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I’m quite proud of this podcast since I was able to get some of the linguistic luminaries together. The topic was a broad overview of language in South Asia.
We were able to keep a very strong regional balance since TCW’s specialty is Dravidian. We touched on the role of Sanskrit and its prominence as a literary lingua franca until the late medieval period (until it was supplanted).
Incidentally, we didn’t talk all that much about Indian English instead we delved into the “dialects.” There seems to be a turning point in that the Subcontinent is consolidating linguistically among regional, national and religious lines with English emerging as the great neutral and prestige language.
We touched a fair bit on the specific languages of the Hindi belt but I guess for next time we will have to tackle those that are tangential to the Hindi language sphere like Punjabi, Bengali, and Marathi.
More than 137 people have been killed and more than 150 injured after coordinated bomb blasts hit a number of high-end hotels and churches in Sri Lanka on Sunday.
The blasts, reported to have occurred in the cities of Negombo, Batticalo and the capital Colombo, targeted at least three hotels and three churches as worshippers attended Easter services.
Bodies of the dead have been received at Colombo National Hospital, according to hospital sources. Most of those injured were also taken there, hospital officials said.
Please post updates in the comments.
Update: New York Times seems to be reporting Islamists.
One hundred years since the Amritsar massacre, probably among the worst violations in all of Britain's tenure in India and the phrases uttered still don't contain the word 'SORRY'. So much for the paragon of civility and refinement in the world. #shame
Martin may either be a surname or given name. Martin is a common given and family name in many languages and cultures. It comes from the Latin name Martinus, which is a late derived form of the name of the Roman god Mars, the protective godhead of the Latins, and therefore the god of war….
As a German surname, Luther is derived from a Germanic personal name compounded from the words liut, “people”, and heri, “army”. As a rare English surname, it means “lute player” (Hanks and Hodges 1988). Luther is also derived from the Greek name Eleutherius. Eleutherius is a cognate of the Greek word eleutheros (έλεύθερος) which means “free.”
I bring this up because it is curious and notable to me that apparently is common for converts to Christianity in India (I’m setting aside traditionally Christian groups such as Nasranis) to take a “Christian name”. One of the arguments is that you shouldn’t have names which refer to a pagan god. Someone should have told Martin Luther. The Anglo-Saxon kings retained the myth of descending from pagan German gods long after their Christianization (they obviously didn’t believe it literally, though they still refused to let go for the prestige).
About ten years ago I read a book about the Islamicization of the core Muslim world. In particular, there was a curious feature of the process that occurred over three centuries in Iran. There was a chart of the form:
The records were clearly from sub-elite individuals. People from whom records remained due to their service or taxes paid. What one sees is that for several centuries the proportion of classical Iranian names drops as the number of local landlords who are non-Muslim drop….and then as the Muslims become overwhelming, there are individuals who are known to be Muslim who are being given classical Iranian names all of a sudden.
The link between being non-Muslim (generally Zoroastrian) in rural Iran among sub-elites and having an Iranian name disappeared when the number of non-Muslims declined to the point where they were not a major community (outside of isolated areas such as Yazd).
In a similar manner, Bangladeshi Muslims often have more ostentatiously Arabic names than Pakistani Muslims, who reflect more Iranian and Central Asian influence. The Bengali Muslim intelligentsia is a recent creation of late modernity, balancing its sincere religious beliefs with an ethnic identity distinct from the post-Mughal Islamicate culture further up the Gangetic plain and into Punjab (the Muslim elites of Mughal era Bengal did not speak Bengali as their high language, and the early Bengal Rennaissance was due to Hindu gentry). The extremely Arabic names are probably one way to emphasize one’s Muslim bonafide in a cheap manner.
My own children have conventionally Western forenames (though not generic ones). The reasoning is straightforward: they are being raised in a conventional white American milieu. I have no religious attachments obviously, nor am I passionately ethnic, outside of some food preferences. Their South Asian heritage is part of their past through me, but the future is different, and the names reflect that.
Going back to names…it’s ridiculous to say that they don’t indicate deep culture dynamics. The hyper-Muslim people in my family don’t make recourse to Bengali pet names. My father, whose father was an ulem, did not have such a pet name. As the lineage secularized, with my father, pet names in Bengali reappeared.
Since I am not a believer and am unlikely to passionately convert to some religion, I don’t know the motivations and psychology. And people are free to do what they want. But the idea that conversion to Christianity necessitates a name change seems ridiculous to me. The first Christian king of Sweden was Olof Skötkonung. The first Christian Roman Emperor was named Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus from birth to death. Could think of a name more Scandinavian or Latin Classical?
Though it is common in the Islamic world to have distinct names rooted back to the Middle East (Indonesian Muslims being an exception), there is far less uniformity in Christianity. And yet many Christians adopt this pattern. Why? Similarly, white converts to Hinduism sometimes adopt Indian names. Why?
The post is not so much an argument for anything. But an observation that opens up a discussion….
Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes, Spotify, 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.
Today Zach and I talk about his evolution in relation to Islam. In particular, why Zach has become vocally and unapologetically Islamophobic recently, and what the difference between Islamophobia and anti-Muslim prejudice is. I also ask Zach what his problem white people, and in particular PewDiePie, is.
And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.
Lately, we have been talking a lot of things about South Asia but not much on what is supposed to be the biggest event in the calendar for 2019, India General Elections 2019 scheduled to start 11th April and continue till May. Looking at the Opinion Polls it seems that BJP’s election fortune has become much brighter since the dustup with Pakistan. Although foreign issues do not dominate Indian elections that much. Domestically, general Indian people still seem to regard Modi as a better steward for the Indian economy than Rahul or any other alternatives. I have no opinion on the probable results as I have little knowledge and expertise. Let those who are more informed opine here freely on the elections. Not just probable outcomes but also about social, economic and political directions that this elections may bring about.
19th March : ” Times Now and VMR survey is back with yet another batch of poll-related data and analysis. In the current survey, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is predicted to grab 283 out of 543 Lok Sabha seats, UPA – 135 and Others – 125.
In the last survey, the Times Now-VMR poll had shown that the NDA would have been 21 seats short of the half-way mark had 2019 Lok Sabha Elections been held in January.”
Maybe he should do us all a favour and do what his fellow countryman Avici did a year back (and seems to be a Scandinavian trait).
“Guess to beat one Swedish boy you need a billion Asians.”
“All it took was a massive corporate entity with every song in Bollywood.”
He then tries to allege corruption of T-Series (second 48-1.10). Usual coloniser tactic when they get jealous of Brown Success (as though they didn’t simply rape and conquer the world).
He then calls Bangladesh, Indian, which of course is not an insult but is a deliberate ignorance (Bangladesh fought a long and bloody war to be considered it’s own 1971 nation).
Minute 2:02 he refers to defecation assuming a joke on India’s open defecation rates.
Then he dares to have the temerity to educate South Asians, who are probably the world’s greatest wordsmiths on the distinction between defamation and defecation. To paraphrase they were savages while we were busy composing the Vedas and the Avestas not to mention the Quran, which probably has no literary equivalent the world over (Muhammad may have been a sick pedo but he seemed a pretty decent poet).
Did you know that Indians have poo-poo in their brains?
Then some long orange haired junkie sings, How about next you figure out how to fix the caste system?
Maybe all those ads will solve your crippling poverty.
I’ll add a very short thought here. What happens to Pakistan when they interact with other Muslims (especially Arabs, Persians & Turks) is that all of the national identity issues come to the fore.
Pakistanis obviously do not spring from those cultures and as a people virtually all of our holidays are Islamic in origin. Pakistan may seem as an Islamic culture in South Asia but it’s profound “Hinduness/Indianess” refracts in a Muslim setting.
That is a core reason as to why Pakistanis do not garner respect. For instance the Persians (who anyway are the leaders of their own sect of Islam) will always emphasize their own identity and festivals in all contexts. The Turks are supremely proud of being Turkish and the Arabs are of course the archetypal Muslims.
Pakistanis should have been incorporating the “colourful” Hindu festivals (Diwali, Holi, Cheti Chand, Basant) into our cultural matrix and even looked towards appropriating Sanskrit and the Vedas (as Bollywood has done to Urdu). Unfortunately this lack of perspective means we have only substracted from our cultural base as a “tit-for-tat” response.
Pakistan is not only an insufficiently imagined nation but furthermore a hollow one. Many gods have lived on the Indus and unless we welcome them back home, Pakistan’s psyche will be always be on the verge of psychosis (no other nation has happily condemned an innocent Mother of 5 for a decade and kept quiet about it).
Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on 