Category: BrownCast

Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes and Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe at one of the links above. You can also support the podcast as a patron (the primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone else…). Would appreciate more positive reviews.

This week we’re doing something different…but also something you are going to have to expect. The “BrownCast” and “Brown Pundits” are labeled “brown” because the founders of this weblog are brown. We are obviously interested in Indian/South Asian/Desi topics…but that’s not all we are. In fact, the three original founders, myself, Zach, and Omar, are confirmed dilettantes.

One of the “privileges” of being white is that you are interested in whatever you want to be interested in. You don’t just opine on “white” topics, you opine on the world because the world is your canvas. In the year 2019, my own opinion is that more nonwhites need to decolonize their minds, get over white people and their fraught relationship with a race which dictated the terms of the 19th and 20th centuries and grasp the chaotic, polycentric, and globalized 21st century with two hands.

Cross the threshold. Step into the future. It’s interesting…if sometimes a bit too interesting.

The conversation in this podcast starts out with specific concerns and questions about how Native Americans in the USA are reacting to the candidacy of Elizabeth Warren. Brett Chapman lays out the concerns of his own people rather well. He is a lawyer, so that is to be expected! But, the conversation moves to issues relating to Catalan and Scottish independence, and reconsiderations of the sacrosanct nature of the Eurocentric Westphalian system.

Native American experiences are not just particular, they’re universal, and global.

This is 2019 and the 21st century. Two Americans, one a brown 1.5 generation semi-immigrant, one a Native American, and a brown Briton, get together and have a discussion about continental European politics. It’s our business. The world is our business. And our business is the world.

The latest BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes and Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe at one of the links above. You can also support the podcast as a patron (the primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone else). Show-notes after the jump!

Continue reading BrownCast Episode 11: Indian Numismatics with Mohit Kapoor

Catch our latest Episode 10 of BrownCast on Libsyn, iTunes and Stitcher. 

Back to the Post. I was thinking that usually Jinnah (I prefer to use QeA but this time I’ll dispense with honorifics) is contrasted with Nehru or Mahatma Gandhi. Nevertheless a better basis of comparison would be Ambedkar.

When All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen President Asaduddin Owaisi, MP, and Bharip Bahujan Mahasangh leader Prakash Ambedkar addressed a rally in Aurangabad on Gandhi Jayanti, it marked a milestone in contemporary Indian politics.

It was the first time a Dalit party has tied up with a Muslim outfit.

In pre-Partition India, Muslim League leader Mohammed Ali Jinnah understood the power of this vote bank and quickly latched on to the idea of separate electorates when the British proposed it.

But the plan came a cropper when the more astute Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi convinced Dr B R Ambedkar that separate electorates were not the way forward and sealed the Poona Pact.

Then in the 1980s, Kanshi Ram realised the potential of Dalit votes and went on to form the Bahujan Samaj Party. It reached its zenith under his chosen successor Mayawati, a four time chief minister of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.

See Also: Pakistan’s Forgotten Dalit Minority

Continue reading ‘In the milk of OBCs and Dalits, Muslims have added sugar’