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Continue reading The Battle for the Taj Mahal & India’s Sacred Lands: Waqf Boards Under Fire

“Repeated gut detoxes and probiotics won’t help if you continue holding onto the “tiger’s tail”—the stress. That’s the missing link in your detox protocol” Dr. Ashmita

With 100 days left until I turn 40, I’ve become laser-focused on preemptive care—a philosophy inspired by Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint. My genetic predispositions, including non-alcoholic cirrhosis and cardiac arrest, means that health is more than just important—it’s personal & spiritual*.

Continue reading The Gut-Brain Detox: Preparing for 40 with Ozone Therapy in Chennai

 

In the 15th century, Venetian explorer Niccolò de’ Conti coined the phrase “The Italian of the East” for Telugu, captivated by its melody and rhythm. He famously asked, “Is this language or music?”

Tl;dr Four Reasons Why Telugu is So Poetic:

1. Vowel-Endings: Nearly every word in Telugu ends with a vowel, making it rhythmically pleasing and easy to rhyme.
2. Vowel Harmony: Telugu’s phonetic structure ensures that vowels are adjusted for a more aesthetically pleasing flow, creating a melodic cadence.
3. Verb Flexibility: Telugu verbs can take on thousands of forms from a single root (e.g., choodu becomes choosaanu, choosthunnanu, choosindi), allowing for nuanced expression and sound variation.
4. Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Dravidian Influence: The layering of these linguistic traditions adds depth and variety to Telugu, enriching its poetic and musical capabilities.

See more detail after the jump.

Continue reading The Italian of the East: Is It Language or Music?

India’s influence on world history is undeniable, yet the narratives that emerge often come from unexpected directions. William Dalrymple’s latest, The Golden Road, shines a light on the central role India played in ancient global exchanges—spreading ideas, art, religion, and science across vast geographies. From the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, the legacy of Indian civilization is visible everywhere.

Consider Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram), a bustling port city under the Pallava dynasty (275-897 AD), whose ships once connected India to Southeast Asia. These traders didn’t just carry textiles and spices; they brought with them Sanskrit, Buddhism, and Indian architecture. The awe-inspiring Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the largest religious monument in the world, and Borobudur in Java, the largest Buddhist temple on the planet, are prime examples of how Indian ideas were adopted and adapted by local cultures. In Angkor Wat, Hinduism’s cosmology of Mount Meru shaped the temple’s design, while Borobudur’s mandala-like structure reflects Indian Mahayana Buddhism’s spiritual journey to enlightenment. Continue reading The Power of the ancient Indian Story

Across India, discussions about demographics are charged with questions of destiny and identity. In the Hindi belt, particularly in UP and Bihar, the focus often turns to birth rates between Hindus and Muslims, a dynamic sometimes referred to as a “cradle race.” This term reflects deeper concerns about societal balance, yet paradoxically, it also influences high birth rates among upper castes. I know a (Hindu) woman from Bihar who recently had her third son, a personal example of how this dialectic pervades everyday life.

Globally, the Hindu population has grown modestly from 11% to 15% over the past five centuries. In contrast, the share of the Abrahamic faiths has surged from 37% to 54%, moving from a plurality to a Scottish majority.

In the same period, within what is the modern boundaries of India, the Hindu population has seen a subtle decline—from 85% to 79%—reflecting a complex history of migration, cultural shifts, and geopolitical changes. The most pronounced demographic shifts occurred in areas now known as Pakistan and Bangladesh, which made the Hindu population of the Greater Indian Subcontinent dropped from 78% to 66%. Despite this decline, these two countries still rank as the 2nd and 5th largest Hindu populations globally, underscoring their profound & immovable Indic substrate.

Mughal imperialism significantly reshaped Bengal’s religious landscape with taxation settlements, British colonialism introduced Christianity with further irrigation works also impacting demographics in Western Punjab, and Partition irrevocably redrawing demographic lines.

The narrative of global demographic displacement—often framed as the decline of a lighter-skinned, prosperous population in a democracy—oversimplifies and distorts the real dynamics. The Parsis of Mumbai, for example, despite their dwindling numbers, continue to wield significant economic and cultural influence. Their enduring presence in South Bombay, marked by landmarks and institutions, underscores a critical point: demographic numbers don’t necessarily dictate power or presence.

Historically, the emergence of elites often resulted from historical accidents rather than pure meritocracy. The upper castes in India, consistently representing 15-25% of the Hindu population over centuries, exemplify this. Their enduring influence, despite societal changes and efforts toward social equity, highlights the deep-rooted structures that shape contemporary realities.

In France, the overrepresentation of white individuals in parliament—estimated at 90-95% despite whites comprising 70-85% of the population (but these numbers are notoriously hard to get by as France doesn’t do official racial & ethnic counts so as to not undermine the indivisibility of the French people & nation)—reflects a global issue: power doesn’t always proportionally reflect demographic makeup. This discrepancy invites a broader reflection on how historical advantages and institutional control determine who holds power.

This discussion is crucial, not just academically, but for understanding how identity, power, and demographics intersect in complex ways. By critically examining these narratives, we can better understand the realities of demographic changes without succumbing to deterministic thinking.

The myth of democratic liberal capitalism is the presumption that voters determine the true shift of power. The growing inertia of the deep state—civil services and military administrations—makes genuine reform difficult, echoing George Orwell’s observation: “but England will still be England, an everlasting animal stretching into the future and the past, and, like all living things, having the power to change out of recognition and yet remain the same.”

It’s nigh on impossible to imagine India that is not Bharat, to envision a future where Hinduism isn’t deeply & inextricably intertwined with its land of origin. It is much more likely that one day, Vedic traditions will once again flow across the banks of the Indus, reclaiming the lost civilization of the past.

Reproducing a recent (slightly edited) tweet in full, originally written in response this article:

Yes, I read your piece, and I’ve read countless others like it over the last decade. That Indian Americans are a “model minority” is not a myth, it’s a statement of fact that is apparent to anyone who has taken even a cursory look at the community’s social/economic outcomes in recent decades as measured by any reasonable metric. It’s not culturally chauvinistic or triumphalist to point this out. There is an important conversation to be had about the structural factors that enabled this including, e.g., inequities in Indian society and American immigration policy (so-called “double selection”), but it is also apparent that our success as a community in recent decades has been a product of both the openness and economic dynamism of American society and the Indian community’s emphasis on financial success, educational attainment, and family stability. That this picture doesn’t capture the diaspora community as a whole is obvious, but it doesn’t have to. That’s why we use averages.

The assertion that the model minority is a “myth” is not an empirical argument, but an ideological one, and in my view it reflects an underlying anxiety among Indian Americans regarding their position in the elite left/democratic coalition. On the one hand, Indian Americans enjoy socio-economic outcomes that surpass those of the average white American, but on the other hand we are from a post-colonial country, are brown, largely non-Christian, etc. and therefore have a natural affinity to the “POC” coalition. It’s a tenuous position to be sure, and the result is an emergent elite that feels the need to apologize for the community’s success, to be embarrassed of it, or to attribute it to wholly structural factors. Even more pernicious is the characterization of certain cultural values that enabled our success in the first place as “White, Christian” measures of success. This is nonsensical and dismissive of the struggles of first generation immigrants who escaped destitution and successfully created a better life for themselves and their families.

The success of Indian Americans in recent decades throws a wrench in the American racial binary (in fact this has been the case since Bhagat Singh Thind), but it also casts doubt on the prevailing ideological shibboleths of the left, namely that America is a white supremacist country, that we are all victims of structural racism, etc. Look, these critiques of American society might have some truth to them, but Indian Americans are not convincing spokespeople for a view that is so at odds with our own experience. To pretend otherwise is to try and fit a square peg in a round hole. So when someone holds up Indian Americans as “ideal” or “model” immigrants, this aggravates the anxiety, because it reveals the truth that our community’s success has been enabled by a political and social culture that many Indian Americans are ideologically compelled to condemn as fundamentally inequitable.

What is most ironic, however, is that the result is often not considered reflection on these ideological axioms, but rather the construction of a “model minority” of their own. The dutiful, hard-working immigrant who is grateful to their adopted country and a model for other immigrants is rejected as a normative ideal in favor of the committed ally who recognizes their privilege and dutifully subordinates the lessons of their own experience and culture to the demands of the coalition. Those who dissent from this model are increasingly condemned as some sort of traitors to the “culture” or, increasingly, “hindu supremacists.” I’d like to think there’s a third path, one that unabashedly celebrates Indian American success and the society and culture that enabled it, while also thinking critically about how Indian Americans can leverage that success to contribute to the national fabric in a way that does not require ritual self-flagellation as a demonstration of political and ideological loyalty.

Radhika and Anant Ambani finally get married. Mind you their wedding festivites, all in all, started in March of this year. So it essentially stretched on for months.

The latest news today is that Anant gifted his 10 groomsmen, limited edition luxury watches (only 25 pieces), worth $250,000 apiece.

I wish the Ambanis the very best that life has to offer but I’m reflecting that this might go some way in explaining as to why the BJP’s electoral results were so much poorer than expected. I also note that the Gandhis refused to attend the wedding; in a way one can’t buy the attendance of blue bloods?

I’m sounding slightly Waspish here (what to do I live between the two Cambridges) but such excessive and extravagant displays of wealth seems only focused on pleasure and leisure. What I would have much preferred is some old decrepit part of India sensitively restored for the wedding; where is the investment in the country itself.

One could argue that the Ambanis are the very essence and marrow of India then why are they partaking in foreign luxury brands and not patronising in domestic industries.

These are just questions that I’m asking since after all this is easily the most expensive wedding on the planet and history; Mukesh Ambani has spent $600 million on this entire escapade (0.5% of the Ambani family wealth?).

We also had a rather nice wedding but above all it interwove taste, class, tradition with a touch of opulence.

Noblesse obligee demands those who are fortunate to reflect on what they are able to give back to society; one cannot but remember that European nobility patronised the Great Masters, Mozart, Brahms and other such brilliant art. Even Shah Jahan, who was not the wisest or sanest of rules, at least built the tear on the cheek of eternity.

What has emerged from Anant’s wedding that will stand the test of time?