India Election 2019 Thread

Lately, we have been talking a lot of things about South Asia but not much on what is supposed to be the biggest event in the calendar for 2019, India General Elections 2019 scheduled to start 11th April and continue till May. Looking at the Opinion Polls it seems that BJP’s election fortune has become much brighter since the dustup with Pakistan. Although foreign issues do not dominate Indian elections that much. Domestically, general Indian people still seem to regard Modi as a better steward for the Indian economy than Rahul or any other alternatives. I have no opinion on the probable results as I have little knowledge and expertise. Let those who are more informed opine here freely on the elections. Not just probable outcomes but also about social, economic and political directions that this elections may bring about.

 

19th March : ” Times Now and VMR survey is back with yet another batch of poll-related data and analysis. In the current survey, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is predicted to grab 283 out of 543 Lok Sabha seats, UPA – 135 and Others – 125.

In the last survey, the Times Now-VMR poll had shown that the NDA would have been 21 seats short of the half-way mark had 2019 Lok Sabha Elections been held in January.”

https://www.timesnownews.com/elections/article/opinion-poll-for-lok-sabha-election-2019-live-times-now-vmr-survey-for-bjp-congress-narendra-modi-rahul-gandhi/384850

James Brown: Video + Bootsy Collins

I get a little tired of Aryan, Sudra, Islam. Pakistan, Hindu diatribes.

So a James Brown video
a) Look to the end, its FBI etc keeping a eye on James Brown
b)  The tall guy behind JB playing bass in a sort of dark shirt with small cross is Bootsy Collins.

Bootsy became one of the first to be Gay friendly on stage, this is probably early 1980’s

 

—————————————————-
Don’t you know that it’s true
That for me and for you
The world is a ghetto

Wonder when I’ll find paradise
Somewhere there’s a home, sweet and nice
Wonder if I’ll find happiness
Never give it up now I guess

Misunderstanding Ta’arof

I think Ta’arof translates into Takaluf in the Urdu speaking world but I can’t be sure.

I find it rather amusing that while India is being dissed on the world’s most popular youtube channel; a Jewish American travelloger is extolling Pakistan to the skies.

If Vidhi wasn’t Indian then I can take some schadenfraude but considering she is a daughter of the Indus, and her tribe are exiles from Pakistan, they are the best type of Pakistanis; those that are entirely free from the taint of Islam. Continue reading Misunderstanding Ta’arof

PewDiePie is Coloniser Trash

PewDiePie Concedes YouTube Defeat to T-Series, Takes a Dig at India

Maybe he should do us all a favour and do what his fellow countryman Avici did a year back (and seems to be a Scandinavian trait).

  • “Guess to beat one Swedish boy you need a billion Asians.”
  • “All it took was a massive corporate entity with every song in Bollywood.”
  • He then tries to allege corruption of T-Series (second 48-1.10). Usual coloniser tactic when they get jealous of Brown Success (as though they didn’t simply rape and conquer the world).
  • He then calls Bangladesh, Indian, which of course is not an insult but is a deliberate ignorance (Bangladesh fought a long and bloody war to be considered it’s own 1971 nation).
  • Minute 2:02 he refers to defecation assuming a joke on India’s open defecation rates.
  • Then he dares to have the temerity to educate South Asians, who are probably the world’s greatest wordsmiths on the distinction between defamation and defecation. To paraphrase they were savages while we were busy composing the Vedas and the Avestas not to mention the Quran, which probably has no literary equivalent the world over (Muhammad may have been a sick pedo but he seemed a pretty decent poet).
  • Did you know that Indians have poo-poo in their brains?
  • Then some long orange haired junkie sings, How about next you figure out how to fix the caste system?
  • Maybe all those ads will solve your crippling poverty.

Continue reading PewDiePie is Coloniser Trash

How Islamicate culture will die?

 

Islam will kill Islamicate culture in Pakistan unless Islam is neutered (we can always hope).

I enjoyed IndThing’s comments on the Marathas, there is no doubt if the Mughals were “Hindu”, the Bharat contingent would be adulating them.

We did some Persian events this weekend (one Baha’i one non-Bahá’í). I remarked to Vidhi the paucity of Persian culture, Persians do Western food and fashion as a sign of their high culture. Continue reading How Islamicate culture will die?

BrownCast Podcast episode 25: Christoph, center-left edgelord on social justice, Islam, and cosmopolitanism

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 talk to Christoph, the erstwhile “Eurasian Sensation.” Long-time readers of this weblog will know that Christoph was an early contributor to this weblog. Over the past few years, he has gained prominence on Twitter as a verbal pugilist of sorts, punching Right and punching Left from the de facto center.

We talk about his own mixed-race identity, and cosmopolitan lifestyle choices and orientation. Both of us also talk about the interesting fact that we are regularly lectured about Islam by non-Muslim progressives.

Between Tariq and Columbus

I have long followed Brian Catlos’ more academic works, so I was excited to read Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain. Aside from some strange contemporary allusions, this is a good introductory book. If you are curious about more detail, the author has written good monographs.

The reason that this work is interesting is that Al-Andalus is a frontier society that’s been well studied. Liminal to both Islam and Western Latin Christendom, for various political reasons it is of particular interest in modern times.

One of the themes is Catlos’ work is though that we tend to refract the history of the Iberian peninsula between 700 and 1500 in simple stark modern dichotomous terms, the reality was that confessional identities were simply one of many loyalties. And yet if you read his work you see the meta-ethnic/civilizational identities are what determine the long-term arc of history, the hinges around which it turns.

In the initial decades after the conquest, local Christian elites and power structures remained intact, and the Arab conquest elites utilized them as administrative intermediaries. But after 800 AD a combination of local Iberian converts and Muslims from other parts of the Islamic world were numerous enough that Christian society begins to be pushed to the margins, even if numerically they remained a majority in the 800s.

Additionally, Catlos emphasizes the deep ethnic divisions between old Arab families, who monopolized religious offices 300 years after the conquest, tribes of Berber origin who occupied a position between the indigenes and the Arabs, and finally, Arabicized converts and Christians, Mozarabs. While the high culture became Arab, Latin speech persisted among the rural peasantry. Even the remnant Christian elites within Al-Andalus were literate primarily in Arabic.

One of the major insights from Kingdoms of Faith is that the conversion of Latin elites, whether Basque, Visigoth, or post-Roman, to Islam, resulted in corrosion of Christianity within Iberia. That corrosion was reversed only with political reconquest, and migration of Christian peasants from the north and the gradual conversion of Muslims in the centuries before the final expulsion of the remnant Moriscos.

Kingdoms of Faith is a useful read, not because of what it tells us about the history of Spain, but how we can compare to other regions of the world….

Raj Koothrapali is a shame on all Brown Men

While I was busy disagreeing with Indthings (the idea that “Pakistan” has a better brand value than India is hilariously untrue) they made a very good point on Raj Koothrapali.

Raj Koothrapali is a shame on all Indian men. I don’t know what Kumail’s character is like on his show but from what I’ve watched on the Big Bang Theory, but Kunal Nayyar does a huge disservice to all Brown People.

I have noticed this trait that Indian (Hindus) men are rather insensitive/unaware of their perception in the wider world but are always keen to stamp Pak/Muslims below them.

I had once read a study (I can’t link on it) that in UP, upper castes were more concerned about their relative ranks than their absolute one (tall poppy syndrome magnified).

I have noticed this with Indian origin Baha’i men. The only time they evidence strong India passions is when I or other Pakistanis around them otherwise they are totally consumed by Persian culture (I may be Turanian online but I’m super Tharoorian offline).

I find it interesting how the discourse is so fixated on Pakistan and Islam when frankly the real damage has been done by colonisation. We’ve been through this before several times but Raj Koothrapali is far more emasculating than Ala’u’ddin Khilji.

Furthermore I can understand why Pakistanis, who are on the outskirts of Brownitude, will swim away if being Brown is being Raj K. It provides an existential question; is it better to be feared (and lusted) as a potential terrorist or mocked as a sexless nerd? That’s probably a very salient question for many Pakistani men in the Diaspora as they tack on identities.

Also I feel this is more acute in the Brahmin centred societies; for instance the Tamils of Sri Lanka are probably one of the ASIest people in South Asia but are very swaggy. They’ve managed to disassociate themselves from the nerdiness of South Asian culture and sort of swim on a much cooler Afram vibe.

This isn’t to somehow absolve Pakistan and Islam; in fact my criticisms of those countries and cultures are much harsher. As Kabir B noted I routinely like to mention casually that Muhammad was a pedophile and was generally rather creepy in his sexual interests (he was busy “marrying” all the daughters of his friends; that’s outright disgusting). It’s an important of normalising that Islam, Quran, Allah and Muhammad are nothing special and are not above criticism in common discourse. “Nothing is Sacred.”

However what I have noticed is that when I condemn Pakistani culture I get praise from the Hinditvas but as soon as I target the shortcomings of Indian men; I’m the archetypal Paki.

One just can’t win and I’m noticing just how male these discussions are. For instance in Majlis when we were giving notions, I proposed

“TH believes that India/Pakistan condones gender violence/rape culture.”

Alot of the backwardness of South Asia is to do with the regressive roles of women. India is undergoing a revolution of sorts hence it will make much more rapid strides than Pakistan, where women are locked in 1950’s mode (in fact in many ways American women in the 50’s are much more progressive than Pakistani women).

One could argue that I’m hypocritical since I don’t target the lens at myself. I don’t believe in insulting individuals but ideology, religion and language are all up for fair game otherwise what’s the point. Furthermore this is “Brown” Pundits not Baha’i or Persian Pundits; IRL I spend a lot of time advocating Brown causes but it would  be hypocritical for me not to criticize the immense failings of Brown Culture and where it could improve.

Just to balance it out:

Criticism of the Bahá’í Faith

Egalitarian/Equality and mobility in Society.

Something to keep in mind, an egalitarian/equal society is equally important to happiness of society.

Excerpts from Article

While the US ranks among the least equal and mobile countries in the developed world, recent work shows that it contains places that span the global mobility distribution.

Persistence in income from one generation to the next is higher in unequal societies like the UK and the US, and weakest in the relatively equal Scandinavian countries (the ‘Great Gatsby curve’)

Would would this map out similarly in South Asia, I think yes)

For example, equality and mobility are highest in the Midwest, where Scandinavian ancestry is common. The same goes for every group we study – for example, income mobility is lowest in areas where the population has Italian or British roots.

From Comments (read them too, please).
One should point also out the common observation that all that Scandinavian solidarity is built on a great deal of ethnic homogeneity. The US problem has always been getting the melting pot to melt.

My mother, life-long Republican and descendant of Swedish grand-parents, blamed the “socialist” bent in MN on the dumb Ole-and-Lena’s who maintained their village mind-set of caring-through-conformity post-immigration. In her opinion, worldly-wise people knew better than to just hand money out to strangers. I thought about that a little when reading Tuesday’s piece about trust in society, and cat sick’s comment that keeping business (or wealth) within networks is a way to mitigate risk.

Brown Pundits