Tag: South Asian diaspora identity

The Harilals of Hong Kong

X.T.M · June 12, 2019 · 22 comments

Such an amazing video; the joint family done well by the famous Harilals of Hong Kong (they own the Pearl Continental building). Even though I would swap it round and send the sons as further afield as possible (like the Rothschilds) and keep the daughters (if I had a daughter I’d want her to go into STEM subjects; the tougher the better).

I’ve met one of the Harilals daughter-in-law at a wedding; she was fun-loving and rather incandescent, she certainly stood out.

I do find the whole nuclear family setup to be so much unnecessary grunt work.

These sort of Diaspora Baniya families (I think Bhaibands, Vidhi’s caste, are originally Punjabi Khatri who moved southward towards Sindh) are going to keep the candle of Hinduism alive against assimilation.

Sajid Javid finally *owns* his Pakistaniness

X.T.M · June 11, 2019 · 8 comments

This is a very powerful video – regardless of one’s politics. It’s such a powerful evocation of the Immigration and Asian experience in this country. The *hidden* history so to speak.

Ordinarily I stayed away from supporting Sajid since he seems so white-washed (at Conference he made an awful Punjabi-Welsh joke) but finally I felt that he owned up to his Pakistaniat, which moved me.

My letter to the Cambridge Union

X.T.M · June 9, 2019 · 4 comments

Dear Sir/Madam,

Hope you are well. I wanted to make a complaint about today’s event.

There was a Pakistan Society Event at the Union “the Asif Khosla talk.” Many of my friends were going to it and I had decided to come along. 

At the door I was stopped by one of the girls and asked for my student id. I explained to them that I wasn’t a student but I was told about the event from my friends at Pakistan Society and asked to come along.

My wife is also a PhD student at the University and accordingly spouses are allowed at University events.

At that point the gentleman (a young white student of around 20) just asked me to leave saying it’s for students only.

I later found out many non-students were there but it was rather humiliating and demeaning to be asked to turn around in front of my friends. I could have argued with them but it just felt so unnecessary and it seemed like he was on a power trip.

It’s upsetting to see that not only did the usual Town-Gown divide raise its ugly head (even though within the University statutes I have the same rights as the spouse of Gown) but it felt there was an additional race divide.

I feel if it had been Pakistanis gatekeeping; there would have been so much more sensitivity shown in the matter. I felt that either I was a terrorist or some hoodlum trying to barge the sacred gates of the Union.

The irony is of course I was speaking at the Union for Majlis in March; if it’s going to be such an unfriendly environment that only the privileged feel welcomed then all cries of accessibility ring hollow.

I’m a respectable Brit-Pak professional at 34; I don’t have the heart to continue being barred and demeaned by a 20year old white Male student on a power trip arbitrarily applying the rules.

I write to you to express my dismay and regret. Initially I wasn’t going to do anything about it but after speaking to a good friend at the University, who happens to be tenured faculty in STEM; at their urging they asked me to write to the Union (and Varsity- however I’ve omitted them) as a first step to redress.

I look forward to hearing back from you.

Best,

Zach

Gene Expression status update

Razib Khan · June 8, 2019 · 4 comments

Since people keep asking, I will post here (it will post to my total feed). Gene Expression the website kept maxing the shared hosting plan’s CPU a few weeks ago. I took it down because I didn’t want our host to blacklist it. When I have some time to spare that’s continuous I will get it back up, along with archives. The issue has been time (I used Cloudflare for what’s it worth). The host looked at the logs and suggested it might have been targeted by DoS attack.

The downside of me hosting the blog is that I have to do all the tech stuff. On the other hand, I have total control of the platform. In this day and age I am not going to give up the control, so just be patient. Honestly, I obviously don’t have as much spare time as I did when I started the blog as a 20something 17 years ago. But I’m not ditching it either.

Indian Americans “trump” Brit-Asians

X.T.M · June 4, 2019 · 12 comments

This is a business roundtable between the President and the PM. It’s fascinating that even though Britain’s Asian population is 5% of the population versus 1% Indian-Americans; there are 2 Indians (at least) on his side of the table.

British society is invisibly white and though there are some sectors that are *cosmopolitan*; we are certainly behind the US since class is an additional factor here. A privileged Etonian, who dropped out, is equally if not better placed than the state-school Oxbridge kid.

Finally this article is so witheringly racist; Sajid Javid not invites to State Banquet. One of his “friends” joked to the newspaper that perhaps it was that Palace confused him with another son of a bus driver (Sadiq Khan).

I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me.

Razib Khan · May 28, 2019 · 10 comments

There was a comment below which I am now reflecting on…that this “This blog pertains to South Asians.” The comment was sincerely made, and I take no deep issue with it.

Rather, I wonder what the purview of pertaining to South Asians is for each of us. Do we all see the same sky above us? Or does where we stand alter the constellations above? Both?

There are so many faces to this question. Some might echo Naipul and suggest that those of us from Muslim backgrounds are shorn from our Indian roots, that we are a people without a spirit. Others might assert a racial component, which in the Western context becomes cloying and exceedingly restrictive. Liminal populations are matters of dispute.

And yet I reflect on my own life, my own orientation, my own upbringing. I spent long enough in Bangladesh as a small child to remember the taste of jackfruit in my mouth…but below are the climatic conditions I grew up with as an elementary and secondary school child and teenager.

I wasn’t born in the cold and ice. But I was raised in it. I was moulded by it. I do not miss the seasons. I do not miss the ice. But the ice is part of who I am.

The cold of winter is deep in my experience, and that is almost one reason that I shudder to think of the cold, and I positively avoid it now that I have a choice as an adult.

And yet this is not typical of the South Asian, Indian, subcontinental, background. It is not part of our deep cultural memory, it is particular to many of us who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, young children of hopeful immigrants fleeing countries of grinding poverty and deep sclerosis, embedding themselves in frozen landscapes where they traded warmth for hope.

Readers of my other weblog (which as of this current writing is undergoing some maintenance by yours truly) sometimes ask me when I choose to post here, and when I choose to the post there. To be honest that distinction is harder to make for the non-science content.

If there is an election in India. If there are tensions on the border between Pakistan and India. If someone wants to engage in a troll-fest on the Kashmir question. This blog will be a space where those issues are mooted.

But there are more things in heaven and earth, Harjeet, than are dreamt of in your Darśana. 

I think a reasonable position may be “this is a South Asian weblog, this is why we are talking about this.” But, I am very wary of the proposition, “this is a South Asian weblog, this is why we should not be talking about this.”

Seek illumination even if you have to go as far as China, for seeking knowledge is a duty on every human.

Browncast Ep 42: American Arranged Marriage

Razib Khan · May 26, 2019 · 9 comments

Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, Apple, 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…this podcast was posted a week ago).

Probably the number #1 reason that the “Browncast” is of interest to me is that I can talk to people who are different from me in some deep and important manner. This podcast is a conversation with Amit, an Indian American who is doing a medical residency. Raised on the “best coast” of the USA, after some conventional dating travails, he has decided he will go the route of an “arranged” matched.

If you listen, you will see that the process has been a positive one for Amit, and it includes much more flexibility and volition than most Americans might imagine.

I went into the discussion mildly skeptical and came out of it with an appreciation for how people can make different choices, but those choices are probably the best for them.

I would really appreciate if regular readers/commenters would leave more positive feedback/ratings, especially on Apple and Stitcher.

The decline of the bee

Razib Khan · May 25, 2019 · 16 comments


At the Spelling Bee, a New Word Is M-O-N-E-Y – Elite spellers now can pay to get a spot in the national event. For this generation of zealous competitors, it just means another chance to shine:

An extra factor driving the stakes for this generation of spellers is a concerted effort by non-U.S.-born parents, particularly Indian-Americans, to make a mark on the competition. In 1985, Balu Natarajan was the first child of immigrants to win the Scripps bee. Of the 33 contests since then, fellow Indian-Americans have won 17 more, including the last 11 straight.

Indian-Americans, just 1% of the U.S. population, have established their own minor-league spelling bee circuit that adds opportunities to hone on-stage performance. They have led the way in paying for coaching, buying or developing proprietary study software and traveling to participate in more bees. Many spellers’ parents came to the U.S. via the Immigration Act of 1990 that admitted exceptionally skilled immigrants who specialize in STEM topics. It is no mystery that they would value education—and recognition of it—above all else; it is the very thing that gave them access to this country.

Reminds me of the stuff in Jerry Muller’s The Tyranny of Metrics. Now that the national bee is going in this direction it will be impossible to reverse the trend and make it a test of childhood exuberance and passion, as it was until recently. Rather, it will be just another part of the meritocratic conveyer belt, another notch in one’s resume or c.v.

And, unfortunately, it illustrates one of the effects of the rise of Asian American immigrant parents, who come from extremely competitive societies, and so bring the same ethos to the United States. Childhood in the old sense is disappearing, as people begin to prepare their children for adult roles in the economy before they enter elementary school.

Browncast Ep 40: Wael Taji on the Topology of Privilege

Razib Khan · May 22, 2019 · 2 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…).

(as of this posting there are two postings on the patron page that probably won’t see the light of day until next month; one on Game of Throne and another a discussion with an Indian American on his impending arranged marriage)

On this episode, I talk to Wael Taji, a graduate student in behavioral economics and neuroscience at Peking University, in China. Wael is from an ethnically European background but converted to Islam at one point, before becoming a Coptic Christian (listen to the podcast for details!).

We talk about privilege, race relations, or lack thereof, in modern China. Wael has been living in China for two years, and first visited in 2013. He offered his own views on the changes in China’s view of the world and its place geopolitically.

Wael also offers a pessimistic take on Western academia (his undergraduate background was as a student at Cambridge University). His comparative assessment of intellectual prospects in China and the West were published in Palladium Magazine.

We would definitely appreciate more positive reviews. Many of you listen to us, but don’t leave any reviews!

Brown Pundits