Epoche and detachment in analysis

I want to make a short and quick comment about a style of argumentation that I’ve noticed in people from the Indian subcontinent (though not exclusive to them). In addition to verbosity, there tends to be an aggressive hyperbolic emotionality. That’s fine if you want to scream on cable television, but it’s really hot air that doesn’t move a conversation forward.

I’ll bring up the class example with the Mughals.

Muslims in the subcontinent admire the Mughals, on the whole, and take pride in their accomplishments. Whether you think that that pride is warranted or not, it is there, and it makes it difficult for Indian Muslims to evaluate the Mughals with any degree of detachment. The fundamental reality is to a great extent the Mughals were a colonial and alien power that control the subcontinent for centuries. To some extent, they were more foreign than some of the post-Delhi Sultanate Muslim kingdoms. The Mughals imported Turkic warriors and Persian bureaucrats for many centuries, and for decades continued to speak Chagatai Turk among themselves. Up until Aurangzeb, they were keen on conquering their ‘ancestral’ homeland. The Mughals had a racial caste system, and continued to differentiate between the foreign Muslims, and those of native subcontinental stock (arguably native Indian Muslims did better under some of the Delhi Sultanate successor states).

But what about Hindus? Whereas Muslims get very defensive about their “Mughal ancestors,” many Hindus detest them because they were colonial interlopers. I think it is a reasonable assertion, but then Hindus take a step further. Along with their precursors, the Delhi Sultanate the Mughals killed millions and engaged in a campaign of mass rape and murder. Often if the Hindus are talking verbally there is a lot of emotion in their voice, and I wonder if they are going to cry. The reality is the genetics is clear that Hindus have almost no West Asian ancestry, and the fraction of Indian Muslims is quite small. If the Mughals were raping a lot, they were quite sterile.

The reality is it seems to me that though the Mughals synthesized themselves with India, for much of their early and mature period they were more a colonial skein over the substrate of India, the vast majority of which remained loyal to its indigenous religious traditions. This means that their interaction with the natives was mostly a matter of resource extraction, that is, rents.

I don’t know if more discussion with help India resolves its internecine religious fractures. Probably not. But I wish people would comport themselves like they were actually trying to discuss, rather than emotionally screaming at each other.

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Hector_St_Clare
Hector_St_Clare
1 year ago

One of the most striking things about India, for which Hindus should feel some collective pride, is that they were able to accomplish what Christians in Egypt and Syria, Zoroastrians in Persia and central Asia, Manichaeans in Turkestan and animists in West Africa failed to accomplish: they held onto their religion (most of them, anyway) in spite of centuries of Muslim rule, and then another century and a half of enthusiastic evangelization efforts by the British. The Indian heartland remains majority Hindu today and in much of India it’s an overwhelming majority. Rather than focus on the rape, murder and temple desecration (which as you note, Razib, seems to be wildly exaggerated), why not focus on the positive? Vietnamese suffered a lot at the hands of America during the Vietnam War, but these days there doesn’t seem to be much anti-US sentiment there, because at the end of the day the Vietnamese won. To a large degree, so did the Hindus.

Sumit
Sumit
1 year ago

The Vietnam comparison is a bit disingenuous.

1. Vietnam was not partitioned into North and South with active persisting enemities after the war. The North won and renamed the largest city after their revolutionary leader.

2. No active minority in Vietnam that identifies themselves as descendents of Americans.

3. American constitution is less hostile towards communism than the Quran is towards polytheists.

—————

The solution comes from Hindus and Muslims moving away from religiously driven identity.

But I think both India (with rise of Hindutva) and Pakistan (foundational) currently rely on a religiously driven identity as a legitimizing narrative.

Potentially Bangladesh can be the South Asian leader in this regard. But as it stands they seem to still worse than India in terms of murdering Atheists and protection of minorities.

Overall I think this gets worse before it gets better.

Ali Choudhury
Ali Choudhury
1 year ago

It was not that big an accomplishment given the various Turkic and other Muslim rulers were more invested in having a large, obedient non-Muslim population they could extract taxes from than encouraging rebellions by mass converting the locals. It is a credit to Hinduism that it was able to remain the religion of the majority while the Greeks, Nordics, Egyptians, descendants of the Babylonians and Assyrians etc discarded their local pantheons for Abrahamic religions. Perhaps the emphasis on active participation in Hindu rituals rather than religious thought kept the population less inclined to seek alternatives.

phyecho1
phyecho1
1 year ago

Lets put it this way. Gujrat riots , demolition of babri masjid is not forgotten by muslims or the left. Though many riots did happen even under non bjp . What gets highlighted is , what is of importance to them.
It could be no more than one incidence to become a prime time tv show for an entire week if not a month and more and is put on a list. Entire academic research projects, part of education in a semester or an entire chapter in a course.

In all, in guarat riots, death toll is less than 1050 people out of which 250+ were hindus, 700+ were muslims. It then becomes a question, how much bigotry , murder, rape , systemic terror is enough to remember.
Not to mention blasphemy laws existed then as well(admitted by richard eaton himself ), which really is a form of systemic terror. Anyone can fling it and the death mark is on you. Even in the modern world, it really is unique to see how girls of non muslim background get kidnapped, raped and converted in pakistan. And what deep trauma it inflicts on their families.

None of this would matter, if people moved away from taking “pride” as you pointed out. Which too is emotional and irrational in equal measure. None of this would matter if people accepted secular critique of their faith or of these rulers and empires. Since none of that exists, this double standard is exploited rightly so. You should not expect people to take irrational pride on their “achievements” and expect others not to look down on the ways it hurt them.

Where we disagree is here, you think truth matters by itself. I think it takes politics to create a climate where truth is valued . politics is necessary to get society and cultures to respect truth. And that political action to get people to respect truth is built on highlighting those forms of critique. Critique of Christianity and its excesses by atheists in the west is not entirely historically accurate. For example on slavery, slavery existed in other societies, cultures, religions as well. But the way to negate the universal claim of Christianity requires criticizing slavery. Neither has it been with respect to Hindus and missionaries and colonized left /liberal alliance. Infact , as has been said many times here. Uniquely, autonomy is denied to Hindus in India in many places.

https://twitter.com/ANI/status/1540300138798714880
“Karnataka | An FIR has been lodged against 5 priests of the Deval Ganagapur temple. They created certain websites and were collecting money from people. It’s a govt temple which comes under the Muzrai dept. By doing so they cheated the govt: Isha Pant, SP Kalaburagi”

The methods applied are commensurate. And so it is fair. This is not a critique of mughals as much as critique of islam and mughals as a part of it.

You can stop here. But if you need empirical facts on how discussion about mughals are a big thing in India right now, I will post again.

Ritesh
Ritesh
1 year ago

Yes i have this inside deep. when on TV i hear indian muslims says mughals were secular and all that, i just burn,, , ,and helpless. this si one of reason i left secularism

Rai
Rai
1 year ago

It would be interesting to compare how other asian cultures think about similar empires. Are the Iranians or Chinese for example proud of the accomplishments of the Timurid Empire or the Qing empire, or do they think of them as colonial and alien powers?

This is probably not a fair compariosn as the Turkish empires in Iran were Persianized and the Manchus in China Sinicized to such a great extent. Hindus in the Indian subcontinent would look at the Mughals in a very different way if they were Indianized Hindus instead of Persianized Muslims.

HJ
HJ
1 year ago
Reply to  Rai

The closest comparison for the Chinese would be Yuan Dynasty. There is no love for them there. And Persian hostility towards Arabs and Turks is well known.

Rai
Rai
1 year ago
Reply to  HJ

I don’t understand Pakistan. Pakistan goes as far as naming a ship after Timur (PNS Taimur (F263)) when even the Persians have no love for him. This is as absurd as the Chinese naming thier AC after
Genghis Khan.
The ironic thing about it is that Timur did far more damage to territory which is now a part of Pakistan than India. Besides his famous sack of Delhi he raided Punjab constantly while most of what is today India was unaffected.

HJ
HJ
1 year ago
Reply to  Rai

I mean I get it. They are the cultural descendents of Timur even if they are not the genetic ones. This kind of stuff happens sometimes. Look at this French howitzer named after Caesar. Caesar basically committed a genocide of the Gallic ancestors of the French and yet here we are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAESAR_self-propelled_howitzer

Rai
Rai
1 year ago
Reply to  HJ

Point taken. I guess it is just hard to see Timur and his ilk as anything more than one of the many barbarian invaders from the steppes.
The Caesar analogy doesn’t work since the Delhi Sultanate was already a
civilized persianized muslim state. So it’s not like Caesar civilizing a bunch of german tribes in Gaul.
Timur killed many many millions of muslims in both Iran and north western India. The Iranian muslims see him as the second coming of Genghis Khan but somehow the Indian muslims see his as thier cultural ancestor?

S Qureishi
S Qureishi
1 year ago
Reply to  Rai

Sikandar (Alexander) is an extremely common name in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. People remember & emulate winners, not losers. Forget names, millions of people now speak the language of their former colonial masters, who weren’t exactly that kind to their ancestors.

Rai
Rai
1 year ago
Reply to  S Qureishi

Language is understandable. People in asian countries that were never ruled by the British still learn English as a second language. English as the international lingua franca has as much to do with the power of the USA after WW2 as it does with the British Empire.
If you want to remember and emulate winners then you may as well name things after Arthur Wellesley. He is probably the most recent military commander to conquer large parts of the subcontinent. But I doubt we will ever see the modern states of India, Pakistan or Bangladesh name anything in honour of the Duke of Wellington.

S Qureishi
S Qureishi
1 year ago
Reply to  S Qureishi

Why is language understandable but names are not? Names are at least harmless. Consider that billions of people: learn the language of the colonial masters, wear the clothing of the colonial masters, absorb their entire culture, adopt their entire political, military and educational systems, even think like their masters thought before. By the logic being employed, it’s a much more egregious form of colonization than adopting some foreign names.

Common people don’t think like this, which is why they don’t care about ‘righting the wrongs of history’. Very much doubt that Iran is vying for revenge against Central Asian States on the Steppe (plus Mongolia) for the absolute devastation it went through.

Khushboo
Khushboo
1 year ago

The raped women were generally converted and their kids were almost always raised Muslims. So yes you may not find much West Asian DNA among those who escaped.What’s the west Asian DNA among Indian Muslims-esp the upper caste ones?

Mohan
Mohan
1 year ago

Your first mistake is expecting rational behaviour from a South Asian person. Whether that’s Hindu’s talking about Mughals, or Muslims talking about Prophet, the emotions will always run high.

We are very small dicks perched atop very large balls.

Scorpion Eater
Scorpion Eater
1 year ago

“If the Mughals were raping a lot, they were quite sterile.”

when you are a geneticist, you tend to look at everything from the prism of genetics.

not all the atrocities will leave a genetic imprint behind. a hostile army campaigning in a rebel area will follow a scorched earth policy. it will burn down the crops, and the resulting famine will kill thousands. but you will not find the traces of this atrocity in the genes. in fact this is what happened in aurangzeb’s 26 year long campaign in deccan. read about satnami revolt in haryana, which destroyed a thriving community of people. satanamis today are an insignifiicant scattered people.

sikhs suffered multiple genocides too. during bahadur shah first ( aurangzeb’s successor), there was a standing reward of Rs 5 on every sikh’s head, no matter male or female, rebel or non-rebel.

and then the cultural vandalism. the temple destruction orgy of muslim rulers is well recorded in their own chronicles. we need not go in details. i wonder how will you read all this history in the genes.

Scorpion Eater
Scorpion Eater
1 year ago
Reply to  Razib Khan

my point was that genetics need not corroborate the facts that are historically well established. take the mongol conquests for example. it is generally accepted fact that mongol conquests were the most destructive conquests the world has ever seen. yet the mongol gene flow into the conquered population seem to be minimal (persians still look persians to me, russians still look russians). so why look for genetic signature in hindu poupation to confirm if the genocides/rapes really happened or not.

the vandalism surely happened. but we also know that the muslims have a very strong incentive to just lie and exaggerate…

it is a tired argument, the favorite of muslim apologists and leftist historians. you dont need to be a degree holding archaeologist or historian to gauge the truth. just go to qutub minar complex in delhi. the muslim medieval texts say that the mosques and monuments inside the complex were built after destroying 27 hindu templse, and you can actually see the stone panels depicting scenes from hindu mythology on its walls.

or you can just google the picture of gyanvapi mosque, and see for yourself its grotesque domes sitting right on top of stone pillars decorated with hindu motifs.

or you can just marvel at the fact that while south india has many grand temples going back 500+ years, in the entire swath of north india no large scale temple older than 200 year survives. what happened to them??

seriously, the exaggeration arguments is something i would have expected from irfan habib or romilla thapar, not from you.

“the reality is that even without war famines were all too common in premodern times.”

since you revel is calling all of us stone dumb, just think how dumb this statement is. this is exactly analogous to saying that since more children die in road accidents every year, it is OK for an occasional psychopath kills a few schoolchildren every now and then.

DaThang
DaThang
1 year ago
Reply to  Razib Khan

There is scope for testing the 25 to 50% hypothesis but DNA work is slow in India.

Scorpion Eater
Scorpion Eater
1 year ago
Reply to  Razib Khan

two points to make.

1. you hang out with the wrong crowd. i don’t do twitter, but i have known extreme hindu nationalists, and i know they can be wild in their claims. but when you dismiss their claims, you end up dismissing some of their legitimate claims too. solution – ignore extreme fringe elements and engage with the rational, more educated hindu nationalists. they will give you a better feel of what hindu right thinks.

2. too much focus on genetics. recognize that genetics can only be an auxiliary tool to resolve historical/cultural questions, not the primary solution.

3. read some indian history from the primary sources. they will give you a good feel of the times. also, there are some things you will not find in any history book, but can only be picked from the cultural memories of communities. i will give you an example. i read in a book ( i believe it was prakash tandon’s punjabi century, but i may be mistaken), that up to early 1900s the people of gujarat district of punjab still remembered with horror the annual passage of jahangir’s army through their district on his way to vacation in kashmir, and how much destruction it left in its wake. apparently no grain was to be found in a 30 mile wide band along this path as the army simply plundered along as it marched. and this was not even wartime! this kind of histroy you will not find in professional history books.

phyecho1
phyecho1
1 year ago

As I said before, more data would come only with time. This is a period of history that has not been studied very well for reasons of bias. It might take a long time for this to be settled. most of Indian rw is not into history that much except for some parts. You are not typical either. Even william dalrymple admits that there is much less of Indian rightwing on many of these issues than even in the west.

Deep Saran Bhatnagar
Deep Saran Bhatnagar
1 year ago

// The fundamental reality is to a great extent the Mughals were a colonial and alien power that control the subcontinent for centuries. //

You acknowledge this not Muslims & other minorities {along with leftists} in South Asia who undermine Hindu narrative of history & identity which is at the core of the issue.

———————————————–

If someone wants to further understand the issues check these sources abt. identity formation in subcontinent since it’s encounter with Islam –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36tfOQUbge8

Identity since Western colonization {Papers & other sources} –
https://twitter.com/deep007_bond007/status/1449295154536325120
https://twitter.com/deep007_bond007/status/1514009781618769924

Identity since Islamic encounter {Papers & other sources} –
https://twitter.com/deep007_bond007/status/1346533180879196160

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