Tag: Identity and culture

Browncast episode 74: Maratha Bro Amey Talks Immigration, Ayodhya, etc

Omar Ali · November 29, 2019 · 1 comment

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.

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On this episode Razib talks to our resident Maratha philosopher, Amey, discussing US immigration, Ayodhya and whatever else comes up.

Image result for shivaji

2019 Sri Lanka Presidential Elections

sbarrkum · November 17, 2019 · 14 comments

The latest Game of Sri Lanka’s National Sport, politics, has ended.
In words, divisive, peaceful and large turnout,

Turnout:
83% of approx 16 million eligible voters.
Total Population 21 million.

Results:
Winner: Gotabya Rajapakse 52.5% (approx 6.9 million votes)
Second: Sajith Premadasa 42.99% (approx 5.6 million votes).

Difference: 9.51% or 1.36 million votes

Divisive
Green Color (for Sajith): Minority as Majority area (Tamils and Muslims)
Red: Majority in Majority area (Sinhalese)

Await next Game, Parliamentary elections in a few months.

http://election.newsfirst.lk/

Divisive Analysis (my opinion)

Gotabaya got less of the minority vote (less than 10%) compared  Mahinda Rajapakse in 2015 (around 20%).

Tamils:  Instead of reaching out for Economic development, its still pie in the sky separatism. These views are propagated by the Tamil leadership like Sumanthiran who live comfortably in Colombo, went to Colombo schools (and their children).

Sumathiran (or someone in the TNA) went as far as to say if we dont vote for Sajith we cant defeat the Sinhalese. The Tamils united and backed Sajith by over 70% in the North and East. That was the kiss of death for Sajith with the Sinhalese voters in the south

Muslims:   Sajith, hobnobbed with Muslim MP’s who had been pals of the Easter Terrorists. The Muslims voted for Sajith en masse (again over 70%) and Sajith lost a lot of Sinhala votes.

The Sinhalese responded,and united in what they saw as Sajith’s apparent support for separatism and seeking support of Muslim MP’s sympathetic to Islamic Extremists. The SLPP party base is not sufficient to win. There has been UNP crossovers to Gotabya and he won with pretty much only the Sinhalese vote.

Background on Gotabaya Rajapakse
Was the all powerful Defense Secretary 2005-2015.  Credited with ending the Civil Wat, Urban renewal and Infrastructure development.   Diploma in IT from Uni of Colombo. MS in Defense Studies from the University of Madras and various Defense related training  In SL Army, 1971-1992 retired after 20 years as Lieutenant Colonel.   Unix Admin (1998-2015) at Loyola Law School, CA.  Credited with being a Technocrat and authoritarian.

Gotabaya and Wife Ioma

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotabaya_Rajapaksa

When you have a hammer everything is a nail

Razib Khan · October 26, 2019 · 25 comments

A Racist Attack Shows How Whiteness Evolves
An assault at a New Jersey high school football game had an unexpected cast of characters:

Two 17-year-old boys accused of harassing four African-American middle schoolgirls — using racial slurs and urinating on one of the victims — are facing charges including bias intimidation and lewdness.

The incident, which took place during an Oct. 18 high school football game in the New Jersey suburb of Lawrence Township and was partly captured on a video that circulated on social media, involves a cast of characters that has given some observers pause: Police say the boys are of Indian descent.

While it’s tempting to see the reported ethnicity of the boys suspected in the assault as complicating the story and raising questions about whether the assault should be thought of as racist, I look at it through a different lens. Instead of asking what the boys’ reported racial identity tells us about the nature of the attack, we should see the boys as enacting American whiteness through anti-black assault in a very traditional way. In doing so, the assailants are demonstrating how race is a social construct that people make through their actions. They show race in the making, and show how race is something we perform, not just something we are in our blood or in the color of our skin.

I want to emphasize the “complicating” aspect. Many American intellectuals don’t want to complicate an already tragic story, in black and white. Those of us of “Asian American” origin complicate that story (as do people of Latino background), so we are co-opted into the preexistent story that already exists. We are subalterns in a black and white story.

So these boys are brown kids in “whiteface”, to serve a particular narrative.

But, I believe literally every one of the South Asian readers of The New York Times that read this knows very well that anti-black racism is not something learned in the United States of America by Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, etc.

Why do nonmuslims treat muslims so badly (g)?

AnAn · October 26, 2019 · 7 comments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTiE4xTvPzA

There are few examples of nonmuslim sectarian mistreatment of muslims more glaring than the way nonmuslims have abysmally betrayed LBGTQ muslims. Nonmuslim LBTGTQ are celebrated by Xi Jinping, Trump, Modi, Lebron James and many others. Any mistreatment of LBGTQ nonmuslims correctly dominates news coverage around the world and leads to massive global pressure. But when it comes to muslim LBGTQ, nonmuslims become suddenly silent.

 

The above video details the severe persecution of Palestinian LGBTQ. Palestinian LGBTQ have long been attacked by Palestinians, the muslim world and nonmuslim world.

 

Where are PM Modi, President Xi Jinping, President Trump, Lebron James, PM Bibi Netanyahu, PM designate Gantz? Do Englishman and Englishwoman feel guilt for the enormous suffering they have inflicted upon Palestinian LBGTQ during English empire and ever since the end of English empire? This blood debt could be repaid by giving English permanent residence status to every Palestinian LBGTQ who passes a background check to weed out violent criminals and members of organized crime.

 

Not that muslims are doing any better when it comes to Palestinian LBGTQ rights. Global muslim leaders Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, have you no tears and compassion for Palestinian LBGTQ? How will you be able to look up upon Allah after having betrayed Palestinian LBGTQ?

Continue reading Why do nonmuslims treat muslims so badly (g)?

The shadow of the crescent

Razib Khan · October 23, 2019 · 99 comments

Obviously I have not had much time to write on my blogs recently. But I thought I would pass on a casual judgement I have come to in regards to Indians, and particularly Hindus. Their mentality is powerfully shaped by the Other.

This is true of modern Muslims as well obviously. As Bernard Lewis would famously assert, the victory of the West over Islam in geopolitics in the 19th-century induced a psychic trauma which Muslims are still reacting to. Postcolonialism suggests that this is the condition of all non-Western societies. They can be only understood in their reaction to the West.

In general, I think postcolonialism is not helpful. Obviously, there is some truth in the framework, but most people don’t have a “thick” understanding of history, so they simply use Theory to invent “facts.”

But, it is clearly the case that modern Indian, and Hindu, Weltanschauung, whether “secularist” or “Hindutva” or something altogether different, is hard to understand without colonialism. But it is not simply Western colonialism. It is also Islamic colonialism and conquest.

The peculiar and curious aspect of modern Indian/Hindu mentality then is the double-colonial layer. That is, the long-term sublimation of the Indian civilization under the temporal rule of Other civilizations. One could assert that China was ruled by Manchus for 250 years before its quasi-colonization. But this analogy is clearly weak because the later Manchus became so thoroughly Sinicized that Manchus as an independent ethnicity have disappeared in modern China (Manchus today are those who have descent from Manchus, not those who practice a non-Han culture).

Basically, it’s always modern complicated in India…

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