Category: Popular

What is indigenous about Indian civilization?

The curry to the right contains potatoes, tomatoes, and chili pepper. All of these are features of Indian cuisine from the last 500 years, as they are New World crops. Unsurprisingly, they were often brought by the Portuguese and spread out from Goa. But, at this point, it’s hard to deny these have been thoroughly indigenized. So this brings me to some questions I have for readers (non-troll answers only, I may start banning people who answer unseriously, since I’m very busy this week and don’t want to waste time with drivel):

Continue reading What is indigenous about Indian civilization?

Open Thread โ€“ 08/08/2020 โ€“ Brown Pundits

I’m traveling with my family a lot this week. Please stay under the control, because if you get out of control I’ll be more kludgey in my response than usual.

Also, to be frank, I would appreciate it if every thread doesn’t devolve into arguments between guys you can imagine whacking off to physical anthropology image plates illustrating racial types from National Geographic in 1930. As they’d say in 1930, everyone beyond Calais is a wog.

Belief and Reclamation

For eons, ascetics and wanderers would journey to the sacred snow-clad Himalayas to test the fires of their belief. Where the skies met the earth and the heavens met the material world, humans met enlightenment; and their discoveries would cascade down the subcontinent. These beliefs would be ossified by ritual and rite, and a culture would engulf the land between the great Himalayas and an endless ocean – India, that is Bhฤrata.

And it is this legendary journey from the foothills of the Himalayas to the tip of the subcontinent that a civilizational epic takes place – the Rฤmฤyana. On August 5th, 2020, the ancient song of Valmiki will echo in the villages, in the cities, in the deserts, the fields, the jungles, the mountains, the waters, and especially in the minds of those who believe. A civilization will enact its long-awaited reclamation.

Continue reading Belief and Reclamation

Ram temple


Thanks to readers of this weblog I know something is going on with Ayodha in India today. Two stories I read.

First, Slate, a liberal American publications, Why a Giant Hindu Deity Is Appearing in Times Square on Wednesday.

Second, Al Jazeera, India: Modi to lay Ayodhya temple foundation to push Hindu agenda.

I don’t know much beyond superficiality on this topic. Curious about other pieces.

Open Thread – 08/01/2020 – Brown Pundits

I think when we started the Brown Pundits Browncast we planned a ~1 time a week affair. As it happens it’s not that regular. The Browncast will be gone for 3 weeks, and then come back every other day for a week. Really you should subscribe at one of the options (just click the link in the strip above the latest podcast).

If you want to hear the podcasts early, please become a Patron. I do post them early. Sometimes hours. Sometimes days. Now and then weeks. And on an occasion here and there months. There is also a podcast you can’t hear unless you are a patron since the person interviewed was up for a government position, and they thought it would be best to remove all public opinions for the moment.

The open threads are getting super long, and I will try some non-WP option at some point. Also something with a killfile. I’m pretty relaxed on censorship with the open threads…but at some point, the nastiness is going to turn people off.

I am frustrated by the historical ignorance of many readers of this weblog and “India” Twitter. So a question, if there are three history books someone should read on the West, India, and China, what would they be? I have plenty of suggestions but I’m wondering what the reader would say.

I’m not going to post a separate show notes episode for Kushal Mehra and myself talking about caste, but it’s up.

Open Thread – 07/25/2020 – Brown Pundits

So How Asia Works is very discounted on Kindle in the USA. If you haven’t read it, I recommend it.

In light of the increased comment activity on this weblog, I ask commenters to shy away from too many stupid comments. If you think you may say something stupid, please be cautious, because I may just delete it. My role as a moderator is basically to periodically engage in some ‘natural selection’ and apply some pressure. This is not something that is up for debate.

There is no schedule for the podcasts, but another will be dropping within the next few hours, and more stuff is going to be recorded tomorrow, and I just recorded something today on foreign policy with Richard Hanania.

Open Thread โ€“ Brown Pundits โ€“ 7/18/2020

Just a reminder, I contributed a chapter to Which of Us are Aryans? Some of you are probably skeptical of this book because the editor is Romilla Thapar. You know who that reminds me of? Kabir! He, the master of pollution and contagion (perhaps he’s descended from Brahmins?).

I’ve noticed that there is an increase in rudeness recently. I am pretty lax on the “Open Thread”, but if it doesn’t start to get more in control soon I’m going to start randomly deleting comments. Some of you enjoy writing comment-novels, it would be a shame if something happened to those…

Due to the popularity of this website, I’m going to have to spend some time figuring out how we can scale getting 500 comments on one post in 5 days. The WP install I have isn’t really designed to handle that and the front-end scripts are clearly starting to strain under that. In consideration of my time invested, please consider joining the Patreon (which also totally defrays the cost of hosting and editing the podcasts).

The Jat Gene!

About 10 years ago there was a defunct blog called the “Jat Gene.” Standard stuff. Nothing super amazing discovered, but the Jats do seem on one end of the pole. I happen to have half a dozen Jats which cluster together. You can see where they are on the PCA plots above.

– no surprise that the Jat are on the ANI end of the ANI-ASI cline

– Please note that Jat and Ror and other such groups are distinct from Pathans and especially Baloch in that the latter groups seem to have more and later gene flow/contact from West Asian groups. Perhaps this is the Islamic period? Or perhaps this is just contact due to proximity. The Baloch and Brahui in particular are distinct because they have very little AASI. The Pathan are arguably an Iranian group with South Asian inflection, but the Baloch are just plain West Asian.

– You can see at the admixture plot below. The Jat are less (marginally) European-like than the Ror, but the Treemix indicates the Ror may actually be a mix of a very European-like group with native Indian (ANI-ASI mix). The Jat are probably the same but I don’t have the samples.
Continue reading The Jat Gene!

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