Category: X.T.M

* Tripura CM mocks Lisa Hayden because she doesn’t conform to Indian beauty standards.

* CBI wins a victory against Vijay Mallya.. His barrister, Clare Montgomery, is interesting as she belongs to Matrix Chambers, whom Cherie (Blair) Booth used to belong. Her previous client includes Augustine Pinochet and she seems eminently capable (smacks of Oxbridge even though she didn’t seem to have gone there).

* Initially I really liked the new name Prince Louis but I’ve now realised they’ve named him after Lord Mountbatten. That’s in incredible poor taste to the British Asian population; as Lord Mountbottom was as bad as Churchill when it came to India. Partition is ultimately in his conscience, speeding the division of India was probably one of the greatest human disasters in history. A very poor showing by the Royal Family and a complete insensitivity to their Asian citizen-subjects.

Forgive my obligatory Mughalophilia but I haven’t indulged Pak psychosis in a while on this blog. Too busy getting worked up over my black/AASI heritage. I have a habit from flitting/flirting with causes; my personality type is apparently ENFP the “Activist” so forgive my armchair activism..

Speaking of Pak psychosis I have a small WhatsApp group of the Pakistani Literati. For our first London meeting when I selected an IndoPak restaurant there wasn’t really much uptake, as soon as I selected a trendy Persian place everyone got into it. The Pak psych is a thing of wonder though Persianate halflings like me probably contribute it with our excessive partiality for Hijaz & Shiraz!

The whole thing about genetics has been very oriented around “whiteness.” Just as we had the historical supposition that most cultures were created by vigorous Northern races that degenerated after mixture with decadent Southern ones (which conveniently was appropriated by Euro-colonialists).

I do think in simple language. While the AASI seem to be related to the initial Negrito coastal waves that spread across Yemen, Southern Indo-Pak, parts of Malaysia, Melanesia, Papua New Guinea and the Aboriginals (hints of these genes are said to be in the Amazon); it’s important to realise that we are “brown” because of these ancestors.

The Aryans were fair & lovely; the Eastern Anatolian/ Elamitic (Iranian farmers is a misnomer) were probably olive & tanned (related to J2 population sort of look like modern day Caucasians; fair skinned but darkish colourings) but it was the AASI (the Dalit/untouchable) who gave us our swarthier complexions.

Maybe the race movement/ black lives movement in the US is needed in South Asia so that we can love our black ancestors.

It’s interesting Hollywood has an amazing and vibrant black Afram entertainment community. None of the cinemas in Latam and/or South Asian put darker skinned/Dalits front and centre.

Vijay makes a very important contribution on the Aryan-Dravidian debate and how all of it was cooked up by the British (Hindu/Muslim divide, caste system, martial races etc).

It is the absurdity and arrogance of the British to imagine they created/united India; India has always existed from the times of our AASI/Andamese/Negrito ancestors (maybe we should go back to 80’s Britain and call the AASI black so we are basically black according to one-drop rule).

Colonialism was an absurdity and travesty and did so much to hold back Hindustan (I define this from the Hindu Kush to the Indian Ocean). Even Lord Curzon mentions (again I go quoting colonial authorities; I’m such a munafiq) that Rivers are not real boundaries; India does not stop at the Indus but at her mountains (Hindu Kush, Himalaya) and oceans.

“3) Indian politics –<br />a) North South divide – North = Arya, South = Dravida or Non-Arya aka Natives”<br /><br />You are overemphasising the so-called North-South ‘Divide’ . ‘ Dravida’ referred ethonologically to the Pancha Dravida brahmins ; this included brahmins of Gujarat and Maharastra. 19th Century ametuer linguist Rev Caldwell mistakenly thought it referred to the four large south Indian languages and named the linguitic group as ‘ Dravidian family’ and as was the prevalent notion of 19th century thinkers , he conflated the linguistic group with a racial group. From a purely linguistic angle , his identification of the linguistic group is right, but wrongly named it and even more atrociouly mistook it for a race.<br /><br />It is testament to the success of the the 19th century colonial categories that western mistakes have become creed for a section of Indians.<br /><br />However , the bald ‘ Arya-Dravida’ division is prevalent only in Tamilnadu, and not in other south India states; that too it is politically hyped up. The irony is the Tamil literature knows no word called Dravida till late 19th century under colonial instruction. <br /><br />Political froth from Tamilnadu should not be mistaken as the opinion of majority of people. The majority of Hindus have refrained from taking control the social and historical narrative or even challenging the prevalent narratives which are of 19th century western provenance. That is their mistake. I don’t think the so-called ‘Out of India’ theory is the solution. One nonsense cannot be fought with another nonsense. Wherever you see nonsense , be relentless in challenging and exposing it.<br /><br />The so-called ‘arya-dravida’ divide has no histotical basis – however such toxic narartives need exposing . The narrative of “arya-dravida” divide in Tamilnadu is high decibel and aggressive – it gets more aggressive as it’s historical basis is non-existant and it is running on empty. History is made by aggressive lies in the short run – Satyameva Jayate is a pious hope

LV sent this to me and I found this a useful guide to blog debate..

I am very sensitive to “tone” so I probably am between Step 2 & Step 3 on the 7 step path to Aristotle.. IRL I tend to shy away from much discussion or debate, except with the better half, as I’m a very kinesthetic learner.

It’s nice to see BP so active – I completely failed in my goal to take up AnAn’s suggestion and do a compendium of recent posts but I shall indulge with some observations.

We seem to spend a lot of time on BP talking on caste origins.

The more interesting castes are Bollywood; where most of the acting families are linked and intermarry with the industrialist and cricketing caste (the Sharma-Kohli wedding was presaged by Malik-Mirza match).

The Bollywood caste is Punjabi & Muslim men (Ranveer Singh dropped his Sindhi name – who would watch Ranveer Bhavnani) with women stemming from other parts of the Subcontinent.

I’m surprised by the lack of Sikhs in Bollywood; Arijit Singh (who is a cut Sikh) and Ranbir’s mother + Saif’s first wife are Sikh. Where and who are the Sikh men?

I think people forget India is undergoing a breathtaking pace of modernisation. However because of Bollywood; this modernisation isn’t necessarily Westernisation. Bollywood takes a nod from the West and translates it in Hindustani culture, language & values which then influences the whole nation (Pakistan is undergoing the same process but is far more immunised from Westoxication; we are generation to half a generation behind in liberalism).

LV was showing me the new trailer for Veere de Wedding (Kareena Kapoor & Sonam Kapoor) and I was remembering what Kangana Ranaut was saying about nepotism in Bollywood.

Also Vidhi pointed out to me that a lot of the “Punjabis” are in fact half-Sindhi (KJo, RSingh, Kareena Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor).

One of the most shocking juxtapositions in the Subcontinent is just how cosmopolitan and glamorous Sindhi Hindus are whereas Sindhi Muslims have such a staid reputation (landowners, wadheras).

A few things jump out of this map:

(1.) Tibet is important, real important. These rivers feed half the world and these are the population centres of what we mean by “Asia.”

(1a.) Continents ultimately are arbitrary political constructs; what geographic feature cuts off Europe from Asia (is it really the Urals)? This map represents “core Asia” and more than ever I can see why the Middle East has an entirely different orientation. If a world government did ever come about; for fairness sake there would have to be some redistribution in how the Asian super-continent is treated; Africa’s population is burgeoning but difficult to see how it can match this.

(2.) It’s interesting to see how all the South Asian rivers have a common source (the Ganges has another source); a poetic meditation on the unity of the Subcontinent.

(3.) invaders or not; foreign or alien what is admirable about the Aryans is the extent to which they co-opted local traditions. As most readers of this blog know, Mt. Kailash is known as the home of Shiva and it literally feeds the Subcontinent.

(3b) Each initial wave seemed to have weaker and weaker ties to the land. The AASI seemed to have settled in the mists of pre-history, the (Elamitic?) Dravidian farmers may have fused with them to found the Indus Valley Civ.

(3c) the best way to think of the Aryan invasion is the Mongol conquests. The demographics of Central Asia and Mesopotamia shifted (and collapsed) as they did not (only) because of the rapacity of the Mongols but because of the failure to maintain the qanat (complex irrigation systems). I know that for a fact in Greater Iran whereas I can’t be sure that they used qanats in Mesopotamia.

(3d) At any rate either the Aryans filled in an ecological collapse (which seems unlikely since they spread with a rapidity elsewhere meaning that they had some technical and military advantage) or they triggered it. The indigenous compounded Dravidian-Negrito/Australasian (sorry for the loaded terms but easier to use Arya/Dravid than the newfangled terms) collapses and the remainder population did a Latin America where Aryans males were polygamous and high status.

(3e) the Aryans were the last invaders to both fully merge and embrace India as their core civilisation. The Muslim (Turkic?) invaders were oriented West and the British even further West. Each succeeding invasion wave was invested in India by an order of magnitude less than the preceding wave. The English returned to their colonies, the Muslims created Pakistan and the Aryans kept Aryavarta while the Dravidians have their local politics that tie them (especially in TN; the heart of the Dravidian movement).

(3f) I know it’s contentious but I would imagine the AASI would be like the Negrito coastal population and a related equivalent further upriver in the Indus prior to the Dravidian farmer wave. Prehistory was probably pretty ugly and tragic we just don’t know about it as we don’t have records but think the New World repeated time and time again.

(4) a final point as to why Iran may not have had as much a genetic impact. The Iranian plateau is exactly that a plateau. As I was told in Tehran a couple of years ago by a geographic; the mountain is life, every city in Iran is based on hills and mountains the rest is all desert (fertile plains are in short supply). It’s probably why it’s difficult to effect population replace in Iran as it is in its neighbours (Turko-Mongols introversion in Central Asia, Arabs influx in Mesopotamia, Aryan “invasion” in the Indus).

That’s all I can think for now btw the title is a bit misleading since Aryans are always a good lede lol.