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Category: Open Thread
Browncast Ep 38: Indian Elections
You can also support the podcast as a patron (the primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone else…).
Razib & I played host to MJ, Kushal (Carvaka Podcast) and Vidhi.
It was a very long podcast (1hr 40 minutes) and it was really entertaining. Kushal & MJ are BJP-lite while Vidhi (if she was forced to vote) is Congress. We skipped the technical discussion since we will serve that after the elections. Continue reading Browncast Ep 38: Indian Elections
Open Thread – Brown Pundits
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The Indian Muslim question
I can see BP Open Thread has exploded into a flame war about Pakistani Hindus vs Indian Muslims.
I thought I would share my experience. The moment I go to India; I subconsciously de-Muslimfy. Indians & Hindus are just not comfortable and since I’m the non-confrontational type (only Kabir can role me up) I adapt accordingly.
When I’m with Pakistanis I tend to change colours accordingly however I have increasingly made my personal (and increasing) distaste of Islam known.
Pakistan is very riven with a class dynamic so it doesn’t matter what religion you are so as you belong to the right class. There are issues with Ahmadis.
Both societies have so much to do in improving minority rights but I do feel they mirror their ideological priors. Indians look at Muslims almost as a caste and Pakistanis internalise accordingly to class divisions (certain minorities belong to certain stratas).
Open Thread – Brown Pundits
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The survey now has 160 responses. Below the fold I’ve summarized the results.
Lord Indra was a tan man
I get a fair amount of email related to questions about Indian genetics, as well as calls for me to adjudicate various controversies. A major problem with any “Aryan invasion theory” or its descendants, which posit non-trivial gene flow from the Eurasian steppe, is the possibility that the Indo-Aryan ancestors of nearly all South Asians (albeit, in extremely varied proportions) were a thousand men with the bright faces, azure eyes, and flaxen locks. Paul Bettany times a thousand astride chariots.
The anachronistic neocolonialism obviously makes Indians uncomfortable. Or that’s my psychoanalysis. I don’t care much either way. What does Lord Indra’s scion care? We are the unbroken lineage, grasping Eurasia’s heart, from the Baltic to the Bay of Bengal!
The flip side of this is people of European ancestry, some of whom are white nationalists, do come close to making this claim. That is, that the Aryans were white Nordic people. The genetics from the Sintashta and Andronovo cultural complexes do indicate that they resemble many of the contemporaneous European populations. Their ultimate locus of origin probably is the Pontic steppe, which is in the geographic boundaries of Europe, as such. Finally, these steppe peoples exhibit genetic signatures of reflux from Europe. That is, they’re not just Yamna-descendants but derived from Yamna-like people who moved west, mixed with local indigenous Europeans, and moved back east along the Eurasian steppe corridor.
Looking at some of the ancient forensic DNA some of these individuals have suggested that I must admit that the Indo-Aryans were genetically like Europeans, and phenotypically like Europeans as well. They know that I won’t lie like some people, and just want me to admit this.
Open Thread – Brown Pundits
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Our most popular categories
I’ve given myself the thankless task of “tagging” all my past posts. I noticed that we don’t have a tag on “Kashmir” (the only sub-region we do have is NWFP). It sparked a thought that for a Desi blog we really don’t discuss Kashmir all that much (even though it was going to drag the region into war earlier this year).
This mirrors the larger discourse on Kashmir where Indians & Pakistanis don’t seem as animated or defined by it as before. Two reason comes to mind: Continue reading Our most popular categories
Open Thread – Brown Pundits
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Also, I’ve posted a new linguistic podcast on the patron page. It’s 1 hour and 20 minutes, and really dense with information and wide-ranging. There were five people, but I didn’t say much, and Zach was mostly asking questions. So there were three with a huge amount of knowledge engaging with each other. I have to say that this serves as a good model/example for future podcasts.
Open Thread – Brown Pundits
Please keep the other posts on topic. Use this for talking about whatever you want to talk about.