology has advanced enough that the control can be maintained from the skies.
2. pakistan needs illiterate afghan mules that it can pump into kashmir. but again, 2020s are not 1990s. india has a much firmer grasp on security situation in kashmir than it had back then. kashmir s borders are much more tightly secured. so mining afghanistan for cannon fodder in kashmir is not gonna be profitable.
3. taliban, with some justification, can claim that they drove out the americans with their blood and sweat. having gained victory after a grueling 2 decades long war, they are not going to do the bidding on some bureaucrat sitting in rawalpindi.
4. pakistan might be wary, again with lots of justification, that a taliban victory in afghanistan will give a boost to pakistan talibans too. not a very palatable thought. after all, taliban are as much a pashtunnnational movement as an islamic movement.
in fact, it is in every party’s interest that taliban capture kabul peacefully, let its president flee and seek asylum in US/turkey/pak, and establish a nice little islam-light government in afghanistan. unfortunately, things never go as planned in afghanistan. only time will tell how things pan out.
Thread should be renamed: Ugra DESTROYS Gangetic Plains Supremacist.
More like Saurav chad causes tamiltwink butthurt.
Ghani doesnt even accept the international border the whole world accepts.. it doesn’t get more unreasonable then that. Infact now that he sees defeat written on the wall.. he is appealing to the Taliban to not accept the Durand line.
https://pajhwok.com/2021/07/10/taliban-should-promise-not-to-accept-durand-line-ghani/
I dont think anyone in Pakistan really cares about the Durand line as long as Afghanistan is friendly towards Pakistan. It is failure of Afghan Nats to accept reality as they are still under the delusion that they have claim on half of Pakistan.
Taliban does not accept it either.
This is a lame excuse for violence. Afghans do bakchodi just like Pakistanis or Indians. Pakistan is causing bloodshed because it can and it has too many ‘geostrategists’.
Sannu ki? Sab Lad Maro!
true. afghans have been fighting each other for the last 500 years (or is it 5000 years?). nobody gives a shit about afghans, as long as they keep their friendly little bam-wham within their borders.
Taliban are ambivalent about it and are not hostile, while Ghani and his ilk of AfgNats are more concerned about Pasthun lands in Pakistan than in administering their own non Pasthun populations in Afghanistan. Most Pakistanis don’t care about Durand line either as long as it’s not bringing in arms or terrorists in their cities. Afghan refugees actually have it quite good in Pakistan in terms of reception with the non Pasthun host population compared to what refugees usually get in other countries.
If Afg nationalists are rooted out, Durand line may eventually cease to matter once Pakistan does not see a threat from Afghanistan.
https://www.opindia.com/2021/07/madhya-pradesh-grooming-love-jihad-police-chhatarpur-conversion-complaint-murder/
Disturbing
ARTPARK to set up $100M fund for long-term investments in deep tech startups
https://yourstory.com/2021/07/artpark-100-million-fund-investment-deep-tech-startups-india/amp
I know the people behind this. They plan to build an equivalent of Stanford Research Institute for India. Still early days. Very excited to see where this goes.
I did read the discussion you guys are having and to be honest,the core areas having the most political power is quite a volatile position.
For instance,during the early Vedic Age,Sapta Sindhu region was political centre of India.
In Iron Age,Haryana and West UP gqined ascendancy.
In Mayryan Era,Magadh.
In Maratha Empire,Maharashtra.
In British era,Bengal.
And now the power is in the hands of UP.
Tbh,I dont know how long will it last.
One thing for sure is that those who demand akhand bharat will also have to think about being Punjabis and Bengalis getting more numerous,which maybe Gangetic Elites would not like and will try to preserve the status quo.
https://m.economictimes.com/magazines/panache/craving-the-bengal-rum-india-was-responsible-in-intoxicating-australia/amp_articleshow/84311093.cms
Craving the Bengal rum: India was responsible in intoxicating Australia
https://theprint.in/opinion/uttar-pradesh-had-a-thriving-literary-culture-in-the-1980s-but-new-delhi-killed-it/693178/
Uttar Pradesh had a thriving literary culture in the 1980s, but proximity to Delhi killed it
Pretty astonishing that UP had a thriving literary culture without the literacy.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.scroll.in/article/999676/why-indias-new-environment-minister-is-sparking-some-cheer
Why India’s new environment minister is sparking some cheer
now sharad pawar has sort of approved u p population law. others will soon follow suit, as sharad pawar is a reputed weather vane in indian politics. shiva sena will be forced to do some thing similar.
I’m not so sure about it. If it happens it’s good. Maharashtra is facing full scale “Hijabization” among Muslims. The parallel exists only in Kerala. It seems better socioeconomic conditions imply “Hijabization” of Muslim women.
@ Shashank
Razib had talked about this in this blogpost
https://www.brownpundits.com/2019/09/11/calvinism-atheism-and-hinduism/
Radical haleemification and radical leftism are the two cancerous growths for which India has found no cure. Treatment expectations have at least moved from purely palliative to now bordering on intent to cure. But it can teeter back at anytime.
https://swarajyamag.com/news-brief/within-22-months-jal-jeevan-mission-provides-tap-water-to-97-lakh-households-in-japanese-encephalitis-affected-districts
Within 22 Months, Jal Jeevan Mission Provides Tap Water To 97 Lakh Households In Japanese Encephalitis Affected Districts
https://swarajyamag.com/world/long-read-how-chinas-communist-party-is-infiltrating-the-global-media-circuit
How China’s Communist Party Is Infiltrating The Global Media Circuit
https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/covid-19-overview-why-last-weeks-data-is-of-concern-and-where-the-spikes-and-plateaus-are-coming-from
Covid-19 Overview: Why Last Week’s Data Is Of Concern And Where The Spikes And Plateaus Are Coming From
https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/nation-state-and-modern-sport
“THE NATION STATE & MODERN SPORT”
” We should not be comparing the IPL to the English Premier League. The proper analogy is another football code on another continent: America’s NFL or the National Football League.
Like the IPL in India, the NFL is a vast country’s highest grossing league. Like the NFL, the IPL is based on franchises not Premier League style clubs with their long histories in local communities. Like the NFL, the IPL’s principal audience (and therefore its revenues) is local: it basically needs Indian eyeballs. The NFL, like nearly all American sports leagues, whether it is baseball or basketball, is a domestic competition played between local teams staffed with mainly American players. And here’s the thing: the absence of international competition and the absence of national teams makes no difference to the superheated, militarist nationalism that virtually defines the NFL. Like India, the US is a continental nation, large enough to have an insular celebration of itself through sport regardless of the absence of other countries.
The NFL is a good way of thinking about the future of nationalism in Indian cricket because it demonstrates how much scope there is for militaristic chauvinism in a domestic league in a democratic country. It is also an excellent illustration of the ways in which corporate media, politicians, celebrity players, fans, and franchise owners use nationalism as a magic sauce to grow the game and make it (and everyone involved in it) richer.
Where does that leave the Indian spectator who might prefer watching cricket at a less feverishly patriotic temperature and watching cricketers less mortgaged to the nation state? Let us return to Hobsbawm’s take on sport and nationalism Notice that his insight was carefully gendered: “even the least political or public individual can identify with the nation as symbolised by young persons excelling at something practically every man wants to be good at.”
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/al-qaeda-module-busted-in-up-planned-suicide-attacks-in-lucknow-says-police-2484185
earlier there was a idea that tamil nadu can be split with madurai being the capital of south tamil nadu. it was said that this will solve the ‘property’ issue between stalin and alagiri. now b j p has let the cat amongst the pigeons by hinting at kongu nadu which is essentially the western districts of tamil nadu. if this takes shape coimatturu can become really big. the weather is also good here. also kongu nadu is considered more ‘ cultured’ and more refined than the other regions of tamil nadu.
It’s mostly pressure tactic by BJP. Same thing is happening in Bengal as well.
Indian states are divided when both the ruling party and the party in the state acquiesce. Neither in Bengal or Tamil Nadu does bjp gain by dividing the state.
https://twitter.com/pranitasubhash/status/1414559116626857990
“Pratima Roy’s picture from her NASA internship swells my heart with pride.
The attacks directed against her reeks of Hinduphobia. Science and Sanatana Dharma can co-exist because our civilization isn’t/has never been dogmatic beyond reason.”
There is seriously something up in Karnataka. Seems its churning out more Hindutva folks than the state can handle. First Venkatesh Prasad, and now this. Half expecting Dravid might be next, since India’s cricket coach job is up in the air. He comes from MP anyways.
In the North its mostly washed up celebrities who take to politics, it seem the opposite in the South. Is Karnataka Hindutva’s attock fort to conquer the South?
https://twitter.com/AskAnshul/status/1414293446450315268?s=20
Halal Haleem Owaisi
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pakistan-after-rooting-for-afghanistans-taliban-faces-a-blowback-11625822762
Pakistan, After Rooting for Afghanistan’s Taliban, Faces a Blowback
“For two decades, a large part of the Pakistani security establishment rooted for the Taliban in the Afghan war. Now that the Taliban are taking over vast tracts of the country and seem to be on the cusp of seizing power, panic is spreading through Pakistan’s halls of power.”
Something which i was pointing 2 couple of days back.
Muddying the water. Don’t fall for this. Pakistanis love throwing bullshit ‘in this context, that context, left alone, betrayed, history baggage, Frontline state, blah blah…’
‘Yeh jo dehshatgardi hai, isle peeche wardi hai’
Dont know man, this seems a bit out of ordinary to be a act.
https://twitter.com/ArifCRafiq/status/1414927732484493313
Even pro-Pak/Taliban voices seema bit concerned
What else can they do? They like talking, there is nothing else to talk about. Does their talking change their behavior? Some Pakistanis said something-something when Mumbai happened, does that mean that they changed their hearts. No! They still house, arm and train the Taliban.
Everyone knows it will be clusterfuck in Afghanistan but unless Pakistanis get really hurt like APS attack I don’t think it really bothers them enough to change. They don’t care about Afghan lives.
Pashtun Lives Matter
Pakistani elites are adept at exploiting Pakistan’s strategic location to wring the US for obscene amounts of money.
Everything from Alaska to Kurils from Japan to Korea, from Mongolia to Tajikistan to every Laos to every island and atoll from Indonesia to Kerlugens to New Caledonia to Caribbean, even Paraguay and Angola, even Niger and Greenland EVERYTHING is strategic if one wants to think it is.
Strategic as a term is useful BS to justify annexing some territory like say Gilgit or Nagarparkar in exchange of reasonable amount of bloodshed but it should never be taken seriously when OTHERS use it. Jiski Lathi uski bhains, Geo-strategy is retrofitted bullshit.
Pakistan is surrounded by poor countries, it has zero natural resources that others covet, it’s claim to fame are the nuclear suicide and terrorism. There is nothing that Pakistan offers that Iran or India can’t outdo ten times over.
//There is nothing that Pakistan offers that Iran or India can’t outdo ten times over.//
So why have they not done it already? More incompetence?
India is only good at providing access to Central Asia on it’s government produced maps, otherwise no its location was pretty useless for the West until very recently when China became their number 1 enemy (and even here it has been outflanked by China preemptively so it’s usefulness to the powers that be are limited at best). As for Iran, it’s actively hostile to Western interests and has been so for last few decades and situation does not seem like it’s gonna change.
Pakistani geo-strategists have mostly made the right alliances, and with shift towards milking China, this is turning out to be another successful home run.
@Qureshi
people are tweeting about a lot of Pakistani soldiers KIA (or attained martyrdom, not sure if Pakistan army enforces the distinction). Any chance of this being Afghan retaliation or are they local people? Any chance of surgical strikes into Afghanistan? Pakistan might as well test it’s new drones on ISIS’s ass.
Nominal GDP of entire central Asia is about 300 Billion USD. That is about the same as Tamil Nadu. No one gives a fuck about Central Asia, they are a resource pit at best and a nuisance at worst. The future of Indian people will be written in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Dhaka, Karachi and maybe even Dubai.
That’s too much bania influence, counting coppers while ignoring geopolitics. UPites should be above this shit. Not everything revolves around GDP or potential GDP. If Central Asia is not important then please explain how Pakistani geo-strategists are able to milk the West for so long.
//Any chance of surgical strikes into Afghanistan? Pakistan might as well test it’s new drones on ISIS’s ass.//
I don’t see it happening anytime soon, not as long as Imran Khan is PM. Only if the Taliban fail at consolidating power and Afghanistan is completely free for all.. then maybe Pakistan will start to more actively join the fray. But as it stands, I don’t see that scenario as likely.
//The future of Indian people will be written in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Dhaka, Karachi and maybe even Dubai.//
We ain’t Indian. The break is almost complete.
@Qureishi
Really? Home run?
Allying with the US on one level was smart, but on another level bad, too. The US used Pakistan and spit it out. The US is rarely “friends” with anyone, just uses countries insofar as it helps them advance their interests. Look at how the Cold War + War on Terror policies of the US caused havoc in Pakistan. I would have even less faith in China.
I think Pakistan has been smart and prescient in identifying the superpowers and being on their side, but I also think they have gone too far and become quasi-colonies of those superpowers at times. It’s good to be friends with the right people, but also just as important to be able to maintain some degree of independence. India has had the opposite issue to some degree, being idealistic or choosing the wrong superpowers at the wrong time (Soviet Union before, now the US just as China is becoming a hegemon). But it has maintained its independence, which has helped it not be used by the Soviet Union or the US, as applicable.
…..Pakistani geo-strategists have mostly made the right alliances, and with shift towards milking China, this is turning out to be another successful home run….
Too many words to describe the function of a condom.
…counting coppers while ignoring geopolitics. …..Not everything revolves around GDP or potential GDP.
Last week Pakistan sold a 30 year sovereign bond in the foreign market for 300 million USD at 8.45% to finance their budget deficit. That’s like the deep end of junk territory. Basically Pakistan borrowed that money from foreigners and promised to pay them six times that amount in 30 years. All for financing one annual budget. Not going to have an happy ending.
I am more with Qureshi on this, though i dont think the reason Afghanistan is coveted is because of C-Asia. During the first Afgan war, the reason was to make it Russia’s Vietnam. And the 2nd the reason it took so long for US to pull out was part ego (that they didnt want to lose), and part bureaucratic sloggishness. That;s the reason why US could wrap up easily and go back home quickly, once it was established there is no poltical cost of leaving Afghanistan. So much so that folks who wanted US to get out (both on liberals as well as China/Pakistan) side are now getting jittery.
It was never about C-Asia or pipelines or trade ever. It was just a ruse to make all those investement made in Afghanistan have some economic logic. No one in their right mind will invest billion of dollars on trade and stuff connecting C-Asia. China has tried with BRI and it has been described as roads leaving no where to no wheres. That’s y i feel even CPEC is overwblown since it joins the most laggard regions of China to C-Asia, Pakistan rather than its Eastern sea-board. That;s y not sure if its Pakistan milking China or vice-versa.
On India;s importance (wrt to Pakistan) to the west i think its usefullness cannot be fully judged unless India becomes a full fledged ally of the West akin to what Pakistan was. Like providing bases etc. If India would want it can provide even “better” strategic ally considering it can hem (not defeat) China’s ocean as well as land power, something which no other country can simultanesuly provide.
Austin and Pittsburgh will soon become major hubs of US tech industry especially in robotics and computer vision. On par with Boston and Seattle.
How’s the employment scene at startups in Seattle for generalist roles like product manager?
Are spouses of people on L1 visa able to find jobs easily?
I don’t know the specifics but I have product manager friends at Amazon, Adobe and Nvidia who seem to be doing very well, the Nvidia one even said that it is a comparatively easier profile with less work hours and and systems architecture type of work compared to rising up the Engineering hierarchy. Seattle is a great city, there is Amazon, MS… Everyone from say Portland State and UW-Seattle goes to work for Amazon.
If someone is determined they will get a job. USCIS are not known for their efficiency or consistency, one of my advisors once told me that one out of three Americans wants you out of this country, sometimes this one guy will be in charge but the other two (out of three) will do you more good than three out of three good meaning people from any other country. For H1B dependents there is this joking observation that San Jose State University, University of Illinois Chicago, University of Houston, Stevens/NJIT… are universities for Indian spouses.
From my friend circle’s info, product manager roles tend to be less stressful than developer/engineer roles, but pay less as well, especially in startups. Since you will be coming from India, you will have to carefully negotiate salaries, $ 100,000 is a lower middle class salary in areas like Seattle and Bay Area. It sounds like a lot, but it isnt really. Austin is more manageable, but the pay will be lower.
L1 spouses cant work, however L1’s can apply for the green card in a faster queue than most Master’s level engineers. While you are doing that, your spouse can try and get an H1B visa or continue her education.
L2s can work. Plus L1A has the faster queue , while L2A has the same speed has most H1B
Is this true if one doesnt have a pending I-485 ? I thought you needed that to file for an EAD.
L2s can works without I-485. Even F1 folks file for EAD.
While you are doing that, your spouse can try and get an H1B visa or continue her education.
Most likely I will be the spouse in this hypothetical scenario.
(Nothing is happening, guys. I am not getting married. Just clarifying to any heartbroken ladies in the comments)
L2s can work. Plus L1A has the faster queue , while L2A has the same speed has most H1B
In plain English, does this mean that if my wife has an L1 then I can work in the US?
Yes
Startup funding is still overwhelmingly concentrated in the Bay Area, $ 32 billion last year. The only real competitor is NYC with $ 14 billion. The money stays mostly where there is already a critical mass of labor and the VC’s like to live.
I have family in tech in a few of those places. I enjoy medicine, and I didn’t like programming in school (I know there is a lot more to tech than programming but still), so I am happy where I am.
But it really is incredible to see the lifestyle/comp balance of the elite American engineering crowd. I have relatives in decent level positions at google, apple, and amazon in their early 30s. They are doing amazingly well. One is an IIT grad who married into the family.
On Money:
When one gets down to the numbers the best deal for an Indian is to not work too hard in cram school, don’t take drop year, just go to a decent private engineering school to do Computer Science like Manipal, SRM or VIT and move to the US at 22, get into a mid-rung affordable state university which has a familiar name that gives MS for about 50K, preferably near tech industry, Gpreferably not in places like Oklahoma or Iowa. Do lots of leetcode. At 24 start in SF at around 120-130K and climb up to ~200K by the time you are in early 30s. Try to marry a fellow Indian H1B immigrant who has a similar career interest. Wait in H1B line for 20+ years. Raise angraiji speaking kids who your relatives in India will adore.
This is the simplest most repeated money making plan ever.
The mistakes people make:
1) Dating in late teens. It never works.
2) Thinking their IIT degree makes them deserve more.
3) Studying anything other than Computer Science if the goal is maximizing money. Civil engineering MS people make about 70-90K starting salary, Electrical people make 90-110.
I came because I loved this one specific field and could not afford to pay for MS. Have received top education from the very top peoe in a field where there is a lot of scope for starting something. I see OK-ish people who scored a C on the class I TA-ed chilling out at Apple. It is hard not to think ‘Chutiya Sala!’ about them. Maybe because I did not make much money and had to make big personal sacrifices. My friends in Bangalore are all making well into 30-50 LPA (USD 40-70K) that’s a lot of money in India. So a very mixed bag I would say in terms of money. On the other hand I will be playing with multimillion dollar toys in a few months which would not have happened in India.
A debt free alternative would be to do undergrad from VIT, RVCE etc and then join a startup. Gain some work ex and keep applying to FAANG on the side. You’d be in the India offices one of these companies by 25. You can then move to the US within a couple of years by getting into the right teams.
I gave a long interview for Google X last year, did not get in. They do some pretty open ended projects, a lot of really smart people. Lack of pressure to deliver end results makes them soft in some ways.
I have a friend who works for Amazon Robotics in Boston. They seem to have more sense of direction.
Things are going down in South Africa between Indians and blacks.
https://twitter.com/khutsorebel/status/1414704389596585991?s=21
https://twitter.com/pine_tree_riots/status/1414721357863137280
@ Bhimrao
What are your thoughts on this
https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2021-07-carbon-dioxide-butanol-phosphorous-rich-copper.amp
@ Bhimrao
What are you thoughts on this
https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2021-07-carbon-dioxide-butanol-phosphorous-rich-copper.amp
@Narasingha
Catalysts cannot change the enthalpies of reactions. At the end of the day Ethane/Methane/Butane… + Oxygen equals Water+CO_2+Energy, because of the difference in the bonds between C-O, H-O vs C-H and O-O. There is no escaping giving this energy released back if you want to reverse the reaction. Thermodynamics is a bitch, with lots and lots of free maybe solar energy maybe it is possible to take CO2 out of atmosphere and make it into Hydrocarbons but it would be like supplying subsidized electricity and cars to our ancestors.
Happy to be corrected if I made any mistake.
https://www.hindupost.in/crime/arif-became-aditya-to-trap-and-marry-daughter-of-ias-officer-tortured-her-to-convert-to-islam/
More rape jihad
Is South Africa’s Present America’s Future?
South African Indians defend themselves against black looters in Rainbow Nation.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2021-07-13/south-africas-present-americas-future
https://myind.net/Home/viewArticle/18-years-later-the-qasim-nagar-massacre-of-hindu-laborers-by-islamic-terrorists-remains-forgotten/
Massacre by radical haleems
https://swarajyamag.com/news-brief/india-pulls-out-kandahar-consulate-staff-amid-taliban-advance-in-afghanistan-what-next
Things are bad. Taliban khan is winning. India needs a new strategy
https://m.timesofindia.com/india/pakistan-govt-to-withdraw-cases-against-350-accused-in-temple-burning-case-says-hindus-pardoned-them/amp_articleshow/84378343.cms
The oppression continues
With all due respect to Saurav, who I like, it seems that the real Chads of India are Haryanvis and Punjabis.
Number of qualified sportspersons for Tokyo 2020 Olympics from each Indian state
rest of country can learn from sports investment/culture in these places, particularly haryana. South is doing better than East and West too. East and West need to stop sucking so hard at this stuff.
Actually Manipuris are the biggest per / capita chads based on that map. If they had the same population as haryana or punjab there would be 50 athletes from that state
I think this picture has a lot to do with recruitment for the army. States with a culture of seeking armed forces jobs probably have more youth participating in athletic events.
@principia
LOL, again i don’t claim Gangetic folks as chad or anything. Everyone knows we aren’t.
We are BIMARU and more-Hindu. Punjabis can be less-Hindu and chad (if u feel so). Both things can simultaneously co-exist.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Bollywood-dominated-only-by-Punjabis-especially-by-the-Khatri-caste?ch=10&share=0c0270e4&srid=u6vS8
Interesting answers lol
“If Central Asia is not important then please explain how Pakistani geo-strategists are able to milk the West for so long.”
you must have heard the common quip – pakistan is the condom US needs to enter afghanistan.
this is all there is to the strategic value of pakistan. this also explains why pakistan has disproportionately larger number of geo strategists than any other country. the west seems to want to enter afghanistan more and more often, and pak geo strategists have their hands full devising new features that heighten the pleasure of both parties.
So what is stopping them now from cutting all ties, and punishing Pakistan for it’s ”treachery” all these years Scorpion? US intelligence agencies are not oblivious to the fact that Pakistan was playing a double game.But clearly, that’s not on their agenda right now. Even after all this while, India has not been able to extract any concession from the US on Pakistan. Wonder why?
No it’s not because of Afghanistan’s $3trillion mineral wealth deposits or some oil pipelines. It’s plain old geo-politics. Pakistan is the gateway to Central Asia, and Central Asia is the backyard of both of US’s prime enemies: Russia and China. They are not going to rattle relationship with Pakistan as they will lose that leverage entirely (like they lost Iran). Pakistani establishment has also shown them they can play ball if the prize is big enough. So the most you are going to get is a couple of slaps on the wrist for ”terror” financing but that’s about it.
“So what is stopping them now from cutting all ties, and punishing Pakistan for it’s ”treachery” all these years Scorpion?”
are you crazy? who even “punishes” a used condom???
hah.. Indians and their obsession with sexual innuendoes.
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Punjabis-dominate-in-Bollywood-movies?ch=10&share=b1b6c825&srid=u6vS8
Another one lol. Worship of steppe continues
Bihari babu is dropping truth Bombs there
The reality is that Indians are obsessed with fair / light skin and more Caucasian shifted features.
You can use the “freida pinto test”, to see the extent to which someone follows indian beauty norms.
The slum dog millionaire actresses is:
1. Plain looking
2. Good looking
Another test is Ranbir kapoor in plain clothes (Indians tend to think he is very handsome for some reason)
Yeah. Indians have several layers of brainwashing for various reasons that leads to irrational disdain for tropical features and darker skin. The sad part is that they think this societal propaganda is some sort of immutable objective biological hierarchy. They sincerely believed they are DNA hardwired to think this way. It looks pretty cringe to others when you view yourself as innately inferior. But that’s on them.
Their cope is “looks aren’t everything.” Well yeah the same thing can be said about intellect. But studies show better looking people earn more, commit less crime, are happier, tend to more educated, tend to get more promotions, tend to have fewer divorces, etc. It isn’t everything. But when you set society up with artificial looks norms that pretty much put most of your population below your recent colonizers and a small segment into an acceptable attractive class, based on their lighter skin and relatively more caucausoid features, traits that when isolated alien populations tend to first encounter, they tend to find weird looking, just like all different traits, in many documented historical accounts, you set up a situation of massively preventable inequity.
This will be very hard to organically change. But you are seeing it very slowly happen. Historical dominance hierarchies put layers and layers of lighter and more caucasoid people into positions of power in the subcontinent, from the aryans to the British and the many in between.
@thewarlock
“ studies show better looking people earn more, commit less crime, are happier, tend to more educated”
It could be that wealthier people are able to take better care of themselves and are ranked more attractive because of that
Might seem unbelievable but India is moving in a better direction on skin color. Just the preference in Bollywood illustrate it
Deepika Padukone(2000s)>> Kajol/Madhuri (1990s)>>Smita Patil (1980s)
Genius test. Yes. Most will find Pinto just average. Actually there was a post with deepika without makeup and most Indian commentors found her quite average. But I noticed foreign commenters still calling her quite beautiful.
And yeah that’s true about Ranbir too. Basically, the less AASI you look or conversely the more steppe, the better.
The IVC iranic component is not as variable across S Asian populations. But steppe and AASI are. As I have previously stated, that ratio matters the most on S Asian looks hierarchies.
Deepika is quite average looking without makeup
But then, most women would look way uglier, no matter the geography, if makeup didn’t exist, which explains why women over 25 in the past were considered quite old. These days, they can stretch their youthful looks to 35 or so with some decent makeup..
she is pretty. 90% of women without makeup, age controlled and across geographies, are uglier IMO. Indians are just brainwashed to find darker skin and non caucasoid features ugly.
I am sure this is just average to you too
Hmm
https://thewinnower.com/papers/estimating-the-genotypic-intelligence-of-populations-and-assessing-the-impact-of-socioeconomic-factors-and-migrations
TABLE 4A. PREDICTED IQS BASED ON REGRESSING IQ OF DEVELOPED COUNTRIES ON THE 4SNPS G FACTOR
IQ developed countries
Predicted (G.wich) IQ
Afr.Car.Barbados
83.6
US Blacks
85
84.0
Bengali Banglade
91.4
Chinese Dai
102.7
UtahWhites
99
99.3
HanChineseBejing
105
104.3
HanChineseSouth
105
103.6
Colombian
92.5
Esan Nigeria
82.1
Finns
101
99.0
British
100
100.0
Gujarati Ind. Tx
97.1
Gambian
82.1
Spanish
97
98.1
Indian Telegu UK
95.0
Japanese
105
103.0
Vietnam
105.9
Luhya Kenya
81.4
Mende Sierra Leo
83.7
Mexican LA
95.1
Peruvian
91.0
Punjabi Pakistan
94.9
Puerto Rican
93.5
SriLankanUK
88.7
TuscanItaly
99
97.9
Yoruba
82.0
https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/amp/news/spacex-to-partner-local-firms-to-make-satcom-gear-in-india/84365479
SpaceX to partner local firms to make satcom gear in India
https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/technology/auto/terra-motors-joins-hands-with-fcc-corp-to-develop-evs-parts-in-india-7166011.html/amp
Terra Motors joins hands with FCC Corp to develop EVs, parts in India
south africa burning. indian men are fighting with guns and women are lighting diyas. was it so difficult for these governments to provide housing and schools for the blacks as a minimum? south africa is a rich country comparatively.
Pretty sure my boy and current S-Africa PMs BFF Gupta ji will save Indians
south africa burning. indian men are fighting with guns and women are lighting diyas. was it so difficult for these governments to provide housing and schools for the blacks as a minimum? south africa is a rich country comparatively.
Struck by this image of a middle aged Indian auntie casually carrying an automatic shotgun and ammo belt like its a super soaker.
https://mobile.twitter.com/willempet/status/1414649243931975680
“Struck by this image of a middle aged Indian auntie casually carrying an automatic shotgun and ammo belt like its a super soaker.”
hard to believe, but these folks are descendants of settlers of gandhi’s ashrams in SA.
i am not complaining. when it becomes a question of kill or get killed, there shouldnt be any moral dilemmas.
@ Qureishi @ Bhimrao
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ndtv.com/world-news/pakistan-bus-blast-kills-8-including-6-chinese-nationals-report-2486188%3famp=1&akamai-rum=off
The second order effects of US withdrawal from AFG have begun. 6 Chinese killed in a bombing at KP province. Islamabad denies that it is a bombing, while China is insisting that it is (shades of Balakot).
For the last 35 years, the world’s superpowers were involved in AFG providing a secure armour to Pakistan who protected the supply lines into landlocked AFG.
Now there is no-one’s supply line to protect and be protected. In the past, US would pressurise India to behave in PoK because Pak would threaten retaliation on the AFG front. So there would be diplomatic and SD pressure on India to sim the stove.
Now there is no such safety valve. This is how geodynamics operate – in second order, not first order. Ideally China should would step up and provide stability in the form of troops. But it’s not going to happen – Hans only brandish their weapons like a Sun Tzutiya. No stomach for a real fight.
Ab hoga Diwali shuru.
https://www.opindia.com/2021/07/maharashtra-police-arrest-occult-practitioner-baba-karim-khan-bengali-media-reports-call-him-tantrik/
Maharashtra: Police arrest occult practitioner ‘Baba Karim Khan Bengali’ for cheating young woman, media reports call him ‘Tantrik’
https://www.thebetterindia.com/258541/sustainable-startup-greenjams-carbon-negative-bricks-agrocrete-innovation-india/amp/
Engineer Makes Carbon-Negative Bricks That Cut Construction Cost By 50%
https://twitter.com/dhume/status/1414246072650698755
Thread which throws light on the oncoming Hindu schism.
https://www.memri.org/reports/pakistani-commentator-maria-ali-same-war-model-turkey-and-azerbaijan-used-nagorno-karabakh
Halal Haleem Owaisi
https://warontherocks.com/2021/07/how-british-imperial-history-does-and-doesnt-shape-the-sino-indian-border-dispute/
good read