Month: February 2020

Delhi riots (a)

This is a follow up to:

The Delhi riots

What happened on the ground is very murky. This is more a request for information rather than describing what happened.

 

Question 1: Did any violence take place outside of 7 neighborhoods in North East Delhi (Seelampur, Jafrabad, Maujpur, Kardampuri, Babarpur, Gokulpuri and Shivpuri)? Did violence really take place in all these seven neighborhoods or are press reports inaccurate?

Question 2: If violence did not take place outside these 7 neighborhoods or took place in fewer neighborhoods than the press reported was this really a major riot?

Question 3: Why would the Chief minister of Delhi–Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party or Kejruddin as many affectionately refer to him–allow a riot where muslims get killed? Many of his supporters and leading aids are muslims. One of his six ministers is muslim:

Note that previously there was an inaccurate list of Delhi assembly persons and cabinet ministers that is now deleted. Hat Trip Scorpion Eater for letting me know the list was inaccurate.

Granted these muslim supporters of Arvind Kejriwal likely support CAA, NRC, the Ayodhya temple, and abrogating section 370. Don’t know this for sure but they might be Shiites, Sufis, liberal muslims or atheist muslims–a majority of whom vote against the left and conservative Sunni friendly political parties in India.

But if this is so, then why facilitate a riot in these neighborhoods? Are they conservative Sunni heavy? They strike me as full of muslims sympathetic to the non left (in India most conservative Sunnis vote for the left and most of the muslims who are not conservative sunnis politically ally with the non left). There are multiple reports of local muslims forming human chains to protect nonmuslims and nonmuslim sites–including temples.  Many local muslims in press reports are insisting that the attackers were not local muslims but out of towners. If this is correct, why would the muslim leaders of the Aam Admi Party attack their own political base? {In Delhi the majority of muslims vote for the non left political parties and against the left political parties.}

The attacks that killed many Indian police officers–including police head constable Ratan Lal, that stabbed Ankit Sharma–a Security Assistant working in the Intelligence Bureau–four hundred times, the attacks against non muslim holy sites; and the attacks against non muslim people have the feel of a professionally organized military strike.

Could this have been organized by foreign militaries and global Islamist organizations to coincide with President Trump’s visit to the USA? It would match their modus of operations and thought process.

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Completely seperate from the above speculation about who caused the North Eastern Delhi riot, is critiquing the operational response by the Delhi state government, and the Indian central (federal) government. Here I have a lot of thoughts, but would like to ask the following questions first:

  • Did Delhi Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal call for the Indian Army to be deployed in force within hours of the attacks begining?
  • Why didn’t Indian PM Modi comply with this request, assuming it was made?
    • Was the Indian central government and her various agencies afraid of a “Black Lives Matter” style take down of the Indian Army and Indian police by the global media and by global academia?
      • If this is so, one lesson that should be learned from this is to mostly ignore what foreign media, foreign academia, global human rights organizations and global activists say. It is more important to do what is right (dharmic or haq (حق)) than to be respected, let alone liked.
  • Did the Indian police really retreat in fear after getting violently attacked?
  • How good of a job did the Delhi state government do in having rapid two way communication with Delhi locals and the global media?
  • How good of a job did the Ministry of Home Affairs (of the Indian central federal government) do in having rapid two way communication with Delhi locals and the global media?
  • Were the above the only two public sources of communication and information regarding the North East Delhi riots? If not, what other governmental organ was communicating with the Delhi locals and the global media?

Note that this post is likely to change as new information becomes available.

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Update 1

Tareq Fatah–one of India’s most popular and respected muslim leaders–describes some of the out of area Islamists who coordinated their attacks on North East Delhi during President Trump’s visit:

Mobbywick, thanks for sharing how probable Islamist attackers tore the school clothes of North East Delhi girls. What do you think of my speculation that out of area miscreants rather than locals orchestrated this? Is there any evidence that Islamist out of area people targetted liberal/atheist/sufi/shia muslims in North East Delhi alongside nonmuslims people, holy sites, schools, shops, police, Intelligence Bureau. (Many anti CAA NRC “protestors” in recent months have violently attacked liberal/atheist/sufi/shia muslims.)

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Update 2:

Growing evidence that the Pakistani Army ISI Directorate coordinated the Islamist attacks on North East Delhi to coincide with Trump’s visit.

Brown Tories!

Pieces like this in The Guardian are somewhat funny, How did British Indians become so prominent in the Conservative party? It’s not that complicated. A lot of British Indians are professionally and economically successful. As bourgeois voters, they’re good targets for the Conservative Party, so long as that faction mutes excessive anti-minority sentiment.* The same calculus that is at work with British Jews applies to British Indians.

The numbers speak:

Fast-forward to 2010, and the Conservatives held 30% of the British Indian vote. After 30 years of Thatcherite ideology, British Indians were the most pro-Conservative ethnic minority, after the Jewish community. After decades of gradual advance, this number soared to 40% in 2017. In the 2019 election, as the Conservatives chased a realignment towards white northern voters based on racist scaremongering, support in constituencies with high Indian populations increased substantially again. At every point, this has included members of both groups of Indian migrants. Now British Indians make up 15% of the Tory cabinet.

The Tories have now managed to extend their appeal beyond the “two time” migrants by finding common cause in a project of Islamophobia. Supported by the Indian government and its far-right ruling party, the BJP, the Conservatives have exploited a sharp rise in Hindu nationalism within the British Indian community to play Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Muslim communities off against one another.

And of course, there is the fact that the Labour Party religion at prayer is Islam, at least of an ethnicized sort. For each action, there is an opposition and equal counter-reaction. British Jews and Hindus and Sikhs are suspicious of excessive Islamophilia. They will vote for the faction which is less friendly to this. It doesn’t take deep analysis.

* The racialist and Christian fixations of the Republican Party is the primary reason that most Indian Americans, who are immigrants, position themselves on the moderate Left with centrist Democrats.

Pre Buddhist Music and tradition in South Sri Lanka

Pre Buddhist music and dance of Sri Lanka

Its just the rhythms, so complex and for the uninitiated so out of tune. That said whats with the court jester head gear.

As crainsy1337 says

The yakun natima, or devil dance ritual of Sri Lanka, is nothing if not full of drama. Not just a charade or interval designed to entertain, the yakun natima is a carefully crafted ritual with a history reaching far back into Sri Lanka’s pre-Buddhist past. It combines ancient Ayurvedic concepts of disease causation with deft psychological manipulation. Lasting up to twelve hours, it mixes raucous humour with deep-rooted fears to create a healing catharsis for both patient and community.

I just like the words in the first part. Is it about Seenigama Devol Kumaru.

Nondi Kumaru …….
Demala mau ….. (means Tamil mother)

 

The rise of Islam after 1500 in the Indian subcontinent

For me, Richard Eaton’s The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760, is the best analysis of the peculiar spatial distribution of religion in South Asia today. This is not because Eaton’s work is without flaw, or beyond reproach. It is because few have made as concerted an effort to analyze this issue in a dispassionate manner.

The map to the right shows the proportion of Muslims within united Bengal in ~1870 by region. The outlines of Bangladesh and West Bengal are already clear. That being said, one feature that seems clear is that the more marginal areas are curiously mostly Muslim (e.g., the far southeast). Eaton’s broad argument, following upon others, is a consequence of the fact that these areas came under intensive cultivation only during the Mughal period, and therefore under the aegis of Muslim elites. Therefore, the local peasantry took up a nominal Muslim identity as a matter of course. To reinforce the mechanism, Eaton points out that there are noted cases of villages founded by Hindu zamindars in the east where Hindu shrines were built, and the peasants nominally adhered to the sect of Hinduism professed by the zamindar.

The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760 is fully available online. I encourage you to read it. One thing that is now clearer to me again after reading it is that Islam as a religious identity of the peasantry of eastern Bengal is a notable feature only after the Mughal conquest of 1576. Visitors to Bengal from other regions before this date mention Muslims only as residents of cities and towns. Additionally, these Muslims often have some foreign connection, whether it be Afghan, Turk, or Persian. As far as the rural people go, none are mentioned as Muslim. Some of them described in eastern Bengal also seem likely to have been Tibeto-Burman in origin. They are described as “beardless”, and Muslim commentators assert they are neither the religion of India nor are they Muslims.

After 1600 visitors began to observe large numbers of Muslims in places such as the lands on either side of the Meghna river. In contrast, observers of the Hooghly basin note that all the inhabitants are Hindus (e.g., a Jesuit declares they are all “idolaters”).

In another paper Eaton analyzes Punjab. While the Islamicization of Bengal was driven by small mosques and shrines in newly founded hamlets, Eaton argues that in western Punjab Islamcization was driven by the transition of pastoralist Jatts to farming, and their settlement around charismatic Sufi shrines. But, he presents data that suggests that this process of Islamization was gradual and somewhat later than the present-day Muslims assert. Siyal Jatts of Jhang in northern Punjab assert they have been Muslim since 1250. But a record of names of notables from this community suggests this is unlikely.

Islamicization began in the period between 1400 and 1500. But the shift from Punjabi names to self-conscious Muslim names did not complete in totality until 400 years had passed.

Brown privilege in the American executive suite

Why East Asians but not South Asians are underrepresented in leadership positions in the United States:

Whereas extensive research has examined the “glass ceiling” faced by women, little research has examined the “bamboo ceiling,” whereby Asians appear disproportionately underrepresented in leadership positions in the United States. To investigate the mechanisms and scope of this problem, we compared the two largest Asian subgroups: East Asians and South Asians. Across nine studies (n = 11,030), East Asians were less likely than South Asians and whites to attain leadership positions, whereas South Asians outperformed whites. The leadership attainment gap between East Asians and South Asians was consistently explained by cultural differences in assertiveness, but not by prejudice or motivation. To leverage diverse leadership talent, organizations should understand the differences among different cultural groups and diversify the prototype of leadership.

I’ll put some stuff from the discussions of each of the analyses:

– “Our analysis of the population of S&P CEOs revealed notable leadership attainment gaps among EAs, SAs, and whites. Whereas EAs had a lower CEO-to-population ratio than whites, SAs actually had a higher CEO-to-population ratio than whites. These results indicate that at the highest level of US corporate leadership, EAs are less likely than SAs and whites to attain leadership positions, whereas SAs actually outperform whites.”

– “By analyzing a large-scale field survey distributed to a set of S&P 500-level companies, study 2 provided evidence that the leadership attainment gap between EAs and SAs exists not only at the CEO level (study 1) but also in broader senior leadership across large US companies. Importantly, this effect could not be explained by control variables such as birth country, education level, or the economic prosperity of EA vs. SA countries.”

– “By analyzing another large-scale field survey, study 3a provided evidence that EAs were less likely than SAs to attain senior leadership positions partly because EAs were lower in assertiveness, but not because they were lower in motivation. Again, these effects could not be explained by control variables such as English fluency, birth country, education level, or the economic prosperity of EA vs. SA countries.”

– “By analyzing another large-scale field survey, study 3b provided further evidence that EAs were lower than SAs in both current and prospective leadership attainment, partly as a function of EAs’ lower assertiveness.”

– “Complementing the field studies involving large US companies (studies 2, 3a, and 3b), study 4 analyzed a large MBA dataset that mitigated self-selection and self-report biases. Replicating the prior studies, EAs were less likely to be nominated as leaders than SAs; this effect was again mediated by assertiveness. Consistent with study 1’s finding about CEO representation, SAs were more likely to be nominated as leaders than whites. Importantly, these effects could not be explained by control variables such as personality, SES, and birth country.”

– “By analyzing the objective leadership attainment of a large dataset of MBA students, study 5 provided further evidence that EAs were less likely to attain leadership positions than SAs; this effect was again mediated by assertiveness. Consistent with the prior studies, SAs were more likely to attain leadership positions than whites. In addition, EAs and SAs did not differ significantly in leadership motivation or aptitude, suggesting that these two factors were unlikely to be the main reasons for the leadership attainment gap between EAs and SAs.”

– “Dovetailing with study 6a, study 6b found that non-Asian Americans exhibited greater prejudice toward SAs than EAs. These results suggest that prejudice is unlikely to be the main reason for the observed leadership attainment gap between EAs and SAs. As a robustness check, we replicated these results in another preregistered study that employed a group comparative design (for details, see SI Appendix).”

– “Study 7 provided experimental evidence that non-Asian Americans rated EAs lower on leadership potential than SAs. Consistent with our prior studies, this effect was significantly mediated by perceived assertiveness, but not by prejudice or perceived motivation. Together, these results suggest that, despite facing less prejudice than SAs and being equally motivated, EAs are less likely to attain leadership positions.”

The authors cite Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative India, but anyone who has spent time around subcontinentals and East Asians is aware of the difference. To be frank, we brown people can kind be annoying dicks, lacking in grace and civility. This is evident in comments on this weblog. But these antisocial tendencies happen to be good for selecting CEOs of major American companies.

Why physical appearance is an imperfect individual proxy for ancestry

Kalash children

Pictured above are some Kalash children. You notice in the foreground and center a child who could easily pass as European and draw no notice on the streets of Gdansk, Poland. But look at the child right behind her, I would guess she’d draw no notice on the streets of New Delhi!

Though the Kalash are noted for their fair features, most of them look more West Asian than anything else, and from what I can tell as many have a “northwest Indian” phenotype as a “European” one. Genetically we know that they are good proxies for “Ancestral North Indians” (ANI). About ~30% of their ancestry can be modeled as derive from the steppe peoples, such as the Sintashta. Indo-Aryans. The other ~70% of their ancestry is similar to that of the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) people, which itself can be decomposed as mostly ancient Southwest Eurasian-adjacent (i.e., derived after the Last Glacial Maximum from the ancestors of Zagros farmers) and a minority of ancestry that is more like that of Andaman Island and pre-Neolithic Southeast Asians (“Ancient Ancestral South Indians,” or AASI).

Another thing to note about the Kalash is that they are genetically very homogeneous. This is due to the fact that they live in an isolated region, and their non-Muslim religion means that they have not intermarried with nearby Muslim people. What does this imply? It means that the Indian-looking girl is exactly the same ancestrally as the European-looking girl. Both have the same proportion of AASI and Indo-Aryan ancestry. That being said, the Indian-looking girl exhibits features more like that the AASI than the European-looking girl. Why?

The simple reason is that the genes which vary and encode salient physical features are a much smaller subset than the total genome. Therefore, they are subject to much higher variance from individual to individual (lower N in the denominator).

Here’s a concrete example. Compare eye color to inferring total ancestry and your total ancestry. Modern SNP-array ancestry inference relies on 100,000 to 1 million genomic positions. It is pretty good as a proxy for the 10 to 100 million SNPs out of your 3 billion base pairs that define your variable ancestry. For eye color, there are a few dozen genes at most, and more honestly a handful that really impacts variation. For Europeans, 75% of the variation of blue vs. non-blue eye color is due to variation around one genetic region, the HERC2-OCA2 locus. This means that just because someone has blue eyes, one can’t be sure that one has much European ancestry at all!

In the 1000 Genomes South Asian populations the SNPs for “blue eyes” are 2 to 10% frequency by population. Since the expression is recessive (you need both copies of the “blue eye” variant), assuming just this SNP you’d expect 0.05% to 1% manifestation of the characteristic in Indian-origin populations. The people with blue eyes have no more or less European ancestry than anyone else in their family.

Where does this leave us? You should understand from this that within a given family or ethnic group there is going to be a range of appearances, and a range is normal within many groups without exotic ancestry. Most Bengalis have 5-20% East Asian ancestry (closer to 5 in West Bengal, closer to 20 in Comilla and Chittagong). This means most of their ancestry is South Asian, and most Bengalis look just like other Indian-origin people. But a substantial minority look somewhat East Asian, to varying degrees. This is exactly what you expect when you have a minority quantum of ancestry.

Finally, many of the commenters here made a lot of assumptions about vloggers talking about their ancestry and were quite rude. I wish you wouldn’t do that. As a matter of fact, many of the inferences may actually be correct, but you don’t know for sure, and you don’t know the whole story. I’m pretty liberal on the comments of this weblog, but if you exhibit a serial pattern of rudeness I’m going to start randomly deleting your comments (if you complain about this I will immediately ban your IP).

Brown Pundits