As I write this I’m listening to Kabir’s link on Noor Jehan; its revving me up for Urdu class. But it also gives voice to conflicting ideas over the last day or so. An iPhone in a Dalit hand is not a panacea for caste. A Turkic sword at the birth of Indo-Islam is not a claim over South Asian Islam.
The iPhone. A Dalit with an iPhone 16 has purchasing power. That is not nothing; it is also not the end of caste. Capitalism welcomes the customer long before the marriage column or the rental listing does, because selling to someone costs the seller no status. On Monday I wrote about the tragic death of Sahil Wakode at IIT Bombay. I had chosen a picture that cropped in his iPhone 16; unintentional, as I simply try to put a header picture on every post. It did not protect him, and whether caste followed him into that exam hall is now a question for the Crime Branch. Caste did not end with urbanisation; it transformed from the visible to the invisible.
Babur. RNJ shared an interesting tweet by a Pakistani girl who was asked by her Uzbek and Central Asian friends why Pakistanis are so Hinduphobic. The question was sincere. Babur was one of their own, they love him, and they are totally in line with India.
The claim that Arabs, Turks, or whoever can read Persian may speak for Indo-Muslim culture dies on one fact: Babur’s descendants are not in the old world. They are in South Asia. The centre of that civilisation is Lahore and Lucknow, not Ferghana.
As the Commentariat know, I’m in my own hyper-Hindufication stage, but I can clearly see that I have swapped the Islamicate for the Persianate.
The Indo-Persian Twinning. The Indo-Islamic experience was not built by the Turkic invasions alone; it is also the synthesis of native converts. Urdu is the proof: not Turkish or Arabic parked on Indian soil, but converts taking Hindi and making it their own, Perso-Arabic ornament on an Indian frame. What Noor Jehan shows is the same machinery in music: the gharana, synthesis organised into a family line. And Bhakti would not stay on one side of the line. Kabir the weaver was claimed by Hindus and Muslims at his death, and his namesake in our comments keeps the musical habit alive.
Omar’s caveat. Omar put it plainly in his Shahab Ahmed review: the zone from the Balkans to Bengal did not change religion by magic; it was conquered. There is a settler-colonial strand in the Indo-Muslim experience, and I understand why he names it. But conquest is the first chapter, not the book. The rest is synthesis, and conquerors cannot do synthesis alone; only converts who buy in wholeheartedly can (as Shawkat mentions, even his grandpapa, who was a Haji, essentially ran the town).
English, in real time. The same process is running now, in the open, between English and every South Asian language. The difference between the post-colonial and the neo-colonial is that the hegemon still radiates its culture, asymmetrically.
I have not been following the Middle East, but Indo has written a clever piece, Dune or Doom, on the Saudis. Every time I go to write about it here, I think of Sereno, who had very strong opinions of the Middle East. It is just one of those things.
memento mori
Addendum
Sons Are Not Sold in Shops
My Urdu teacher turned this week’s class into a Noor Jehan seminar, and the seminar kept turning into caste.
Two voices carry Pakistan abroad, he said: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Noor Jehan. People like that are born once in a long while. But to understand where the second one came from, he took me to a Punjabi community called the Mirasi, from miras, inheritance. Their old work was to be other families’ memory. They kept your genealogy when you yourself had forgotten it, your father’s name, his father’s, his father’s, and they entertained: song, dance, recitation, comic verse. After the British, the other functions withered and the singing stayed, because weddings had spread to every town and every house in Punjab, and weddings need singers. Every city and village had its Mirasis.
Naseebo Lal comes from a Mirasi family; Noor Jehan rose out of that world, though her life ran its own course. The gossip that still trails her came caste-flavoured, he said: such people are not khandani, show them money and they will do anything. The caste that kept everyone else’s lineage was told it had none.
And yet all Punjab carries her songs, young and old alike; remixed, resung, a world-record songbook nobody has managed to forget.
Then 1965. The fighting was on the border and Radio Pakistan needed morale. The story as he told it: word went about that India would simply buy Pakistan’s soldiers; the country was new, and some wanted to go back. Sufi Tabassum wrote her the answer and she sang it. Ae puttar hattan te nahin vikde: sons are not sold in shops; you are searching the wrong bazaar.
Sufi and Noor asked theirs sons and soldiers if they did not give our lives for Pakistan then, then when? The despised rememberers ended up holding a nation’s memory. Miras, doing its work.
wrote an addendum but also interesting Zia targeted Karachi Urdu cinema but not Lahore Punjabi cinema..
I’m quite sure that the cropping was unintentional, but it also exposes a blind spot.
Your point is that economic wealth does not change one’s caste. Why not?
I’ve argued that the discrimination they face subsequently is perversely a consequence of the laws providing them reservation and giving them their accusatory word the backing of state services.
Conversely will there be no resentment of watching people availing reservation, not paying tuition, getting stipends, free textbooks, and then posing with the latest model iPhone?
Many years ago I watched a video of Shivraj Chauhan interacting with students, one boy moans that he is unable to get admission despite having much higher marks than his friend who has performed much worse. Chauhan stammers something about backwardness, when the boy replies – but they have a car and a house, we have a miserable bicycle.
The mike is taken away mid sentence.
I would highly recommend that you post your Saudi article here 🙂
yes I agree 🙂
thank you for your comment 🙂 a rich Black man in the United States will still be stopped by police etc.
privilege does not obviate other aspects of the minoritised-marginalised experience.
I agree there is a fine line with abuse but comportment (which correlates fairly well with class, caste and every other elite marker) is probably more important to long term success (likability is what keeps someone in their job)..
Here I disagree hard. Dalit is not a racial visible minority.
Colleges with boarding for teenagers is the single most formative experience of their lives. They also provide the networks. That boy (who by accounts was quite popular and well liked) would have graduated from an elite college with many viable paths.
What marginalisation are you talking about? You need to spell it out at this point, because honestly I cannot see it.
yes and within college how is popularity assessed.
it’s like high school, not everyone has the same experience even in the same high school?
privilege is not only absolute but relative as well.
//What marginalisation are you talking about? You need to spell it out at this point, because honestly I cannot see it.//
The below article written by students in iit Roorkee give some information about how castesim operates in even elite institutions like the iits.
You can read it and learn more.
https://watchout.iitr.ac.in/2023/03/the-merit-myth
It may not be obvious marginalization. He might have been popular, well liked and possibly privileged. But when such events take place like a cheating scandal, the whispers invariably start with not “why did he cheat” but “he’s probably cheating because he’s XYZ caste”.
Its the same irrational angst that the West has against Indians. The stereotype holds despite logic to the contrary.
*Mic not Mike Wazowski
Thx for mentioning the Dune article. It was well and away my favourite book growing up, it’s quite fascinating how much of it maps with Ibn Saud.
I thought it was based on the wars in the Caucasus ..
Well Brian Herbert (Frank’s son) says it was mostly inspired by the Californian sand dunes outside his childhood home.
Ibn Saud could be entirely coincidental. It’s just a fun thought.
Oil → Spice
Ibn Saud → Paul Atriedes
Fidayeen → Fidayeen
Rashidis → Harkonnen
Ottoman Sultan → Padishah Emperor
Arabian tribes → Landsraad
Mossad → Bene Gesserit
In my college days the official policy was very insensitive.
There would be almirahs labelled SC stbook bank. These books were lent only to them.At the beginning of the semester a list of students who got these books was published on the notice board only to be ripped off in a minute.
In those days there assertive dalit in engineering colleges was still in formation stage. The officer’s son who got a free pass was sneered, and they were leaders of sc st students.
Appalling. I hope you are very old and this is many many decades ago 🙂
//I’ve argued that the discrimination they face subsequently is perversely a consequence of the laws providing them reservation and giving them their accusatory word the backing of state services.
Conversely will there be no resentment of watching people availing reservation, not paying tuition, getting stipends, free textbooks, and then posing with the latest model iPhone?//
Reservation and laws like the SC/ST act are consequence of casteism that can turn violent even today
What have the people who sport moustaches that they get beaten up or what have those whose marriage procession are stopped or those who are rejected due to the community they come from in marriage? There is no way the discriminators know whether the victims in these cases have availed reservation or not. Yet violence still continues as does discrimination.
And only about 5% of all jobs in india are public sector jobs and have reservation. Almost 80% of all educational institutions are private and have no reservation.
Not to mention many states do have scholarships and support for poor brahmins and upper caste poor
The problem is one only sees the odd well to do dalit not the many who still suffer and need support and are at times insulted for taking it.
As long as castesim ia a reality in indian society these measures have to continue we can argue about how to ensure the most deserving recieves them but it is a ridiculous notion that some SC/ST who is well to do getting some benefits others dont is why caatesim still exists. This is just an excuse thst casteist use in many cases.
I agree to an extent. Economic prosperity takes away one aspect, but nobody can erase conditioning to see a human being through a caste lens unfortunately.
The tragedy of reservation has been exactly this. Fueling resentment and deepening the divide just because of historical grievances. Another reason why the benefits of reservation need to be studied and revised from time to time based on objective metrics.
Is there any proof that casteists who perform violence on dalits for what they consider a transgression refer to reservation as a reason?
Or is this just another mask that is used to make caste based biases respectable?
Reservations have failed. There have been huge negative consequences. As far as dailts are concerned, obc reservations have made matters worse for them. Too much to say on this topic but the conclusions are clear: unequivocally failed policy. New ideas are needed
Reservations were made for one purpose and that is to increase the presence of historically marginalised castes and communities in governance and public institutions- on this count it has been an unequivocal success.
It was never a poverty alleviation scheme, never was going to be able to convince casteists to stop being casteist and was never a substitute for government doing its job.
Many failures put at the foot of reservation are either state failures or societal failures.
It is society’s fault that large percentage of people still see large percentage of others as lower than them and targets of ridicule and violence. It is not on reservation that most of indian society, including muslims, christians, sikhs and jains cant let go of their biases.
It is also the governments fault that it has not made sufficient number of either high quality institutions or provided enough jobs or upgraded and provided high quality primary education.
Reservation has succeeded in its target of putting people from marginalised communities in sturcutre of power and giving them a chance to build social, political and economic capital that many upper caste communities had centuries to build. Everything else attributed to it are state and societal failures.
Only a section of upper caste and class indians call reservation a failure, and even among this crowd this view of reservation being failure is losing ground.
Complete failure. Mea Culpa – I had forgotten how pointless this discussion is.
Please read out of the right wing sources you are getting your information from.
Specially the SC/ST and ambedkairites who are advocates for this
I can even link an interview from Ashwini Deshpande thst gives more information.
You can ignore me, one day even your own community members will be repeating what I say to you.
I am fed up of how sure you are about yourself. Vitiates all conversation and makes engaging with you a thankless exercise. If you are so sure so be it, please let us lesser mortals wallow in our ignorance.
I am under no illusion that you or anyone else is less sure about what you believe in.
I know because of thst I will not change your opinion on anything and neither will you me or anyone else like me.
If we all agree , then what discussion is there to be had?Do you only want to be validated for your own beliefs and not test them or challenge them even a little?
You dont need to agree with me, but when certain things like reservation ate widely supported and seen as a success by many, especially those who benefitted from it, you at least should test whether any of your criticisms of it are based on your own social conditioning or can stand up to scrutiny outside it
Otherwise your just remaining static and unchanging.
dude speak for yourself..you reek of condescension..i have had enough of this..find someone else to chew…
I am not being condescending.
You should think why you are so bothered that someone who disagrees with you exists and does not hesitate to put their view forwards. Since when is saying that you are wrong or blaming things on reservation unfairly condescending
On the topic of condescension what do you make of that AI generated blurb on Kabir or blaming reservation for casteism or decreasing quality with no engagemrnt of counter examples, much worse than anything I have written.
I think you have are too aligned with your viewpoint on reservation that you are taking it as an attack on yourself. If you cant see that you can be wrong then it is not me vitiating discussion.
lol..
It is fascinating how you’ve managed to write four entire paragraphs just to prove my point about your defensiveness.
You seem incredibly bothered that someone dared to call out your tone, and this long justification only confirms that you’re taking this deeply personally. I also love how you’re trying to deflect by bringing up completely unrelated things like Kabir and AI blurbs just to avoid self-reflection.
You can keep convincing yourself that you’re the objective voice of reason here, but your inability to handle a mirror being held up to your behavior says it all. I’m going to leave you to process your feelings on this.
If anyone calls me condescending I am well within my rights to show instances where you have been objectively worse.
No matter how you cut it, the AI blurb you wrote about Kabir is much more condescending than anything you can ever accuse me of. The whole point of brining that up was to point out that you have a massive problem with people who disagree with you.
//You can keep convincing yourself that you’re the objective voice of reason here, but your inability to handle a mirror being held up to your behavior says it all. I’m going to leave you to process your feelings on this.//
Except I know I am not a voice of reason, I know very well my points are based on my own personal biases and experiences. They just happen to be in favor of the marginalised communities like the SC/ST, whose educated people I think you are being very judgemental towards. If you think being on side of the SC/ST makes me a voice of reason thst is your claim not mine.
I am just a differint viewpoint that I am very happy to be challenged on, it is just that what you call condescending behavior in an attempt to show me the mirror reflects your own discomfort with being opposed. There is no world where disagreeing with someone on something and justifying that is condescending.
You have an issue with any notion that the reservation system is a failure, and instead of countering my points that most failures are misattributed you accuse me of condescension after what you said to Kabir?
I don’t want to counter your points. I think engaging with you is a real waste of time. I have told you you may carry on with your crusade. I have no interest.
BTW, I have enjoyed every word that I have ever said about “he who shall not be named else Admin will delete comments”
//BTW, I have enjoyed every word that I have ever said about “he who shall not be named else Admin will delete comments”//
Hope you have saved it somewhere. You can look it up to know what real condescension looks like if you ever are in doubt.
//I don’t want to counter your points. I think engaging with you is a real waste of time. I have told you you may carry on with your crusade. I have no interest//
Now this is just disappointing, but dont worry if not me someone else will give the exact same counter to what you believe are ‘failures of reservation’, one day or the other you will have to engage with an opposing viewpoints without taking it as an affront.
He has a massive blindspot – charitably I tend to ascribe it to his possible youth. If he’s not able to grow out of it….
Everyone has a different upbringing and as a result sees things differently.
My blindspot, if you can call it that,is that I see this from issues like reservation primarily from the benefit it gives to historically marginalized communities, and their perspectives not the general category people whose perspective you are considering normative
For all the talk of me being young, I have actually taken the time to engage in perspecitve outside of my upbringing, rather than just find ways to dismiss perspectives I dont like as biased in one way or another.
Is there proof that non-Hindus who fixate on caste are motivated by religious bias?
Is aggressive advocacy of the failed reservation policies just another mask to ‘divide and conquer’?
//Is there proof that non-Hindus who fixate on caste are motivated by religious bias?//
They are not, it is just a consequence of caste based segregation in living and endogamy, being a reality for centuries in the indian subcontinent and non hindu religions also adapting to the social mileu.
//Is aggressive advocacy of the failed reservation policies just another mask to ‘divide and conquer’?//
I have already mentioned why I disagree it has failed and where most of the failures attributed to it should be assinged, so wont repeat that.
What I want to interrogate is why exactly are you saying reservation is a strategy of divide and conquer? Hinduism is stronger in India because all communities have a pathway to upward mobility in form of reservation, as is India as well, where people who would otherwise have difficulty getting into corridors of power, would have no motivation to go for revolutionary movements.
This and the SC/ST act seem to be opposed as a result of viewing general cateogory people as victims of it, ignoring how beneficial it has been to many other communities, as well as how at least in case of reservation many of the things that victimize general cateogry people, being a result of government failure. I think the way you are evaluating these is very biased to perspective of only one group of people in India.
>What I want to interrogate is why exactly are you saying reservation is a strategy of divide and conquer?
Scroll up and read again. Comprehension failure, yet again. You repeatedly invest more energy in ‘defeating strawmen’ than in actually bothering to read differing opinions.
//Is aggressive advocacy of the failed reservation policies just another mask to ‘divide and conquer’?//
Can you explain what you mean by this, because at least with Indosaurus, his condescension towards people in general who differ from him, is why I take some of his statements to be insulting others
You on the other hand, seem to think one thing that comes out completely different from how you intend it? What do you mean by the above statement?
good that you are attempting to quote a relevant sentence.
Now you explain why your unique reading comprehension ability translates the first
…into the second.
Feel free to use google or chatgpt to understand the difference between what was said, and what you turned it into. This is, just one example of a repeated pattern of yours, repeated mis-interpretation of points from folks you chose to verbosely disagree with. Comment threads are littered with this. Now whether its wilful or a genuine limitation, I am not going to assume. But it stretches credulity.
And on top of that, you have the temerity to attribute your failures to others.
//And on top of that, you have the temerity to attribute your failures to others.//
In a converstion, two people are interacting and influencing one another. I admit I misread people, that is largely because my worldview and that of many others is so different, and you guys seem to really, really look down on many groups, that when you criticize someone my mind almost defaults to the earlier time some group of people was spoken down to.
As far as why the first leads to the second? Most of the issues raised regarding pro SC/ST legislation, stems from the way GC perspectives have been foregrounded in a way that SC/ST perspectives have not on this sub. Truth be told, it makes no sense why one could consider reservation as a way to divide and conquer, but neither does it make sense why governmental failures would be put at the foot of reservation, since one absurd thing in my opinion has happnened not surprising if another absurd thing also takes place.
I still dont know how my advocacy of reservation is a mask to divide and conquer in your mind? Divide and conquer whom?
This word salad is an accurate reflection of how you justify your comprehension errors to yourself. This is utter….bullshit to be blunt.
I am explaining myself to you, if you have already decided that the routine sort of insults and berating that are regularly given directed all sorts of groups should have no impact in how I evaluate your critiques of myself and others, then tough luck.
I am more than willing to admit my problems and work on them, but I have a duty to be fair to myself and see if there is anything else that can be causing me to misread. If many of you were not so reflexively hostile and judgemental towards different group I would definitely not be as aggressive. I have plenty of friends who are right wingers, I never have such disagreements and misunderstanding with them as I do with you guys.
According to Wikipedia, Noor Jehan’s father was the musician and singer Imdad Ali while her mother was tawaif Fateh Bibi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noor_Jehan
If she started learning to sing at age 5, we can infer that she was from a tawaif background since “sharif” or “respectable” Muslim women would not be taught to sing and they certainly would not be performing in public.
To this day “mirasi” is a derogatory term for classical musicians. There are accompanying stereotypes of them being greedy, uneducated etc. Interestingly, pop musicians such as Atif Aslam etc are never called “mirasi”. So it’s a class thing.
On the point about Pakistanis being uniquely “Hinduphobic”: Uzbekistan etc were not created through a violent Partition from British India. These countries don’t have a territorial dispute with India and neither have they fought four wars with India. That’s a much simpler explanation for why Pakistanis have a much more negative attitude towards India than Central Asian countries do.
Uzbeks claiming Babur is like Afghans claiming Sher Shah Suri, which in turn is like Indians claiming Dinesh Dsouza’s great great grandkids as their own.
It’s just funny.
Except no indian would claim Dinesh dsouza.
Why not? After he is a Catholic Brahmin.
He is also a racist, and a shill of the republican party who is getting his just desserts.
A person who spent the better part of shilling for a party that hates him for his skin color is a life wasted and worthy of scorn.
I dont know is calling him a catholic brahmin supposed to make him look better?
Success has many fathers, failure has none. He just isn’t successful enough.
Indians were claiming Rishi Sunak even though he is 2 or 3 generations removed from Pakistan
Are you……….claiming Sunak is ‘Pakistani’?
I have to admit that the sheer stupidity you bring to the discourse is entertaining at times.
His ancestry is from an area in Pakistan with no connection to the current political entity known as India, so he would be a Pakistani before an Indian, ethnically a Punjabi. Which is why its funny that Indians were claiming him. Although the modern Khatris could be forgiven for this sin as he is from their tribe, area and caste.
As I said, if you are successful, people from all around the world will try to find a connection with you.
Don’t all these mental gymnastics tire you out? Or are you just trying to be funny?
He thinks he’s ‘scoring attacking points’. Its ok, there are all sorts of folks.
What mental gymanstics? Do you have a point to make? Please specify.
Don’t be rude to Agni.
It violates both the Gender Protocol and equally important Agni is the Co-Admin of this blog and accordingly demands respect.
Thank you.
Never mind all this. see this video to know how Babur’s descendants respect and admire Indians..maybe its time to move on for you guys as well 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKqHPw3qv2Q
The cognitive dissonance is mind-boggling.
I was not among those Indians claiming Rishi Sunak.
If you wanted a christian example, you should have gone to arogyaswami paulraj or thomas kaliath, many Indians would claim them despite them having given up citizenship.
Sometimes a troll is so effective, that one can only appreciate it. 👏👏
//The claim that Arabs, Turks, or whoever can read Persian may speak for Indo-Muslim culture dies on one fact: Babur’s descendants are not in the old world. They are in South Asia. The centre of that civilisation is Lahore and Lucknow, not Ferghana.//
Who is exactly making this argument? Anyone can speak on another culture, people on this blog do it all the time, it is obvious one cant speak for a different culture.
//The Indo-Persian Twinning. The Indo-Islamic experience was not built by the Turkic invasions alone; it is also the synthesis of native converts. Urdu is the proof: not Turkish or Arabic parked on Indian soil, but converts taking Hindi and making it their own, Perso-Arabic ornament on an Indian frame. What Noor Jehan shows is the same machinery in music: the gharana, synthesis organised into a family line. And Bhakti would not stay on one side of the line. Kabir the weaver was claimed by Hindus and Muslims at his death, and his namesake in our comments keeps the musical habit alive.//
Yes
//Omar’s caveat. Omar put it plainly in his Shahab Ahmed review: the zone from the Balkans to Bengal did not change religion by magic; it was conquered. There is a settler-colonial strand in the Indo-Muslim experience, and I understand why he names it. But conquest is the first chapter, not the book. The rest is synthesis, and conquerors cannot do synthesis alone; only converts who buy in wholeheartedly can (as Shawkat mentions, even his grandpapa, who was a Haji, essentially ran the town).//
To add to this,conquest driven conversion is difficult to parse out how much is a result of conquest and how much is not. In case of the muslims in central asia, the ummayads themselves were very unsuccessful in getting conversions out of the iranic people, succeeding mostly among arabs and arameans in Syria, who had their own issues with their previous religion, be they christianity or polytheism as well as the professional advancement one can gain as a result of joining the army
The bulk of the conversion happened under later persian empire starting from the abbasids, who while still keeping discriminatory taxes like jizya, effected conversion by assimilation by the iranic groups in khorasan, rural modern day iran and transoxinia.
When a muslim empire stays in power for long time, it attracts a sense of legitimacy to its ideas and religion. People start assimilating ideas into their own day to day life over time and then when we see missionaries go to hitherto unconcerned area’s, both the legitimacy and the gradual adoption due to persistence of muslim government coalesce into an indegenized islamic practise and belief.
Without empire obviously the muslim world would obviously not exist, but giving all the credit to only the conquest and privileged position ignores a lot of background acculturation and indegenization.
” ‘It’s about being loudly visible’: Ahadadream, the British-Pakistani dance star defanging racist slurs”
By Tara Joshi
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/sep/23/its-about-being-loudly-visible-ahadadream-the-british-pakistani-dance-star-defanging-racist-slurs
Note: “clean” is not really an accurate translation for “pak”. “Pure” is more accurate–as in “Pakeezah” (the pure one).
My point was never about culture though. The point was about sustained hostility to the point of justifying terrorism like 26/11. Is that an outcome of ‘culture’?
You have educated folks like Kabir – a guy who proudly brags about his ‘American’ education, and yet repeatedly throws around assertions like ‘Muslims should only be ruled by muslims and never ever by Hindus’. What explains such deeply embedded hostility?
Maybe a sense of unacknowledged trauma and to a lesser extent shame? To have been forced to become something they weren’t? A complete loss of what they were prior to the conquests. Self loathing typically manifests in seeing what you were in others and hating them for it. The inheritance of loss so to speak.
Just by existing, hindus are a reminder to subcontinental muslims of what they were. Its a lot easier to have ‘unsuccessful’ pagan ancestors than ones that are thriving in the present day. Cue the mental gymnastics and attacking rhetoric of ‘shirk’ etc.
I think this is a salient point that most normies with this type of discourse fail. The direct blooded descendants of those people are not in their country but of another nationality, another ethnicity and another race entirely.
We had hoped that modern tools like DNA analysis and AI would help cure ignorance, but it appears to have made the normies more retarded.
It is like the English making fun of Americans, or the French and Danes making fun of the English (and so on and so forth). All retarded discourse.
Since many Afghan and Uzbek diaspora have become literate, they seem to be claiming every ruling figure in South Asia over the last 1,000 years, ‘as their own achievement’. Apparently all the most important Afghan & Uzbek achievements came outside their own borders. Many came Babur and Suri as their ancestor, when their actual real ancestors were busy selling fruit or shining shoes on the streets of Kandahar and Samarkand
What is a normy Q? And how are you abnormal?