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BrownCast Podcast episode 14: conversation with a Hindu nationalist

Razib Khan · February 8, 2019 · 54 comments

Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes 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…this podcast has been up for nearly a week on the patron page).

I asked our interlocuter for some reading material. Here’s what he suggested:

– Essentials of Hindutva

– Hindu Society Under Siege

– Who is a Hindu?

– The Sarva-Darsana-Samgraha Review of the Different Systems of Hindu Philosophy

Obviously, there wasn’t going to be any resolution after an hour and a half long conversation. Instead, questions and confusions were clarified. Disagreements were aired. That being said, I did leave the discussion crystal clear about what Pinaka opposed, rather than what he supported. At least in the specifics. I would hold that one reason that this is so is that it is easier to say what Hindu culture and religion is not more than what it is.

The ghost of empire and the origin of all repression

Razib Khan · February 7, 2019 · 11 comments

The New York Times published an op-ed, How British Feminism Became Anti-Trans, where India implicitly makes a showing:

It’s also worth noting that the obsession with supposed “biological realities” of people like Ms. Parker are part of a long tradition of British feminism interacting with colonialism and empire. Imperial Britain imposed policies to enforce heterosexuality and the gender binary, while simultaneously constructing the racial “other” as not only fundamentally different, but freighted with sexual menace; from there, it’s not a big leap to see sexual menace in any sort of “other,” and “biological realities” as essential and immutable….

These views are very common on the cultural Left. When progressive social activists make these assertions, and I argue that they are factually wrong, I’ve often encounter surprise and annoyance. There are two things I suspect going on here:

– These people are not genuine propagandists, they actually believe their own fictions. Faced with facts that are novel to them don’t know how to react. They live in a factual bubble where it is taken for granted that the idea of binary gender as a dominant paradigm was introduced by Westerners to South Asians, whose own conceptions were fluid, open, and tolerant.

– The facts of the history of non-Western cultures are fundamentally irrelevant because they exist only to support narratives relevant within Western cultures. Those narratives and the trajectory of Western culture is their true passion. Their fundamental Eurocentrism means that falsehood about non-Western cultures is not particularly of great concern. That is not “their history.” Minor details to be ignored and brushed aside.

Gibbon famously asserted that the Pope, and implicitly the Roman Catholic Church, was the “ghost of the Roman Empire.” A living, breathing, vestige of an institution and society long gone. Much of modern Western Left social progressivism, informed by critical theory and post-colonialism, is a ghost of 19th and 20th-century empire. It is the warped inversion and reflection of Western chauvinism and populism.

It is highly peculiar to me that on the precipice of the 21st Asian age Western intellectuals bask and wallow in the reflected glory of Victorian-era empires as if they are determinative of all the goings on today. Part of this is surely due to the reality that intellectual currents are lagging indicators, and empires always persist longer in memory and self-regard than in reality. And part of it is the human needs for “noble savages” and “pure” Others against which their own sins may be measured and contrasted.

Our most popular podcasts & a personal dilemma

X.T.M · February 7, 2019 · 1 comment

Our Genetics & India post just crossed a very major milestone (Omar’s China episode is closely racing it) and 13 episodes on I thought it would be good to share our most downloaded podcasts. Our podcast listening figures are many multiples of the readership of this blog so kudos to Razib for suggesting it and to Omar & myself for hitching along for the ride.

Omar’s most recent podcast on India Military History has only just been released this morning and is already very well-downloaded. It’s interesting to see just how interested our listeners are in China, Islam and the military; not so much in Indian specific topics, art or culture. I guess people are most interested in the near exotic rather than the familiar.

I believe we have a podcast on the Patron page and another one is expected to be done tomorrow (I can only join in because the time zones align being back in Chennai again- for work this time).

I’m finalising a few of my own podcasts; I’m reworking the Dravidian one into a Deccan languages one. I’m also looking for a very well versed economist to speak with on the Indian economy both in a global and South Asian context.

I’m still very much a technophobe; my after dinner electronic ban has led to an efflorescence of intellectual thought (if I say so myself). I’m handwriting my novel & then interspersing my journal entries as a break between writing blocks.

I tried handwriting BP posts but they end up so familiar & intime that I have to post them to my locked private blog; it’s astonishing just how difficult it is to be trollish/opinionated about topics by hand, it just seems absurd on the written word as opposed to a computer.

I’ve discovered the medium of technology profoundly influences the writing style (twitter and its propensity for flame wars is a good example). Knowing that I have a ready audience with only the click of the button I will write for the reader than for myself. However the handwritten style, where the reader is a distant stranger, lends to a profound intimacy.

I’m very proud of my prolific output even though my handwritten notes rapidly degenerate into hieroglyphics if not typed out and it will require constant editing (not surprisingly I tend to be of the James Joyce style, a stream of consciousness).

In many ways I remind myself of a D-lister who have made their career playing Marvel characters is now trying to be taken seriously as an actor.

By masalafying BP and spicing up the comment threads, I’ve trolled my way to the top in the niche world of Brown Pundity. Now in my own search for authenticity I find myself compelled to play a role all of my own making. An existential crisis worthy of a good novel..

The Art of Ta’arof

X.T.M · February 6, 2019 · 8 comments

Some years ago in Tehran a 90 something gentleman got up to greet someone half his age since he said those are the manners he was taught as a young lad. I instagrammed it as “amazing ta’arof” and my Persian friends immediately corrected me that was not ta’arof but genuine.

So Ta’arof is not always a positive force since it’s mixed in with traces of deception. This article below was a very old post in my blog and thought I would share it since it’s so well-written.

by Zohreh Ghahremani

One of the most complicated aspects of Persian culture — and language — is the untranslatable ta’arof. Depending on the circumstance, it can mean any number of things: To offer, to compliment and/or exchange pleasantries. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. I doubt if any study can lead to a full understanding of Ta’arof. A born and raised Persian, even I find myself losing my grasp on it from time to time.

Continue reading The Art of Ta’arof

Open Thread – Brown Pundits

Razib Khan · February 5, 2019 · 24 comments

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

Just a note, that two future podcast episodes are up in the patron’s page. One of them on Indian military history and another a discussion with a Hindu nationalist. We plan on doing follow-ups to both.

Brown Pundits on Instagram!

Vishal · February 4, 2019 · 2 comments

Contributors, commenters, lurkers:

Happy to announce that Brown Pundits is officially on Instagram! You can find the profile here: https://www.instagram.com/brown_pundits. Please do give the account a follow.

I’ve noticed in my social media travels that the desi presence on Instagram these days is quite strong. There’s been a proliferation of profiles dedicated to desi history and culture that have seen some pretty expansive growth (e.g. Brown History, southasia.art). And as the sole and best source of heterodox views on all things South Asia, it’s only fair that BP gets it on the fun.

The primary purpose of the page will be boost the signal of the Brown Pundits Podcast, which is off to a great start and has already recorded a number of fantastic episodes. But of course, the page will be a work in progress.

Please do leave any comments or suggestions you have in the comments. Also open to any suggested “tag lines” we can include in the bio: as a starter, I went with “Punditry by Browns, for Browns.”

Two Dosas

X.T.M · February 3, 2019 · Comments Off

I was looking for a Western pop music video I saw in the gym. It was a white girl (darker hue but recognisably “Western features) in a very “local” restaurant in small-town Indian.

The son of the owners, a nerdy boy, immediately falls in love with her. He tries every tired trope to win her attention but it’s only when he “Bollywoodises” (he forms a dance troupe) that he manages to catch her attention, at which point stairs descends from heaven and she climbs up (either an angel or alien).

Unfortunately I can’t find the link to that video but instead I looked at the above video, which is an interesting short film.

The religious and genetic structure of Bengal & Partition

Razib Khan · February 2, 2019 · 13 comments

I was emailing with a friend of mine about population genetic history and Southeast Asia. I mentioned offhand that there is an east to west cline of Tibeto-Burman ancestry in Bengal. He expressed surprise, assuming Partition had scrambled everything.

As most readers of this weblog know, Partition was less traumatic for Bengal than it was for Punjab. The violence was less extreme, and the population movement also not as massive. And yet looking at the religious map it is clear that some sorting has occurred. The proportion of Hindus in the region that is now Bangladesh has gone from ~25% to about 10% over the past 70 years, or three generations. Though some of this is due to differences in fertility, the main driver has been migration of Hindus out of East Pakistan, and later Bangladesh. In contrast, there has not been much of a reciprocal migration of Muslims into Bangladesh.

This results in a peculiarity when I receive genotypes from people of Bengali origin: a large minority of people of Hindu background mention that one or both of their parents have origins in eastern Bengal, what is not Bangladesh. In contrast, I have never received a gentoype from someone who tells me that their family migrated from western Bengal into Bangladesh.

The genetic consequence is simple: there is a larger variance of East Asian ancestry in West Bengal than East Bengal because of more mixing in the west than the east. In contrast, one could probably infer the extent of the migration simply by doing genetic analysis and not looking at Census data!

BrownCast Episode 12: The global China, with Carl Zha

Razib Khan · February 1, 2019 · 16 comments

If you aren’t in a position to be a patron, please give us 5-star ratings and a positive review!

After this podcast was recorded and edited Carl Zha Informed informed me that he is no longer doing CLASH! and rather is starting a new podcast: Silk and Steel. This is actually the first post on Silk and Steel as well. A “cross-over.”

Continue reading BrownCast Episode 12: The global China, with Carl Zha

BrownCast Episode 11: Indian Numismatics with Mohit Kapoor

X.T.M · January 31, 2019 · 11 comments

The latest BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes 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). Show-notes after the jump!

Image result for gandhara coin — Gandharan Coin

Continue reading BrownCast Episode 11: Indian Numismatics with Mohit Kapoor