Open Thread – 07/10/2021 – Brown Pundits

292 thoughts on “Open Thread – 07/10/2021 – Brown Pundits”

1. The Chittagong Hill Tracts should have gone to India. I think their fate would have been better in Northeast India.

   1. 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.

      1. 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…..

         1. Lol. As I have said, it will take another lifetime for non N-Indians to understand the RJB movement. But till then carry on….

            1. 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.

            2. Oh yes of course the cuck talk. Lol

               There is a india which exists and then there is imaginary one of the dravidians.

         2. 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.

            1. “Jai Hind. Jai Uttar-Bharat.”

               ☝️ More Hindu= More Indian region

            2. “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

            3. Saurabh chutiya, uttar-bharat = more Hindu gandu = BIMARU region

      2. 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.

      3. The Indian RW is chomping at the bit for another Bengali genocide.

         1. 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

            1. 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?

            2. 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.

         2. 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.

2. 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

3. 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?

   1. 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?

      1. 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. 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.

            1. Well they already have.

            2. I think Jaishankar is a Tamilian.

            3. Same “stock”

   2. 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.

      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/

      1. 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.

4. 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)

   1. 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.

   2. 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.

   3. 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.

      1. Your uncle is not wrong abt UP being India, though ?

      2. 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

         1. 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.

         2. @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. 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.

            2. “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.

            3. 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.

            4. correction: Pashupati is not a jyotirling. But still ranks very high.

            5. 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.

            6. 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.

            7. 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)

         3. Seems like in this brand of Indian RW, credibility is measured by how many other groups you hate and how much you hate them.

            1. 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”

5. 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?

   1. 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.

      1. 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.

      2. “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?

         1. One of my arrows hit the troll 🙂

         2. Bruh, you guys had to beg Muslims for over 20 years to build a temple in your own State. Let that Sink in…

         3. 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.

         4. 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.

            1. @S Querishi

               ….So when Ugra says he is more Indian….

               I have never said or implied this in any context. Read the arguments carefully.

         5. 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.

            1. 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?

6. 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.

   1. ” 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?

7. 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

8. 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.””

   1. 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.

   2. “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.

9. Thread should be renamed: Ugra DESTROYS Gangetic Plains Supremacist.

   1. More like Saurav chad causes tamiltwink butthurt.

10. 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.

    1. 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!

       1. 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.

       2. 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.

11. https://www.opindia.com/2021/07/madhya-pradesh-grooming-love-jihad-police-chhatarpur-conversion-complaint-murder/

    Disturbing

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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

15. 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

    1. Pretty astonishing that UP had a thriving literary culture without the literacy.

16. 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

17. 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.

    1. 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.

       1. @ Shashank

          Razib had talked about this in this blogpost

          https://www.brownpundits.com/2019/09/11/calvinism-atheism-and-hinduism/

       2. 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.

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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.”

22. https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/al-qaeda-module-busted-in-up-planned-suicide-attacks-in-lucknow-says-police-2484185

23. 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.

    1. 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.

24. 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?

25. https://twitter.com/AskAnshul/status/1414293446450315268?s=20

    Halal Haleem Owaisi

26. 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.

    1. 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’

       1. 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

          1. 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.

             1. Pashtun Lives Matter

    2. Pakistani elites are adept at exploiting Pakistan’s strategic location to wring the US for obscene amounts of money.

       1. 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.

          1. //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.

             1. @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.

             2. 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.

             3. 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.

             4. @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.

             5. …..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.

             6. 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.

27. Austin and Pittsburgh will soon become major hubs of US tech industry especially in robotics and computer vision. On par with Boston and Seattle.

    1. 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?

       1. 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.

       2. 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.

          1. L2s can work. Plus L1A has the faster queue , while L2A has the same speed has most H1B

             1. Is this true if one doesnt have a pending I-485 ? I thought you needed that to file for an EAD.

             2. L2s can works without I-485. Even F1 folks file for EAD.

             3. 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?

             4. Yes

    2. 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.

    3. 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.

       1. 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.

          1. 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.

             1. 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.

28. 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

29. @ 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

30. @ 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

    1. @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.

31. 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

32. 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

33. https://myind.net/Home/viewArticle/18-years-later-the-qasim-nagar-massacre-of-hindu-laborers-by-islamic-terrorists-remains-forgotten/

    Massacre by radical haleems

34. 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

35. 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

36. 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

    1. 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.

       1. 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

       2. 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.

    2. @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.

37. 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

38. “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.

    1. 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.

       1. “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???

          1. hah.. Indians and their obsession with sexual innuendoes.

39. https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Punjabis-dominate-in-Bollywood-movies?ch=10&share=b1b6c825&srid=u6vS8

    Another one lol. Worship of steppe continues

    1. Bihari babu is dropping truth Bombs there

    2. 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)

       1. 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.

          1. @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

          2. 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)

       2. 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.

          1. Deepika is quite average looking without makeup

             https://stylesatlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Deepika-Padukone-without-Makeup-1.jpg

             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..

             1. 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

                https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/04/19/12/4B4FE85000000578-0-image-a-201_1524135734521.jpg

40. 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

41. 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

42. 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

43. 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.

    1. Pretty sure my boy and current S-Africa PMs BFF Gupta ji will save Indians

44. 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.

    1. 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

       1. “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.

45. @ 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.

46. 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’

47. 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%

48. https://twitter.com/dhume/status/1414246072650698755

    Thread which throws light on the oncoming Hindu schism.

49. https://www.memri.org/reports/pakistani-commentator-maria-ali-same-war-model-turkey-and-azerbaijan-used-nagorno-karabakh

    Halal Haleem Owaisi

50. https://warontherocks.com/2021/07/how-british-imperial-history-does-and-doesnt-shape-the-sino-indian-border-dispute/

    good read

51. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/14/chinese-nationals-among-several-killed-in-pakistan-blast-report

    Taliban Khan & company will reapeth what they hath sown. Even Al Jihada is reporting it

52. Three interesting theories that I have seen emerge from the BP stable are:
    1. warlock’s AASI:Steppe theory
    2. Saurav’s less Hindu, more Hindu theory
    3. Ugra’s Dravidian Hinduism and OBC dominance theory

    What all else am I missing?
    Numinous and Slapstik’s Hindutva is wokeness?

    I think Qureishi could also provide us with something on Pakistan’s new Great Game.

    1. @principia’s Economic prescription for India
       @Jaideepsinh Rathod’s methodical OIT
       @GauravL’s Indian liberal dilemmas
       @Bhimrao’s Readymade Angst Generator
       @Milan’s Out of Serbia

       1. Itna apmaan, itni zillat, Harakiri is in order.

    2. I miss Ali sometimes. Was his name Ali, the person who got banned?

    3. – Saurav’s less hindu more hindu theory – I at times think even he isnt convinced by it. He seems to be doing to troll Ugra.
       – Steppe/AASI theory by Warlock is true – everyone knows it – we have weird fascination with light skin – straight nose – Caucasian features – more so than caucasians .
       – Ugra’s south indian hinduism / OBC power thing is also empiracally provable. There is no hindutva without OBCs – Brahmins too few or just too esoteric or liberal to maintain hindutva. Rajputs may be able to do – but what i am reading of Rajputs on twitter is that there is a great angst between Rajputs and mainstream indian politics – BJP/INC – so only in sections of North can UC combine have a significant numbers to have hindutva – South of Narmada not so much

       Also u can add IndThings and ArainGangs – Pak nationalism – pakistanis were buddhist non hindus sthick.

       1. LOL, Y do u think i am not convinced by it? It would be weird for me to propose a theory i myself don’t believe it , No?

          I mean now i have PEW research to back me up, and it would be foolish for me leave it mid way. The reason i don’t try to fight back, because at least for me, the theory is so apparent to anyone growing up in India, that i find it amusing when folks say something diametrically opposite to what’s on the ground. For instance, UP being the most Muslim friendly state (news for muslims and yogi) and all. What can one say to these assertions? I mean you have to within the common sense ball park.

          One last thing on OBC Hindutva. The whole Hindutva project is a UC project, just like every movement is first led by its elites. I get it that you come from MH where there is/was some traction from OBCs for Hindutva due to Shivaji. But lets be frank, in MH the OBCs are still more non Hindutva than for Hindutva. The only place where OBCs lean more Hindu is the more-Hindu region. Not withstanding what Savarkar wrote or what Bal Thackeray thought they were still UCs larping as some Shivaji-esque figure, doesn’t make them Maratha.

          Long story short, the more Hindu regions make even the subaltern Hindu inclined. The less-Hindu region makes even the UCs less Hindu. You know the regions, by looking at their elite 🙂

    4. – that Haryanvi Jaat guy’s Latin American racial categories to caste equivalence theory.

    5. I think it’d be an interesting idea to compile these theories into a book or a pdf or something.

53. https://twitter.com/tavleen_singh/status/1415400724310102016

    ” The Taliban reminds us that Hindutva is just moderate religiosity compared to real religious lunacy.”

54. More rape Jihad

    https://www.opindia.com/2021/07/danish-becomes-dinesh-to-marry-and-forcibly-convert-a-hindu-woman/

55. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/jmb-terrorists-entered-india-moved-kashmir-other-states-report-1827317-2021-07-13

    Terrorist Marxist Communal (TMC) party likely welcomed them in

56. https://www.reddit.com/r/chutyapa/comments/gp6xkr/rant_selfhating_pakistanis_are_100x_more_annoying/

    Lot of Indus Gang talk lmfao. Buddhists again. Good one

    1. Of they call India gangdesh (land of the Ganga in many Indo Aryan languages)

       We should start calling them Phindustan (pure land of the indus) and Phindus (pure hindus). Based on the Persian for the Indus River with an added P for Pakistan.

       Persian as we all know is the historical native tongue of most Pakistanis, so this is highly appropriate.

       1. Persian does not have an aspirated Ph. HINDUSTAN works though since that is also a Persian word. So is Indus and India, Hindi and Hindu.

          1. Wonderful!

             I think that makes Phindustan and Phindus even more appropriate as a moniker for “Indus 人”.

             India, Hindu, Hindi etc already taken and confusing for outsiders.

             1. Indus is known as River Sindh. That’s what it is known for in local languages.

                And sindh is in… :p

             2. Yes sadly the term Sindhi is also taken.

                I was also thinking “Pindustan” and “Pindus”.

                But I think non-Punjabis would protest against references to the Punjabi word “Pind” (village). And Punjabis themselves might feel it is too low status as a reference (paindus).

             3. Cant you guys come up with your own terms for all the Indus/Sindh derivatives? Indus is gone now.. your should forget it.. it’s like a crazy ex still tatooting your name on her forehead several decades after the ditch.

          2. Industan can be a good name. Indus can be the locals but pronounced like Hindus.

             Maybe even Indudesh. Indudeshis

             1. If Pak were a true islamic homeland and united with Bangla, then maybe even

                Haleemdesh or Haleemastan

                Haleem could be the demonym or you could genderize it to

                Haleemo or Haleema or neutral with Haleemi

                Many possibilities. Alas, the two are no longer united. Hence the Indus obsession

             2. Not sure it would fly. Pretty sure that at this point half of the Phindustani population would consider use of the word “Desh” to be a gateway shirk.

                Just look at the state of “east Pakistan” after it was renamed to “Bangladesh”. I.e. relatively chilled out, progressing economically, a PM doesn’t blame women rape victims. Can’t have that in Phindustan.

    2. Everything else I can kind of figure the origins, the racial supremacism, North India isnt exactly the rockstar of India, Muslims are oppressed narratives. But what I fail to understand is why Pakistanis think ‘India is hell bent on destroying them’ ?

57. https://www.reddit.com/r/chutyapa/comments/ojjit2/we_wuz_one_country/

    Lmfao. The cringe is epic. Wonder when the next genocide will happen. Maybe it will the “Gangadeshi” mohajirs

    1. as per the ethnology map of india presented in this post, i am an indo-aryan by origin, and i share my ethnicity with indus people.

       and all along i was hobnobbing with aryo-dravidians, scytho-dravidians, mongolo-dravidians, and just dravidians (plain vanilla dravidians?). heck, i didnt even know there were so many kinds of dravidians.

       i am throes of identity crisis now. my loyalties are split. i am unable to say even one word…

       1. The time draws nigh. You have to choose one side…

       2. Lmfao. Their bias towards less “martial,” more AASI, and “bania” dominated Gujarat constantly shows. They love to put in gangetic influence but get stuck with it on IVC maps. It pisses them off to no one that Gujarat was part of Indus Valley. It also trolls them when someone like Modi who is probably 55% iranic IVC related and 45% aasi fits in nicely on one end of IVC cline, whereas the majority of the current inhabitants they exhalt (aka Birdari groups over all others) are mixed with steppe and thus have proportionally less racial continuity with IVC.

58. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/afghanistan-can-pakistan-manage-the-taliban/a-58250772

    When you raise snakes in your yard. Don’t be surprised when you are envenomated

59. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloombergquint.com/amp/business/india-grabs-share-from-china-as-textile-exports-to-us-jump-during-pandemic

    India Grabs Share From China As Textile Exports To U.S. Jump During Pandemic

60. Very interesting article on how Venkatesh Prasad, Paras Mhambrey and Rahul Dravid have transformed the structure of Indian youth cricket, and its links to domestic and international A team cricket. It also busts (somewhat unwillingly) the notion that India is destined to have a great cricket team because of its population. Uber talented folks like Prithvi Shaw are getting sidelined by the more professional Shubman Gills and Washington Sundars.

    https://www.thecricketmonthly.com/story/1265703/sidharth-monga—how-did-india-build-their-world-beating-bench-strength-they-have-a-system

    1. Oh didn’t know Prasad is within BCCI structure. If he plays is cards right, he can become the next BCCI chief, considering the noise he is making wrt to BJP. While Dravid would be another contender, he seems a bit aloof. Prasad seems to check all the (political) boxes just like Ganguly did somewhat.

61. https://theprint.in/opinion/dear-dharmendra-pradhanji-forget-iits-iims-for-a-moment-real-crisis-is-in-school-education/695696/

    Dear Dharmendra Pradhanji, forget IITs, IIMs for a moment. Real crisis is in school education

62. https://theprint.in/opinion/marxist-jesuits-are-not-for-tribal-welfare-india-and-indian-catholics-both-must-realise-that/696346/

    Marxist Jesuits are not for tribal welfare. India and Indian Catholics both must realise that

63. https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/a-future-cjis-empty-rhetoric-woke-liberalism-and-why-we-should-worry

    A Future CJI’s Empty Rhetoric, Woke Liberalism And Why We Should Worry

64. https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/policy/india-begins-talks-on-free-trade-agreement-with-uae/article35303961.ece/amp/

    India begins talks on free trade agreement with UAE

65. now every body and her aunt seems to have realised that there is no population explosion and that there is no need for a population control bill. some one wrote in a kannada paper that adopting such a bill for karnataka will be disastrous.
    if only this hemanta biswa sarma was made the cm 5 years ago, it would have been more fun.

    1. I am not sure BJP will go thru with it though. Its too radical a change , and UP is too big to lose.

       1. this is causing a domino effect. now karnataka b j p is talking of having such a law. they bill pass this as congress cannot oppose, congress is not opposing in u p. there will be pressure on m v a in maharastra. it is taking an interesting turn.

          1. I doubt Karnataka will pass the law, considering Congress-JDS can use this to portray it as a N-Indian conspiracy to keep Kannada population down and fill the state with immigrants.

             Ditto with MVA, this will give a fillip to marathi manoos vs N-Indian thing. Also folks give too much importance to MVAs internal rumblings and supposedly ideological/moral contradictions. There is nothing which BJP can offer to SS to break the alliance. The alliance will complete its term unless they replace Thackeray as CM or something like that.

66. Random thoughts on warehouse robotics:

    There are two major events in autonomous vehicles: one was release of Roomba autonomous vaccum cleaner with its now legendary rudimentary Lidar and second the DARPA grand challenge.

    Fast forward now, Amazon Robotics alone now has about a quarter of a million autonomous robots working non stop all day every day. Boston Dynamics might pull off cool circus tricks but it is warehouse robotics that kick-started bigger ideas like self-driving. Roomba, OpenCV, Gazebo, ROS and Turtlebot will be remembered like the Atari 8-bit or the first Macintosh.

    Grey Orange which does warehouse robotics is by far the most successful robotics startup(of any kind) from India (but technically based out of Atlanta and Singapore). There are others like Dexterity Robotics, Motional, Vicarious… that have Indian founders but they are not Indian enough.

    On bigger scale India has lost the self driving game. There are some brave praiseworthy efforts like fluxauto and swaayatt robotics but seeing this game from my vantage point I know that it ain’t happening.

    Any ideas where India might fit into the self driving game? I have a friend in India who tried to sell his camera based ADAS to some B-tier auto parts supplier. Dude wasted a couple of years with nothing to show for it. Lack of an electronics industry is a major hurdle and so is the conservative investment environment.

    One place I often think of is in traffic cameras, we don’t have many and will build from ground up. Gives us an opportunity to do a lot of interesting things. Another (rather stupid) idea is that maybe our dictator bureaucracy can help make a database of every driver’s behavior via traffic cams, driver phone gps and face/car id. This and other information collected from the car’s sensors might make self driving cars safer. idk, any thoughts on how can lots of Indians make a career in AVs?

    1. What is the economic driver for warehouse robotics or autonomous driving in India? Is there a viable model?

       Example – solar panel crawlers that dust the panels and wipe with a clean cloth. This is an area where some Indian companies are doing well – in line with the solar boom thats happening. Also baggage sorting and conveying automation has historically done well in India – airports, coal plants etc.

       1. What are the companies in solar panel cleaning robots? Outdoor stuff is hard as the machines wear out and are exposed to the elements.

          Warehouses are just perfect for deploying AVs. Lots of artificial landmarks and features to do SLAM well, indoors, clear objectives/coat-functions. It becomes like a video game.

          Indians are ordering so much on big basket and Flipkart, plus eventually I think maintaining inventory in a Amazon warehouse and selling through Amazon is a good thing if someone wants to focus on core business and not get bogged by logistics.

          The overall driver is cost and efficiency but Grey Orange won simply because India had a lot of talent and nothing else to do.

          On one occasion I spent a long baggage delay at JFK talking to and figuring out baggage handling, so many things that can be improved and a lot of money involved too. Lots of things to be worked out in this and other facets of port/airport operations.

          1. Taypro – they have installed over 150 robots at solar farms in India.

             I have doubts about the cost scaling model for Indian environment. Dense labor laws can be a source of pain but in the end cost has to be compared against a cohort of low-cost labor force. Again this is one of the reason why autonomous driving will not kick off in India. A well paid driver is safer and cheaper. And that driver will also be a handyman. Which the robot will not do.

             I have seen some 3D home printing robots in action (very cool – pancake model with a special cement developed by Heidelberg). The Dutch and German politicos are up in arms against these robots. This will eat the lunch of millions of jobs in the countryside. So these homes face an almost zero chance of being certified by the authorities. In the end – everything devolves to what are you disrupting? Low-skill jobs in the millions?? – forget it.

             I do have a dark horse for India – 3d printing of metal parts. The scarcity combined with the ease of manufacture and portability will create tech-cowboys in the countryside.

             1. Doing 3D printing and what not is fine but who will buy it? Where is the demand?

                I have seen CNC laser cut facades, kitchen fittings and furniture making shops popping up across North India. If they can cut ply-wood they can handle sheets but where do you see the demand? I can buy a FANUC gazillion-axis machine but what do I do with it then? A relative of mine does some work for Ordnance factory board machining howitzer parts. Volumes are low and contracts are won before tendering begins. They used to make dies and moulds for private Indian companies too before the Chinese annihilated them.

                Making things is never a problem. Selling things is always the problem. This is why I believe South Indian states cheated when they got HAL, NAL, BHEL, BEML, Avadi etc etc etc and north got nothing, a big central government subsidy/package essentially.

             2. “This is why I believe South Indian states cheated..”

                Be careful with where u are going with this. This is the chad people you are talking about

             3. …..they got HAL, NAL, BHEL, BEML, Avadi etc etc

                Bhimrao…..you are just joking, right? Many of these were all privately held organizations before they were nationalised in Independent India.

                Some of the country’s top engineering talent was located in the princely state of Mysore. The national Engineerś Day is celebrated on the birthday of Bharat Ratna Sir M Visveswaraya, the Diwan of the Mysore Kingdom. So Karnataka’s expertise in engineering predates Independent India – if you are thinking that somehow Central Planning of Nehru Chacha produced Bangalore – thats the best joke I have heard today!!

             4. Taypro looks very promising.

          2. What are you talking about?
             Other than HAL and Mazgaon everyone was started well into the 60s.

             BHEL, BEML, BEL, NAL, ICF, HVF, CVRDE, HMT, ISRO, DRDO Imarat, Bharat Dynamics, ITI, MIDHANI, IIL (and almost the entire oil, shipping and shipbuilding investments), I can go on and on and on.

             DLW in Banaras and Scooters India in Lucknow is what UP got.

             Mysore might have had other advantages no doubt but a big one was that the government decided to build everything in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai and did not give jack shit to say places like Patna that now get mocked.

             Give me names and dates for PSUs companies to change my mind, just like I spent the time to give you names.

    2. “the conservative investment environment”

       I think this is the key obstacle in taking India to higher growth rates. I think we have the labor side of the growth equation substantially figured out. About 30,000 Indians are graduating with PhDs every year and our higher education enrollment rate is almost 1/3rd. Capital, however, remains a big issue with high interest rates, and ratings agencies not being fully objective.

       The government tries to overcome this by spending on infrastructure, but such investments are usually not super productive. One reachable alternative is increasing the incomes for Indian farmers, this should increase demand savings and improve the private investment scenario. But there are barriers put up by developed countries for agro-exports.

67. https://www.dawn.com/news/1635051

    “All imams and mullahs in captured areas should provide the Taliban with a list of girls above 15 and widows under 45 to be married to Taliban fighters,” said the letter, issued in the name of the Taliban’s cultural commission.

    I guess after fall of ISIS we were living in an unknown world (White supremacist, BLM, Corona etc) . Seems we are reverting back to the normalcy of the pre Trump era.

68. https://twitter.com/NicolaCareem/status/1415574352662257666

    “International forces have all but gone, but #Afghanistan is facing a humanitarian catastrophe. This exclusive report from @yogital Sanjay Ganguly, @Mahfouzzubaide1, edited by
    @AakritiThapar is very hard to watch. But please don’t turn away. #Kunduz”

69. https://twitter.com/karanjohar/status/1415561821004591105

    When one of India’s most liberal director tries 2 profit from (Hindu) nationalism, u know u have won.

70. Hello.
    I am new.
    Cant keep up with these experienced political strategists in the thread tbh

    1. Well every Indian is a cricket coach and political strategist rolled into one.

    2. Best to read actual news articles across political spectra. Most of the convo here is just what most Indians would consider to be “timepass”

71. https://www.yahoo.com/news/viral-video-taliban-executing-22-153925097.html

    Taliban Niazi Khan must be proud.

    1. @warlock

       https://news.abplive.com/news/india/over-1000-cases-of-west-bengal-violence-in-nhrc-report-1469681

       “Violence and fear on women and children for family members voting for a certain political allegiance as well as the silence of the bureaucracy has been found mention in the report.”

       1. It is 1971/Pandit Exodus 2.0 waiting to happen. You say “sacrifice.” But it will be disproportionate and very heavily Matthew Principlesque

          1. If u dont like the word ‘sacrifice’ then perhaps, just deserts?

             Either one works for me.

72. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_JX0_1bsXg

    Tata, Wadia, Freddie Mercury, Mistry, Manekshaw: Coomi Kapoor talks to Shekhar Gupta on Parsis

73. BBC touches new levels of “journalism”….makes a headline: Indian variant explained in five South Asian languages

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57229268

    anything bad = call it Indian
    anything good or neutral = call it South Asian

    Exit clause: If anything bad turns out to be Pakistani or BD, invert the logic – call it South Asian. Example – Rotherham grooming gangs

    1. What do you expect. There is a global radical leftist islamist nexus. BBC is a poster child for that attempt at a NWO

    2. Anything negative within “traditional Indian cultural practices” is Hindu (for eg caste, sati)

       Anything positive is the specific thing itself (for eg. yoga, onam, holi aka ‘colour run’, etc).

74. @Saurav

    https://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/Jatt

    “Rebuttal of Caste” section is hilarious

    Every single one of those points can apply to many groups. Those points can simultaneously apply to several. It is functionally a caste, whether they like it or not.

    The surge in land prices and profits from green revolution made some groups powerful and supremacists overnight. The slightly greater steppe ancestry and S Asia’s tragic obsession with looking as light skinned and caucasoid as possible adds to this ego. Lol not under Brahmanical Hinduism. Hell that is everyone right now and most OBCs for awhile. People give Brahmins too much credit. They only had real power in very select contexts.

75. There is this Twitter user called “@BiruniKhorasan” who tweets out delightful nuggets of Afghan, Persian history. Architecture, quotes from 500 years ago, Silk Road stories, calligraphy, madrassas, natural landscapes of Afghanistan and etymology….

    He (or she?) is also very scathing of Hindutva. Probably deeply entranced with the image of the Gangetic Hindu – docile, submissive and a cringeing persona created by the self-same secularists from the Gangetic Belt (Nehru, Marxist historians like Irfan Habib et al).

    More recently – he (she) tweeted that the Taliban were at the gates of Herat, his/her hometown. Went on to describe the Taliban as follows
    – made up of rural Pashtuns
    – this ethnic monotone is denied by Afghan society which prefers to call them “Punjabi”
    – not totally untrue as they are a Paki proxy
    – Pashtuns are the main victims of Taliban as they generally try to physically eliminate other co-ethnic leadership (shades of Prabhakaran)

    For me it is quite clear that the Pakthas will not find any solace in the tribal and Islam framework of organization. Its HDI is among the lowest in the world. Add to this a landlocked country – basically a open-air prison. The type of government they choose for themselves – theo + kraterocracy – has no distinguished leaders of any stature or substance.

    Contrary to the modern fiction of Afghanistan being the graveyard of empires, it is a very supine society that has played host to every conqueror’s fancies and whims. The Rgveda records them as having fought against Sudas (Dasarajna battle) and lost, Sakas overpowered them on the way to India, Achaeminids drafted them into their armies, Alexander did not even consider them of any merit, Mauryas put their pillars right in the middle of their territories. Their high point was Khorasan – again a term invented by Sassanids for the eastern most part of their empire.

    Last time around (1999- 2002) there wasn’t a lot of internet in Asia – so the Taliban were just basement sadists in a remote corner. Now the gory videos of Taliban executions are already flooding the internet. Just another chapter to the end before we start reading the book again.

    1. The US could have used violence against Afghans like the Chinese/Uyghurs did against Dzungars. That is the only thing that will work against the Afghans. But the Americans are too polite for that, fortunately for Afghans.

       If the Americans go back in again, they will be heartless as the war would be with much less troops on the ground.

       1. The Soviets tried carpet bombing Afghanistan, with nothing to show for it on the ground, except uniting the Afghans resulting in a faster expulsion.

          Here is an old tidbit

          https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/05/10/Soviet-forces-carpet-bomb-Afghan-city-and-villages/6609421387200/

          Short of nuking the entire place (which is not an option), there is no victory for foreigners in Afghanistan.

          1. I find it strange though so much resources have been wasted on this country. Almost all wars fought irrespective of the winner or the age has not given its victor anything.

             1. For the West, it has to do with subduing Russia/China as C.Asia is their backyard. Same reason for Russia and China, it is their backyard and they want to control it or it least not let it fall to the West. Everything else is just smoke.

          2. I do think this is an understatement. The introduction of artilleries and bullets made Afghanistan quiet difficult to be annexed but i think if Pakistan invades Afghanistan, it could take it in 2 months since Pakistan has more strategic depth and psychology of the people. They love bloodshed and you will give it to them!
             Well go for it. Babur first annexed Kabul just like your ideals and then invaded Hindustan.

       2. Yeah, the human costs of America’s forever wars has been tiny. If we wanted to depopulate Afghanistan and settle it with tech yuppies who love mountain biking in the Pamirs , it could have been done with a fraction of the effort of whatever was attempted. More problematic would be the deterioration of our relationship with the civilized world, not actual afghans or their neighbors.

          1. No they cannot.

             1) The US has no route into Afghanistan.

             2) Mountainous regions cannot be effectively and precisely bombed (as India found out in 2019), all US carpet bombing in 2001 failed to wipe out any senior Taliban leadership or Al Qaeda leadership.

             3) Nukes are the only option if you want to annihilate but not rehabilitate, because they create fallout. So no chance of hippies in Pamir.

             4) And if nukes are used, then US already used the first strike and the retaliation is almost sure follow. Actors that have nukes and WMDs and hate the US will be more than likely to provide them to non-state actors that can target mainland USA or other important US targets. US already lose any moral backing to retaliate. Risk of losing New York or triggering a nuclear World War is not worth nuking Afghanistan.

             International politics and war is complicated. Total War was possible in World war 2, but not anymore without annihilating the entire world.

             1. Nukes seem a bit far off, dont ya think..

             2. The US can annihilate Pakistan and Afghanistan (and India fwiw) as functioning societies without nukes. Its ridiculous to think otherwise. Afghans don’t live in mountain bunkers and the putative holdout militants won’t have a society to return to. You overestimate the ability of Pakistan to smuggle/deliver a nuke to a credible target, or any other country caring enough to get involved, let alone throw haymaker from a blind spot.

             3. The US army fled Baghram during the night, here girmit is talking about destroying nuclear powers. Carpet Napalm bombing in Vietnam didn’t work bro.
                Aaj Thursday hai Saturday nahi

             4. qureishi, maybe when people write matter of factly you imagine them having the same complexes you do. I am happy that the US and its western allies aren’t genocidal. But if our leaving implies we were occupying something, then we were doing it with fewer than 8,000 servicemen and contractors. Its a joke. Its like Amazon folding a startup it was funding. try better than coming back and insinuating that my ego is invested in any way in US military supremacy. I’ve never done service there and its not my valor to claim. I’ve got plenty of family in the indian forces fwiw.

             5. Re Saurav’s comment that India becoming US’s bitch is only option, I can only say another example of gangetic hindus displaying their galaxy brain thinking. Sure India faces an difficult external environment but the worst case scenarios are loss of Kashmir and parts of NE(again worst case). We had a much bleaker scenario in early 90s but we came out stronger out of that. Thanks in no small part of first southern pm. India becoming US’s bitch would be a re-run of UPA decade on steriods. To spell it out clearly, this means revival of hindu/saffron terror bogey, more consumption driven economy with manufacturing actively discouraged, minority appeasement, cultural imperialism/marxism etc etc. And in this scenario there will be a soft separation of Kashmir anyway. Look at Armenia/afg as the most recent case of what happens to US bitches.
                Talk about cognitive dissonance of a person shouting about his hinduness from rooftop being the first in line to be US bitch in current climate.

             6. girmit

                I watched UFC fight between McGregor and Porier. Porier beat the shit out of McGregor in the first round, and broke his leg in half, leaving McGregor a bloody broken mess on the ground. Yet McGregor was still livid after losing, ego bruised and battered, and issuing death threats to Porier and his family while incapacitated on the ground. Clip:

                https://twitter.com/oocmma/status/1414434500545851393

                So when you say about how US din’t try hard enough, it reminds me of McGregor mouthing off about his capabilities here.

                If they could have, they would have. But they couldn’t. Bitter cold hard truth.

             7. You guys are being shortsighted by pretending that US would have won this war by being more brutal.

                This war was a war against Pathans (not all Afghans), and Pathans have never really lost a war on their turf.

                The British were very rough. Yet that harsh approach failed to save them from total annihilation during first Anglo-Afghan war. They were absolutely murdered in that conflict (Pathan tribesmen destroyed them). And those Brits were no hippies. And long after the first Anglo-Afghan war, they fought a forever-conflict with Pathans in what is now Pakistan. Never did they succeed at controlling them. And again, they were very harsh at first (burning villages, burning fields, jailing and executing tribal elders). Harshness never saved them from losing. They ended paying the eastern Pathans generous grants, to spare themselves the harassment.

                The Russians too were brutal. Very brutal. Yet brutality failed to help in that circumstance too. They famously left Afganistan as losers, tired and humiliated.

                No one can conquer Afganistan (especially the Pathans). It’s for the best that we left. We all knew the Taliban would win. There’s no need to waste more time and money there. America must focus on herself

             8. Venkatesh, the point of the whole discussion is the framing of events. Kabul and Kandahar (and every other city of note) fell in less than 60 days. Its never been easier to conquer a country like Afghanistan. (Even the soviets controlled anything that constituted state capacity.)Mechanized warfare requires industrial and fuel supply-chains and that if anything makes the relative power between nations even more divergent than in the past. The massive failure and defeat was trying to build a new country with Pashtuns as stakeholders and win their loyalty. Its the neo-liberal delusion that other humans find meaning in the american social paradigm and will be paciified by the promise of kfc and starbucks. What does it say that the US was able to nation-build Germany and Japan post ww2, but has consisitently failed in southeast asia, the middle east and Afghanistan?

             9. ‘Pathans have never lost a war on their home turf’
                Hair Singh Nalwa? Peshawar?

          2. Aaj Qureshi high hai.

             Girmit is channeling his inner Tucker Carlson.

             With all due respect to US for it’s enormous stolen land. Fuck off! Gwaihir is welcome to take on the Airawat. We ain’t your bitch.

             1. Who isn’t who’s bitch?

             2. India (Elephant) isn’t US (Eagle’s) bitch.

             3. No one is suggested they were or ought to be

             4. India, sooner or later, has to become US’s bitch. This whole non alignment or multi alignment wont work.

                And can we calm down on the whole bombing everything to stone age. No one’s gonna bomb anyone, and we know that. If the US had to bomb Afghanistan to smithereens it would have already done.

76. //Probably deeply entranced with the image of the Gangetic Hindu – docile, submissive and a cringeing persona created by the self-same secularists from the Gangetic Belt //

    Someone needs to tell Ugra that to the ‘northwestern Islamic hordes’, the Gangetic Hindu maybe considered docile or submissive but this meekness gradient only increases as you go south and east. To the point that at least the Gangetic Hindu is at least considered threatening (thus demand for Pakistan), the southern one is not even considered aggressive let alone threatening.

    1. I have given up trying to make them understand…

    2. One man’s (non-Gangetic) steel shattered the dominion of Mughals, from which they never recovered. Aurangzeb even soliloquized about this hopelessness in the middle of nowhere. Bhingar in the interior of the Deccan Plateau, which he tried to conquer.

       “Azma fasad baq!” …..were his last words…After me, chaos! Querishi….start reading Indian history before pleading special courage (gradient wtf?) for Gangetic Hindus. I also know why you are doing this 🙂

       You haven’t given your opinion on my thoughts about the Taliban?

       1. Ugra,

          You already had Muslim kingdoms in the South (they were not indigenous). Even foreign slaves rose to power their https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malik_Ambar

          You give too much credit to your way of life, less to geography. Geography, often dictates who gets colonized and who doesn’t, case in point Afghanistan. Why do southerners have amnesia about British colonizers? I heard the British loved Madras

77. Trying to think of examples of institutional competence in South Asian institutions.

    So for eg. Even if you hate Pakistan’s ISI you have to admit they are competent often outmaneuvering parties with far more resources with their creative out of the box thinking.

    In India maybe ISRO is a similar example, their budget to accomplishment ratio is unparalleled in the space industry imo.

    What are some other ones ?

    grameen bank in BD,
    Original IITs,
    Amul milk co-op
    Mumbai’s “six sigma MBA case study” dabbawalas
    Karachi’s Eidhi foundation
    Goenka “pay what you want” Vipassana retreats

    What else ?

    1. I wouldnt consider ISRO as an increasingly incompetent organization. Their conduct after the Chandrayaan-2 lander failure was excessively prickly and unprofessional. Every failure before this, the FAC (Failure Analysis Committee) report was made public. This is important for both public accountability and as an exemplar for other complex industries in the country. They have evaded RTIs, which should have never been needed in the first place, under the cloak of national security.

       See here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ISRO/comments/nmyviy/rti_reply_from_isro_with_same_excuses_of/

       1. wouldnt -> would

    2. NASSCOM
       The Indian Administrative Services (shades of Imperial China)
       BCCI
       SEBI

       1. Indigo airlines,
          Tata Steel, SAIL
          L&T
          Bajaj Auto
          RE
          Ashok Leyland, Tata Motors
          Zoho, so many similar companies

          Pakistanis celebrate Armed forces because they unexplainably suck at absolutely everything else only big exception is Shahid Khan of Flex-n-gate.

          1. Don’t see the point of comparing ourselves to Pakistan. They are a small resource-poor country trying to make a living the best way they can by using geostrategy.

             We ought to compare ourselves to US, Europe, China.

             I do think Zoho, Freshdesk, Postman etc and the wave of SaaS companies that are going to come out of India will become truly global brands.

78. What makes ISI so special? There are 200+ million moslems in India, it shouldn’t be hard to find a few disaffected souls in such a huge crowd. As for their maneuverings in Afghanistan, they are mostly just exploiting the conditions on the ground – which they did not create or frankly maintain. From what I’ve read, many afghans don’t even like Pakistanis that much (and the feeling seems to be mutual, given how poorly Afghan refugees/migrants are treated in Pakistan).

    I concur with the general sentiment here that the Afghan war was stupid, but when a geopolitical entity does a major mistake, it would be foolish not to exploit it, as ISI has done in Afghanistan to extract more resources out of Americans. But I am not sure if that’s a sign of ISI’s brilliance as much as a sign of Americans’ strategic blunder.

    At any rate, it is my impression that a significant share of the Pakistani elite would want to work for ISI since these have very high status. By contrast, it is also my impression that while RAW is respected in India, it doens’t hold the same cachet domestically as ISI does in Pakistan. Simply put, RAW has to compete much harder for top talent. This is also a function of India having more high-skill industries than Pakistan, so elites are more spread thin. Pakistan’s economy is less impressive and their society is much more militarised, hence it isn’t surprising that ISI gets a greater potential pool of recruits at the highest end. But at what cost?

79. https://m.timesofindia.com/india/chief-minister-amarinder-singh-navjot-singh-sidhu-to-work-together-congress-punjab-in-charge-harish-rawat/articleshow/84438009.cms#_ga=2.83776534.145477151.1626384487-842429684.1626043416

    Not good. Sidhu is less of a patriot. He loves his Jatt identity politics

80. “The first European traveller to mention the Ganges was the Greek envoy Megasthenes (ca. 350–290 BCE). He did so several times in his work Indica: “India, again, possesses many rivers both large and navigable, which, having their sources in the mountains which stretch along the northern frontier, traverse the level country, and not a few of these, after uniting with each other, fall into the river called the Ganges. Now this river, which at its source is 30 stadia broad, flows from north to south, and empties its waters into the ocean forming the eastern boundary of the Gangaridai, a nation which possesses a vast force of the largest-sized elephants.” (Diodorus II.37).[52]”

    Funny how Greeks refer to the both the ganges and Indus as in India. This will upset the Indus Larp “we wuz Buddhist kangs and shiz” gang.

    I do appreciate Q recognizes this is historically foolish and just a way to rationalize existence along more than religious grounds.

    1. The Greeks also referred to everyone else a Barbarian, doesn’t mean Barbarian is now an identity (except to hipsters, maybe)

       1. A famous argument of radical islamoapologist Birdari ethnonationalists is what Greeks and Persians called the region. I am just turning it onto them.

          1. The correct Greek term is Gangaridai

             https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangaridai

             1. I think Bangladeshis can LARP eventually with this one w/ “We Wuz Separate Kangz and Shiz”

                Looks like enough arguments that it is referring to area of modern day bengal

81. https://swarajyamag.com/politics/how-jamia-millia-islamias-character-and-demographics-changed-in-last-10-years-and-why-its-a-serious-concern

    How Jamia Millia Islamia’s Character And Demography Changed In Last 10 Years And Why It’s A Serious Concern

82. https://theprint.in/ilanomics/india-needed-a-crisis-to-reform-it-got-one-in-1991-thanks-to-nehru-indiras-soviet-model/696905/

    India needed a crisis to reform. It got one in 1991, thanks to Nehru & Indira’s Soviet model

    good summary

83. This will upset the Indus Larp “we wuz Buddhist kangs and shiz” gang

    Where exactly do these people think Buddhism was born when they go with “we wuz Buddhists” and “we wuz separate advanced civilization for 10 trillion years”?

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8e/Buddhist_Expansion.svg/1200px-Buddhist_Expansion.svg.png

    1. I dont think anyone in Pakistan really takes “we wuz Buddhist kangs and shiz” seriously. Its just a group of folks on the internet. For them they were always muslims.

       Just like outside of net, no in India takes AIT, AMT or OIT etc seriously. For them they have always been Hindu and always been in India.

84. https://thewire.in/media/pulitzer-winning-indian-photojournalist-danish-siddique-killed-in-kandahar

    Pulitzer-Winning Indian Photojournalist Danish Siddique Killed in Kandahar

    1. Brave man.

       https://mobile.twitter.com/AmrullahSaleh2/status/1415710708541673475

       ‘Breaking: Pakistan air force has issued official warning to the Afghan Army and Air Force that any move to dislodge the Taliban from Spin Boldak area will be faced and repelled by the Pakistan Air Force. Pak air force is now providing close air support to Taliban in certain areas’

85. https://twitter.com/ihsantipu/status/1415941367784747010?s=21

    “I know the history of Uzbekistan more than Uzbek people”, the prime minister Imran Khan said. Seriously

    1. Let the Uzbegs come to Multan again and Imran will learn history correctly?

86. https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/trends/current-affairs-trends/as-the-taliban-prepare-for-victory-islamabad-is-being-forced-to-face-up-to-the-cost-of-getting-what-it-wanted-7146621.html

    As the Taliban prepare for victory, Islamabad is being forced to face up to the cost of getting what it wanted

87. https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/technology/auto/petrol-rs-100-a-litre-two-wheeler-buyers-rush-to-go-electric-7175961.html/amp

    Petrol @ Rs 100 a litre, two-wheeler buyers rush to go electric

88. ‘ Carpet Napalm bombing in Vietnam didn’t work bro.’

    US public lost the will to fight, they could’ve easily won otherwise . Same thing happened with Afghanistan (if they wanted to end the taliban they would’ve)

89. @narsingha

    “if they wanted to end the taliban they would’ve”

    But they did want to end the Taliban. They didn’t.

    It was an unwinnable war. And it’s for the best of United States interest that they left.

    @bhimrao

    Nalwa never got past Jamrud, which is the real boundary of tribal Pathan region. Peshawar was an Indian city in that age (Punjabi type people called Hindko). He never made any push into their eastern heartland, let alone touch the western Pathans.

    Before Brits, the only power that had the balls to strike at Pathans in their heartland were Mughals. And surprise surprise: they failed. History repeats itself, nothing new under the sun.

    1. @Qureshi and others, is this claim true? I mean not the nonsense about not crossing some arbitrary xyz, but about Peshawar not being a Pathan city?
       Winning side usually does not live on different sides of a border. But whatever, may the Victorious Pathans continue in their ways, may their daughters enjoy the fruits of their labor. May there be more war. Amen.

       1. Bhimrao
          This is true
          Peshawar was more Hindko than Pasthun.. still has heavy Hindko influence.
          Proper Pasthun lands are in ex Fata and Northern Baluchistan

          1. I think the largest pasthun pops now live in Karachi.

             Also who are these Hindko folks? Hardly heard or read abt them in our history books and stuff. They seem to come out of nowhere.

             1. Yup Karachi likely has the largest Pasthun population, although they don’t really have political power there since ANP died out..

                Hindkowans are more like a salad of Punjabi and Pasthun.. more on the Punjabi side though.. because Punjabi identity is more fluid, Pasthuns have Pasthunwali to distinguish themselves so Hindkowans won’t fit into Pasthun society. But then I don’t know details of their history as they are a minority group.. They seem to have made some grand claims like Hindko being mother language of Urdu etc to disntinguish themselves. The Pasthuns called their language Hindko (meaning ‘of Hind’) and its mutually intelligible with North Western Punjabi. Some Pasthuns also spoke Hindkowans are first language (which is sort of considered blasphemy in Pasthun culture).. Fun fact: Ayub Khan was one such Pasthun whose family spoke.. Hindkowan .. which is why some Pasthuns disown him.. Funnily enough, most Pakistani Pasthuns don’t disown Imran Khan the same way..

             2. Yeah its only recently i came to know about this whole controversy of Imran Khan’s orgin. Growing up in India, we assumed that he is a true blood pathan. Though i think his punjabi-pathan cross helps him politically.

                In India one such politician is Vasundhara Raje ,ex CM of Rajastan. Born a Maratha, wedded into Jat royalty, ran the Rajput state. Her cross b/w different culture allowed her to appeal to different communities.

             3. Well he is full blooded ethnic pasthun as Niazi tribe is Pasthun. But because he does not speak Pastho.. Afghans would usually say he is fake Pasthun.

    2. @Venkatesh
       From what I have read they mainly focused on al qaeda (for obvious reasons) and didn’t seriously go after taliban because of its links to pakistan (as it was their condom) but I think if they had thought it worth the trouble they would’ve properly fought the taliban and still convinced pak to keep their supply routes open, by hook or crook.

90. https://thewire.in/media/pulitzer-winning-indian-photojournalist-danish-siddique-killed-in-kandahar

    Pulitzer-Winning Indian Photojournalist Danish Siddique Killed in Kandahar

    Hilarious watching people get riled up about RW mocking his death as a revenge for LW mocking the deaths of Sushma Swaraj, Jaitley and Rohit Sardana.

    These people would rather get mad over Twitter trolls enacting “revenge” than what actually killed Danish, i.e. religion of peace.

91. https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/commodities/chinese-love-for-indian-red-chilli-hoists-exports-of-the-spice-to-a-record-7183011.html/amp

    Chinese love for Indian red chilli hoists exports of the spice to a record

92. https://www.opindia.com/2021/07/danish-siddiqui-dead-body-photograph-taliban-afghanistan-reuters-journalist-covid-19-funeral-pyres/amp/

    There are no rules anymore: How journalists have only themselves to blame for the viral photo of Danish Siddiqui’s corpse

93. https://www.opindia.com/2021/07/south-african-mp-shameen-thakur-rajbansi-talks-to-opindia-racist-attacks-against-indians-the-indian-govts-help-a-toolkit-and-a-people-in-distress/amp/

    South African MP Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi talks to OpIndia: Racist attacks against Indians, the Indian govt’s help, a ‘toolkit’ and a people in distress

    1. Very little mention of this in mainstream outlets.

       Hard to make out what is actually happening in South Africa.

       Does anyone have an in-depth piece I can read?

94. https://www.google.com/amp/s/thebridge.in/amp/athletics/indian-comapnies-athletic-equipments-tokyo-olympics-23015

    3 India-based manufacturing companies to provide athletic equipment at Tokyo Olympics

95. https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-a-lot-of-East-Asians-see-White-people-as-generally-better-looking/answer/Feng-Jiaxin-1?ch=10&share=b457925d&srid=u6vS8

    Plagues E Asian society too

96. assam police have started shooting ‘escaping’ criminals.
    https://indianexpress.com/article/north-east-india/assam/23-shot-at-5-dead-new-assam-govts-extreme-action-against-criminals-police-encounters-7406815/
    they appear clumsy. only karnataka police have perfected the ‘art ‘ of shooting such people in the leg.
    i am expecting the ‘human rights’ people to move to court.

97. As someone that knows nothing about Pashtun culture, can someone explain the tribal system there ?

    Are the tribes endogamous ?

98. Sumit,

    I often find myself explaining Pashtun culture online: but not this time. I have a feeling that people are tired of reading my thoughts and explanations on this subject (and I really don’t wish to be a nuisance).

    So instead, I’ll just point you towards a book which I recently read. Personally, I found it to be an exceedingly entertaining (yet rather accurate) portrayal:

    https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.36506

    She’s an old one; there’s been a considerable passage of water underneath the bridge, in the time that’s elapsed since this work was first put to paper.

    But it truly is a fun read (I knocked it out in one sitting). And in addition to being an enjoyable work, it’s also an admirable piece of scholarship. Not a single sentence in it with which I could find myself in disagreement.

    On the question of endogamy though, it would really depend on the Pashtuns under discussion.

    ^ Rural Pashtuns still prefer tribal endogamy. And in cases where neighboring tribes are enemies, like Mangal Pashtun vs Zadran Pashtun, or Turi Pashtun vs Bangash Pashtun, or Shinwari Pashtun vs Afridi Pashtun, etc, then endogamy was very strictly observed (although that’s loosened up over the years).

    Urban Pashtuns though… not so much. Not only do they not care about tribal background; they often don’t even care about ethnic background. In Afghanistan Pashtun men freely marry Tajik and Uzbek women (and there is considerable mixture in urban Pakistan too).

    And for anyone wondering about Hindkowans: they are the original urban Indo-Aryan inhabitants of the eastern Pashtun region. In Pashto we often call them “Kharyan”: “city people” (and as Qureishi noted, “Hindkowan” means “of Hind”, since the Pashtuns of old referred to the Punjab and Sindh as India).

    Many of them like to claim Pashtun ancestry… but there’s no real weight to much of that. Many people who live alongside Pashtuns eventually come up with stories about how they themselves are ultimately Pashtuns too.

    ^ They look like northern Punjabis; they act like northern Punjabis; they think like northern Punjabis; they understand the dialects of the northern Punjab. They are basically northern Punjabis

    (Then again, perhaps I’m being a bit simplistic here. For example, I’ve read that the Hindko language is closer to Sindhi and Seraiki then it is to any true Punjabi dialect)

    1. “Many of them like to claim Pashtun ancestry… but there’s no real weight to much of that.”

       So a bit like Dravidian Hinduism, got it.

    2. Interesting info, thanks.

       Pashtun tribes seem very different from Punjabi / Haryanvi baradaris. I am quite confident now that baradaris are not tribes in a Pashtun sense but rather more similar to jatis.

    3. You say the men marry Tajiks and Uzbeks. But what about the women? Would someone like Imran be looked at badly for being a man-whore? My impression is that they would look more favorably on a man who has married 4 women and has 20 legitimate kids.

99. Imran Khan is not disowned because he is a ladies man.

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