Uncategorized – Page 84

The Post-White World

X.T.M · May 2, 2019 · 15 comments

As I was scoffing down my lunch (I jest; I actually eat really healthy food) a thought came into my mind that a good book title would be “The Post-White World.”

Since 1492 (when Granada fell and Columbus set off) there has been an increasing consolidation of the West. It reached its apogee in the Victorian Era, where it was unabashed racial hegemony, and it took two World Wars to really shake it off. It’s interesting that Islam experienced so much “innovation” in the 19th century simply because the incursion of the West was finally being internalised. Continue reading The Post-White World

What is a “Brown Pundits” podcast?

Razib Khan · May 2, 2019 · 6 comments

One of the interesting things about asking people whether they would come on this blog’s podcast is that they often say “I don’t know if I’d be that interesting to the audience….” More specifically, there isn’t always a South Asian “hook” to some of the episodes.

But the name of the podcast is “Brown Pundits” because this podcast was started by a few brown guys. Not because we discuss purely “brown” things.

Our most popular categories

X.T.M · May 1, 2019 · 17 comments

I’ve given myself the thankless task of “tagging” all my past posts. I noticed that we don’t have a tag on “Kashmir” (the only sub-region we do have is NWFP). It sparked a thought that for a Desi blog we really don’t discuss Kashmir all that much (even though it was going to drag the region into war earlier this year).

This mirrors the larger discourse on Kashmir where Indians & Pakistanis don’t seem as animated or defined by it as before. Two reason comes to mind: Continue reading Our most popular categories

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?

Browncast Episode 33: an ethnography of doubting Darwin

Razib Khan · April 28, 2019 · 3 comments

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 I am posting a podcast that I decided to record on a lark. I talked to Benjamin Dierker, the author of Why One-Third Of Biologists Now Question Darwinism. To be frank, this is a case where you need to read beyond the title…

Dierker and I had a lot of common ground and his main project is not a defense of Intelligent Design, as much as an ethnography of it. We hashed out what Neo-Darwinism means, as well as how conservatives should bury the hatchet when it comes to their historical enmity to evolutionary theory. In fact, we discussed extensively how the left’s revolt against human nature in the past generation opens up an avenue for conservatives to be on the side of science.

Browncast Episode 32: Indian Linguistics Podcast

X.T.M · April 27, 2019 · 63 comments

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…).

We had a conversation about Indian linguistics. It was Razib, myself, Avtansa, Indian Linguist and TianChengWen.

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.

Pakistan is home to the most frenetic education reforms in the world

X.T.M · April 27, 2019 · 3 comments

EVERY three months, Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab, gathers education officials around a large rectangular table. The biggest of Pakistan’s four provinces, larger in terms of population (110m) than all but 11 countries, Punjab is reforming its schools at a pace rarely seen anywhere in the world. In April 2016, as part of its latest scheme, private providers took over the running of 1,000 of the government’s primary schools. Today the number is 4,300. By the end of this year, Mr Sharif has decreed, it will be 10,000. The quarterly “stocktakes” are his chance to hear what progress is being made towards this and other targets—and whether the radical overhaul is having any effect.

For officials it can be a tough ride. Leaders of struggling districts are called to Lahore for what Allah Bakhsh Malik, Punjab’s education secretary, calls a “pep talk”. Asked what that entails, he responds: “Four words: F-I-R-E. It is survival of the fittest.” About 30% of district heads have been sacked for poor results in the past nine months, says Mr Malik. “We are working at Punjabi speed.”

Reformers are trying to make up for generations of neglect

Continue reading Pakistan is home to the most frenetic education reforms in the world

Open Thread – Brown Pundits

Razib Khan · April 27, 2019 · 16 comments

Please keep the other posts on topic. Use this for talking about whatever you want to talk about.

Also, I’ve posted a new linguistic podcast on the patron page. It’s 1 hour and 20 minutes, and really dense with information and wide-ranging. There were five people, but I didn’t say much, and Zach was mostly asking questions. So there were three with a huge amount of knowledge engaging with each other. I have to say that this serves as a good model/example for future podcasts.

The many ways of being Brown Diasporic

Razib Khan · April 25, 2019 · 23 comments

An admission: I have no idea what half of Zach’s posts are about. More clearly, they’re written in English, but there are so many references to Indian/South Asian pop-culture and drop-ins of Hindi-Urdu words that I have no idea what he’s talking about. It might as well be Greek. Often after 30 minutes of Google, I get it, but it’s pretty funny because technically we’re both English-speaking brown people living in Anglo countries.

There are different kinds of brown people. Some of them are well talked about. For example, ABCD vs. “FOB” culture. But it’s way more subtle and diverse than that.

For example, I have a friend who grew up in Canada, who is from a South Indian Brahmin background. But, it turns out that the only Indian language she knows is Hindi, because of the people she grew up with. I am not good with languages. I have primitive fluency with Bengali, though I can’t read it, and absolutely no firsthand knowledge of Hindi or Urdu. A lot of Diasporic South Asians though drop-in in Hindi-Urdu words into their speech and a lot of us have no idea what you are talking about (I share this reaction with a lot of people of South Indian background raised in the USA, who don’t know Hindi).

Zach is a “Third Culture” person in a traditional sense. I really am not…my parents left Bangladesh in 1980, and did not raise me among many Bengalis or even South Asian people. Better to describe me as American culture + an accent/perspective of something very different.