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In this episode I talk to our regular guest, Major Amin. Major sahib has a long association with Afghanistan and with Russia and as a fan of military history is a huge admirer of the country that brought us such earth shat operation Uranus and

00:00.00

Omar

Hello good evening, everyone and welcome to a new episode of the brown pundits browncast we have with us again today major a mean well known to our listeners. We have chatted with major amin before. About various topics related to military history and history in general and we are very lucky to have him again with us on this historic day when the russian federation has launched a major military operation against Ukraine. Mayor I mean has a long association in the region has been closely associated with has worked in Afghanistan has been worked a lot with the Soviet Union and then later with the russians so it’s very familiar with this whole. But the people involved in this business so we will start by asking him. Yeah, amaze up. What is your assessment what is going on in Ukraine right now. Ah Dr what has happened is that. Geopolitically there are 2 camps 1 camp as defined by a very eminent geopolitical erist professor van pigeon. From the netherlands teaching at susex university he defined 2 major contenders in geopolitics one is the atlantic name led by the Usa and basically Neto and one is the vast. Asian Heartland the euro asian greatest power foreign history which we call Russia so this power revelry is going on and has not ended. And as you know I will just give you in a short ah capsulated view that the ah atlantic grim at that time the western allies they made the Ussr fight the germans and the ussr suffered. 90% casualties in the second world war but the major ah geopolitical benefits were reved by the attack technique that by the Usa and with the charttle known as Britain at that time a charttle whose back was broken by the car first and by Hitler.

02:42.55

Omar

So the main of course player with the usa now we start with the cold war as soon as the and british and the american achieved their objectives they threw Russians The Uss are into the dustbin of. And geopolitics like Icondo and it was the most heartless betrayal and so-called cold war started and here I want to clarify to the apalridges and the so-called white version of history. But you find in very large numbers in University Like Yale Howard Berkeley Oxford Cambridge questions of intellectual dishonesty in all west european universities barring sussex and few universities now they started a false. The that they had waged the second world war based on ethics just imagine that eventually after second world war the americans the british and the late Nato which was formed adopted the same tazi philosophy of anti-reianism is. Slav batting and anti-communism and hidere the same nazis against the Ussr. So these things are very very clear to us. But till now the if you go to American University Or A British University or any best european university they are whitewashing this you know, ah claiming you know they are very you know they are very ethical people. They are very very they principal people which is total nonsenseensor and they are worse than the the deepest gutterent you know world. You know as far as intellectual honesty is concerned now coming to Ukraine state. But the uss are what resolved there was agreement between the atlantic them and the russians that Nato is not going to expand eastwards but the western allies they violated this principle this ah unwritten promise and they you know. Got the whole warsaback countries barring and maybe 1 or 2 into the Neto. So this was a dangerous enc encourageachment on the shia and Ukraine now which you know is the is the backyard of the russians ah most strategically important to russians. Last you know, um the the biggest brand of the americans and network comment was trying to bring network and this Ukraine into network. So Naturallyri Putin had no choice left but to react react.

05:24.57

Omar

Ah, regarding my assessments of americans and Neto in scratches. How I form these opinions based being based on the Afghanistan town from 2002 till almost two ah 2021 and also having participated. Ah the subcontractor in the so-called. Disgraful evacuation mismanaged evaquation by natural americans the most disgraceful evaqui industry I saw the Nato and the american army closely me and I saw that they were strategically clueless operationally totally incompetent. Yes, brave at the load level. I don’t blame the younger ranks I don’t blame the union commanders but characters like Patrias Mcquiel and all these people they were totally incompetent people having seen them in Afghanistan and knew that these people they just cannot fight that was the most hopeless bunch. Look at the disgraful way the germans behaved in Afghanistan they oppos caveards that they will not fight in any area where there is one bullet fired in anger just see how disgraceful the turkish behaved all the natural countries how they behaved the presence of the casualties was suffered by the us army. The 95 % casualties and some british muskets also suffered casualties but you know the only power which foughtd in Afghanistan alreadylthough they also suffered 2000 puny casualties and in 20 years hardly a war for the americans so based on this assessment. Ah I was very clear. Putin is going to have a clean run and is going to knock out Ukraine and this is the dividing line. This is a watershed in history in geopolitical history as you know it was a long time ago that a book was written and of the west. This now sir is the decline of the west juility. Thank you? So um, what do you think is happening operationally right now what was Putin’s plan and just sort of in military terms. What is he doing and what is it likely to what is likely to happen in the coming days. Ah, Putin’s plan was very simple and the russians had been wargaming it since the last um 10 years basically Ukraine. Is indefensible because the ukrainian Heartland Ki and harkov they are very close to the russian border so they are indefensible. So kif and Harco are a gone gone case in oppressa the main new UraPort russians have landed.

08:05.76

Omar

And it’s a matter of time. The russians are going to mop up and naturally they have to totally crush Ukraine and brutal. You know they have to over and it ruthlessly you know because you know they must not give the Atlantic Rem who are the successor of the tragedy Germany you know. Na Germany gave birth to the nato 1945 so this is there. They are the new nazis and the russianians as you know 19% sacrifice in Second World War against nazis and fascism all done by the Ussr not by Britain or Usa or any of these. Bike Mouse Miskeier so I think he’s going to over and Ukraine is going to consolidate and it is a good thing and I think if he place his cards carefully ah ce submitting the alliances with China with Iran even with countries like Pakistan. Ah. Already. He’s controlling the vast mass of the eurationian heartland as becon defined it and these Mickey Mouse characters on on the on the peripher these people who never fought of war whose women are not ready to produce children when there is minus grew growth decades people you know. Important cheap labours from turkey and ktan and from North Africa and from Syria these hopeless totally you know decadent west europeans they have no right to leave the word as per aggressive we can I am sure many listeners will argue. Or against these positions but just in terms of ah, the military capability. Do you think the ukrainian army is going to put up any fight at all. Ah Ukrainian um, the only. Ah. Thing you will find in Ukraine and is a Ukrainian proitutkrain and an army is totally useless in the hopeless bunch I have seen them very closely in Pakistan and trials and totally decadent hopeless bunch and not capable of putting any fight and. And they are the worst people you know as far as military effectiveness is concerned or ah, you know military virtues concerned totally hopeless enough. They have no military effectiveness. No military virtue and yeah, you’ll see that god willing our poses. Mr. Putin will have his day. Ah, okay, so if he does have his day and then they have conquer they reconquer or conquer all of Ukraine. Ah they will set up ah sort of a puppet ukrainian regime or they will incorporate it into Russia or what will be the next step and I think potan will.

10:58.81

Omar

Lay his cars carefully as the russians have always done. You know they will have some sort of a you know on the old style soviet ssr you know as they they were called. You know the soviet socialist republic you know something like that with a different name and naturally. Ukraine present Lee is a usa puppet Ukraine is not an independent country at all. It’s a usa ne puppet and now it will become a russian puppet so puppet say as far as the puppet is concerned only the masters of the prophetpe ukraine is a policy of a state it’s not a state you know it’s a it’s a po it is a fairly large country and it’s very likely that a majority of the population may not want to be ruled by Russians as far as I see I visited Ukraine in Ninety five and ninety six as far as I see. Statistics and the sensors are cooked up and my impression was that almost half of Ukraine is russian number one. The second impression is that Ukraine is culturally economically logistically politically so close to Russia that it was hard to call it a country. Ah, as you know in second world War Stalin was able to gain a vote for Belaria and Ukraine and that is how this fiction was created but culturally politically. It is very you know. Naive to say that Ukraine is a has been a separate country yes separatism has been there. The russian civil war also they were Ukraine and separatists but Ukraine is so close to Russia geographically politically historically that I would not call it a separate country. So if you if as you say they are going to militarily they’re not going to have a problem they are going to sort of brush them aside and establish. Whatever puppet regime they want in in Ukraine once they have done that do you think they have other objectives. Beyond ukraine at this time. Ah, suddenly yeah, they will you know, bring back. Ah, the older republics put the fold geor has been creating a lot of problem affecting Georgia needs to be. You know, given a proper dose Azerbaijan yes, also playing. Between Israel and americans and you know so many people azerbaja um, certainly yes central asia is fully in their control. So no problem Poland yes Poland they are going to you know, sort of given them a minor rubbing you know which is not difficult so I think geopolitically.

13:50.26

Omar

This will be the start of the dissolution and the collapse of Netu as an alliance as far as I see netto is not totally irrelevant already. They have proved. They were totally hopeless in Afghanistan hopeless people and now I would say this is the end of Neto is is a. A matter of time that you know we you know ah a can the founder of Neto A we you know they should be buried in a very deep gutter. They don’t deserve a funeral. If you are saying they want other republics back does that mean also the Baltic Republics Estonia latvia Lithuania they will not attack the baltic republics but you know they are going to apply apply other cosive I just. You know, sort of you know, arms them to you know, sort of reduce them to their size because birthex republics you know again traditionally but part of Russia. It is very hard to say that they are separate countries. They were literally a part of Russia for more than you know, ah starting from the time of p the great. Hundred nine or so these republics were part of Russia and I think Mr put will be a wise man if he sort of armed to them rather than directly attacking them and directly attacking is not possible because they are part of Netu and. As far as I see and as far as I can assess nato is going to be you know dead within a year or two I think this alliance is not going to survive this fisco in Ukraine and Neto does not deserve to exist because they have proved totally useless. You know. Hiring hiring blondes andpronettes and ah buts. You know for their lust. You know, but totally hopeless people. You know if you go to the ne headquarters in Brussels you’ll find blondes and bruettes you know that’s about all but ne is militarily completely hopeless now the other. People on the other side will say that actually Neto will sort of revive because of this because the threat of the russian bear will sort of bring them back to their senses or or that even that they will expand that maybe Sweden will join neto as short as I see. Was a very famous book written by russian author gogo which was titled dead souls as far as I see europe is dead soldier with minus growth with you know women saying that our figures will be spoiled if we have children.

16:36.66

Omar

And you know a decadeant civilization and importing all kinds of characters. You know from Syria North Africa and you know East Europe you know Europe is dead you know it is very difficult that ne can be ever revived because their de people basically I saw them I saw ne and Afghanistan closed. Were protect people. They did not have that burning desire to fight. They did not have that you know that spirit that resolution which is required to fight even a third rate you know country with Peggy Trousers you know they could not even fight those of paths you know they were imposing caviars. They were hurting in kundul they were hiding in bajis. They were hiding in Kabul totally hopeless if you study the natural casualties in Afghanistan you will have to agree that Uto was a total failure in Afghanistan and Ricky Mouse western european new nazi power who could not fight in Afghanistan how can they fight and look how can they face Russia if they could not face the aghans were militarily farfer to Russia. How can they to face the russians. But you also included Poland in those who are going to be chastised Poland is a serious country. They have a history they have ah identity and they are as proud sort of of their polish identity and freedom as as the russians are of Russia you think they will just hold on. And again is ah also a fiction because you know, starting from 1770 s and 80 S Poland was a part of Russia and Germany and there was no poland for a short time after the french revolution the Poland was created but that also was a total you know french spawn. And Poland was not really a country if the revolution had not broken out of Russia in 1917 they would have been no poland so Poland again is ah very close to Russia and Russia cannot afford to have american or natural duke nuclear wars in and Poland. Poland is also hardly a country I would say I would not call Poland a country Germany yes is a country Sweden yes is a country even Finland was part of Russia, not a country and great period after the you know after after after the first world war. So all these historical things have to be seen russian history is very complicated and the ah rather myopic people in Brussels and Pentagon and bunching burglars and having blondes and brunus around. They did not study russian history probably if they had studied russian history probably they would

19:22.00

Omar

Not have suffered this massive classicco and tobacco in Ukraine. But if you are you know as you are saying if Russia is such a strong power with such a strong asabia. What do they fear from Poland why is it a big deal if Poland is in Nato what will they do to them. It’s a question of dominance. It’s a question of geopolitics and how can you answer the biggest question history. What the great powers want for what they have been fighting to study the first world war second world war they have their childish games what is dominance what is power what is the lust for power. These are questions difficult to answer brother. So. But other than that lust for power or whatever there doesn’t seem to be like a rational reason why they should fear Poland Latvia Sweden if they leave them alone. They will probably be left alone by these people. They will not bother rashia. Traditionally the burtex republics were part of Russia and when the Soviet Union on disintegreted they became independent so traditionally the russians regard the russian establishment regards I don’t regard my this is my impression of the russian establishment when i. Occupation of Russia Ninety five ninety six the russian establishment regards the british publics as their lost provincevincis and they don’t regard them as the country if letto collapses and neto it becomes inoperational. Even now it is hardly operational. You know except you know, ah playing pushy games that who is not capable of anything you know and except you know talking about hollow threads and bluffs. Ummartonian Bluffs you know why much suddenly you know was a british prime minister famous for bluff and the russians called but is Amerson’s bluff in 1863 when the there was a polishris palmersan said that Britain will you know do this and that and russians simply marched to Poland and palmusson was nowhere. And Parmason was only good in siu pushing the sister of the british minister or the wife of some other british count or lord a minister that it was all parmusan was voted just like the Nato characters in bruss no but towns and prunettes. That’s all.

21:58.39

Omar

Right? But the british had the largest empire in the world after all, they had some military capability to back it up. They could not when when russian forces the March into Poland in 63 Britain did not oppos the the nations and all the british threats came yeah thrown into the gutter. Because it was a but sodian bluff if you study the european history you will find that there’s a very famous ah section on on the parsonian bluff and all but the british are masters of bluff. They hardly fought any war or if you study the british history let’s say let’s go back to british history to study british history. British never fought a major war in europethey always financed Russia pressure austro-hungary to fight against Napoleon in the first world war. Yes, the british were forced to fight a war and what happened the British Army totally was yet not destroyed. In the battle of Ees and in the first battles of first world war. It was totally destroyed and the british bag was broken after first world war Britain never fought, a major war. They were always made others fight and shape as the case with americans they have never fought a major war but the royal navy that is the last major war americans. But the civil war after that americans are made um the european powers fight especially the russians and if you study the casualties the russian casualties were the highest in first world war and in second world and even against Napoleon it was the russians who broke the back of Napo Napoleon um ah but Atroer or anybody you don’t want any depressions. You don’t want to give any credit to the royal navy after all they they maintain dominance all across the globe for 200 years yes I give royal the navy full credit but as far as the land war is concerned. land warfare the british strategy was that to finance the you know the european armies and the as far as the land warfare was concerned if decisive victories like lii like you know in moshco if the sassiveies were achieved in 1812 1813 and 14 in which the russians and the prussians played the major role. The British Army had no road Waterloo was they you know was a sideline battle when Napoleon’s defeat was a forone conclusion even if Napoleon had won at whattleloo he would have been defeated because whole europe and mobilized. Ah, huge russian army was coming depressions were there the austrohung erran was there so british as far as the land warfare concerned they are nowhere very they were never they were never go on land warfare and the last major battles they fought was in first world war in which you know, um, their back was broken.

24:49.91

Omar

Is all you know indians you know board independence you know first and second world war because 2 great men at Kaer William to and adollf hitler they broke the back of grit it was not Mr Gandhi or jiha or any character who gave and india freedom it was Hitler. That some that many people might agree with but anyway what is the what is the equation between China and Russia right now China and the shia have to come close. They already are Joe Political clothes but now the currents of history. The the pressure of geopolitics will force these 2 giants to come together and if they don’t come together. There is no survival. But I think chinese are very clear and they are going to play the cards correctly and you will see a major. Ah. Shana Rahia lands and of course russiahi after all this you know they will have to turn eastward you know it will always isiatic country and now Russia is going to become more asiatic for will survival the joeo political survival and I think ah. Ah, China rahia alliance in a major way. The the fourgo rule as far as but you kind of when you say that the western europeans are decadent and will not be able to do anything. They have a low fertility rate fertility rate is not much higher in Russia either. Now Russia’s original population is much bigger than west europe that you have to see their real population. Their actual population is much bigger. They they have got a far larger army landmas and all that all these things have to be seen my question to you is that if netto was so. Marshal them such a great power why they was you know so beak and covered in Afghanistan what was there? no zero two why Why us and had to fight the whole of 1 war and was not willing to fight if ne was not willing to fight in a third grade environment like Afghanistan where they had. Massive superiority massive superiority of laws had nothing and yet this narrow this hopeless network was a total failure and um understand if we to you told team if you study the operations will find that ne one was the I would say the height of cowardice. As far as the real battle was concerned in Afghanistan they fight they did not fight they did not fight well the british other than the british I guess nobody fought, really the americans did the bulk of the fighting but did a more an 80% of the fighting right? British yes were there but you know british casualties are much smaller right? I mean.

27:39.80

Omar

But um, but but wanted but somebody could argue that in Afghanistan they were you know this was really a mission of that american mission in which they are just showing the flag and going there are they are not really interested in this mission but when they are defending Poland or let we are whatever they are closer to home. Ah, is not like is maybe a different situation. You don’t think that that’s going to be a consideration law. You see your you have to see your cortex from a very wide angle and probably you have to take a long view if you study the cold war the Ussr collapsed not because of neto but because of the so. Ah, the oil price havinging to 50% which but broke the bag of ussr thatto never broke the back of Ussr great. All we saw the so the hoving of the oil eto has never been a credible player you see letto help and you know, ah, how can. Ah, on earth can you say that Nato had a peaceful mission you see that was ah Usa it was Usa who created Neto and created the Usa who saved western europe from Ussr Usa is the benefactor of western europe and how ungrateful. And I see these west europeans net over in a Afghanistan far their behavior in any way cannot be justified job take me morally militarily in any way. So this is ah I don’t agree with this both respectfully but now the total failure in Afghanistan right? So let’s say the western in europeans. No longer have the jews or whatever. ah but the United States still a significant power ah is there is the you feel that the United States itself is no longer capable of confronting any of these people or Russia. No United States had imposed a very very well-p planned you know, strategy on western europe that they will be part of the us camp there will be us satellites now. The danger is that with Russia emerging victorious in Ukraine. And now this strategic you know that dominance of the Usa may be challenged and even power like Germany and you know even central european powers part of Netu will think twice about being part of neu and they will sort of have have some sort of engagement with russians you know. Because it’s ah it’s power play. You know it was a sheer military power with which the uss are an over Nay Germany and it was shier and military power overall military power that the americans used to reconr western european.

30:24.17

Omar

But that you know scenario has changed the americans are not willing to sacrifice 23 veterans have are been have been committing suicides since 9090 and over 200000 us veterans have committed suicide. It’s an internally shattered society and. It is not the same usa the same us say who was brutally willing to kill and fight the certain world war is just totally different game and cor war. They did very well even in Vietnam they sacrificed 60000 but now it’s a totally different bulk of game a decadent society not willing to fight. Certainly. Usa may go for some sort sort of isolation some sort of you know, going back to the north and south american continent something like that till first for what they were like that they you know and they were practicing as so asulliationism and all that right? So they may revert back to that. But you know they they have lost faith. Also let me tell you that the americans have lost faith in network because Neto has proved so hopeless first in Afghanistan and now in Ukraine that americans have lost faith him and you know the fear of the fear of nuclear war you know that of course you know. Americans but are so afraid of nuclear weapons that that they could not even coerce a ah thirdly country like Pakistan because of fear of nuclear weapons this fear of nuclear weapons has also altered geopolitics and now you know. Major power forms. Want to fight a war you know, even Ukraine if you study Ukraine’s newss but taken by the russians when the us are collapsed. So even ah, you know it was lack of nuclear weapons that Russia invaed Ukraine. Just imagine America has never invaed any power which has nuclear weapons. You know they are very very brave and marshal if there is iraqi or afghans you know were no new Yorks but you know as far as Pakistan is concerned they were covered in the aran war. Although although 90% of the us soldiers 2200 killed and Afghanistan were killed by insurgents based in Pakistan but Usa like the strategic resolution of moral courage to confront Pakistan so nuclear weapon weapons are also a very important part and western europe or Usa simply cannot start a conventional war and the bottom line is that. Puttan also invaded Ukraine because Ukraine had no news if Ukraine had its nukes or if they had retained the nukes stationed in Ukraine at the time of Visa Putin could never have invaded Ukraine. So all these things have to be also taken in the context of the nuclear weapons. So is it.

33:12.96

Omar

Possible that in the coming years countries like Germany maybe even Sweden that they will try to develop own nuclear weapons. Ah Germany certainly will them up but there’s a major power and Germany as far as I see germany or. Ah, the west european countries they may they may like to form a sort of a european ah lands primarily to protect western europe yes, that is possible and german they certainly is a you but you know, um you you will see that. Um. a european alliance can emerge out of this because ne has by by and large become redirected to America has failed to provide the leadership. Basically the the the big dog in Neto was America and the big dog will proved a miserable failure as far as saving Ukraine or as far as defending Ukraine muslims. So the big dog has failed so now the small dogs might decide that they must get together and make another lance and that alliance can protect western europe from being bullied by Putin or whatever western europe certainly has new books. As yeah as but as you know the France and other powers they have Nukes Britain as nukes so they can always form and former european alliance the the the bottom line are the news western europe certainly has the nukes to counter Putin and Putin also like a Usa is very careful but he you know. Carefully calculated and invaded Ukraine knowing fully well that Ukraine had no nuclear data so western europe putin is not going to touch because yes, yes, politically you know Gepolily is you know on the rise. Certainly if you play this cards carefully and. You know as mchelley has said that it is better to act and regret battle rather than not to act and regret so putin is going to act and in action lies his survival. So Ukraine has to be fully. You know, pacified and aa and that certainly he will do. Will go for a China ah lands major lens and the survival of both China and Russia lives now in being a plants you know in me being allies, you know as you know the and very famous american leaders said that. If we don’t hang together. We’ll be hang separate so they don’t want to get hanged and so they will come very close but is as this confrontation sort of goes on. There is going to be like a cold war kind of situation that there will be ah.

35:59.63

Omar

These b blocks will sort of have sanctions economic differences even separate banking system internet whatever or there will be simple cooperation between western europe and Russia then what? What do you foresee? ah. As far as I understand Rasha and China are working on a separate bank system and it’s not a very big deal. It’s a matter of fine matter of maybe two or three years that you will see a rival banking system already as you see the bitcoin and. So also many these digital currencies they have changed the ball game and already the banks are very Vari because the digital currencies you know are are a big threat to the bank and if you study carefully all the russian and iranian and chinese code operations are run on. But but on the digital currency and it’s a known thing even I’ve won insurgents were getting and getting a aid with you know, digital currency vi Dubai during the us have one war. So the whole ball game exchange yes certainty arrival to short will be created. And yes, certainly if the weapon camps will be there right? So when and if that happens in this situation. I mean this world was economically relatively integrated until a couple of years ago ah this separation and cold war kind of situation. Obviously will lead to economic disruption. Also you see the world was never integrated. The Usa had very very strong protective tariffs western europe had very very strong protective tariffs and they regarded the as and then africans as you know as third grade. You know man manyial colonies were was never integrated economic. Yes, they were claiming that you know w to you and all sort of you know facades. You know the jargons and you know false claims that we are integrated what was never integrated as it has always been the biased place. Protectionism has always been there and is going to stay and certainly you know, um, the the so-called great powers. You know the the english-speaking people basically the foundation of their greatness was piracy. Was not in trade or anything. It was piracy selling opm and you know so many things you know, but it’s a long history. So you know, let’s stick to the basics and I think I have summed up my you know my assessments if you want to ask any question please. Ah.

38:44.73

Omar

Ask me 1 last question. 1 last question is do you think that this will also mean China taking Taiwan ah China taking Taiwan is ah just a matter of time and maybe China takes Taiwan in the next one year next five years a matter of time Taiwan is a gone case and the Usa already has proved its irresolution and incompetence and its strategic meekness in Afghanistan by just deserting Afghanistan instead of placing some forces there the partitioning the country and again in Ukraine. Ah, americans have proved their total strategic meekness. So this is ah going to be a big encouragement to China and Thiwa and is a gone case. Maybe one year five years you know but thwa certainly America also will not be able to defend because again fear of continued war Europe nuclear war is dead and. Unless unless ah unless taiwa develops its own use and decides to wipe out the eurochina communist as a state. You know it’s a it’s a difficult thing if if Taiwan does not have news which it does not have. Is a matter of time that you know is what what do you foresee? There are a couple of countries that have there are not necessarily permanent american allies but their own situation sort of forces them on the american side right now one is India and the other is Japan. Are significant powers. Ah what is their future in this new world Japan you see Japan received such a druming from the chinese who infected the maximum casualties in Japan and second world war maximum casualties on Japan were in fact. But chinese second world war and then japanese got such a traumatic shock with these 2 2 nuclear strikes that japanese also you know strategically and they are totally hopeless. You yes, there are a lot of talk that there was Ziam and all that. Yeah. But japanese have lost that you know lost that spread of crucial japanese war or the wars in China or in the second world war they are totally you know I would I would again call them decade you japanese they are not. You know, serious players. And indian as you know are as hopeless as pakistanis to totally third powers. Both of them. So don’t expect anything good from indians you know they’re as hopeless as pakistanis same race know same you know da for race. You know you don’t expect things. It is on that note.

41:35.17

Omar

I’m sure many of our listeners will have their own sort of opinions about this but I know that they all look forward to hearing about your opinion and and it is always stimulating even if people disagree with you. So thank you very much sir and we will be in touch we will in shalla do more podcasts. As things develop and we will process in within a Div thank you congress thank you so thank you you

Another Browncast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe to one of the links above!

The history podcast returns to North India. Gaurav, Omar and Jay are in conversation with Maneesh about the changes in the North Indian landscape as the Islamicate invasions of India begin, first with the Arab colonization of Sindh, then heating up with the Turkic plunder raids of Mahmud of Ghazna and the gradual colonization of the Northwest by Turkic and Afghan raiders.

Another Browncast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, Apple, Spotify (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe to one of the links above!

In this episode I talk to Kushal Mehra (Host of the Carvaka podcast) and regular Brownpundit Amey Chaugle about the tariff kerfuffle… the public (and on Trump’s side, frequently intemperate) war of words between the USA and India that is partly about India’s protectionist tariff regime but maybe mostly about other things (such as Donald’s ego and his desire to get that Nobel Peace Prize)..
Dig in and add your comments. We too don’t know exactly why this is going on and where it will end..  🙂

🧨 The Attack Itself: Pahalgam as a National Trauma

The episode begins by recounting the massacre in Pahalgam, Kashmir—a tourist meadow turned execution ground. Twenty-six people, most of them honeymooning Hindus, were murdered after being identified through religious markers: circumcision, Kalma recitations, names. The hosts don’t shy away from calling it what it is: a targeted Islamist attack. The group responsible, the TRF (The Resistance Front), is introduced as a Lashkar-e-Taiba cutout, designed to launder Pakistan-backed militancy through a local Kashmiri lens.

There is a palpable sense of cumulative fatigue in how the Indian speakers describe it—not as an aberration, but as part of a 30-year continuum of such violence. The emotional register is high, but justified. The use of plain terms like terrorists over euphemisms such as militants or gunmen reflects a long-standing frustration with how such attacks are framed in international discourse.

🤝  Modi, Nawaz, and the Civ-Mil Waltz

The conversation then shifts into a timeline of India-Pakistan diplomatic cycles, particularly under Modi’s tenure. From the 2014 swearing-in invitation to Nawaz Sharif, to Modi’s surprise visit to his family wedding, the podcast tracks how genuine outreach was followed by attacks—Pathankot, Uri, and now Pahalgam.

Omar provides a thoughtful perspective on Nawaz Sharif as a civilian leader who may have sought improved ties, but whose efforts were repeatedly undercut by Pakistan’s military establishment. He outlines the pattern: moments of civilian diplomacy followed by military-backed escalations, followed by internal political retaliation against the civilian leadership. The Memogate, Pathankot, and Panama Papers incidents all return here as nodes in a familiar loop.

🔁 From Kargil to Pulwama: The Strategic Pattern

There’s also a helpful review of the broader history—from Kargil (1999) to the “surgical strikes” post-Uri (2016), and Balakot following Pulwama (2019). The episode makes clear that India’s strategic posture has changed—not only in rhetoric but in willingness to carry out cross-border retaliation. Whether or not these operations are effective is left to interpretation, but what’s underscored is this: India is no longer sticking to the script of strategic restraint.

The discussion also explores how opposition politics within India can undermine or politicize national security issues—how, for instance, some domestic factions have questioned the Balakot strike, or tried to frame past attacks through partisan lenses. There’s a recognition that public trust in state narratives is often fragmented, particularly in a democracy with a complex media ecosystem.

🧱 The Wall: Pakistani Denialism and Indian Disbelief

A major recurring theme is the asymmetry of public discourse between the two nations. Indian frustration seems less about Pakistan’s hostility and more about its deniability—the sense that groups like LeT, JeM, and their affiliates operate with impunity and, worse, with plausible deniability from the state. Pakistani media narratives are described as either suppressive or deflective: dismissing terror groups as “non-state actors,” or framing Indian actions in Balochistan as equivalent provocations.

The contrast is striking: India sees the issue as justice delayed, while Pakistan positions it as parity in grievance. Whether one agrees or not, the result is an emotional and strategic deadlock.

🧭  Why This Podcast Matters

The first 30 minutes of Op Sindoor capture the emotional texture of India-Pakistan relations in a way many formal pieces miss. There is no attempt to force “both-sides-ism,” yet each perspective is given space to breathe. The Indian frustration is raw but rooted in experience. Omar’s contributions offer valuable context on how these dynamics look from the other side, even when the distance seems unbridgeable.

This is not just a conversation about a terror attack. It’s about the structural incapacity for peace, the limits of civilian diplomacy in Pakistan, and the ongoing recalibration of Indian doctrine in response to repeated provocations.

📻 Still Listening…

I’ll share more thoughts on the rest of the episode soon—especially on the Indus Waters Treaty, the expanded airstrikes post-Pahalgam, and the discussion of domestic Pakistani responses. But even in this first third, Op Sindoor is a must-listen for anyone trying to understand why peace in South Asia always seems one funeral too late.

In this episode Amey hosts myself (omar) and Poulasta (our resident Bengali expert) to talk about the recent India-Pakistan kerfuffle. Amey was ready for war, but we found common ground 😉 (as usual with India and Pakistan, a lot of the discussion is about partition and related misunderstandings)

Another Browncast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, Apple, Spotify (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe to one of the links above!

KJ took a dip at the Triveni Sangam, here he is in  conversation with Dr Omar Ali and Maneesh on what was the experience like. His travels across Lucknow and Varanasi make an appearance too. We conclude the episode with a hat tip to the greatest Indian Dessert.

Prayagraj

In this episode, hosts Amey and Dr. Omar Ali in conversation with Vishal Ganesan, a lawyer and thinker, about his essay “Frontier Dharma” and the meaning of being Hindu in the diaspora. Vishal discusses how his observations of mainstream media and academic discourse led him to research the historical representation of Hindus, which he found to be distorted by a lens stemming from 18th and 19th-century missionary narratives.

Vishal’s essay–  The Hindu Case Against “Hinduism”: A Reflection on Dharma in the Diaspora can be found here. 

(https://frontierdharma.substack.com/p/the-hindu-case-against-hinduism-a)

Auto-generated transcipt provided by our friends at scribebuddy.com

The Brown Pundits Browncast.

Dr. Omar Ali: Hi, good afternoon everyone and welcome to another episode of the Brown Pundits Browncast. We have a very special edition of the broadcast today. Vishal Ganesan, 1 of our regular Brown Pundits contributors and lurkers, who is also a lawyer and a thinker, wrote a very interesting essay on his sub stack called Frontier Dharma, and about what does it mean to be Hindu in the diaspora. And from that, I think it evolved that we will have a discussion about this topic. And we have Vishal with us today and we have Amey.

Dr. Omar Ali: Amey is our resident Indian expert. Vishal will represent the diaspora and I will represent the non-Hindu outsiders asking questions. So Vishal, why don’t we start with you and just tell us a little bit about how you came to write this essay and what is in this essay.

Vishal: Yeah, thank you for having me, Umar and Amey. Yeah, I guess this is actually the first podcast I’ve done with you guys, even though I’ve been following Brown Pundits for I don’t even know how many years it’s been, I guess, even the seapoint mutiny days. So it’s kind of crazy. This is the first time, but I’m glad to be here and talk to you guys. Yeah, so to start out, I guess just to give a general background.

Vishal: Yeah, so I was born in America, so I’m like, I always forget whether it’s second generation or first generation, but that’s kind of my vantage point. And I think that’s important to kind of understand my perspective on these issues generally. And so I think everything started for me like, you know, a few years ago when I got on Twitter, and I think like a lot of people, you’re exposed to kind of mainstream media accounts, you’re exposed to like different intellectual currents all over the world. And I started kind of getting drops of this sort of Indian intellectual discourse, which has in recent years, especially, I would say, like after post BJP has really started to become like a global discourse in that liberal Americans and the liberal Anglophone discourse globally has started picking up on some of these trends. So I would start kind of looking at mainstream media articles, whether New York Times, Washington Post, and just see how they talk about kind of Hindu related issues or even India related issues.

Vishal: And, you know, I was never really a close observer of Indian politics, but I kind of had a somewhat passing familiarity with what was going on. And obviously I have family there, so they’re always telling me their perspectives on things. And so I think at the start of it, it was a sort of gnawing sense that there was a distortion going on, that there’s some sort of lens that people were looking through that was giving them a jaundiced view of what was going on and, you know, what Hindu identity was, what Hinduism is. And so, you know, I, I would say for the first couple of years on Twitter, my engagement was mostly just kind of pointing this distortion out in kind of an ad hoc way and saying like, you know, you know, the South Asian is for my favorite target, you know, the kind of academic class or activist class that really propagates a lot of these views. And I think, you know, eventually, that kind of got a little bit tiresome, even though it was somewhat satisfying.

Vishal: And that’s what led me to Hindu history, which was kind of the initial stage of this project. And Hindu history, for people who are not aware, is a sort of historical research project that I’ve been engaged in for the past couple of years. And what that entails is going into the newspaper archives, American newspaper archives, and looking at these early representations of the Hindu. And I put it in quotes because it was spelled during that time as H-I-N-D-O-O. And that’s been a very enlightening project.

Vishal: It’s very kind of just historically oriented, you know, not a lot of editorializing. And I don’t think you need a lot of editorializing because you really see the sort of inception. A lot of the kind of modern distortions that we see had their origin in these early narratives that were kind of established in the American public culture, American media in the early 19th century, late 18th century and onwards. So, you know, I kind of was going deep into that. And frontier dharma is, I think, an attempt to try and sink my historical research with my contemporary concerns.

Vishal: But I think that, like, if you look at Hindu history, in some ways, it does vindicate the view that, like, you know, a lot of the contemporary views we see, whether they’re in the media or academia, represent a kind of continuity with what I would broadly call like the missionary discourse of the 19th, late 18th centuries. And what I mean by missionary discourse is that, you know, the kind of early American view of the Hindu was really shaped in a pretty overwhelming way by missionary literature. You know, like there was obviously, you know, again, pre-internet, pre kind of global flow of ideas. So the exposure Americans had to material from India, material about the Hindu religion, was all mediated by a sort of missionary class. These are people who were engaged in some sort of conversion activities in India, and they wanted to raise money for those conversion activities in America and what they would do.

Vishal: And this is quite explicit if you look at the history. Claudius Buchanan is a figure I talk about a lot in Hindu history, and he was this Anglican missionary who was based in Bengal. And this was during the days when the East India Company was still quite reticent about allowing conversion activity in India. And Claudius Buchanan was very clear. He basically formulated this plan and he said, like, if we want to break the reticence of the East India Company, we have to launch a public relations campaign, basically.

Vishal: And so he ended up releasing this book called The Christian Reaches in Asia. I might be forgetting the title. Christian Light in Asia, The Reaches of Christian Light in Asia, something to that effect. And it was this book that was released in like 1811 that was really instrumental in kind of opening up the floodgates. This is the book that included his early accounts of the juggernaut, which kind of became famous in the American public imagination as being kind of representative of like the pagan bloodletting of the Hindu, you know, this like story of this giant monstrous ritual.

Vishal: Yeah, exactly. People would like throwing themselves under it to sacrifice themselves to this like God. And, you know, the account itself was written in like very kind of explicitly old testament vocabulary you know it was like described as moloch you know and so this was done in a way to specifically rile up american churchgoers who would have been familiar with those references. And then in 1812 you have the American Board of Foreign Missionaries that’s officially founded and then they start kind of sending these missionary groups to India. And yeah, and you know as these missionaries go to India they send back these reports that are through missionary journals and then subsequently published in newspapers all over the country.

Vishal: So, you know, 1 of the things that’s interesting about the kind of Hindu history story is you see, especially post Vivekananda, that’s 1893, when you see Vivekananda and then kind of his successors travel through America, you know, like there’s a great quote by The guy who succeeded Vivekananda in New York as the head of the Vedanta chapter there He like has there’s a great newspaper clip where he basically says, you know I didn’t know that Hindus fed their infants to crocodiles until I came to America or something to that effect, you know this is kind of a recurring motif where you find these itinerant spiritual travelers who come to America looking to like propagate whatever their particular brand of Hindu thought or whatever. And they come against this kind of popular conception that they found quite jaundiced and prejudicial and not really in line with their experience. And, you know, coming back to the current day, I think 1 of the things I really started thinking about was how similar the present discourse is to what we see in the early 20th century. You know, in the same way that those early itinerant Swamis were engaged in this battle of representation, like we see the same thing today.

Vishal: You know, now we have this discourse of Hindu phobia, which is essentially similar, you know, structurally, where we have groups of Indians, groups of Hindus, who take a look at, they look at the kind of mainstream media representation or whatever it is in textbooks. And they say like, you know, that’s the false representation of Hinduism. And this is, you know, and you know, sometimes they’ll offer their own representation. Like 1 of the examples I talk about in the Frontier Dharma essays is 2005 California textbook controversy. And that was when, you know, these kind of local groups in California, there was a public comment, you know, this is like a regular thing that these school boards do where they revise their textbooks and they allow public comment.

Vishal: During this public comment period, you had some Hindu groups that, I haven’t looked at the original textbook material, but I imagine it was like the standard caste pyramid. This is kind of a mainstay of the American social studies textbook. Hindus are polytheists, whatever. There’s 3 main gods. They wanted to correct what they saw as a prejudicial representation and they ended up offering their own version of how Hinduism should be described and in that description they kind of emphasize that Hinduism is really more monotheistic.

Vishal: Cast is really a cultural practice, not a religious practice, whatever. And that being this big fight, you know, the Harvard Sanskritist, Michael Witzel ended up catching wind of this and he ended up rallying a bunch of scholars and activist groups. And they, you know, attended these hearings and basically said that the Hindu groups were Hindu nationalists trying to whitewash history and that their proposed edits should be rejected. And

Amey: Vishal, just to add, this is Amey everyone by the way, just to add, I was actually in India when this controversy flared up. This actually was a big deal in India as well. Back in the day, it was a Manmohan Singh government in India. It was also a lot of Indians from India were also involved in pushing forth the narrative that these groups are Hindu nationalists. So they were on the side of Wendy Doniger and Witzel.

Amey: Just to add an interesting dimension to how cross national that thing became.

Vishal: No, I mean, that’s for sure.

Amey: Which was over and I hadn’t appreciated, right? Like, because I hadn’t actually been to America yet. I didn’t even know I was going to spend all of my adult life here. After understanding the actual what the controversy was about, it’s it’s in America, every school board gets picked textbooks and it has very pedestrian definitions of what are what is Islam, what is Judaism, what is Christianity. And I think the main concern of the Indian American community was the descriptions of Hinduism exotified it quite a bit from the American mainstream and focused purely just in the cost and the oppression narrative which is what the narrative you hear in India itself, but in India, it’s in a different context than what an American Hindu growing up here would have.

Amey: Because in India, you have obviously the reservation system and lots of groups who have genuine historical reasons to feel aggrieved. But yeah.

Vishal: No, I think that’s, yeah, exactly right. And I think that’s 1 of the kind of other motivating factors of this essay and why I focused on the diaspora because it’s exactly this strange kind of entanglement with Indian politics that makes this, I think, a difficult topic because a lot of the people, you know, this is 1 of these strange, also narratives that has kind of emerged and taken hold about how the Indian diaspora is this hotbed of Hindu nationalism and Hindu supremacy or whatever. But the truth is that a lot of the people who were opposed to these edits were just normal parents who didn’t want their kids to go to school and feel like marginalized or feel like they were being demonized in the classroom. And yet their concerns are kind of totally subverted by this narrative that like, oh, they’re Hindu nationalists trying to whitewash history. So it’s 1 of these interesting questions about the extent to which the representation of Hinduism is almost inextricably entangled with Indian domestic politics.

Vishal: And that puts the diaspora in a particularly challenging position.

Amey: Interestingly, just yesterday, UK published a report. I don’t follow UK politics as much anymore, but Prevent, which is a program in the UK to prevent, you know, whatever terrorism amongst teenagers has decided to add Hindu nationalism as another area of concern.

Vishal: Oh, yeah. You know,

Amey: as if as if UK Hindu teenagers are in any danger of picking up a trishul and taking a flight to India and joining the Bajrang Dal in tearing down a mosque somewhere in the UP. It’s a ludicrous notion, but they have to be seen as non-Islamophobic. So they have to add a whole

Dr. Omar Ali: host of things. From these sort of thoughts or events that happened you started to think about What is going on? What is the what should be Hindu representation in the US and what it is? And is there a gap that you wanted to fill?

Vishal: Exactly. So this is really what it came down to, is that when I started looking at the kind of contemporary advocacy around how to represent Hinduism, I kind of started to realize that in so many ways, the focus on the public representation distracts from a more fundamental issue, which is that there’s not really a coherent articulation of what Hinduism is as a quote-unquote religion. And this is where I kind of got sent down the intellectual rabbit hole and historical rabbit hole of trying to understand, you know, how this kind of emerged as a global religion and what we actually mean when we refer to Hinduism. And I think that this is a somewhat fraught topic and I’m sensitive to the fact that a lot of the arguments I make are actually arguments that have been made by the so-called secular left, but in a very different context. You have people who are opposed to the BJP in India, who argue like, oh, Hinduism is a construct, therefore Hindu political agency should be rejected out of hand.

Vishal: And in some ways, they are taking the intellectual and historical, factual record and distorting it for a very kind of reductive ideological reason. But I think if you take like an actual objective view of the history, what really happened was, you know, Hinduism as we know it, that term, it emerged in the late 18th century. The first time we see the word Hinduism used is in the writings of this British evangelical named Charles Grant in like 1782. And then Ron Moho and Roy probably picked it up from like Baptist missionaries, and he starts using it in his writings in the late 18th century, early 19th century. So the question is, like, okay, when Hinduism emerges as a term that was being used by missionaries and Indian intellectuals alike, you know, what were they really referring to?

Vishal: And I think that my understanding is that, you know, the British use of it was like a projection of their sort of worldview in the sense that they had, when they came to India, they had a particular understanding of what a religion was. And, you know, you can go into the historical antecedents of why they understood religion in that way. I think that the 2 events in particular that shaped it were the Protestant Reformation and global exploration. So the British came to India and, you know, this was amidst a sort of intellectual construction of this idea of world religions, you know, and world religions, the idea was that, you know, religion was this kind of natural category, everybody has it, or some kind of, you know, type of religion. And it kind of follows this evolutionary process, you know, in Protestant Christianity is sort of like the rational zenith of religion.

Vishal: And, you know, they had this whole kind of characterization of this whole ranking of civilization based on what kind of religion you had. So like the most civilized countries were Protestants, then you had like half civilized, or it was like enlightened, I think is a top category. Then you had civilized, which was like Catholic countries. And then you had, you know, half civilized and then savage countries, you know, there’s like a fourfold classification that they had. And so when they came to India, they were kind of trying to understand how that category of religion would apply to the Indic spiritual traditions.

Vishal: And so when they came to India, you know, they saw what looked like that to them, like spiritual or religious activity. They kind of placed this label of Hinduism onto it, and they assumed that there was a sort of integral structural coherence that’s analogous to what you might find in Christianity or Islam, in the sense that you have this sort of singular text, you have like a kind of a closed system of religious authority and religious hermeneutics to interpret the sacred text, whatever, you have a clerical class. And so they impose this kind of understanding on the Indic spiritual traditions that didn’t reflect the lived reality of Indians themselves. And this is not to say that there wasn’t, I think this is where a lot of people in the Hindu right, they recoil at this argument. Because when you say this, they think that you’re denying any sort of civilizational or cultural unity.

Vishal: But you can have both of these things can be true at once. India clearly had the sort of spiritual, civilizational continuity. I mean, Diana Eck, the Harvard theology scholar, has written about India’s sacred geography, this idea that India had these sort of extensive pilgrimage networks that were instrumental in creating a kind of shared high culture, a shared kind of idiom of religious and ritual practice that connected these far-flung areas of the subcontinent. I think that’s true, but it’s a very different thing to say that they had a religious unity because this whole idea of religious unity or religion was, it emerged from a very specific intellectual and cultural matrix that India was only introduced to by the British. You know, and you can look at, I mean, there’s a lot of scholarship on this about how like, to what extent did Indians themselves use Hindu as a sort of self-descriptor.

Vishal: And the consensus is basically that they really only started after the Islamic incursions. Because when the Afghan and Arab incursions came into the subcontinent, they kind of clearly understood that the Hindus were different than they were, and that they had kind of a distinct religious identity. And then you start seeing, yeah.

Dr. Omar Ali: We have to get the audience to read your essay also, because some of the discussion has to come from there. So we’ll definitely post some excerpts and links and make people read it. The essay is basically after you’re saying Hinduism was not a secondary religion like Islam or Christianity, right? Using that kind of classification. But it’s not the only example in the world, actually.

Dr. Omar Ali: The Japanese people have a Japanese religion, which is even less defined.

Vishal: Yeah.

Dr. Omar Ali: But they seem to do okay. So it shouldn’t be the case that if you have a different software that it’s like not workable anymore just because it’s different.

Vishal: I think I will.

Dr. Omar Ali: I think this need to Why should you have to fit it into the dominant sort of Christian Islamic version in any case?

Vishal: I don’t think you necessarily have to fit it into the dominant paradigm, but I think the problem is that Indians want it both ways. I think this is the kind of intellectual tension at the center of it. So the point I make is that, you know, the British imposed this idea of Hinduism on the Indic spiritual landscape, and then native Hindus appropriate it for their own ends, because the idea of there being a Hindu, unified Hindu religious identity is useful for the assertion of political goals within the kind of colonial context. But even in that context, you have kind of differing strategies. So I split it up into the reformists and then the Orthodox kind of factions of this response.

Vishal: And the reformists I think are typified by Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, groups like that. And Ram Mohan Roy, Dibendranath Tagore, these guys, they basically took this category of religion and they really did try to fit the Indic spiritual essence, whatever they defined that as, into an explicitly kind of quote unquote religious structure. This is why it was so Christianized in its form. And I think that’s a legitimate criticism that a lot of people make, is that they were too over-Christian in their outlook. Even I quote Aurobindo.

Vishal: Aurobindo in the Renaissance in India, I think has a really astute kind of analysis of this whole evolution. He says that these initial waves of reformists, they were enlightened in their own way because they really opened up the Indian world to this whole new set of paradigms and ideas and a way to confront modernity, but they were also like very anglophilic, you know And they really saw they really bought into the kind of colonial view that Protestant Christianity was the highest form You know and there’s this whole backstory here about how even the Orientalists saw Hinduism as a sort of like, there’s this, it’s called the declension theory, right? They basically came to India, they saw, you know, and they interpreted the kind of prevailing religious practice as a sort of degenerate form of religion. But then they started translating the Sanskrit text and they saw, oh, but actually they, the Indians do have this kind of idea of primordial monotheism that’s quite sophisticated. And so a lot of the early reformists really bought into that.

Vishal: I mean, both Dayananda Saraswati and Ram Mohan Roy both kind of saw that, you know, the Vedantic monotheism was really kind of the essence of Hinduism and they accepted the kind of colonial critique of polytheism, temple worship, all of that. So I think that there’s a middle ground, so you have the reformists who really were trying to fit into this category of religion. And then on the other hand, you had this Orthodox faction that basically emerged as a reaction to the reformists. And their argument was like, instead of buying into this kind of colonial view of our religion, we should accept that we’re really just kind of a organic whole is really the kind of theory they had is that Hinduism was an organic whole of all these different traditions, all these different customs, all these different ritual practices, and really we need to kind of maintain this harmonious organic unity. And my argument is that like, you know, the synthesis, Aurobindo in the Renaissance in India talks about how there needs to be a synthesis between these 2 ideas, you know, and that synthesis never really happened.

Vishal: I mean, historically, if you look at, you know, the 1920s in particular is when this kind of falls apart. And this is when the, you know, in the aftermath of the Khilafat movement, you have this sort of mobilization of the Hindu Mahasabha, all these different kind of Hindu groups, and what they kind of argue is that we need to maintain unity at all costs, and this, and they, all of the kind of reformist energy is subsumed into this idea of organization and unity. And I think the problem with that is what, we’ve inherited the issues, the problems with that, with what the events of the 1920s. And then coming back to the present day, like if you look at the kind of diasporic understanding of Hinduism to the extent that it exists, the way I describe it is that we have this uneasy juxtaposition between 2 kind of streams, right? On the 1 hand, you have this idea of like inclusivism, which is I think a very widespread value held by Hindus in America, which is idea, it’s like a kind of downstream for the Vedantic idea that all paths lead to the same truth.

Vishal: There’s really just 1 divine and everything is a kind of a manifestation of it. And therefore, like you can’t really delineate what is Hindu and what is not because people are just following their own path to the same destination. So you have that idea that I think is fairly widespread. And, you know, I quote, even the Hindu American Foundation, if you look at their website, I’m not like blaming them for this. I think it reflects a real…

Dr. Omar Ali: You don’t think it’s a good idea?

Vishal: I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think it’s philosophically, I think, you know, I’ve seen, you know, just from, again, from my vantage point as a second generation Hindu American, I’ve seen how it just leads to a sort of nihilism, you know, it’s kind of it’s it’s it leads to a sort of incoherence Because if you really take this idea of inclusivism and you and you take it seriously, then it’s like well What what what argument you have for preserving any of this stuff? You know, like what argument you have for preserving a particularly Hindu view of looking at reality or looking at, you know, the divine, because you can just argue that like, oh, well, if you’re following some other religion, then you know, that’s just as good because, you know, Vivekananda made the same argument in the world parlour in his speech in 1893, right? He says, I belong to the mother of religion.

Dr. Omar Ali: What would you replace this idea with? What’s the opposing idea that would take its place?

Vishal: So, I don’t, that’s an idea I think for future installments. At least in this essay, I’m just trying to point out the kind of incoherence of this structure, you know, the have have the

Amey: so I would I would interject.

Vishal: Yeah,

Amey: so I would interject here Omer, you know, I think I come at it from an from a, It’s not an opposing point of view. It’s not something particularly front and center of my thoughts, especially right now. But this idea is inherently tied to the idea of Indian nationhood. Yes. And for me as an Indian citizen, it’s a very important idea to preserve.

Amey: And what I would say is the ideas you mentioned, these colonial tropes, they have never died out. They’re still operational in day-to-day reality of India and people talking about India and Indians. For instance, even someone like Tom Holland, who is not an expert on any of this stuff, well, feels confident enough in Dominion to be like Hinduism or something just invented by the British, which as an idea gets expanded to India as a concept created by the British. And while we can trace the modern day definition of Hindus and Hinduism back to Charles Grant’s writings, but there is a wealth of literature about India, especially the Persian historians from 11th century onwards. So in a sense, the colonial conversation is just a continuation of that, right?

Amey: Because the difference, for instance, I come from Maharashtra, which was very influenced by the Bhakti tradition. That is where Bhakti comes from. But even then you have the, especially even in the early Maratha writings a sense of you’re fighting for a Hindavi Swaraj or the fact that Brahmins in all of these temples in northern India, even the Ayodhya temple, the family that kept the, you know, before it was destroyed, the family, rather not Ayodhya, Kashi, the 1 that was actually destroyed the Gyanvapi Masjid, the family that cared for it and the and the shrine was a Maharashtrian Brahmin family right like so they the the you can I think the the thing is for both arguments you can actually follow specific strands of Indian history that don’t necessarily negate each other, but they both have grounds to stand upon?

Vishal: Absolutely. Also,

Dr. Omar Ali: I think that that’s an important point that you should, first of all, India as a civilization and as a geographical entity has a certain unity. It has a physical unity and it has a cultural unity. And that cultural unity includes having a common sort of religious tradition. And this religious tradition is very variegated, sort of heterogeneous or whatever. But that doesn’t mean it’s not 1 tradition in some sense also.

Dr. Omar Ali: And there is also then the matter of Brahmins, you know, Brahmins are, there is a certain role that they played. That’s how they are what makes India India, actually. Yeah, because they are the common feature that everywhere Indian culture went, it was taken by Brahmins, right? Or it generated Brahmins when it got there.

Amey: You’re gonna get a lot of Tamil nationalists arguing that it was like the Chola Empire in Southeast Asia and the Hinduism there, you know, was more varied in its spread.

Dr. Omar Ali: But that’s not- It’s more varied within India too. It’s not, that’s not the argument though. That the thing is you can put up a sort of a straw man and say, oh, it doesn’t fit this particular version of Brahmin domination, so this must be false. But it’s not that. It’s, And in any case, I think that another feature of Hindu thought is just the fact that it is not just open source.

Dr. Omar Ali: It’s sort of open-ended. There isn’t 1 common goal to which everyone is working. Even if you say moksha is a goal, it’s an individual goal. It’s not a common goal for society and culture and everybody. History is not moving towards kayamat or something.

Dr. Omar Ali: So this is that also creates its own issues because it means that there isn’t, it will evolve. We don’t know where it will evolve.

Vishal: It

Dr. Omar Ali: will go wherever it will go. But this is supposed to be, that’s why it’s the land of Babas, right? Everybody has their individual understanding of what reality is. And sometimes it’s very different from other people.

Vishal: Yeah, so let me just make a couple, a few points here. So in terms of like the Tom Holland argument, so that’s a very kind of well established strain of thought within the literature, this idea that Hinduism was invented and I don’t endorse that at all. I think that’s a totally false reading. You know, the kind of my interpretation of it is different and this is, I cite Balagan Gathara, he’s the guy who wrote Heathen in His Blindness and All Roads Lead to Jerusalem. I think it is a subtle difference but I think it’s a really critical 1, right, because Hinduism was not invented as a religion.

Vishal: What Hinduism represents in my mind is a certain conceptual architecture that we use to understand and communicate Hindu tradition, right? And so you can see how that’s reflected in the early reformist efforts. This idea that, you know, Hinduism as a world religion, as we understand it, reflects a certain normative View about how religions ought to be structured and I think that you know, it’s 1 thing to say like yeah You know Hindu tradition exists. There’s a Hindu religious thought we can say like there’s no need to fit it into this structure of religion, but I’m kind of more of a pragmatist about it, you know, like, and again, like this I think comes to the difference between India and the diaspora, like I totally agree, I mean there’s a lot of scholars who have written on this, you know, the nationalization of Hindu tradition and the role that played during the colonial period. But the diaspora is necessarily divorced from that process, right?

Vishal: I mean, I think if you look at kind of the evolution of Hinduism in India, it’s going to be fundamentally different because Hinduism as a religion and Hindu identity in India is mediated by forces that we’re totally immune from in the sense that like Hinduism is, I would say, in Kuwait as a religion in the way we understand it today, but it’s increasingly approaching a structure that’s more akin to that of Christianity or Islam. And it’s doing that through like a variety of historical and political processes, whether that’s like internal migration in India, whether it’s like the popularization of certain deities or mythological stories, you know, like again, you know Indian leftists hate this right they say like You know the Romanian and Mahabharata TV serials were kind of where the proximate And I think it’s a very it’s a very it’s a very it’s a very naive understanding because it’s like, no, these are just natural outgrowths of nationalization, right, of India’s formation as a nation state. And these are kind of natural evolutionary processes that will continue to take place in India. And if I had to predict, I think that in the coming decades, like Hinduism as we know it will be increasingly centralized.

Vishal: And part of this is just a natural byproduct of this sort of internal migration and homogenization that are byproducts of the kind of globalization and capitalism, You know, like you’re going to have certain festivals, you know, a lot of these kind of

Dr. Omar Ali: reality as a whole, right? I mean, there’s nothing special about Hinduism in that way. Everything is like that.

Vishal: No, no, for sure. But it’s what’s unique about Hinduism is how, you know, like the how dramatic of a paradigm shift it’s been. You know, if you think about just the process that, you know, began during the colonial period and has really taken off post 1947 and post liberalization. I mean, you’re seeing a wholesale transformation of this massively variegated spiritual tradition that’s deeply localized, deeply tied in with local deities, even like, you know, family cults or whatever you want to call it, and kind of turning into something that’s a much more national in its character. But I think that in the diaspora,

Dr. Omar Ali: why do you think that it will just become just that? I mean, why would the other things die out? There’s many other things going on at the same time. I think I think the side of it,

Vishal: but I mean, my thought on this is that it’s just the political necessity. You know, I think that basically,

Dr. Omar Ali: I am agreeing it will happen, but this is not the only thing that will happen, right?

Amey: And I’d also point out it’s not necessarily Mostly political in my mind either. I think I don’t know like bollywood is probably a bigger vector of homogenization Like it’s a if

Vishal: you if

Amey: you go to a average Indian wedding, you would think it’s a total Punjabi victory. I think Omri might be tickled to know that many Indian Hindu weddings are basically Punjabi style weddings. Now, you know, which isn’t necessarily the case, wasn’t the case at least in my parents’ generation.

Vishal: But yeah. Yeah, I think, yeah.

Dr. Omar Ali: I was going to ask Vishal a different question. This is all like we’re having this conversation. It’s almost like any educated Western people could have the same conversation, or modern people would have the same conversation, or could have the same conversation. None of us sort of took it as the possibility that there really are gods. Yes.

Dr. Omar Ali: And they are going to, and there are really things you can do by getting up in the morning and sitting in front Of the Sun that will actually change how things happen in your life

Vishal: Absolutely.

Dr. Omar Ali: You have any any comments on that side of religion?

Vishal: I think this is a topic that I want to explore more in future installments, but I think you’re absolutely right. And I think that 1 of the things that maybe the Hindu right hasn’t really sufficiently come to terms with is, you know, like if you look at, if you read like Max Weber, right, or if you read even Heidegger, you know, for them, 1 of the sort of key aspects of modernity, for Max Weber, it was this idea of disenchantment, right, that the kind of spirit of modernity, this idea of like the rationalization of every sphere of human life, it necessarily removes the sort of element of magic from the world. This idea that gods can actually inhabit reality around us and they exist in nature and they exist in the world. For Max Weber, disenchantment almost precludes that. This is a natural process that any country that’s going through this process of modernization has to come to terms with.

Vishal: And Heidegger talks about the flight of the gods, kind of a similar idea, this idea that the rationalization, and he was obviously was a critic of modernity, a critic of enlightenment thought, was coming in from the perspective of like, we need to re-enchant the world and we have to kind of allow space for gods to re-inhabit, you know, reality, re-inhabit existence. I think that’s like a very deep philosophical issue that I think that Hindus and Indians need to come to terms with or I think about in a more critical way, I think that there’s often like a tendency and again, I you know, maybe this will be offensive to some people, but there’s a sort of a tendency I’ve noticed about like, you know, this I mean, I think it even exists in something like the Ram temple you know like there’s no doubt that the for millions of devotees like when they go to Ayodhya you know they see the Ram there like it’s a living god for them you know like that’s a living tradition it exists for them in the real world But I think there’s also like a more modernist take on that, which is like, no, this, the importance for them is like, this is a symbol of Indian nationhood or Hindu nationhood.

Vishal: And it’s more and the valence is more political in its

Dr. Omar Ali: nature. Because

Amey: Hindu nationalism is a very atheistic movement to be to be to be fair Yeah, I’ll point out it was kind

Dr. Omar Ali: of funny.

Amey: There was it There’s a Pakistani commentator Zakaria something Zakaria who lives in New York and she was marveling about like how? Hindu nationalists, you know, like how Pakistani Islamists are not on the internet, but somehow Hindu nationalists seem educated. And I just was like, wait, does she not realize that a Hindu nationalist is more atheistic than an average Westernized Pakistani Muslim on by any rubric. But yeah, anyway, just a point aside.

Vishal: What about nationalism as an atheistic? I mean, it’s absolutely true, right? Because I think that the development of nationalism historically, right? Let’s say maybe India will be an exception to the rule, but historically the idea of nationalism and secularism have always gone hand in hand, right? And the idea is that you have the elevation of the political over the religious, right?

Vishal: Religion, rather than becoming like, and this is, again, I think goes back to the John Osman distinction between primary and secondary religions. So for a primary religion, which we can consider kind of Hinduism or Hindu traditions in the category of primary religion, the idea is that the religion is so inextricably linked with the broader culture And even the geography of the land itself, it evolves organically within that particular context. And where secondary religions can be transported across national or ethnic boundaries because they’re kind of these self-contained systems. And if you think about like-

Dr. Omar Ali: There are also more explicitly political movements almost.

Vishal: Yes, they are. And I think that it’s, you know, again, like, if you think about it in terms of the process of secularization, right, this idea of religion is implicit in the idea of religion that we’ve inherited from the British, it’s this idea that religion is just 1 sphere of human life that exists in a compartmentalized way within a broader kind of societal secular structure. And, you know, and so even in this kind of development of Hinduism as a proper religion, quote unquote, proper religion, you know, the idea of it becoming kind of just another religion alongside Christianity or Islam within a broader secular framework. And so I think that’s a real kind of philosophical conundrum And yeah, I mean, Omar, you’re right, maybe India will be the exception to this rule. But this is kind of the historical process that is played out in Europe that is now playing out in India.

Vishal: But I think to get back to my original point, I the reason why I kind of advocate doing take undertaking this analysis in the diaspora separate from India is because the diaspora, we’re just subject to very different pressures, right? I mean, I think that it’s easy. I think Indians are in a better position to critically examine this category of religion, this category of secularism. But in America, we live in a thoroughly modernized, westernized framework. And these conceptual categories that we’re talking about, like, you know, intellectually, we can scrutinize them.

Vishal: But, you know, in terms of the average diasporic Hindu American, we take these categories for granted. I mean, it’s like the conceptual categories that Indians had to deal with in the colonial period are hegemonic for us. And so, Omar, when you talk about why do we need to fit into this category of religion, I think that my answer is ultimately pragmatic. If you’re trying to exist in a ultra-modern secularized American society and you want to have some semblance of political power, if you have some kind of perspective that you want to share with the world and some sort of interest that you need to protect at the level of culture or level of politics, you kind of have to play by those rules because those are the rules that are operational, I think, in the area that we’re talking about. So even though I agree with everything you guys said about how this is how Hindu tradition is and we shouldn’t discount the coherence of Hindu tradition and Hindu civilization historically.

Vishal: I just think that that analysis has limited utility in the diaspora because we live in a thoroughly modernized, westernized framework. And so for me, you know, I think the question is, and this is really the discussion that I want to start with Frontier Dharma. And it’s something that we need to ask, which is like, okay, you know, if we dispense with this term Hinduism completely, and just kind of take the traditions that we’ve inherited, we have to, in some way, understand how we want to universalize those traditions or try to understand what is what is the essence there and you know try to reformulate it in a way that’s better suited for our political social and cultural conditions and I think that does require some adaptation to this idea of religion. I’m not, I don’t really, I don’t like, again, this is maybe a future piece, but I’m pretty opposed to this kind of like decolonial deconstruction. So all these questions.

Amey: And speaking of this, it’s kind of funny because I’m also part of Indian diaspora in America, but I have a very different lens because I’m also from India. Wouldn’t a cultural coherence be, quote unquote, better operationalized in diasporic context, you know, sort of like Jewish Americans. I have not, you know, I know rabbis who I suspect are atheists, you know, for instance, right? Like I understand that it takes it away from the spiritual meaning of the daily practice as it’s introduced to a Hindu growing up in the diaspora, but wouldn’t, isn’t the cultural coherence more important to perhaps pursue these structures of powers in the West?

Vishal: I mean, I think a lot of people make this argument. I think it’s funny, both the left and the right. I think the left looks at Hindus in the diaspora as like Zionists in the making or something. And I think a lot of people on the Hindu right are like we should be more like the Jews, you know, and I just think that it’s not a realistic option. Like I think that America, like the Hindu diaspora, and I’m part of this, you know, like we’re just very assimilated and I think that in so many ways, like the Hindu diaspora, like India, it’s just not comparable.

Vishal: I think like the Jewish diaspora has a much stronger.

Amey: Oh, I was not making the argument that India should be like, I was not making an argument for a diasporic Zionism.

Dr. Omar Ali: No, no,

Vishal: I know. I know. You know,

Amey: but I’m like making an argument comparable to like secularized American Jews who have a cultural Jewish identity.

Vishal: Yeah, I mean, I think that that’s basically South Asianism, right? I mean, this is this is this is the kind of flip side of it. And like, this is the

Dr. Omar Ali: sort of… Not necessarily. I think I actually, when we were going to do this podcast last week and it got postponed I was talking to a friend of mine who is married to an Indian girl and I just asked him okay you know the whole extended family of Hindus that he knows What do you find in young people these days? And he had an interesting take. He said that he has seen a change in the last 10-15 years, that the young people have become more consciously conscious of India, and also prouder of India than they used to be.

Dr. Omar Ali: And that he was of the opinion that it doesn’t take too much. You actually don’t need, it’s not like you need to have some 500 page, you know, textbook that everybody has to memorize that this is our religion. Very, very simple, basic things are enough, actually. Those people know that they are Hindu, and they are very successful in America. And they continue to identify as Hindu.

Dr. Omar Ali: And now as they see India sort of becoming a relatively, you know, somewhat more prominent, better advanced, whatever place, they also start to feel more comfortable identifying with it. And that’s about all it takes. He said they’re all sort of proud Hindu nationalists, but that’s all Hinduism is to them.

Vishal: I think that there’s something to that in the sense that like, I’m very aware of the fact that like, the character, the political character of India has so changed on the fundamentally, right? In the past few decades, like my dad came here in 1987 and this pre-liberalization, you know, and like, there, you know, my parents, I think this is probably true of a lot of second generation Hindu Americans that were kind of in my situation, like, that generation, like, they were fairly traditional and rooted. I mean, they didn’t have any hangups about their kind of tradition and the religion or whatever, but they weren’t political. There wasn’t that sort of like, more like, I guess, outward confidence maybe in the way that I think more recent generations of immigrants have, because their arrival has coincided with this sort of political awakening in India and I think that’s true but you know I’m I still I’m kind of fairly skeptical that their children the ones that are born in America I think that like yeah you might I think that’s true now right Like people have this sort of identity and they say like, yeah, I’m Hindu, but they take it for granted.

Vishal: And then when you ask her to ask them, like, what does that actually mean? You know? And this is what I mean when I say that this is basically South Asianism, because I think that what happens.

Dr. Omar Ali: Won’t you expect sort of organically that that too will develop, that these people will develop their own catechism of what it means to be Hindu just because people keep asking them that question?

Vishal: I don’t know. I mean, I think that for a lot of people, it just they kind of maintain, I mean, in my experience, what the more common outcome is in the diaspora is that people preserve some sort of attachment to like the festivals, certain cultural traditions, but they kind of become empty of vital meaning in the sense that they’re, because there’s not a sort of language or a framework for them to incorporate the underlying spiritual ideas. They maintain the sort of external forms of these holidays, whether they’re Diwali or Holi. And they kind of they like the kind of the pomp and circumstance of the festival. But then the Underlying spiritual meaning is kind of lost.

Amey: This isn’t necessarily too removed from like an average Many

Vishal: other right

Amey: up in India, you know, absolutely

Dr. Omar Ali: Yeah, that removed from other I can tell you as an outsider I mean, what do Muslim children in America know about the spiritual significance of either whatever it’s a festival you go and eat something and you meet other people and you know, You go for morning prayers There are certain rituals associated with it. It’s not Absolutely most people in a modern

Amey: actually actually it’s when the diaspora Kids find the find the true scripture omer in certain muslim communities. That’s when that’s that’s when the alarm bells sometimes

Dr. Omar Ali: But then then you should say that you’re you already have a religion which is better adapted to actually Doing this job of being you know simultaneously Many things

Vishal: no, but so this is I think you’re right about this I think that is true of most people. But I think the difference is that in the case of Christianity or Islam, right, They have like strong institutional centers and like very committed groups of true believers and scholars who are actually capable of…

Dr. Omar Ali: You don’t think the Indians or Hindus have strong groups of dedicated whatever?

Vishal: I think… No, we don’t.

Amey: We don’t. I would agree we don’t.

Vishal: I think there are groups of Hindus who are strong believers in the sense that like, you know, like even I’ve seen this, you know, in, in, in Arizona and other States, like there are like these, you know, recent immigrants who force their children to do like Vedic recitation every weekend, right? Or like, like Gita recitations or whatever. And you know, there’s like whatever, something appealing about that. But it’s like, that’s not, you know, if you’re actually engaged in like American civic culture, American political culture, like, how is that going to help you actually engage in this kind of field of representation. I think 1 of the challenges that like, yeah, you have.

Dr. Omar Ali: Why, what are other people doing? I mean, you have many things going on in life simultaneously, right? Those Indians are successful people. They go to top colleges. They have top jobs.

Dr. Omar Ali: They make money. They also happen to learn, you know, whatever Sanskrit on the weekends. That’s just, why do you think that’s a hurdle in some way?

Vishal: I don’t think it’s a hurdle. I just think that there’s a fundamental disconnect between the way in which people assert Hindu identity, like, or connection to Hindu culture in America, and what’s actually required to create a sustainable, transgenerational religious identity, right? I mean, I think 1 of the challenges that we see now is that sort of because our like, because we lack the institutional mechanism to affect knowledge, like knowledge production, right? I mean, ultimately that’s really what this comes down to is like, if you look at the past, whatever, decade of discourse around Hinduism in America, what you basically have is, you know, these highly placed academics, activist groups, media people who have a particular representation of Hinduism, right? That is negative, it’s like an oppressive religion, it’s problematic, whatever.

Vishal: And I think what this does is for people in the diaspora, coming up in the diaspora, they’re kind of immersed in this sort of world of liberal progressive discourse. And they see these representations of what Hinduism is. And that essentially leads them to detach themselves from their religious tradition, because they see it as problematic in some way, they see it as like politically inconvenient.

Dr. Omar Ali: This may have been almost standard in sort of left liberal Indian migrants here 20 years ago, but are they still the majority?

Vishal: I don’t think it’s about left liberal Indians. I think it’s just about, again, I mean, this is, I think, 1 of the lessons of Hindu history, right? Is that like the contemporary representation of Hinduism does represent this continuity with the fairly prejudicial view that was, you know, propagated by missionaries in the past 2 centuries. And ultimately, like, if you want to create the social, cultural, and political conditions for people wanting to kind of preserve those traditions, you need to control, you need to have some impact on that level of discourse. And I think that like in the absence of a sort of institutional mechanism, You know, like I think it’s, you know, we can kind of take this romanticized view and say like, oh, you know, it’s great.

Dr. Omar Ali: Like these groups that you mentioned initially, you know, like something like the Hindu American Foundation and you were a little bit critical of the fact that they have this very almost fake ecumenical thing going about. I don’t

Vishal: think it’s fake. I think it’s a real perspective that’s shared by a lot of Hindus. I mean, I’ve heard my own parents.

Dr. Omar Ali: No, but I was just going to say that these people, Aren’t they already doing what you are suggesting that they have a common program which is really about the political and institutional things that matter to people in their life like schools and how people are treated in the media and things like that or how America treats India for that matter. And don’t care about the spiritual aspect at all because that’s not, it’s an open source religion. There’s like a hundred different ways of doing that and people will keep doing their own thing.

Vishal: No, I think they do a great job, but I think that a couple of observations I’ve made is that like you know I’ve been like somewhat peripheral to the sort of whole Hindu advocacy space and 1 of the things that you notice is that it’s almost exclusively first generation immigrants you know like there’s very few American born Hindus who are involved in these organizations. I mean, I will say that HAF leadership is actually a lot of them were born here. But if you look at the kind of rank and file activists, the people who actually care about this stuff, it’s almost all recent immigrants. And I think that reflects a kind of fundamental limitation, which is that first generation immigrants who come here who have like a strong sense of Hindu identity, of Indian identity, are very highly motivated to fight against these misrepresentations. But when it comes to their children, they just don’t care.

Vishal: And I think that that speaks to a sort of communication gap or a failure to kind of articulate, you know, why these traditions or why these misrepresentations need to be corrected.

Amey: So, yeah, I actually really empathize with the point you make about misrepresentations. And I’m, it’s funny, you were talking about generations, I’m not a second generation Indian Hindu American, but I came here relatively early. So I have some insight into what you presumably face growing up here. But these knowledge production things don’t exist within India either. You know, any pushback is inherently wrapped up in a particular style of Indian political discourse, which sort of lends like the style of discourse kind of makes sense perhaps in an Indian setting, but it tunes out every even possible neutral observer from the outside.

Amey: It’s just…

Vishal: No, that’s how it is. Yeah.

Amey: But the question I have is without these knowledge production sources even existing in India, would a diasporic alternative even sustain and stand on its own or there needs to be a United in an extent that there needs to be a, you know, a partnership with perhaps people pursuing such efforts in India or Indian academia and build on that as opposed to have a completely separate power center because it would lead to the same issues of, you know, how do you have a pipeline, you know, into, into, into, and cross-pollinate from 1 another and, and, and perhaps elevate the discourse on, on either side.

Vishal: I think that, I mean, I I’m kind of of the view that the diaspora needs to kind of tackle this issue on its own terms in the diaspora, in the sense that like, you have to start, if you’re trying to solve this problem, it has to start with the recognition of like the material conditions that we face, right? Like the society that we grow up in and the pressures that were, the constraints that we are under. And that’s not to say that, you know, there’s a Priyank, I’m sure you follow him on Twitter. He’s a really thoughtful guy, young guy, I think based out of Delhi. And 1 of the, and he actually had this same criticism about the essay, which was that like, he didn’t understand why I was focusing on the diaspora and not like Hinduism writ large.

Vishal: And my point was that, you know, ultimately I do think that there will be, so like, you know, I think 1 of you made the comment earlier that a lot of the issues that I’m talking about are not dissimilar to what urban Indians might face. And I think there’s a lot of truth to that. And I think that there’s definitely opportunities for cross-pollination between those 2 groups. But I think that you have to acknowledge that we’re operating from a fundamentally different social and cultural base in the sense that I think a lot of 1 of the 1 of the favorite kind of arguments of the Hindu right is, you know, the diaspora is is de-Raston aided, right? And this explains why they’re anti Indian anti Hindu.

Vishal: I think that’s like a very lazy kind of it’s a cop out, right? Because de-Raston nation is sort of a key feature of globalization and modernization. Like the diaspora is de-Rastanated by definition. And I don’t think that’s anything that we should be like trying to fix. I think that’s just a fact of life.

Vishal: And so I think really the mission is to try and understand like, you know, we’ve inherited the spiritual tradition. We live in a sort of, in an American, you know, American context. We think about these things in English, and we operate with this idea of the structure of religion in the background. Now how can you take the essence of these traditions that we’ve inherited. And we have to think seriously about what is it actually that we’re trying to preserve?

Vishal: I mean, what does success look like? I mean, is success just like, they keep celebrating Diwali at the White House, or that kids get together every year and celebrate Holi, like, is that really the kind of the target that we’re going for? Or is it something more like ambitious, you know? And I would hope that we can kind of set a target maybe higher, you know? And 1 of the things I was really inspired by is like, again, like I really love reading the, the, you know, Bengali Renaissance thinkers, there’s like the whole kind of crop of thinkers who emerged in the late 18th century, early 19th century, because I think that they had a very clear eye view of like, you know, Tagore writes really beautifully about this or a Bindo writes really beautiful about this.

Vishal: But I think they really, understood, understood that, the index spiritual traditions and dharma writ large has something to offer the world, right, in a positive way that like, you know, Tagore writes really beautifully about how like dharma is almost like a corrective for like the excesses of modernity, you know, and how this sort of Hindu spiritual values can really kind of help curtail some of those excesses. And I think that that’s really the kind of frame of mind that I’m in when I think about this. I think you have to articulate a positive vision about what we’re actually trying to build as distinguished just from preserving some sort of cultural continuity. I think that this idea of cultural continuity, I don’t think it’s fruitful. And I think that it’s just, it seems futile to me to try and create an identity in the diaspora where kind of cultural continuity with India is a central value.

Vishal: Because I just don’t see that as realistic. I just think that the reality of the matter is that most diasporic Hindu Americans are pretty assimilated. And I think that, you know, like we’re not, you know, in ethnic enclaves for the most part, like we are kind of immersed in the sort of urban cosmopolitan life. And I think you need to kind of articulate a case for Dharmic or Hindu identity that is true to that, those circumstances.

Amey: So, and perhaps this is the last point I wanted to touch on. I actually, this was a clarifying sort of exchange. Have you considered other Hindu diasporas? You know, there’s the ones in the Caribbean and South America, but even Bali, which is an island of certain Hindu tradition that is very localized to itself. They contrast in different ways, but have they…

Amey: I like never actually followed this thread like how have they preserved? You know, what is their version of the Caribbean?

Vishal: I mean, those were basically ethnic enclaves, right? Like there was very little mixing between the African populations and the Indian populations in the Caribbean. And this kind of allowed for this sort of self-contained continuity with this Hindu culture. You know, it’s just so different. I mean, these were, you know, the Indian…

Dr. Omar Ali: But then what you are doing, Vijal, to an outsider, this looks like, yeah, this is exactly what you’re demanding is what is all actually happening, because that’s what you are doing. You’re trying to create, you know, or look for messages and meanings that you feel were not adequately transmitted to you, but that are maybe there in the tradition and you will work out something based on that. But you also know that this is not how every Hindu is sitting in America is going to look at it. Some of them will find a completely different answer.

Vishal: Absolutely. Wouldn’t

Dr. Omar Ali: that be okay? So you

Vishal: would have

Dr. Omar Ali: to have a weekend with very little common, you know, like the common features may not be that many.

Vishal: Absolutely. I think that, you know, I’m not like saying that everyone is wrong and I’m right. I’m just saying that like, we have to kind of think about, you know, if you want to exercise any level of political or cultural power, maybe not cultural power, because I think that actually 1 of the interesting paradoxes is that I would say that Hindus or Hinduism, Hindu values, whatever you want to call it, are culturally more influential than they’ve ever been, you know, and you see this arise in different contexts, whether it’s like yoga or mindfulness or whatever. So you in the cultural sphere, I think that or like even look at like Sadhguru, right, look at how popular he is with all these.

Dr. Omar Ali: You look at, you know, there are these kind of Christian nationalist people and so on. If you look at their complaint about the world, they are going, they’re complaining that the world is too pagan. Yeah. This country and this modern society is like too Hindu already.

Vishal: But yeah, I just think that like you have to, you know, ultimately, like, if you want to have an impact politically, or if you want to even like, you know, have some sort of presence politically, you have to kind of understand what the requirements for that is, right. And like, ultimately, if you want to…

Dr. Omar Ali: Things change, right? What you are describing, in fact, maybe this is a general phenomenon of some sort that by the time, you know, someone like me starts to talk about something, half the thing has already happened because we are sort of late. We are talking about things that are already in process.

Vishal: I think there is a natural sort of process that is taking place but I think that again like I think that in the diaspora we’re not subject to the same natural evolutionary process that’s taking place in India. And in that sense, I think that in the diaspora, you have to be a little bit more like aggressive maybe about what exactly, like, I think that, you know, 1 of the points I make in the essay is that, you know, I think that whatever, you know, I kind of look at this reformist orthodox dialectic and I kind of come down on the side of reformists. And I think that’s really a byproduct of kind of my own context. Right. In the sense that, like, maybe the kind of orthodox view has certainly had its value in the colonial period.

Vishal: And even today in India, where you still have kind of extended kinship ties, or even caste ties are still so strong. People are still so attached to the sort of like local and familial cultures and traditions. Like, you know, maybe that makes more sense, but I think in the diaspora, that’s just not the case. Like, I think that we are ultimately in the diaspora living in a far more individualistic society. And I think that we’re kind of detached from, we don’t, you know, a lot of those extended kinship ties, they act as like a bulwark for certain traditions, right?

Vishal: And we just are divorced from that. I mean, you know, people who are here, who came here as immigrants, like we are alienated from those, that system. And so I think that the requirements for preserving any sort of like spiritual identity, the solutions are gonna be very different here than they would be in India. And I think we just have to be sensitive to that difference would be the point I’d make.

Dr. Omar Ali: And 1 other factor which is sort of unique to the Indian situation is just the presence of such a strong and motivated group of Indians who are very unhappy with Hinduism.

Vishal: Yeah.

Dr. Omar Ali: And who from outside do define it. And they are maybe half the religion probably exists because of them.

Vishal: I mean, in a lot of ways,

Dr. Omar Ali: it does. And And their presence creates a situation that is sort of unique to India. I can’t think of any other country that has this exact situation going on.

Amey: Well, I mean, Omer, if-

Dr. Omar Ali: Like every time, this is almost like a 100% score rate, that I look at a tweet where you look at the tweet and you think, oh, this news item or this tweet or this journalistic piece is an Orientalist sort of trash about India. And 100% of the time these days, it will be written by an Indian. So what do you do about that?

Vishal: Well, yeah, this is exactly the point, right? I mean, this is the sort of, I guess, goes back to the initial point I made about this battle of representation, right? Like I do think that that exists and it’s important to kind of be aware and raise awareness about it. But ultimately, you know, like if we get stuck into this sort of battle of like, oh, that’s a wrong view of Hinduism, this is the right view of Hinduism, without creating the conditions, whether that’s through some sort of institutional mechanism or through a consensus. I mean, again, like to go back to this California textbook, right?

Vishal: So this was exactly what happened there, is that you had some activist groups, you had groups of scholars, and you also had other Hindu groups who kind of took the side of Witzel and the Sanskritists, arguing that, you know, the other groups were Hindu nationalists or whatever. And to me, it’s like, you can keep engaging in that fight over and over again, or you can realize that if you want to have your perspective be the accepted 1, you have to create the conditions for that consensus on the ground. You have to create an institutional mechanism that can legitimately say, like, we are representatives of this community and we have an official doctrinal view on what the truth is. And until you actually do that, then you’re going to be constantly fighting the same battles over and over again.

Dr. Omar Ali: We just sort of concluded that even within India, there is no such consensus. So why would there be such a consensus?

Vishal: I think in India, eventually it’ll happen. I mean, I think that the pressures of this fight that you’re talking about, I mean, I think in some ways there’s maybe like a convergent evolution going on, you know, like certainly in India, you’re going to have, more kind of centralization. You’re going to have more people who are like, I was just reading this article about in the Kumbh Mela, you know, they had, I guess some group of, of, of Sadhus or, you know, there’s all these, like, it’s so crazy. Like in the, the kind of internal structure of Hindu tradition in India, it’s very complicated. And you have these groups of like, The holy people saw those who, you know, have millions of followers or whatever, But apparently they came together and they decided that they had to create some sort of like code of conduct or something You know, like they had to create like a code of conduct that we should be accepted by all Hindus in India You know, I don’t know the details of it I just saw an article about it, but I mean that is like natural pressures that are going to be acting

Dr. Omar Ali: my impression is that just some small group of people decided this is an opportunity to do it. Indeed. That’s rhetoric enough.

Vishal: I think it was like a VHP, which is like an RSS.

Dr. Omar Ali: But it’s not going to become. Like,

Amey: VHP doesn’t have as much cultural salience as as their detractors and even themselves would like to project.

Vishal: Yeah, I mean, but the point is that they’re responding, they’re responding to very real pressures, right? And I think that it’s inevitable that more Hindu groups are going to be alive to that requirement, right? Because that’s the only way to actually effectively fight this battle without just doing the same thing over and over again. And I think in the diaspora, we’re subject to the same pressures, right? I mean, if we’re concerned about the kind of public representation of Hindu traditions or whatever, like, you have to ask yourself pragmatically, well, what do you do about that?

Vishal: And I think that really the only thing you can do is to kind of build institutions that not only create like social consensus, but also are engaging in the sort of arena of knowledge production and are doing it from a perspective of like, you know, this is the official kind of perspective and we have to you know, defend it against people who might argue differently. I think that’s kind of really the next step if you want to decisively win that battle, rather than just, you know, constantly going after the biases and prejudices of other people, which is good that people are doing because I think it awakens people to the systemic biases that do exist, but it ultimately has limited utility in the long run anyway, I think.

Dr. Omar Ali: It may be that you just have to get India richer and a lot of these things will sort themselves out.

Vishal: Maybe.

Dr. Omar Ali: That’s the Marxist view at least. My sort of residual Marxism speaking, that you know, once you get the economics right, other things will follow. I don’t actually believe that in some strong sense anymore, But I think there is something to it. India being a very poor, very, you know, like weak country is itself a reason why all these crises were happening. You reverse that situation and many other situations Will become irrelevant.

Vishal: I don’t know if I have the patience for India to catch up

Amey: I mean, I mean, there’s a reason why I’m sitting here in Silicon Valley Yeah, and but yeah, it is as an as an Indian. That’s that’s always an exasperating The question. But yeah, I think you

Dr. Omar Ali: may- I think we are out of time. Yeah. But I think this was a good, interesting discussion and we should definitely, this will open up actually, I think we’ll get some feedback hopefully and we’ll also think about it ourselves.

Amey: So I can

Dr. Omar Ali: do part 2 we will have more intelligent questions.

Amey: Indeed, I can only imagine how your mentions were like on Twitter when you published this.

Vishal: Honestly not that bad. I mean I think that it was maybe because it was couched in an early…

Amey: Yeah, and also you’re forcing your interlocutors to actually read your arguments, which, you know, which most people on Twitter just don’t have patience.

Dr. Omar Ali: Yeah, Please,

Vishal: frontierdharma.substack.com, please subscribe. Please read it.

Dr. Omar Ali: Please read Vishal’s article, The Hindu Case Against Hinduism, and give your own opinion. And I think in a sort of a Hindu fashion, you’re allowed to give opposing opinions also.

Vishal: Yeah, no blasphemy here. Say whatever you want.

Amey: Yes, and thanks Vishal for joining us and thanks Omer.

Vishal: Yeah, this was a lot of fun. Thank you