Category: Popular

When Brahmins get treated like Dalits; the world listens

X.T.M · May 15, 2019 · 109 comments

https://www.instagram.com/p/BxYNcrTAw0Y/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=xogsyngrd9zr

Swipe right and you’ll see why I wrote that.

I agree white people have to learn *more* about race but how many upper caste Indians would be comfortable with their children playing with Dalits?

And yes for white people *we* (coloured volk) are all Dalits since we were their subordinates and slaves less than half a century ago (history would have turned out very different had they not destroyed each other in White War 1 & White War 2).

As an aside I find it a bit absurd when Brits go on and on about how they “died for our freedom.” Our ancestors were subjects (or rather more like glorified servants; Hindustani text books in the 19th century is how an English lady should tell her staff to do a better job) both before and after the Wars so it’s a bit rich to presume they shed their blood in our name. Even the epithet “World War” masks that though the world was at war, it was simply because it was controlled by White Powers (with the exception of Japan). Language is a masking told and all powerful in how to reshape the narrative.

I’m not going to be an icon for Hinditva (I wanted to write Hindutva but my phone defaulted to Hinditva LOL) simply because I make a daily habit of shitting on Islam.

There are some deeply disturbing aspects of Hindu culture especially with regards to treating a huge section of their population on a lower rank than animals.

Caste is the South Asian curse and makes us the laughing stock of the world. Our colour obsession stems from the simple fact that colour is profoundly correlated to the caste hierarchy (as a Chennaite once told me in Kampala- never trust a black Brahmin).

I find it a bit amusing when Indians hyperventilate that Islam is the biggest threat to world peace and Indian security. I would have imagined a significant subsection of their truly dark population (Ms. Subramanian is *not* dark in Chennai) in abject and soul-wrenching poverty should rank a bit higher on their list of concerns..

Why I hate the Hijab

X.T.M · May 13, 2019 · 56 comments

The Hijab is a part of the Middle Eastern-Levantine cultural matrix so I don’t  have a problem when I see Arab women wear it . But it’s risible when Desi Muslims try to flaunt what is essentially an alien garment. If one wants to be modest why not just wear a salwar kameez and elegantly drape the dupatta?

After I ranted to V about yet another uppity Hijabi (the offending lady in question had secured herself a booth for 4 people in a crowded cafe); V made a profound remark.

V didn’t mind the Hijab per se; women should be allowed to wear what they want. However what she found to be so strange about the Muslim hijabi activists in the West is that they had no sympathy for their Iranian sisters who are dying for the right to dress as they please.

Continue reading Why I hate the Hijab

The Indian Muslim question

X.T.M · May 11, 2019 · 64 comments

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).

Continue reading The Indian Muslim question

Lord Indra was a tan man

Razib Khan · May 10, 2019 · 112 comments
An angel of the Christian Era

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.

Lord Indra’s face? NO!

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.

Continue reading Lord Indra was a tan man

2019 Brown Pundits Reader survey

Razib Khan · May 6, 2019 · 109 comments

“I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me.”

-Terrence

One of the strange things is the comments on this weblog make it seem like many more of the readers are South Asian than is really case (or care about the India-Pakistan conflict). I wish more of you would speak. I’m brown, but I speak on Chinese history. It’s my history too. In a cosmopolitan post-national world the global chattering class should consider Terrence’s insights and be less bashful.

Continue reading 2019 Brown Pundits Reader survey

Should the Pakistani elite revive Sab-ki-Hindi (the Farsi of India).

X.T.M · May 4, 2019 · 78 comments

I was overlooking Vidhi’s screen at the gym and saw the dance. Initially I thought Bharatanatyam (it didn’t have a title) is so elegant and mesmerising and I asked Vidhi, what it was.

She replied that it was a Kathak and I made a mini-rant about how India ignores Islamicate culture etc. Incidentally I only just learnt Vidhi had studied Katak and, surprisingly for someone from Chennai, not Bharatanatyam. Her mother (a Sindhi from the North) made the choice and chose accordingly. I’m trying to convince her to pick up Kathak again to offset the intensity of her research.

My point being is that while Kathak has distinctly Hindu/Indian origins; it is ultimately (like Hindustani music) a culmination of the Indo-Islamic culture (apparently Wajid Ali Shah was its finest patron).

My post is about another suggestion that I’ve been dwelling upon this am. I’m convinced that the noblest thing that Pakistani elites could do is resurrect the medieval Persian dialect of India. Continue reading Should the Pakistani elite revive Sab-ki-Hindi (the Farsi of India).

Is the social justice exterior overwhelming the Indian nationalist interior?

Razib Khan · May 1, 2019 · 53 comments

One of the most interesting things I have experienced over the past 15 years or so interacting with young Indian Americans, usually of Hindu background, is the disjunction between the scripts that they are inculcated with in their education in broader society, and the quite nationalistic/parochial perspectives that are imparted to them by their parents.

You can say many things about me, but there isn’t much of a disjunction in what I will say you to privately about controversial topics and what I will say in public about controversial topics (the main skeptics of this view are some Hindu nationalists and Zionists, who are convinced that I’m an Islamic supremacist sleeper agent).

So, I when I began to spend some time around Indian Americans one of the peculiar things I was a bit surprised by his how different their extremely social justice Left external presentation could be from what they might say privately over some drinks, or if they perceived you to be an intimate acquaintance. Since my views on Islam were well known many of them felt quite free to openly state their privately skeptical views on the religion of Islam and the practices of Muslims, which reflected what their parents had told them, while in public these people might still denounce Islamophobia. People who would criticize caste privilege in public forums might still be privately smugly proud of their family’s caste background. And, the same people who might perceive American patriotism as to be jingoistic and declasse would express Indian nationalism that they had absorbed with their mother’s milk in private in the crassest of terms.

But there does come a time when you leave your parents’ home, and their influence. And I don’t interact much with Indian Americans on a day to day basis, but I do wonder if many progressive Indian Americans are bringing their two aspects into alignment, and shedding their private chauvinistic reflexes?

An analogy here might be young American Jews, who until recently were quite liberal in the American context, but might align with more ethnonationalist views in relation to Israel (even if they supported the Left parties in Israel, those parties are still more nationalistic than similar parties in the United States). Today the two views are coming into coherence, as most younger American Jews who are not orthodox are starting to distance themselves from Israel.

Did the Brits “Indianise” the NorthWest?

X.T.M · April 29, 2019 · 66 comments

I was picking up the comment thread on the linguistics podcast. To my mind there are some inconsistencies about modern-day Pakistan:

(1.) Ever since MBQ conquered Sindh in 712; Sindh has remained under Muslim rule. When it did have local rule it was essentially a tussle between the Baloch and Muslim Rajputs, which has replicated itself to this day. Benazir Bhutto is of Rajput ancestry (Bhatt) while her husband Zardari is a Baloch. The Hindu minority were either merchants or serfs and as far as I know the caste Hindus of Sindh are a basically heteregenous lot (there is only one Brahmin surname among the Amils and the castes tends to have strong geographic regions).

(2.) As for Baluchistan and KPK; It’s basically seen the incursion of Iranian speakers the past millennia or so.

So the real question left is Punjab (the 5th major Indus region Kashmir is out of scope). Continue reading Did the Brits “Indianise” the NorthWest?

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