Society, caste and identity
Caste, ethnicity, gender, family and community.
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Open Thread- Love Jihad?
Open thread opening on interfaith marriage and ‘Love Jihad’, with a quoted view that it is conversion when only one partner shares the other’s culture, and a pointer to Dr…
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Why Caste Formed In India and how the heck it could have been maintained! – A Structural Model
Dr Rajorshi Datta argues that strict caste endogamy in India came from structural predisposition rather than luck, using a model of subcontinents as ‘containers’ and upstream geographic and ecological variables.…
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The saffron and the crescent – why BP matters
The author argues that candid comments from Pakistani Muslim commenters on interfaith marriage and idol worship expose a Hindu-Muslim mismatch in worldviews that Indian liberals avoid confronting, and cites Pew…
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The Veil We Will Not Wear
A Bahá’í response to the ‘saffron and crescent’ post, arguing that the Bahá’í position is a distinct civilisational stance that begins with Táhirih unveiling at Badasht in 1848, and that…
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Conversion out of Hinduism and Caste
The post argues that the popular idea that caste explains medieval conversion to Islam and Christianity does not fit the evidence: regions with the least rigid caste had the most…
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On Safety and Hinduphobia
Announcing a ten-day suspension of a commenter who posted another commenter’s personal details, the authors affirm privacy as a house standard. They then argue Hinduphobia is real, theological in form…
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The Shijrah and the Y-Chromosome
A sequel arguing that BB and Qureshi reach the same wrong conclusion on Sayyid ancestry by different routes. The post contends that Y-chromosome evidence retains paternal descent that autosomal arithmetic…
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Arab Fathers are not fabrications (entirely)
Answering BB’s claim that Pakistanis invent foreign fathers, the author argues South Asian Muslims are not one block: Pashtuns, Baloch, Hazaras and Sayyids carry foreign ancestry the genetic record supports,…
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Honour and Acid: The Great Indus Split
X.T.M tests the claim that honour killing is Pakistan’s inheritance from Indus culture and acid attacks India’s. The data are messy and undercounted, but the line broadly holds. Both practices…
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Why is Pakistani Culture obsessed with Policing Female Virginity?
X.T.M reflects on an overheard story of a Pakistani-origin daughter in Europe and the murders of Sana Cheema and Qandeel Baloch. The post argues that policing a daughter’s body remains…
