Why Turks ruled India for so long

Razib Khan Ā· August 26, 2020 Ā· 117 comments

After finishing Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity I continue to believe that geography and economics explain the basic reason for the very long ascendance of Turkic people in the Indian subcontinent, and, their eventual eclipse.

The context for this is the fact that many Indian and Indian American friends have posited cultural rationales for the Turkic hegemony. That is, there was a passivity and disunity in Hindu society which made it vulnerable to the Turks, who were also adherents to a separatist hegenomic ideology in the form of Musim. All this may very well be true, but I have always held that the key factor was that Turks and Muslims more general had ready and easy access to warhorses.

Between 500 A.D. and 1500 A.D. was the heyday of the nomadic pastoralist as a geopolitical force in Eurasia for various reasons. Even in the centuries after 1500 A.D. horses remained critical for mobility. The problem is that in much of agricultural Eurasia there is not sufficient pasturage to raise large numbers of horses.

Pretty much every Eurasian society within reach of the steppe (so basically every society except for those in Western Europe, Japan, and Southeast Asia) had to deal with the menace of armed nomads. Sometimes they paid them off. Sometimes they mobilized enormous armies which incurring crushing costs. And sometime they were conquered.

Between 1700 and 1900 this spectre faded. Improvements in military technology, transport, and mass national mobilization, leveled the gap between the steppe and the settled peoples, to the point where by 1900 the steppe was a marginal factor.

Note: the author of Escape from Rome attributes the rise and fall of Vijayanagara explicitly as a function of its access to horses.

Browncast Episodes 121 & 122: Desi-Rae, heterodox Jamaican American, and Anthony, a black American in China

Razib Khan Ā· August 26, 2020 Ā· 14 comments

Two new BP Podcast episodes are up. You can listen on Libsyn,Ā Apple,Ā Spotify,Ā  andĀ StitcherĀ (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we donā€™t have a regular schedule is toĀ subscribeĀ to one of the links above!

You can also support the podcast as aĀ patron. The primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone else. This website isnā€™t about shaking the cup, but I have noticed that the number of patrons plateaued a long time ago.

First, we talked to Desi-Rae, a Jamaican American woman who has some heterodox views. Her views on race in Jamaica and the United States, relationships, and the fallout from being so vocal. I apologize that my mic was very low on this episode.

Next, I talk to Anthony, a black American who worked in China. We talk about Chinese perceptions of blackness, his daughter, who is half-Chinese, and the prospects for the China-USA relationship.

The Middle Path: Towards a Liberal Conservatism in India (Part 1)

London Observer Ā· August 23, 2020 Ā· 27 comments

I listened with interest to Brown Punditsā€™ recent podcasts with Gaurav and Tony on the current state of Indian politics. I could relate to some of their agonies and predicaments, although I profoundly disagree with some aspects of Tonyā€™s worldview.Ā  Slapstikā€™s recent post Indian woke wears saffron also contains some good insights on the nature and roots of the current Hindutva movement. In this post, I have picked on three strands of Slapstikā€™s argument: the comparison between Hindutva and woke culture, the genesis of the Bhakti movement and the nature of the leadership of the Indian National Congress both before and after independence.

While I share Slapstikā€™s assessment of the importance of the Bhakti movement, I do not regard the Bhakti movement as a radical rupture from the pre-Islamic Dharmic traditions. I also argue that by only highlighting the role and influence of the liberal modernist elements of the Indian political leadership in the colonial and early post-colonial periods, Slapstik overlooks the equally if not more salient part of the leadership that sought its inspiration from the countryā€™s indigenous Indic heritage. In doing so, I seek to highlight the deep and abiding roots of Indiaā€™s Dharmic consciousness that is characterised by cultural continuity.

Continue reading The Middle Path: Towards a Liberal Conservatism in India (Part 1)

Why Indian Americans are not the new Jews

Razib Khan Ā· August 23, 2020 Ā· 49 comments

In the 2000s I would have arguments with some Indian American friends about the ethnic trajectory of Indian Americans in terms of their similarity American Jews, where I staked out the position that the analogy was superficial (e.g., on the Sepia Mutiny blog). To understand why the analogy doesn’t work, you need to know the history of American Jews first. Though Judaism in the United States goes back to small Sephardic communities along the eastern seaboard before the Amerian Revolution, to understand the Jewish community in the 20th and 21st centuries one needs to focus on the two Ashkenazi migrations from Central and Eastern Europe that occurred in the 75 years between 1850 and 1925.

The first wave was the “German Jews”, most of whom were Bavarian peddlers. Many of them scattered across the country, starting general stores and the like. Though numerically a very small migration, they founded many Jewish American institutions. There is a reason that the headquarters of Reform Judaism, which is of German origin, is in Cincinnati. This reflects the migration of German Jews along routes of commerce in the 19th century.

The second wave, and the much larger one, is the migration stream that issued out of the expanded Russian Empire, in particular Lithuania and Galicia. These are who the German Jews referred to as the “Ostjuden”, the Eastern Jews. This was a term applied in Germany to Jews from Poland and further east as well. The Ostjuden were often destitute. Those that fled the early 20th century pogroms may have had nothing but the clothes on their backs. In fact, in all likelihood, the richer and more assimilated Jews were the ones who remained in Europe.

America was the destination for the more marginalized.

Continue reading Why Indian Americans are not the new Jews

Paatal Lok – Review

GauravL Ā· August 22, 2020 Ā· 5 comments

Open Thread – 08/22/2020 – Brown Pundits

Razib Khan Ā· August 22, 2020 Ā· 200 comments

The usual.

But I’ll make a comment here. I am of the school that thinks facts matter a lot. Many of you trade in standard Hindu nationalist tropes and generalities about Islam. As someone who told Shadi Hamid on our interview, I am not a big personal fan of Islam, I don’t really mind people fearing Islam. I have personal experience of the religion after all.

But, facts matter. And a lot of the “facts” that get bandied about here are false.Ā  I won’t tolerate that. There are two general categories I will point to:

1. First, people take traditional Muslim historiography at face value. You shouldn’t. This is like taking Christians at face value when they talk about the Four Gospels are pure positive history, when they were finally compiled and redacted decades later. Whether Muhammad exists is an empirical question in the same way that whether Jesus exists is an empirical question. As it happens, I’m modestly confident both figures existed in some form but were quite different from what Christians and Muslims depict them as (I do suspect that Josephus was a later interpolation).

The broader issue here is that Muslims on the whole have not gone through the modernist transition in regards to a critical-rationalist take on their religion. In Christianity, traditionalist-fundamentalists exist, but they have to take dialogue with modernists as a given. They exist in large part as reactions to modernism. This is not the case with Islam. Muslims accept that non-Muslims reject their religion, but within Islam, there is not a strong rationalist engagement with their texts that applies the sort of criticism than the Germans pioneered within Protestantism in the 19th century. That means they present a “unified face” about their early history which too many non-Muslims take for granted. Islam with all of its constitutive elements is not truly recognizable to us until about 850 A.D.*

2. Because this is a blog with a South Asian focus a lot of Hindu nationalist tropes and facts get presented at face value. I don’t really mind them as mythologies that give people succor or create their identity, but a lot of them have as much factual basis as a pagan Mecca: not much.

Most of the Hindu nationalist commenters do reflect a reality of “lived experience.” As someone who grew up around South Asian Muslims, I can admit they have total contempt on the whole (there are exceptions) for Hindus and their “bizarre” beliefs. But, as someone who is personally anti-Islam and literally tolerant of diverse views, many people from Hindu backgrounds of all ideologies have told me what they really think of Muslims, and the contempt is returned.

My issue is always when people turn their personal experiences into deep historical insights. Do not do that if you don’t enjoy me jumping down your throat, because if I’m not busy, I will do so.

More broadly, lots of Indian readers would benefit from reading more history. Especially non-Indian history. A broad cross-cultural perspective is essential, so do more!

For the curious here are a few books:

– China: A New History
– History of Rome
– A History of the Byzantine State and Society
– A History of the Arab Peoples: Updated Edition

* The Shia-Sunni split starts to become discernible in a way we’d recognize, Hadith culture is already on track to marginalize the “philosophers” and Hellenists, and the ulema centered around madrassas spread from the east to the west.

The Qualitative Destruction of Pakistan Army between 1955 and 1971

Omar Ali Ā· August 21, 2020 Ā· 4 comments

From Major Amin. Originally written in 1999

Why Military Defeat in 1971-The Qualitative Destruction of Pakistan Army between 1955 and 1971 Major A.H Amin (Retired) https://www.militaryhistorycentre.com/blogs/news/pakistan-army-between-1965-and-1971
Why Military Defeat in 1971-The Qualitative Destruction of Pakistan Army between 1955 and 1971
ā€¢ August 2020

Research teaching and writing were unproductive jobs in British India since they did not enable a man to be a deputy collector or barrister or doctor! It was a mad race made further mad by frequent outbursts of communal frenzy, which increased as population increased during the period 1890-1940. All this helped the Britishers who had been traumatically shaken by the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 when a largely Hindu majority army had rebelled under Muslim leaders! The British were thus happier playing the role of judges resolving Hindu Muslim disputes rather than performing the more unpleasant task of facing a combined political movement of all Indians regardless of race or religion as in 1857, 1919 or 1922! This is the basis of anti-intellectualism in the Indo-Pak Sub-continent. It is truer for Pakistan since the Muslims were educationally more backward and relatively less true, yet still true and applicable to India too! Pakistan and India have produced very few serious military writers. In Pakistan the situation is worse since an unofficial ban was imposed on military writing by various military usurpers who ruled the country for the greater part of its existence.

The finest summarizing of the incalculable qualitative harm inflicted on the Pakistan Army, by the self-promoted Field Marshal of peace, by a contemporary, was done by Major General Fazal I Muqeem, when he described the state of affairs of the Pakistan Army during the period 1958-71; in the following words: “We had been declining according to the degree of our involvement in making and unmaking of regimes. Gradually the officer corps, intensely proud of its professionalism was eroded at its apex into third class politicians and administrators. Due to the absence of a properly constituted political government, the selection and promotion of officers to the higher rank depended on one manā€™s will. Gradually, the welfare of institutions was sacrificed to the welfare of personalities. To take the example of the army, the higher command had been slowly weakened by retiring experienced officers at a disturbingly fine rate. Between 1955 and November 1971, in about 17 years 40 Generals had been retired, of whom only four had reached their superannuating age. Similar was the case with other senior ranks. Those in the higher ranks who showed some independence of outlook were invariably removed from service. Some left in sheer disgust in this atmosphere of insecurity and lack of the right of criticism, the two most important privileges of an Armed Forces officer. The extraordinary wastage of senior officers particularly of the army denied the services, of the experience and training vital to their efficiency and welfare. Some officers were placed in positions that they did not deserve or had no training for” 1.

Continue reading The Qualitative Destruction of Pakistan Army between 1955 and 1971

Kamala Harris embrace of ‘victim identity’ bothers me

Razib Khan Ā· August 21, 2020 Ā· 26 comments

Apparently Kamala Harris was admitted to law school through LEOP:

LEOP offers admission to approximately 50 high-achieving students each yearā€”up to 20 percent of the classā€”who have experienced major life hurdles, such as educational disadvantage, economic hardship, or disability. The majority are students of color. Besides traditional admissions criteria, such as grades and LSAT scores, the program also considers studentsā€™ overall potential and the obstacles theyā€™ve overcome. ā€œThese are extraordinary students who have been playing while injured in the game of life, but all they do is win,ā€ McGriff said.

Once students enroll, LEOP supports them throughout their tenure at UC Hastings, offering a weeklong orientation, academic counseling, practice exams, and help preparing for the bar exam and job interviews, among other resources and services.

…. LEOP went on to count many prominent alumni among its ranks, including U.S. Senator Kamala Harris ā€™89; San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi ā€™85; Adelmise Warner ā€™01, chief counsel at Pandora; and Andrew Houston ā€™07, procurement counsel for the University of Californiaā€™s Office of the General Counsel.

We know a lot about Kamala Harris’ mother’s family. They are upper-middle-class Tamil Brahmins. Her mother did raise her mostly alone. So she was a single mother. But she was also a Ph.D. biomedical researcher.

Here is a profile about her father, Kamala Harrisā€™s Father, a Footnote in Her Speeches, Is a Prominent Economist:

Dr. Harris was raised in a landowning family on the north coast of Jamaica by a paternal grandmother whom he described as ā€œreserved and stern in look, firm with ā€˜the strap,ā€™ but capable of the most endearing and genuine acts of love, affection and care.ā€ Reserved and highly intelligent, he was more cut out for academia than activism, contemporaries said.

Basically, on both sides of Harris’ pedigree, there is evidence of sub-elite status. Her utilization of the LEOP program seems to be unfair to students who were genuinely disadvantaged.

The Aryan Integration Theory (AIT)

Razib Khan Ā· August 21, 2020 Ā· 44 comments

I’ve been thinking a bit recently about loaded terms like the “Aryan Invasion Theory.” Since I’m not Indian I don’t get super worked up about the ideological valence of the term. But, after thinking about it for a while, a few weeks ago I decided that the term “Aryan Invasion Theory” (AIT) is not useful, and I will abandon my gentle defense of its utility.

My own views can be read extensively at already, so I won’t belabor the details of what I believe.

Rather, I think that the classical version of the “AIT” is not useful because I think most people associate the idea of a barbarian “invasion” with a conflict between two clear and distinct groups, and one of the groups have a coherent social and political organization in a complex fashion. This is not what I believe at this point. Rather, I believe that Indo-Aryans interposed themselves into a fallen landscape.

The best evidence from Narasimhan et. al. indicates that “steppe” admixture into Indian subcontinental groups in the northwest dates to the period between 1900 and 1500 BCE (95% confidence intervals). What we now call “Ancestral North Indian” (ANI) and “Ancestral South Indian” (ASI) seem to have emerged in the period between 2000 and 500 BCE. In the “Swat transect” which begins ~1000 BCE there is an increase in AASI related ancestry over time (and, increase in “steppe” as well), suggestive of subcontinent-wide gene flow, including into the northwest from the southeast.

My idea for how Indo-Aryans became preeminent in South Asia is similar to the arrival of Rohirrim into Rohan. The “Mature IVC” had almost certainly have collapsed by the time of the Indo-Aryans arrived. This is part of a West and South Asia wide collapse of complex urban societies. This is often attributed to a climatic shock and was correlated with an influx of barbarian peoples (e.g., the Guti of the Zagros into the territory of Ur III). In some cases, such as Egypt, the indigenous elites recovered rapidly. In the case of Babylonia, an intrusive Semitic population, the Amorites, assimilated into the high culture of the Akkadians and Sumerians.

The situation in South Asia is unlikely to be peaceful. The Y chromosomes of South Asians are on the order of 10-20% attributable to the steppe (depending on sampling and weighting of populations). A much smaller percentage of mtDNA is attributable to these people. The indication here is that this was a migration of males.

But, the opposition to the Indo-Aryans was not culturally as advanced as the IVC. Rather, the likelihood is that what we see is similar to what occurred in the Balkans after 550 A.D. and the withdrawal of East Roman forces. The Latin-speaking peasantry, with no elites, and the collapse of the Christian church, eventually assimilated into the “peasant culture” of the intrusive Slavs across much of the Balkans. A similar process seems to have occurred across much of Britain, where a minority of pagan Germans assimilated larger numbers of semi-Christianized Celts after their elites retreated to Cornwell, Wales, and Brittany.

It seems that complex specialized societies can be quite brittle. Especially those from the Bronze and early Iron Age (the late Bronze Age collapse is another case). The decline of the IVC probably resulted in the evaporation of many elites who had served to anchor the identity of these polities. My assumption is that the arrival of Indo-Aryans, who had more social cohesion at this point (steppe nomads are all easily mobilizable as a fighting force due to lack of specialization), resulted in integration of the remnant local elites rapidly into the new social order.

Citizenship Amendment Act – the straw that broke the camel’s back

GauravL Ā· August 19, 2020 Ā· 141 comments

Since the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, which culminated in the demolition of the Babri Masjid, nothing has polarized Indian politics and society as much the Citizenship Amendment Act. On its own, its fair to assume that CAA is notĀ  a particularly insidious piece of legislature, but when it gets combined with National Register of Citizens (NRC) as explained by Amit Shah below, it becomes some to be vary of.

As Amit Shah stated, CAB(A) will be applied before carrying out the process of NRC. In his own words, the refugees(non Muslim migrants) will be granted citizenship and the infiltrators (Muslim migrants – he also referred to them as termites at one instance) will be thrown out or prosecuted (there was some talk of throwing them into the Bay of Bengal).

Its clear to conclude that by refugees – he means Bangladeshi Muslims who reside illegally in India as almost no Muslims from Pakistan and Afghanistan come to India illegally with an intention aĀ  better life. (When they do cross the LOC illegally, they’re treated as enemy combatants or terrorists)

The ACT:Ā 

The instrumental part of the act reads

any person belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian community from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan, who entered into India on or before the 31st day of December, 2014 and who has been exempted by the Central Government by or under clause (c) of sub-section (2) of section 3 of the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920 or from the application of the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946 or any rule or order made thereunder, shall not be treated as illegal migrant for the purposes of this Act

While this amendment to the ACT is seen as problematic, one must point out that large portions of the existing ACT are also extremely problematic – most of which were added after 1955 under various governments at various times. In particular the 1986 amendment (under Rajiv Gandhi) – which meant children born to both illegal immigrants wouldn’t get citizenship. This is seen as a contradiction with the Birthright naturalization (Jus soliĀ ) principle of the Constitution. The 2003 amendment (under Vajpayee)Ā further restricted citizenship to children, when either of their parents is an illegal immigrant.

The 2003 amendment also prevented illegal immigrants from claiming naturalization by some other legal means. So in short with the CAA 2019, this particular amendment (2003) has been annulled for Non Muslims who have come to Indian sovereign land from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In other words, the CAA facilitates the imagination of India as the natural homeland of subcontinental Non-Muslims (but not a Hindu Rashtra or Hindu State).

Objective Reasons for opposing the CAA:

Continue reading Citizenship Amendment Act – the straw that broke the camel’s back

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