Well, here is the long promised article. I’ve been meaning to write this for a year, with many disparate bits of data floating around from different subjects in a brain soup. Gratitude to Q, while his purposes are very much misaligned and probably in direct opposition to mine, provided both the impetus and coalescing of the arguments. And of course to X.T.M for the site on which it took place. I’m pretty sure if it weren’t for BP, this wouldn’t have gotten penned.
https://indosaurus.substack.com/p/parsis-matrilineal-dna-and-steppe
May the common Agni deva of the Zoroastrians and Hindus enable them to reclaim the name Aryan from the Nazis, the skinheads, the brotherhoods and all the racist degenerates who have tried to corrupt it.
Why not post the full article here?
It’s to save me energy on any edits. I don’t count the energy you expend with 1 click as worthy of note.
Calling yourself willys is a bold choice.
Welcome to BP, Willys?
Almost all the arguments you presented have been answered in the previous thread.
I do want to outline the Jatt part where you question why they are low on the varna system with the highest steppe %. The Jatts were endogamous group isolated in Sindh. They did not migrate to Punjab and Gangetic plain until the 11th century AD where the caste system really calcified 2000 years ago and where it is still strong. Even Muslim conquerors were not accepted inside this system, so they created their own one.
If you look at the y-dna, its r1a heavy amongst UP/Bihar/Bengali Brahmins, even more than Jatts. Autosomnal steppe percentages also track higher in upper hindu castes to low in lower castes in a North West to South East gradient (the expansion route).
Your claim that IVC was the original Arya culture is wrong. IVC inhabitants were 30% AASI, and this is not present in Iran or Afghanistan in any significant quantity. The Avesta was composed in Khorasan/Afghanistan and this is where Steppe percentage is the highest (higher than India or mainland Iran) along with Steppe ydna percentage. IVC has nothing do with any of this.
Firstly, the aryans didn’t introduce Iron smelting into South Asia. People already knew how to smelt iron long before the Iron Age, and I am pretty sure there were Iron instruments from the Bronze Age. The main difference was the cost-effectiveness of iron smelting compared with bronze smelting; bronze was easier to produce and, by extension, became more commonplace, resulting in the Bronze Age. Having the capacity to produce Iron instruments doesn’t change the timing in this specific situation, since the main point here is that Indo-Aryans had advanced Iron smelting, which allowed them to spread further than preexisting groups as they made more Iron tools, not that they were the first to make Iron tools.
Secondly, the cave argument is quite questionable. In Meenakshi DUBEY-PATHAK’s article “The Rock Art of the Bhimbetka Area in India”, the author talks about how the cave was continuously used for thousands of years, to the extent that there are literally inscriptions written in old Ashokan Brahmi. Also, the region was inhabited, with a Buddhist stupa from the Mauryan period and a Shiva temple from the Paramara period nearby, all the while the cave had depictions of the Nataraja and a Shiva-like god holding a trident. So, it isn’t much of a stretch to understand that the paintings you were referring to can date from a much later period rather than 3,000 years ago.
Thirdly, the Indo-Aryans could neither be that old nor have been the Indus Valley people, considering the fact that the cultures align at all. Archaeological evidence clearly shows that the Indus Valley was a heavily urbanized society with complex sewage networks and hydrological systems. The Vedas that are attributed to the Indo-Aryans represent what is very clearly a pastoralist society and don’t seem to mention anywhere nearly as urban as the Indus Valley was. Additionally, if the Indo-Aryan exsisted for such a long time, there doesn’t seem to be any definite archaeological remains for the Indo-Aryans that go that far back.
Lastly, people’s understanding of Proto-Indo-European theory has expanded beyond what the early figures and weird practices thought. A recent study that examined the Yamnaya Indo-European culture shows this quite well: Wolfgang Haak et al.’s Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe. The study showed that a significant number of people groups that would fall into a traditional culture that could be labelled as Indo-European are not necessarily biologically related to the original Indo-European people groups. For example, the Greek language for example is considered to be an Indo-European language, as indicated by its overall structure; however, the Greeks themselves don’t possess any Yamnaya (Indo-European) genetic material in extensive amounts, and said Indo-Europeans didn’t migrate to the region extensively. The study further suggested that, in some places, Yamnaya migrations even had a complete resurgence of the pre-existing Neolithic population. The basic suggestion was that a lot of the groups that would become Indo-European appear to have enculturated themselves into the broader culture rather than getting displaced over time.
The same aspect would still apply to places like Iran and India, where Indo-aryans that migrated from external regions like the steppe over time settled and, through a process of enculturation, gradually formed a deeply mixed culture with the local population. The Iranians have 90% Zagros genomic material because they enculturated into the Indo-Iranian base culture rather than having made the structure themselves. For example, Southeast Asia adopted a lot of classical South Asian cultural practices without being conquered or through intermarriages. Southeast Asian didn’t invent those cultural artifacts; rather, they adopted them from an external group. A lot of arguments are basically trying to interlink culture and genetics as if culture is only transmitted from parent to child all the time.
culture is always….complex. These ‘we wuz’ and ‘you weren’t’ arguments are tiresome.
The likes of Q are driven by a peculiar flavor of self-hate embedded tribalism.
Good post and mostly agreed. Although I would say that the Greeks do possess 10-20% Yamnaya ancestry which is the same as many Brahmin groups in South India that possess Steppe Aryan ancestry.
Also – while you draw a more peaceful conclusion, I have a more sinister view of events. We know that the Yamnaya and Corded Ware cultures replaced male lineages in Europe. Britian for example has 90% Indo European Y-dna. These lineages don’t get replaced in peaceful migrations in an ancient era (especially when female lineages don’t change that much). They get replaced during prolonged periods of conflict with the victor establishing its culture and religion as supreme. This is what happened in most of Europe, and this is what happened in India and Iran as well – although on a much smaller scale – possibly because these countries had a larger population base or gave more resistance. This is what is referred to the ‘invasion’ in AIT.. not a grand battle at Panipat with the victor taking the spoils, but continued and repeated incursions by Steppe pastoralists over a span of couple of centuries that were mostly violent expansion of territory.
West Iranian dna has very little Aryan ?
Think the Norman conquest, possibly disproportionately mediated via the Y-DNA but not so genocidal (in comparison)
Another good example of what happens when you leave the women behind. You cannot change the language. The English do not speak French despite all the Norman nobility, the Normans don’t speak Norse despite all the Viking nobility.
Sanskrit and Avestan cannot be steppe origin unless the steppe women showed up.
Y chromosome is able to carry a language for only a generation or so.
This is an interesting thread I will reflect on this since I think AIT is laced with post colonialism. Thank you for an excellent article
+1
The Norman conquest is very much like Turkic conquest of India. Elites got replaced and a foreign langauge was used (French, Farsi) for a few centuries before local langauge prevailed (English, Urdu) albeit after absorbing almost all the vocabulary of the foreign langauge.. both had minimal DNA impact on the local population.
With the case of IE languages, they replaced entire languages permenantly probably because they also had a HUGE genetic impact impact on Europe and a very significant genetic impact in the Indo Iranian sphere. So its not surprising that their IE languages prevailed.
Another example: Egyptians speak Arabic today due to Arab rule. Egyptians have 15 to 20% Arab DNA. (Arab Muslims heavily intermarried with Egyptian
Iranians absorbed a lot of Arabic vocabulary but they have little to no Arab DNA as early Arabs did not intermarry. They still speak Persian
No significant steppe DNA impact on the Iranians.
Both you and flydie subscribe to the notion that language and culture can be absorbed enmasse.
In the Iranian case without Y chromosome impact.
In the Indian case with.
IVC had a tremendous population for the age, the plethora of sites is inescapable. If they were repeatedly knocked out with brutal invasions you would have mass burial sites which are non existent.
Anyway, all points have been made. Rehash all you want, like a schoolboy getting a frisson of excitement about violent conquest & rape.
The Turanians have literally the highest portion of Steppe DNA. Tajiks have upto 45% autosomal and 70% r1a ydna.. This is where the Avesta was composed – in Khorasan, and Steppe DNA is pretty high here, and this spread to Iran from here. Also, Iranians have a decent amount of Steppe, just like South Indian Brahmins or Southern Europeans.
You are just shooting in the dark with your theories about iron age and women needed for language transmission. Read the wiki on iron smelting, and the problems on why just making iron doesnt put you in the iron age. Also countries – continents even have changed langauge and culture in its entirety
Look at North America, now speaks English. Almost the entire population got replace here. Look at South America, a mixture of different races including indigenous .. they speak an Indo European langauge in Spanish or Portuguese. Look at North Africa, they speak Arabic. Anatolia spoke Greek just 600 years ago, now they speak Turkish and these Anatolions only have 10% Turkic ancestry. ETC ETC This happens all the time, not sure why you deny it.
When you deny Sanskrit’s Steppe origin, you better explain this:
We all understand Indo-European language trees. Indus script needs to be deciphered to clear this up.
Is there a Zagros Neolithic tongue that someone has found? All the theories here are curve fitting around the Steppe assumption.
There is a mythology mismatch too. Indian & Iranian Pantheons are very adjacent and opposing, nearly all gods are represented, some common, some role flipped.
The Greek pantheon has some commonality, but is much further away, pointing to a much earlier split. The Lithuanian baltic gods are far removed.
See response to flydie about Americas.
Your response to Fly Die about South America didnt address anything. South America is a direct example of Ydna prominent population spreading its langauge without women.. and you just did a whatabout about Phillipines? And no it did not have a “95% population drop”.. the indigenous population simply got replaced or mixed.
I also gave you several other examples.. Anatolia had a complete change of langauge and this is not even that long ago. North Africa is another.
And you dont explain how Lithuanian happens to be the exact mirror of Sanskrit? Are you claiming an IVC origin for Lithuanian? Because that would be preposterous. The answer is staring at you in the face but you choose to look the other way hoping for some miraculous or fraudulent find.
Pretty dogmatic I must say. Almost reminds me of American Creationists insisting the earth was 6000 years old despite all evidence to the contrary.
Are you intentionally ignoring the North/South American devastation by disease? When you have 95% pop drop, that is a civilisation eradicated within a century. I don’t think there is a comparable event in human history. You cannot expect anything to survive, no religion, no language, no culture, just some ghost rituals which people will excitedly call ‘syncretic’.
Anatolia had genocides. That is the same effect. Same reason why Yiddish isn’t spoken in Germany/Poland now.
Lithuanian is not an exact mirror due to your cherry picked list. Also the gods are wildly different. You pretty much ignore any rebuttal of your theory and descend into mockery. If we start discussing your predilection towards rape theories mods will get upset.
1) You wanted an example of a language becoming dominant without women. You were provided the example of South America. So you changed the goalposts and said that it was because of genocide. Okay even if we give you that, so? Thats just an example of how ydna heavy invasion imposes a language. Same thing happened in early Bronze age Europe.
2) Anatolia and Thrace still have 90% genetic continuity. And yet they speak a completely different language today than 600 years ago. I dont see how you are going to deny this.
Same thing happened in Middle Bronze age Iran.
3) North Africa has 80% genetic continuity and a ydna heavy migration/invasion in the 7th century. They started speaking a different langauge after that. Different religion as well. Same thing happened in middle Bronze age India.
4) nobody cherry picked words to compare between Lithuanian and Sanskrit. These words are what would be commonly used in a brozne age pastoralist society. Exact same. Lithuanian is also living language, people speak it today. You cant even deny that its made up.
I dont think you are using much logic here and just engaging un whataboutery to cover your lack of evidence. I rest my case its a waste of time.
Anatolia started speaking Greek due to Lycians (ex Hittites) repeatedly adopting it from next door Greece over centuries, not 3000 km away.
They started speaking Turkish, due to eradication of Greek ancestry through the sword.
Your claim of genetic continuity in Anatolia is understandable, but I’m afraid you don’t strike me as an unbiased narrator.
See attached pic, effective genetic replacement. All Blue gone.
Lithuanian is an obvious cherry pick of a language, then a list of words. You can take a look at distance on the Indo european language tree.
I agree discussing this with you is a waste of time. So lets stop.
Not responding to you anymore, enjoy.
Do you have any information on how the different parts of the vedas are dated? I think that some of the verses are older than others and since it was not all written at once, we can have situations where some things can be referred to as if they are 5000 ybp( years before present) and other things clearly tell a time that are 3000 ybp.
I think this can sort of spread some light on when the Indo Aryans as a group formed within Indian subcontinent.
I don’t have the exact dating for every part of the Vedas, but I remember a bunch of details specifically about the Rig Veda from my anthropology class at university. Some of the information may be dated, so keep that in mind. The general theory of the Rig vedas date seen to relate to the early Kuru kingdom, sometime around 1200 BCE, not an exact date since some authors date it further back, while others date it further ahead. What was taught to me was the fact that during the early Vedic period of migration into South Asia, the majority of the Indo-Aryans lived in the Indus Valley region. They weren’t able to penetrate further inwards due to the thickness of the vegetation in the forests that existed in North India. Usually, there was a strong cyclical pattern, where heavy rain during the monsoon caused a large portion of the forest to expand over time, and this period of heavy rain was followed by a period of drought or dryness that reduced the vegetation and made it easier to enter. The Indo-Aryans arrived early during the period of thicker vegetation and hence remained in the Indus region.
Once the drier season came, the vegetation reduced, and the Indo-Aryans were able to pierce the forest and migrate Westwards since they had the ability to mass-produce iron instruments that could clear the thick forests. The textual information presented seems to suggest that most of the Early Indo-Aryan kingdoms during their stay at the Indus were controlled under the supremacy of the Puru clan. Over time, a branch clan of the Purus called the Ikshvaku gradually migrated across the river to settle in the land around Purana Kila and the South Haryana region.
The Rig Veda seems to have been composed in this newly burgeoning kingdom during the reign of a king named Sudas. This king originally had a chief priest named Vishwamitra, who served as an advisor and composed the early sections of the Rig Veda. However, Vishwamitra seems to have been replaced partway by a new head priest, Vasistha. Why this happenend to be unclear; Vishwamitra may not have wanted to share the position of head priest or purohita with Vasistha. Either way, Vasistha composed a sizeable section of the Rig Veda. Now, he makes a bunch of allusions and weird comments that don’t fully make sense since we don’t have the social context for whatever the bloody hell was going on.
What can be gleaned is that at some point (maybe Vishwamithra or maybe not), the Puru clan instigated a war with the Ikshvaku clan; we don’t really know why this happened, but Vasistha seems to suggest a war happened. This was known as the famous battle of ten kings, where Sudas destroyed a natural dyke and followed the rivers when the Indo-Aryan kings (and their non-Aryan allies) were trying to cross. Sudas came to the top, and he merged the Ishavaku-Puru clan, forming the Bharata clan, in turn establishing the Kuru supetribe structure and codifying the Rig Veda.
Over time, the aryans started to settle in the land East of the Indus and continued migrating into the Eastern Gangetic valley. There are specific details in the texts that suggest this migration. For example, there was one part where the author was talking about the prototypical idea of reincarnation, and they compared it to the process of rice cultivation, which was more common in the Eastern Gangetic valley and was written around the same time as the migration. Generally, the first section of the Vedas that were codified during the Early Vedic period was the myths; afterwards, the priests started to add the ritualistic elements that referenced the myths in the earlier section. Closer to the end of the Vedic period, around 600 BCE, the priests started providing more complex philosophical and theological explanations of the rituals as well as the myths; this section was referred to as the Upanishads.
The Rig Veda is kinda unique in contrast to most texts in the sense that the oldest of the texts results in a lot of cryptic central asian stuff. As my professors talked about this one part, where the god Agni sees a fire that appears atop a lake, and he proceeded to absorb said fire, which was technically a minor deity, I believe, into himself. This fire might be referring to an actual thing the older Indo-Iranians saw on their journey through Central Asia. Basically, a lake with a natural gas reservoir was leaking gas that appeared on the surface, and something caused the gas to burn continuously. Central asian countries do have that as a thing in some places, like that random pit in Turkmenistan that is forever on fire. Nonetheless, like with every other thing here, most of this is a working hypothesis that can and probably has been disputed many times.
In terms of the Indo-Aryans themselves, it kinda gets complicated with their interactions with the preexisting ethnic groups in South Asia. For example, a certain distantly related group of the Indus Valley people survived well into the time period of the Indo-Aryans, as their ochre pottery survived into the later periods and were near contemporary of the Indo-Aryans, who may have been absorbed into the Aryan culture.
Another element here would be the endless contentions. For example, some people argue that the battle of the ten kings was mythological in origin and was based on a pre-existing trope. The Rig Veda may have been composed in Afghanistan near a river that was potentially the old, dried-up Saraswati River from the text. Also, you have Mittani texts that reference the gods that appeared in the Vedas, like Varuna, Mitra, etc., but the Mittani works predate the Rig Veda, so potentially the Rig Veda might have even older origins that predate the given dating. Another issue would be the fact that texts like the Rig Veda had multiple recensions, of which only 1 full extant recension and a secondary partial recension survive, so we might be missing some details that existed in the missing versions. There is the whole the early vedas are represent a version of the Proto-Indo-Aryan languages, of which a sizeable section eventually developed into Prakrits of the later period. The Vedas are a cumulation of 1 or more dialects of Proto-Indo-Aryan, which crystallized over time.
None of this gets into the whole issue with Indian art, history, and literature, where authors favor space over time in their narrative structure. Authors will literally write down events that happened in the past, but wouldn’t even bother to properly date any of the events and mess up the timing of things. A good example I remember is when an author discusses a Rajput painting that showed a murder happening and the murderer trying to escape. The Mughal painting showed the escape panel, but subtle left clues showed that the person committed the murder. The Rajput painting showed the murderer doing to killing and escaping in a single sequence by having the character drawn twice in the same painting. The Mughal painting had a clear sense of time in its narrative structure, but the Rajput painting favored a spatial depiction of events, while sacrificing a clear sense of time. This tendency kinda affects narrative structure in literature, where the events are described in detail, but the timing is often sacrificed. There is a whole book about this topic called “Retelling Time: Alternative Temporality from Premodern South Asia”.
I am just stopping my discussion here since it got too long.
Quite interesting so the vedas we have today are from the time of Vishwamitra and Vaishisht onwards? After the battle of the ten kings
Do you know of any papers which can explains why it has any references to the full flowing Saraswati? Are these cultural memory from some of their IVC ancestors?
Most of this comes from “River and Goddess Worship in India”, specifically chapter 2.
Basically, the Sarasvati River is associated with the Ghaggar (Pakistan side)-Hakra (India, Haryana side) river, which intersected the Sutlej River via two channels: one on the Pakistani side near the Indus and another in India. The Pakistani side is the main location where all the Indus Valley stuff happened, and the connection with the Sutlej River was severed around 2500 BCE, which led to this part gradually decaying over time. However, the other connection to the Sutlej in Haryana remained strong until the year 1500 BCE. The Indo-Aryans basically saw the upper-flowing parts of the river that were still intact; in fact, the main references to the river relate to it flowing out of the Himalayan mountains, beginning in Haryana. The gradual weakening of the connection with the Sutlej in the Haryana part is recorded in the Rig Veda, which would have led to the river’s gradual decay. The early Kuru kingdom was also located in part of Haryana as well, so they probably would have seen the upper part that was flowing extensively.
Basically, it wasn’t some long-lost memory; rather, the upper section of the river in Haryana was still flowing during the Vedic period. At the same time, the lower Indus section had dried up due to the connection between the Sarasvati and Sutlej rivers breaking as a result of tectonic plates shifting over time. As a side note, a lot of this is Rig Veda-heavy since the later works like the epics are deeply inconsistent. Nonetheless, the Rig Veda was a contemporary work; hence, it was given more weight.
Thanks will check out this book. Very interesting information.
Iron smelting was clearly not Aryan, the earliest Iron has been found in TN.
Aryans would have shared the same Zagros Neolithic farmer genes as the IVC people did (87% in the Rakhagiri sample), even if the were not the exact same civ, they came from the same genetic pool.
Iron would have moved up from South India pretty soon, not taken 2000 years to do so.
The steppe theory does not explain the picture above
i.e Aryan has a particular religious ritual look. This look is both Iranian and Indian.
Not steppe.
The theory that Iranians adopted steppe practices doesn’t hold water because the zoroastrian priesthood does not have distinct steppe genes.
Finally the Sanskrit language would not be pre-eminent in the subcontinent if there were no Aryan women around to propagate it. Rituals you can maintain, but language is preserved mostly by women teaching it to their children. Gujarati became the Parsi mothertongue within a few generations.
SouthEast Asian cultures all speak their own languages, Malay/Indonesian Bahasa, Thai, Tagalog, are all very extant and clearly non Indian.
Firstly, Iron smelting was a common thing in the ancient world. There are 5,000 years old Iron artifacts found in ancient Egypt that suggest that Iron smelting was common as far back as 3000 BCE. The basic reason why the Southern regions had Iron may come from the fact that they learned how to make Iron when their ancestors migrated from the region near Mesopotamia, where they would have known how to smelt Iron. Iron smelting was not an entirely unknown technique, and entire places in Africa literally independently found a way to make Iron potentially even earlier than Egypt. Even the Indus Valley people had Iron tools in their sites, as stated in the study “Updates on the Antiquity of Iron in South Asia” by Rakesh Tiwari.
The main reason why people didn’t actually make Iron as much stemmed from the fact that Iron was objectively harder to process since it had a higher melting point than both Copper and Tin that were used to make Bronze. In fact, Bronze was quite common in the past since a lot of ancient people groups had access to Copper and Tin reserves, which spread these metals via trade. The cost-effectiveness of Bronze made it popular until the Bronze Age collapse happened, making it hard to obtain both Copper and Tin needed to produce Bronze, which forced people to switch to Iron over time since Iron was more common than Copper.
In fact, many people groups like the Hittites (who would be replaced by the Indo-Aryan-adjacent Mittani people) were already switching to Iron tools before the Bronze Age collapse started. The Indo-Aryans having Iron wouldn’t even be out of place; even if they didn’t have such technology then, iron could have come from Iran or Mesopotamia or every other place where Iron smelting was becoming more prevalent, not just South India.
Secondly, the Vedic and Zoroastrian religious practices look alike since they started from the same common Indo-Iranian religion. Also, the Central Asian steppe was literally Iranian for a long while before it got Turkified. Additionally, the Vedic and Zoroastrian religions are not the original Proto-Indo-Iranian religion; rather, they are entirely different religions that happen to borrow the base elements of the old religion. The relationship they have with the Proto-Indo-Iranian religion is similar to the relationship between the polytheistic Canaanite religion and the Judaic religion today. Judaism originated from Yahwism, which in turn split off from the Canaanite religion. Furthermore, Zoroastrianism is a new religion that was founded by Zoroaster, who was critical of the preexisting Indo-Iranian religion and changed how religion was practiced to the extent that the Vedic religion probably preserves more of what the original religion looked like than Zoroastrianism. Furthermore, the Zoroastrian religion actually engaged in religious conversion that incorporated newer groups into the religion, including the priesthood, and the restructuring would have altered the traditional priest that did rites in the temples. All of this is under the assumption that the original steppe people themselves became the priests of the Indo-Iranian religion, when the non-steppe people could have easily adopted the steppe people’s original Indo-Iranic religions and made some of their members priests.
Also, most people in India in the last 800 years before the British would have spoken Persian since it was the dominant language of the land, including Parsis. Parsis were quite well liked by the Mughal emperors due to their association with Persian culture. After the colonization of India, Persian was gradually displaced by English, and many elite communities, including the Jains, Jews, Zoroastrians, Brahmins, etc became more anglicized under British rule. The Parsis are considered one of the most anglicized communities, which probably explains why they don’t speak the Persian language. A lot of the process wasn’t driven by women or men, but rather by the change in the principal language used by higher learning institutions.
Additionally, Sanskrit as a language survived due to its ritualistic associations and the continual propagation by Vedic schools or Shakhas that played a role in transmitting the Vedas orally, oftentimes to male pupils rather than women. Furthermore, Vedic Sanskrit represents a crystallized version of a collection of Proto-Indo-Aryan dialects rather than a fixed, organic language. The original Proto-Indo-Aryan dialects gradually developed into the Prakrit languages, which were the common language spoken by Indo-Aryan people groups and the languages that developed into North Indian vernacular languages. Even then, Sanskrit only started to become a court language with a degree of prominence due to, ironically enough, the efforts of the very Iranian Western Satrap kingdoms, who promoted the language extensively, unlike the more “native” Indo-Aryan kingdom of the Satavahanas, who promoted Magadhi Prakrit used by Ashoka.
Also, Southeast Asian countries don’t speak a South Asian language, but their languages use a ton of Sanskrit loanwords to the extent that many people have South Asian sounding names. Also, many of the Southeast asian kingdoms had Sanskritized rituals. So, the enculturation process was clearly happening, but it broke off before anything else happened. Also, the Philippines was never really part of the Indianized sphere, outside of an insignificant section.
I mean these are great comments, but it is very hard to respond to these stream of consciousness replies.
Some bullet pointing would make it easier.
If as you say Iron is common in the ancient world 5000 years ago, that pushes Rig Veda dating back further.
Loan words yes, language change no. English is full of French loan from Norman conquest (Beef/Pork) . South Indian languages are stuffed to the gills with Sanskrit loanwords and yet are distinctly Dravidian. Female migration is a key feature of imposing language/culture, it’s why the British brought their wives, when they felt the EIC gang were going too native.
You do understand that none of your arguments work here, right? If the Rig Veda is 5000 years old, then that should put them around the same time as the Indus Valley Civilization. Yet, we neither see nor hear any mention of massive urban structures that clearly existed during the Indus Valley period mentioned in the Rig Veda. It is quite clear that the Aryans neither saw nor interacted with the actual Indus Valley people, since it had more or less stopped existing before they even set foot in this land. So, trying to date the Rig Veda to that period makes no sense.
The Indo-Aryans and their Iranian counterparts literally share little with the pre-existing cultures or populations in their regions. Like the Indus valley civillization were probably Semitic or Semitic-adjacent people whose culture was probably closer to Elam and broader Mesopotamia, considering the fact that they engaged in extensive trade. There isn’t any continuity here, and the Indo-Iranians couldn’t have originated from the Indus Valley. Clearly, they didn’t come from the Himalayan ranges or from the pre-existing people of Iran, since they would have been Semitic. The Indo-Aryans don’t share any linguistic similarities with the proto-Dravidian of the South. The Steppe is kinda of the only answer here.
Also, the British argument is easily countered by the Spanish colonization in South America. They only brought over male explorers to the region, who then proceeded to marry local women. Most of South America today is heavily similar to Spain and Portugal, with people speaking those respective languages rather than the aboriginal languages of the pre-existing people groups.
Okay, I kept this as short as possible.
The Americas had devastating population drops of >95%. That was population replacement to a large extent.
In comparison the Philippines which was colonised by the Spanish speak Tagalog, Spanish as a language has disappeared, though the Spanish genes (and names) remain in lots of people.
This would not have happened to IVC, urban populations with domesticated livestock are pretty disease resistant.
Indra is pretty much a cattle rustling god, so it is clear that the Veda has a pastoral element. I imagine as the cities silted up, the climate change caused the IVC to collapse and force a gradual return to the land. The Veda is full of the memories of this drought.
We know IVC genes are within us. Why the memories of their cities are absent is not clear. For that matter TN iron smelting indicates a fully functional civ, there is no racial memory of that either.
1) Rig Veda is complex. This cannot be done by some pastoral people. This can be done by settled people with constant learning and teaching and scholarship .
All modern or settled paninian concepts like sandhi (between aksharas ) and samasa (between words) are in rig Veda. Yes, There are a few constructs which are not in common use.
2)Not every male came over here from steppe, if this theory is accepted.
There would be old learned folks and very young ones left behind , who would have taught /learned the language and culture. Did they produce any work similar to Vedas?.
3) what appears plausible is that there was an earlier migration from Indus lands Westwards and Some of them came back, and joined the older existing group.
4) Vedas were certainly written by intelligent people. How come they were so oblivious to the existing / recently demised I V C??
After all IVC was in the same valley as Aryans resided.
4) is an enduring mystery. Maybe some sort of taboo on mentioning it?
Personally I suspect the civ fall racial memory is the origins of the cyclical Yuga theme.
Bronze age cilmate change collapse spanned multi decades if not centuries.
//Rig Veda is complex. This cannot be done by some pastoral people. This can be done by settled people with constant learning and teaching and scholarship//
Why exactly cant pastoral people produce or engage in complex topics?
My points still stand, though. The Indus Valley was one of the biggest settlements in the region and had complex international trade with Mesopotamia. You don’t really just forget an entire civilization overnight and act as if nothing existed in the first place. The only way this makes sense is that the Indo-aryans were outsiders who came long after the fall of the Indus Valley; hence, no one who remembered that state survived into the later period.
Even the continuation of pottery from the Indus Valley was by people who were not direct descendants, but people who were distantly related or were merely imitating the old style of pottery. None of the immediate people involved continued a lot of the older practices or even fully survived. Also, it was quite natural to have genomic material from a dead civilization since some individuals would still survive and procreate or potentially assimilate into later groups. Culture is not genetic; it can shift over time irrespective of biology.
Furthermore, smelting iron isn’t really unique since many people independently developed that technology, but it always meant they became a full fledged civillization. Take it like this: ancient people groups discovered how to make fire independently, but that didn’t mean the group fully transitioned into the state of social evolution and became agrarian. Tamil Nadu settlements developed smelting and settlements, but the question remains whether they took the next step to form fully urbanized structures.
Additionally, Iron was a very difficult material to process in the past, which is why people stuck to Bronze in the first place, despite being able to make iron; bronze could be reused again in a manner that Iron couldn’t. Iron was something we were forced to use since Bronze became unviable. Hence, the presence of Iron itself doesn’t translate to the advancement of a people. Archaeological study on this subject about Tamil Nadu settlements is still a newer thing, so much is left to be said here.
Those TN Knives and axe heads are very usable. That is a sophisticated civ.
I don’t know why you believe Iron is not a big deal, getting Iron right is up there in civ greatest achievements, no one randomly tries to build a 1200degree smelter by accident.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62e36jm4jro
Civs can disappear with the people remaining. Language and Gods tend to hang around.
Why not just post a separate article as a counter view?
Honestly, that would really take me a long time here since I would have to cover a lot of time, and everything I wrote right now alone took way too long for me. Also, I am not sure I have enough time to write a clear article with proper citations as well, and there is a whole other aspect of modern religious politics that I have to keep in mind, which really adds another layer to an already annoying task. Also, this was too far in the past for me since I genuinely have not cared for either the Vedic or Indus period as much, so I am lacking a lot of information and research material.
If you are feeling tired you can always drop out, this conversation is interesting but can take a wrong turn very easily.
If the Rig Veda is 5000 years old, then that should put them around the same time as the Indus Valley Civilization. Yet, we neither see nor hear any mention of massive urban structures that clearly existed during the Indus Valley period mentioned in the Rig Veda. It is quite clear that the Aryans neither saw nor interacted with the actual Indus Valley people, since it had more or less stopped existing before they even set foot in this land. So, trying to date the Rig Veda to that period makes no sense.
So is the argument that Vedic culture had fully formed outside of the IVC context both in time and in space? If so, how do you reconcile that against the conventional theory of the Vedas being composed around 1200 BC in the Indus Valley area you had shared previously in this thread?
The general theory of timing later Vedic corpus and Upanishads being composed around 600 BC on the same principle doesn’t make a lot of sense? The Upanishads are highly complex philosophical work that cannot have been produced by a nomadic-pastoralist society described in the earliest parts. If they weren’t nomadic pastoralists then presumably they had also encountered ruins or decaying parts of IVC over time so, why then, do even the later Vedic texts not have any mention of the Indo-Aryans encountering any vestiges of IVC?
Also don’t quite agree with the prevalence of Iberian languages in S. America as a sufficient counter. As Indosaurus stated, the Europeans engaged in ethnic replacement at an industrial scale – so much so that native groups form less than 2-3% of the population in countries like Argentina and Brazil. In countries where native peoples are still present in non-insignificant numbers, native languages still survive in appreciably large numbers and Spanish forms the language of the elites and state machinery ala Persian or English in modern India. The example just doesn’t apply in the Indian/South Asian context.
Why exactly cant pastoralists engage and produce complex topics?
And 500-600 years is a long time for a people to develop complex systems of governance and society and also engage and dabble in new ideas. There are multiple example of people whose ancestors were pastoralists, nomads,fishermen, farmers and all sorts of other works whose descendants achieved remarkably high degree of philosphical and spiritual thought once they got the time and resources to do so.
There is also the case that even if the Indo aryans came after the IVC had collapsed, there would be remnants of this culture whom they could intermingle with and develop new cultures with as well, based on their own, the IVCs and other cultures that we have little clue of which were there.One does not need to be from the IVC itself to have complex thought.
The Indus Valley was already more or less dead by the time the Indo-Aryans arrived in the region. Urbanization had come to a halt in the region; a significant portion of the scripts being written down declined, and human remains with disease and wounds were found. The Indus and other rivers were already shifting their flow, resulting in extensive damage to settlements. After, like 1700 bc, most elements of the Indus Valley faded into insignificance, with some aspects like pottery vaguely surviving.
Mind you, none of this includes the fact that there were other people groups like Ahar-Banas culture, Jodhpura-Ganeshwar culture, etc., who were contemporaries of the Indus Valley. The basic issue with the late phase of the Harappans is the fact that they returned to their pre-urban way of life, making them indistinguishable from the other cultures that existed. To make things worse, some of those cultures could have adapted aspects of the Indus people, say, pottery, which makes it even harder to determine if these artifacts we find belong to the original Indus Valley people or someone else imitating them.
If we are unable to distinguish these different groups and can’t differentiate each group in spite of the evidence, then the Indo-Aryans would know even less. The Indo-Aryans could have influenced basically any of these cultures, and they might have intermarried with these people groups, who could have had a similar ancestry to the Indus people. Another major problem would be the fact that we don’t even know what these peoples’ cultures were even like to begin with; we probably won’t be able to determine if any cultures bleed over into Vedic ones or vice versa, for that matter.
To make things a bit clearer, we have this thing in science called a null hypothesis and an alternative hypothesis. The alternative hypothesis says that event A influences event B; there is a cause-and-effect relationship. The null hypothesis says that event A doesn’t cause event B; rather, there is no cause & effect, rather, it was sampling error that made it look like a relationship. Usually, you either reject the null or fail to reject the null hypothesis.
Here, the alternative hypothesis is that the Indus Valley civilization interacted/potentially influenced the Vedic civilization, while the Null hypothesis states that they did not interact/influence. A sizeable amount of the information here suggests that we failed to reject the null hypothesis. At the same time, rejecting the null hypothesis doesn’t automatically mean the alternative is completely wrong, but it is likely (not 100%) to be correct based on the data (artifacts, textual references) available to us right now. There might be some evidence suggesting otherwise, but it is not strong enough. This can or cannot change in the future based on discoveries.
This is how the consensus stands right now, but it can change in the future or maybe not. Everything else is, at best, conjecture and at worst wishful thinking. I, for a long time, wanted there to be some strong connection between the Indus and the Vedic, but I had to learn the hard way that there just isn’t much to work with right now, and that will remain the main consensus for a while.
Side note: The Upanishads were written closer to the post-Vedic period, when the second wave of Urbanization happened. The Indo-Aryans were already in the process of becoming urban, as indicated by the presence of rice cultivation and other agrarian processes.
… Indus valley civillization were probably Semitic or Semitic-adjacent people whose culture was probably closer to Elam and broader Mesopotamia, considering the fact that they engaged in extensive trade.
Surely you’re not saying IVC were a Semitic people because they traded with Mesopotamia? What other basis is there for this claim?
The IVC, insofar as it can be seen as part of the zagrossian demic diffusion, could be connected to the cultures closer to the source, perhaps. Although, given the vast expanse of the IVC, I would say we ought to assume that there were a patchwork of linguistic isolates, typical of the age. When the semitic akkadians were just one isolate among many in the mesopotamian-elam cluster, it would be a huge leap to even conjecture that they were the IVC people. I think flydie was speaking broadly that IVC had more cultural affinity to that area than the pastoral steppe cultures.
People get on edge after that gross slur about the Pasupathi Seal being proto-elamite by the Hindu baiter.
I want to point out, that my article does not deny steppe migration or DNA evidence. This is not an Out of India theory.
I have not found good explanations to fit the various points raised in the article. i.e RV Dating/lack of IVC destruction evidence/Language & Culture transmission mechanisms/Iranian DNA + Zoroastrian linguistic & cultural proximity. Remnant steppe/greek/baltic cultures are very distant.
All fights described in the Vedas are westwards, against Avestan derived names.
The article is an attempt to bridge those issues.
Also there is a very Indian ethos about the IVC, large, spread out, huge population, no evidence of war, heavy trading along the Arabian sea.
Is it any surprise that the Ahimsa religion of Jainism is located heavily atop IVC and merchant dependent.
Yeah, I did mean that in the broader sense .
Thanks! This helps clarify. Fwiw, I think we just don’t know enough about IVC to make any defining conclusions about their antecedents, cultural successors etc. I do think it is not a leap of faith to say that some remnants of IVC culture perhaps live on as vestigial elements of Indian culture but again, hard to say that conclusively. Now if only someone would go and find that goddamn Rosetta stone.
When culture/language undergoes a dramatic change, it leaves some telltale signs. Ottoman mass grave 1526.
Just thinking about the Mongolian steppe horde creating the largest geographical empire in history, leaving almost no language or religion of their own, but lots and lots of DNA.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2531003123
Ironically they ended up adopting the Indian religion of Buddhism after all their travels. (They are probably 50%> Christian now)
Who are 50% Christians?
Are you saying the people in Mongolia are 50% christian now?
How? And on basis of what?
That area, the remnant of the Horde homelands. Calm down, it’s not an exact figure and I might be off, it’s hard to estimate how much is in Russia.
Most of the people in former horde homelands are muslim.
Even in russia, the places under the control of the golden horde follow sunni islam, not any form of christianity.
It’s rather surprising how much the Russians play up the whole defender of the real Christian faith thing when they might actually be less Christian than even many Western European countries. Russia is actually percentage wise more Muslim than India for example.
This seemed difficult to believe but yeah russia is about 15% muslim with migrants from central asia it maybe even more.
This idea of tracking minority % is a little bit grey.
I have no idea about Mongolia but I wouldn’t be surprised if what you say is true. Even across East and South East Asia, the church has been very successful in converting erstwhile Buddhist populations. Singapore, by many estimates, is now close to a Christian plurality where the Christians (especially Catholics) live in a parallel world – almost strict endogamy and instances of members of a family converting and cutting off from their still heathen relatives. There was a famous case where some pastor went around denouncing Buddhism very publicly (as they usually do). The Buddhist community reaction was to advise Buddhists to not react on the grounds that it shows they are attached to their idea of the world. South Korea has it dystopian megachurches that are now consuming places like Fiji with their hatred for others. Unsurprisingly, it is these same psychotic Koreans who are aggressively converting poor folk en masse in Nepal, Sikkim and North East India.
At some point I want to write about the relative recession of Dharma across Asia because its values are just not prepared to deal with the aggressive ideology of erasure and zero sum games that are fundamental to Abrahamic faiths. It is like an operating system that hasn’t even figured out there is virus working to destroy it from within. In my opinion, Dharmic philosophies need to introspect and contemplate if being ‘defensive’ is a good enough tactic to survive this millenia long onslaught that is only getting worse.
Except Singapore is majoroty atheist or agnostic with the descendants of these christians you describe themselves losing their religion.
Same with korea where christianity is largely something older people followed and the younger generation is not following as much.
The remaining of Indochina is still strongly buddhiat with places like Thailand effectively turning christian run schools as ways for them to preserve elite privilege without converting.
Tribals people’s in malayasia and Indonesia are christian but unless major changes happen in christisn practise, belief and culture, these people’s descendants will also lose their religion overtime.
Phillipines is extremely catholic but you can have people who come to power, like Duerte essentially insult the pope and still be popular
It is not christianity that the religions in these regions are weak to, but modernity and the associated agnosticism and atheism that make many religions that are highly structured, centralizer and dependent on govt support difficult if not impossible to sustain.
//Singapore, by many estimates, is now close to a Christian plurality where the Christians (especially Catholics) live in a parallel world – almost strict endogamy and instances of members of a family converting and cutting off from their still heathen relatives. There was a famous case where some pastor went around denouncing Buddhism very publicly (as they usually do). The Buddhist community reaction was to advise Buddhists to not react on the grounds that it shows they are attached to their idea of the world. //
I had a small look into these incidents.
Other than isolated incidents, which were clamped down by the Singapore authorities, the relations between christians and non christians are cordially. With catholics not only not cutting ties with their non catholic communitiy members but the diocese not censuring anyone who engages in ritual action while doing ancestor veneration and non catholic Christian sects simply encouraging polite participation. No instances of family members going no contact found at all.
//South Korea has it dystopian megachurches that are now consuming places like Fiji with their hatred for others.//
Only one church was found matching your descriptions, that is apocalyptic and largely fighting with other christians. The actual success of south Korean churches in Fiji among indo-fijians seems to be overstated.
//Unsurprisingly, it is these same psychotic Koreans who are aggressively converting poor folk en masse in Nepal, Sikkim and North East India.//
While some of the people have ties and receive money from these churches, the success of Korean churches seems to be vastly overstated in comparison to western missionary organization’s and even more so in comparison to indian christian organization’s. At least in Nepal and Sikkim christianity has not been very successful so far and the growth of christianity in northeast India seems to be plateauing.
Have you picked out a Conversion Avenger name? You know, for the moments that you have to jump in and defend the faith.
Do you imagine the super suit to be with or without cape?
I am not defending the faith. I am pointing out that some of the criticism made about christians in this thread are wrong and can easily be shown to be with a simple google search
I have never have and never will defend the theology of christianity.
I dont see anything wrong in protecting the honor of the community I come from, when all that is needed is a Google search. You can point out if I have said something incorrect instead of making bad jokes.
I have not besmirched any other community either, so why are you so agitated?
Well I’ve already had one restraining order against the jokes, and the Elons bots knocked me off twitter for making fun of him, I’m down to you and my desi uncle whatsapp groups.
Have you been approached by a Scientologist to join their church? You might empathise more with our viewpoint when you’re a conversion target.
+1
The Mormons try their best too.
Please tell me if I have said anything wrong above.
//Have you been approached by a Scientologist to join their church? You might empathise more with our viewpoint when you’re a conversion target.//
I have been approached to convert by Zakir Naik followers, by ISKCONites, by people who claim to follow some baba and ask me to donate or join for a satsang after reading my future and a local churches in where I stay. Oh and one japanese cult as well when I was in Delhi.
It does not provoke me to say false statements on groups of people as a whole and close my mind to any notion that a group of people who may be associated with them are not problematic, and are largely not very successful in their efforts at all.
These aren’t really discussions about the rightness and wrongness of things.
I find all conversion attempts to be a nuisance. Also all the people who show up at home asking for money and attempt a combination of religious blackmail/extortion. The begging I have some sympathy for.
Let me put it this way, defence of conversion possibly elicits similar feelings you find in the defence of Gau Rakshaks.
Lets be very frank.
Saying that the success of people who do conversion is vastly overstated is not a defense.
Trying to equate counters to notions that christians in Singapore are anti social or that they can say whatever they want without any censure or that the christians in southeast asia, east asia and indian subcontinet, are having even a modicum of success in retaining the people they have got much less expand with defending conversion does not make sense and is again not a defense of any conversion. It is a defense of the honor of christians though.
I really am not bothered if someone defends gau Rakshaks or thinks they are needlessly hated.
Yes conversion isn’t so easy
On the contrary. Conversion is easy. In every individuals life there will be a point of stress or deep anguish or loneliness. Where you feel you are ill served by your current faith/rationality.
These are points where, in desperation, people reach out for help. Conversion nearly always preys on this vulnerability, exchanging temporary succour to gain a lifetime tithing source.
I feel this should be a lesson taught in school. Not every parent inoculates their child with a warning about this.
The subsequent loss of a person to an aggrandising cult is a lifelong wound for the family. A constant pain every member has to experience when interacting with the changed (often proselytising) relative.
Any defence of these acts is not some noble calling of defending the honour of their faith. It is defending the despicable. Note, this is not about Christianity, they are simply the most numerous.
//Any defence of these acts is not some noble calling of defending the honour of their faith. //
Saying people who change their religion are not anti social or that the people doing conversion are not very successful are not defenses of conversion.
There can still be other issues with conversions,like the above whete it seems you believe all conversion is a result of exploiting someone during a personal tragedy.
I think it is pertinent to mention that missionaries approach everyone regardless of whether their going through a tragedy or not.
It is just thst when someone goes through a tragedy their more willing to try different things. Not everyone who is approached and even helped changes their faith. The majority largely stay in the same faith they were born in
Those that do change fall into two camps, they either have had issues with the faith they were following for years and the tragedy just bought everything to the surface or they have not but are emotionally and physically exhausted. Using the second group to change anyone’s faith is despicable and condemnable and deserve the strictest punishment law can given.
The first case of people however do know what they are doing, they are willingly going through a hige change that will take much effort and time on their part and should at least not be trivialized
If the new faith does not take care of the problems they had in the first place they would either return or go somewhere else but whatever they do arw well within their rights to do what they want.
//The subsequent loss of a person to an aggrandising cult is a lifelong wound for the family. A constant pain every member has to experience when interacting with the changed (often proselytising) relative.//
Why exactly should the family feel bad for someone living their life how they want and giving time and effort to something they may want to?
This is similar to how some evangelical parents in the US think about their children who no longer follow their faith, they are wrong to think this because their children’s decision are not a reflection on their parenting.
Taking decisions of others on your honor is best avoided.
So are we all, all honourable men?
I dont see anything wrong in protecting the honor of the community I come from, when all that is needed is a Google search.
Aggrandising hegemonic cults are an underrated threat for children and young adults. Happily the danger drops exponentially with age.
You can protect the honor of your community without dragging others down.
And if ‘aggrandizing hegemonic cult’ is your word for religion then I dont agree that hegemonic religions like hinduism, christianity, Sikhism, islam, Judaism, zoroastrianism, Jainism and many others are be default threats to anyone. Individuals within them might be threats to others and shluld be dealt with through the law. Nothing to be gained by making blank and negative statements on community as a whole.
One man’s drag is another mans show.
Unexpected to see you’re in favour of anti conversion laws.
I prefer narrative control to shoddy lawmaking open to abuse. Better forewarned than post corrective.
Better these laws be there so that bad behavior on convertor side can be corrected, if it assures the majority community in any way that is a bonus.
I dont think narrative control can stop people from going away from faiths that they are not interested in. The evangelical christians in the US, spend huge amounts of money doing as much narrative control as they can among their communities, even indulging in routine slander of everyone not like them, it has still not prevented the drift away from them.
When you make these false equivalence arguments equating people leaving evangelical cults to my objections of proselytisers preying, is this a troll or just a mangled logic circuit.
From where I am standing both the people who leave evangelical christisnity and those who choose christianity in india are just following their heart, for the most part, some could be genuine victims but that is not the case with everyone.
The fact that you are portraying every conversion as a result of some manipulations is no different from what evangelical christians say about those who leave them.
At the end of the day, both groups need to take the time to listen to what the people who choose another religion or no religion, before assuming that everyone who leaves is being misled.
Never did I say every, just talking vulnerabilities.
I suggest you give your endless supply of strawmen to the Gau Rakshaks, they can use the fodder, and will be properly laid to rest as the BS it is.
I’m stepping out. Enjoy your little extrapolative wallow.
//Never did I say every, just talking vulnerabilities.//
After calling any counter to christians being called anti social, as a defense of proselityzation.
Calling me saying the missionaries lack charisma as a defense of proselytization.
Not so subtly saying that people leaving their birth faith is an attack on the honor of their relatives and making repeated allusions that conversion as a whole is something thst is done by exploiting people at their weakest, you are now trying to act as if the above is not proof who has an endless supply of strawmen,
If you dont want to be misrepresented, use qualifiers like ‘some’, ‘certain’, ‘many’, ‘most’ so that is clear to what degree you are trying to make a point.
I hope the gau rakshaks appreciate your charity.
All your extrapolations buddy, not mine. I spell honour with u. Do you leave the spell check on American?
//All your extrapolations buddy, not mine.//
The record of all that I said is in the conversation above.
Are you taking a page out of Kabirs book and going to correct me for not using the queens english?
Just proving a point about your extrapolation.
I despise language snobbery and have often stated so, but you chose to interpret an innocent enquiry as a correction.
Indians learn ‘honour’ and yet you choose to frame your arguments through ‘honor’.
Meanwhile leli language policing is sad and unimaginative, makes for a very boring batting.
If you dont want to be misrepresented, use qualifiers like ‘some’, ‘certain’, ‘many’, ‘most’ so that is clear to what degree you are trying to make a point.
//If you dont want to be misrepresented, use qualifiers like ‘some’, ‘certain’, ‘many’, ‘most’ so that is clear to what degree you are trying to make a point.//
Apparently I overlooked that you said nearly all conversions happen through exploiting someone at their worst.
My bad.
You are still wrong as the people who do change their religion had issues with it going back years before personal tragedy struck that was just the last domino to fall.
Because you seem to think that even countering wrong information or questioning the success of missionaries is a defense my mind automatically reads nearly always to always. My bad again.
And the next thing is how you seem to take everything personally, by trying to correct me for not using the queen’s English instead of pointing out that I misread some of what you wrote.
Instead of trying to use stereotypes it is better to actually point back to what you have said. Not everyone is trying to bait and get a reaction you know
Sigh! I see I’ll have to spell things out. “I spell honour with u” -> this is wordplay, you introduced the concept of honour. ‘u’ as in ‘you’.
I get your affinity to strawmen because you suck so badly.
My god what low level baits. Your literally taking arguments from Kabir now.
Buddy your the one who linked my corrections to what NDG said about christians in Singapore and questioning the capability of Indian missionaries as a defense of conversion and put forward the first strawman.
Your the one literally doing the same thing American evangelicals do to rationalise their children no longer wanting to follow their religion by downplaying others mental faculties and pre existing issues
And now when not a single counter has been given to what I have written and you are literally using same arguments that you berated a week back ,I am the one who sucks badly? Hahaha, you at least put a smile on my face, thanks for that.
Poor boy, I see you aren’t having fun. Personally I thought the bit about straw men sucking was inspired.
Liberal outrage is such a sad humourless place.
I am actually having a great time. It is just that the jokes you try to make are less funny than the arguments you choose to instead. I mean making the same arguments as Kabir definitely has to sting.
//Liberal outrage is such a sad humourless place.//
Except I am.really not getting outraged by anything you have written, you are the one who is affected by neither your jokes nor baits having any effect on me. Nor are your caricatures that good either because you seem to not know that they don’t apply. Fumbling this hard that you need to rely on stereotypes to rationalise some of your jokes and baits having no effect is hilarious to me.
Yes, yes, I see 😂.
I dont think you do but let it be. It’s good that you find your own jokes funny at least.
He loves strawmen.
I actually dont.
But when christians, muslims, left liberals and many others are strawmanned as seen in the conversation above, I also end up doing the same inadvertently.
After the Una incident, a lot of commentary was around how Dalits had become collateral damage of the Gau Rakshaks’ hatred of Muslims. To that, Pandit says, “When we expressed our views, our opposition to beef, who was the one who talked about their rights to eat (it)? It was only the Muslims. Beef was introduced in our cuisine by no one but Muslims.”
According to the latest National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) round, around 1 of every 13 Indians—or 80 million people—eat beef or buffalo meat. The biggest chunk of beef-eating population are Muslims. After Muslims, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes (SC/ST) make up the biggest group of the beef-eating population.
Among Hindus, more than 70% of the beef-eating population is SC/ST, 21% is other backward castes and only 7% is upper caste (others category).
https://www.livemint.com/Politics/Mi6HZpayTzwJT7G6zy8dTO/Who-is-a-Gau-Rakshak.html?facet=amp
as far as my understanding goes, the village scavenging communities ( now Scs) would strip dead animals for skin primarily (some claim as a right), and if the meat is healthy eat it.
killing a cow for meat in the SC community was not there.
This Gau Rakshak business, with it’s organisation etc. is a complete nuisance.
They might voice a legitimate grievance, but I really don’t see how they are going to distinguish themselves from the people who want to join along to participate in some mob activity.
Besides in India there is always the low level aspiring politician who is incentivised to gain name recognition by doing what they love – some organised gang violence.
It’s a vicious uncouth practice which is indefensible in my opinion.
I have a few Gau Rakshaks in my family and friends circle. Most of them aren’t participants in mob violence or interested in local politics. They are at the end of the day true believers in Hinduism/Jainism. They truly believe that cows ought to not be killed in a Hindu state. They don’t go out to enforce these beliefs out of their local communities. However, they have been forced out of their comfortable houses and onto the streets patrolling it like a neighborhood watch to ensure that the sin doesn’t occur on their watch. Most incidents involving these people do end up with them taking the perpetrators of the crime to the police instead of some kind of mob activity. I even know of some Gau Rakshaks who have ended up being killed by Muslim truckers because they were caught with beef in their trucks. It may be a bit much to characterize all those people as vicious or uncouth.
There’s no way to differentiate it.
Legitimate grievance will be the shield for baser instinct.
All right wing movements in Europe have very genuine legitimate grievances which need to be addressed, they also tend to attract racist skinheads who are vicious and uncouth. It taints the whole movement.
Your friends and family can be the most upstanding and honourable, unfortunately they will get tarred with the same brush as the politico-criminal element.
If that is a brand they are willing to tolerate for their ideals, more respect to them for it.
It does not change the problem. Mob brutality is an indelible blot on our national character.
Most of these people wouldn’t have to get on the streets if the state managed to ensure that Cows weren’t being slaughtered in the first place. At the end of the day the solution to all these problems is good governance and policing. As for politico-criminal aspects are more prominent in the cow smuggling apparatus that the groups that are interested in deterring it. I don’t need to tell you how connected the cow smuggling and human trafficking has been in our country. It would be better if the state focused on allaying these issues rather than focusing on simple Gau Rakshaks.
++recursively
Don’t conflate Buffalo and Cow. Both have very different symbolism. Also the reason why many dairy farmers choose buffalo vs cow. Buffalo milk is higher fat > more money and no religious taboo around selling it off for slaughter after its productive years.