Month: October 2018

Nikki Haley shows she’s a good politician in regards to religion too


This week on The Remnant podcast, Jonah Goldberg, whose wife works for Nikki Haley, expounded at length about her skill as a politician. His point, which is legitimate, is that Haley is well liked by the broad mass of Trump-supporting Republicans (if not elite pro-Trump idealogues), as well as Trump-skeptical conservatives.

I’ve known of Nikki Haley since 2004, a few years after Bobby Jindal came onto to the national scene. Both are conservative Indian American Republicans elected as governors in the South. But there are differences between the two. While Haley can arguably “pass” as white, Jindal cannot (both are of Punjabi ethnicity). But a bigger difference has been their attitude toward religion: Jindal has worn his Christian conversion and faith on his sleeve, while Haley has been much more low-key. Throughout her career, Haley has admitted that the Sikh gurdwara remains a part of her life, despite her conversion to Methodist Christianity. Could you imagine Jindal saying such a thing about a Hindu temple?

The above is a video clip of Haley during a 2014 visit to India, where she visited the Golden Temple with her husband. When asked about her conversion to Christianity, she avers the sincerity of her belief. But Haley also speaks in an ecumenical language and seems to express the view that her choice of religion was in keeping with her culture as an American. Her turn to Christianity was not a denial of Sikhism, which she seems to see as grounded in India.

I can’t look into Haley’s heart, and to be frank her religious faith is not my business. But, I think I can say many people of subcontinental background tend to view converts to American Christianity as opportunists or somehow lacking in cultural pride and internal strength. American evangelical Protestant acquaintances would often mock Hinduism in front of me, despite the fact that I have a Muslim name and have been an atheist since I was a small child. To convert to Christianity is perceived by some to be conceding the point of that mockery.

And yet above Haley seems to be interpreting her conversion to Christianity as an expression of her alignment with the Dharma of the land in which she grew up, the United States. You may agree or disagree with her, but her emotional expression above certainly does make it seem that she retains a deep fondness for her Sikh upbringing.

Saturday South Asian Questions

  • Is there such a thing about a Deccan Culture? I don’t necessarily mean the “Dakhini” culture but an intermediate geo-cultural zone between North & South India.
  • As a corollary it’s a bit interesting that the “Dakhini” culture didn’t emerge as a binding agent quite in the same way as the Delhite-Hindustani one.
  • In the spirit of this thread about differences between North & South Karnataka; I was looking at the 50 state proposal in India. Does India need more states?
  • I was shocked to learn about “Gandhinagar“, which is the new capital of Gujarat. I do remember there was controversy to change the name of Ahmedabad but it seemed done and dusted.
  • My personal view is that it seems churlish and rather offensive to make a “Saffron” sister city to Ahmedabad but my view is that once again we must be grateful to QeA for avoiding cultural (if not physical) extinction.

Tweet of the Day

I should have added “woke white friend” but I found this to be so hilarious. I mentioned that he should just say “Indo-Mughlai” or “Indo-Pakistani” though from my understanding Nihari, Aloo Ghosht and Falood have definite Turanian influences. Daal of course is a staple food but depends on what type of Daal; Haleem is certainly ours.

Much as I love my woke white friends (they find my persistent Toryism to be hilarious) I don’t approve of their use of the term desi as in this recent tweet:

Continue reading Tweet of the Day

Map of Civilizations

Since the above map is only really visible on clicking I thought I would share another map that was better colour-coded.

World scripts map
Turan & Turkey needs to go Purple asap..

A book that deeply influenced me as a child was the Clash of Civilisations. I thought Samuel Huntington’s contention that Civilisations correlate to religions was a bit too blunt. However what also influenced me was the first chaptre of Ludwig Von Mises’s book, “Nation, State & Economy.”

Continue reading Map of Civilizations

The ineffectual British Monarchy and why one shouldn’t Diss Chris

I’ve started to use Twitter alot more as I’ve was rather tied up (to my loss I still haven’t been able to meet Kabir Sahib in person). I have begun to prepare for a national franchising of one of my brand’s Bubble Tap.

Incidentally my life comes to full circle as I mirror what my Irani great grandfather did in Kohlapur upon pioneering there*; he opened an ice-cream shop I opened a Dessert shop upon moving to Cambridge.

At any rate as is pretty evident my political instincts are quite High Tory. I only assume the SJW mantle to fight back against White Liberals since I dislike Munfaqeenism (to thine ownself be true). A classic example.

https://www.facebook.com/truTVAdamRuinsEverything/videos/2020104111613510/?__xts__[0]=68.ARATOlpD_OitUxNp3_xx-dkDYOxJEpGqcDfmzKgmulIhzwgsFMyidIjMci_BFhtSevClGv08vS-8qI-BfHhuReh4qqWm972GLCrQttP9nt9mNYEBxADKutEhRzCtsqaLZ6kzl-rx0lXSNz1R2NsW8C6oNI-TGtBKYUJVcQseSc65JwjNgu_kzw&__tn__=-R

Continue reading The ineffectual British Monarchy and why one shouldn’t Diss Chris

How the Greeks came to be

Sing, Goddess, Achilles’ rage,
Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks
Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls
Of heroes into Hades’ dark,
And left their bodies to rot as feasts
For dogs and birds, as Zeus’ will was done.

Who are the Greeks? Where did they come from?

We have enough ancient DNA now to answer many of these questions. It seems that the largest component of Greek ancestry derives from the expansion of farmers out of Anatolia ~9,000 years ago. But at some point in the latter phases of prehistory, another wave of migrants pushed out from the east, with affinities to peoples as far away as Iran. And then during the Bronze Age, another pulse of migration arrived, likely correlated with the arrival of Greek-speaking peoples as such, the Mycenaeans. Finally, there is a fair amount of circumstantial evidence that the peregrinations of the pagan Slavs during Late Antiquity and the early Medieval period left their imprint on many Hellenes, in particular in the north of the country, around Salonika.

But that’s just genetics. What about culture? In terms of religion, Greek paganism is a composite. Zeus pater is clearly a standard Indo-European sky-god. Jupiter in Latin. Dyáuṣ Pitṛ́ for the ancient Aryans. In contrast, gods such as Athena seem to have synthetic, and at least partly pre-Indo-European origins. Finally, Dionysius was possibly an eastern import relatively late in prehistory.

Though the Greek language is definitely Indo-European, there are also extensive loanwords indicating an indigenous substrate. For example, words with the syllabic fragment –nth, such as in Hyacinth, are likely native. The Greeks settled amongst peoples who had a long history of settled life, and had developed their own civilization.

The point is that it is probably not even wrong to say that the Greeks as we understand came from elsewhere, or, that they were indigenous. To be Greek probably emerged in the period after 2500 BC, as Indo-Europeans mixed with the local cultures, and created something new. Autochthonous.

Brown Pundits