Another Browncast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe to one of the links above!
The podcast was a good experience – a free flowing discussion without much structure. Retrospectively I felt I could have intervened more on some points or countered some of the answers, but I am overall happy with the discussion.
I hope I have this opportunity again to discuss a few more things with Sai.
Great interview and discussion. I always wondered why Indian leadership was so accommodative towards minorities(mainly Muslims) post independence even though they personally saw India lost 30% of geography in the name of Islam. Glad that Deepak sir asked & captured this idiocy in his book. I feel an inherent accommodative nature of Hinduism is part of it but i agree with him that both Gandhi and Nehru were more inspired by western secularism ideals that made them confused, ignore history of Bharat and committed this grave mistake.
Nehru with his UK education thoroughly believed in western supremacy and saw himself as a savior of indians(mainly hindus) but little known fact is that even Gandhi was also inspired by ideology of “Theosophy” which has certain naïve dhimmitude level understanding of reality. This is a good podcast which delves into how lawyer Gandhi became “Mahatma” Gandhi. This entire podcast series “Empire” is a good source of information regarding East India company and later British empire in India.
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/7-mahatma-gandhi/id1639561921?i=1000579998562
just watched the full interview. this guy (deepak) is certainly quite original and refreshingly free from the straightjacket of western liberal thinking. he will likely emerge as a leading intellectual in the hindutva circles in the future.
i found his assessment of gandhi as a “russian orthodox hindu” both accurate and hilarious. gandhi surely believed in gratuitously suffering and inflicting pain on himself, even when it was not necessary, as a prerequisite for achieving any goal.
will write mote later.
finally, completed watching the video. It is strange to see this transition happen for gaurav. One should amplify views of S sai deepak even more. Though I am skeptical of trads, Fact is, we have won/are winning, so it makes sense to preserve some of those seeds.Question is which ones. Also, his suggestion on temples and its place in society to allow more participation through services etc is a good one, which i support so am shocked that gaurav did not hear of it earlier.
phylecon:
I knew about it – but had no deep interest in it due to my ignorance – i wasnt aware of its true vision and implications.
I knew about it as i discussed with saideepak in few yrs back, online on twitter, pretty much saying this .And in my view is the ultimate solution for it fosters asabiyya at a local level in a very strong way. He wont remember talking to twitter handles from yrs ago. 🙂
Doing my bit anonymously. I am mildly proud though, that i did generate enough traction on a few things(not talking about this particularly) . The history will not remember the many anonymous handles doing their tiny bit pushing different conversations. Including nudging the idea that barkha/shekar should go solo online and ditch TV news media.
But It happened 🙂 .
I thought this was a podcast, turned out to be a soapbox.
hope you pass this on gaurav.
I think the most important part that sai deepak would have to speak of in my view in his third installment , to stand anywhere close to savarkar or ambedkar for his intellectual contribution is about demography and asymmetric support for other religion which is nowhere else in the world and connect it to mental colonialism of the elites.That they cannot see this or speak out on this is evidence that they do not actually believe even in the very principles they claim they are believers of.
One then has to talk of tradeoffs and the necessary compromises we make for Economy vs demography in the long run. At which time should we consider demographic consideration to be so important as to overwhelm everything else?.
In the end, freedom = demography. And the solutions might have to come from ideas beyond “secularism”, “liberalism” etc. The only ism is empiricism. everything else is conjob or a gamble without letting the participants know it is a gamble at their expense by high minded intellectuals. Do secularists inform people that following these policies might mean you as the majority might very well become a minority and risk abuse and we are running this experiment at your expense?. As a fiduciary duty even financial analysts need to inform their clients, but this vital part is hidden away by accusing anyone who questions this as a bigot. morality is ultimately not a matter of some highminded principle but a part of a community that has proven itself capable of introspection and reciprocity. Hindus have shown this enough and do not need any further principles to follow to prove the point.
Best would be for him to compare chinas success and chinese philosophy which aims for empiricism.
empiricism >>> egalitarian ideologies whose consequences are covered up by egalitarian rhetoric and gaslighting others as being immoral for merely choosing basic protection of survival and insistence of reciprocity. This mindless hypnotism is something one has to cut off oneself from.
Demographic change is also a consequence of different civic laws /uniform civil code etc leading to different rates of fertility as a consequence of marriageable age. So, in simple words until we break the spell and let it be known that all that matters is demography> military tech > economy , all ideologies are forms of gaslighting covering up these basic things.
second, the inability of Indian left/liberal gang to condemn what is happening in other countries, to abandon millions of minority at the stroke of partition is evidence of them being colonized minds and incapable of moral objectivity. For them to claim a moral position must mean moral judgement but are infact suffering from moral cowardice or worse moral relativism and hence could never criticize anyone beyond hindus while at the same time accepting and propagating every tom , dick and harry western thinkers critique of hindus and they cannot see this internal contradiction in themselves. And hence are not trust worthy.
Partition was an act of moral cowardice on part of nehru and co, as they allowed a religion based country to form which they believe was wrong but allowed it to fruition, giving birth to enemy. The only thing they have shown so far is that their ideas fail when faced with intransigence and hurt those who cooperated, which is wicked.
This is true because the conservative nature of different religions are different, when one tries to play such game with say christianity of 15th century, it would be terrible and yet that is where islam is right now.
empiricism,demography and reciprocity is all that matter. reciprocity here strongly implies demography.
There has been a moral inversion from polytheism. That, reciprocity which was the ideal and normal in polytheistic world has been turned down to accomodate “tolerance” because of monotheistic intolerance. And others have to accomodate their zealotry. That a hindu might bow in church or dargah but the other is unlikely and infact believe it has to be rooted out. And what secularism, does is give a coverup to this process. Also, secularism by itself also cannot guarantee its own existence for it allows demographic change which itself leads to end of tolerance and secularism. so, how is the replacement of reciprocity and skepticism which were part of polytheism being replaced by secularism guaranteeing any better outcome?. It doesnt, its just a propaganda that has gone on without being questioned. These questions come come from Hindus on the right, but have never come the colonized minds.
According to them, if the principle leads to bad consequences, it is not their fault and they wash their hands off it. Which goes against science , and the two quotes by feynman. And is also moral cowardice and deceptive manipulation for not admitting failures.
“You must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”
Their unwillingness to see their own ideas/ideals as experiments/gambits/gambles on trial and it is the results that determine the validity of their ideas is the question. If their ideas foster diversity, one should consider it. If allowing ideologies whose very aim is to end diversity,pluralism,skepticism . which is what gets allowed under secularism, then should they not openly admit that their idea is biased in favor of such ideologies?.
Congress post partition has washed its hands off the religious minority that they abandoned . This is their original sin and to this day, they do not admit this. Atleast they must admit a periodic testing of progress of every individual community and ideas undergirding that community.
i will throw off all pretense and state what is obvious to every hindu but is too afraid to say openly. ultimately, india will have to reconvert all of its muslim population back to hinduism, or expel them to pakistan or other muslim countries. this is the only way india can repair its internal fault-lines and regain its lost vigor. the time has come to openly state that islam is fundamentally incompatible with a democratic, plural society, and either it has to mend itself, or make a clear separation from the indian society.
before somebody starts shouting nazi, nazi…, think clearly. nazism was rooted in race. the jews had no way back into german society. their blood itself was deemed tainted, and they had no option but to cease to exist. even the most extreme hindutva proponents don’t fantasize about a muslim genocide. all they really want is to bring them back into the folds of their ancient faith, so that india can stop fighting its internal battles and start looking outwards again. and pakistan was afterall founded as a homeland for indian muslims. what exactly is wrong in asking for the completion of the unfinished agenda of partition and conducting a full and final population transfer?
in fact this is exactly the solution the spanish implemented after their reconquista of spain. they took part of the muslim and jewish population back into the catholic faith, and expelled the rest who were too recalcitrant to cooperate. the solution obviously worked wonders from the spanish, because immediately afterwards spain rose to become the first global power in the history.
time to think boldly.
@phyecho1 very insightful analysis.
so, what you are saying is that there is a philosophical paradox here. if by following the principle of diversity one protects an ideology whose very objective is the eradication of diversity, then are they truly following the principle of diversity, or just faking it?
counter question… if in the name of following the principle of diversity one bans an ideology whose very objective is the eradication of diversity, then are they being true to the principle of diversity?
verily a question fit for the ancient rishis of upanishada period, the buddhist monks, or the ancient greeks.
It is not paradox, hence i pointed to feynman and empiricism and called it gaslighting and conjob.
because they are. The correct answer to them is that they are colonized and cowardly pretending to be otherwise high minded.
otherwise , you would see a body of literature and reporting criticizing the two monotheistic faiths, atleast outside of India on principles. But they never do.
They are just useful idiots who insist on running these bad experiments on people without telling them it is an experiment and they could severely get hurt from this. Which is ethically immoral. Every experiment run on people should come with letting the participants know what the outcome is. And all this they do to accomodate the two big evangelical monotheisms of the day. They are the problem . Rest of them got along well enough for centuries. secularism was necessary for christians to constrain christian zealotry. it was meant to constrain that problem and to universalize it means every other belief system is equally expansionist and exclusionary . They are not. secularism is the alternate solution to reciprocity, pluralism, skepticism that polytheistic societies already had. secularism is affirmation of zealotry, expansionism of monotheism in hopes that over centuries, this will tame their passions. rather than putting two most violent religious ideologies to shame and restrict them, they just want to let this “secularism” experiment run which might eradicate all other faiths. In India, it is even worse for these people allow state support for these faiths, which by design is not secular. Nor do they allow criticism of faith by free speech which is absolutely the necessary ingredient of secularism to blunt their totalitarian/exclusivist ideologies. And worse still is we dont even have common laws there by allowing different fertility outcomes.
Hence my view, all experiments are run for a period of time and one checks the results. They cannot get themselves to see this or do this and will launch themselves to endless excuses, gaslighting others by calling them fascist. Everyone has the right to stand for their survival.
secularism is a solution only for the problems of christianty and islam. A world without them might never invent this solution. Because the intensity of fundamental zealotry might never reach this level nor be as long lasting.
the final argument is against “individualism” which is also a form of gaslighting when brought in the context of this debate. In specific case in India, we never tried individualism. The answer to that is also empiricism.
demography>military tech>economy.This is reality, all else is gaslighting , which seek to hide behind libertarian kind of free will, there is no such thing, there are biases in human brain and they exploit that under guise of individualism. Seeing all ideologies as experiments and checking results for a given time period is always the answer.
1:one should not fool oneself
2:It doesnt matter how beautiful your theory is. it is to be treated as an experiment and checked against.
one bastard is using my earlier post of ” civic nationalism” wrt india. what scummy people these guys are, copying ideas to once again gaslight people while changing demography in the background. Their aim is to keep gaslighting people endlessly while demography changes in the background.
we might need power and wealth to fix all these. But we must never allow ourselves to be fooled any further. call for fiduciary responsibility in letting participants know the consequence of running experiments on them.
The only ism is empiricism. everything else is conjob
Do secularists inform people that following these policies might mean you as the majority might very well become a minority and risk abuse and we are running this experiment at your expense?
all that matters is demography> military tech > economy , all ideologies are forms of gaslighting covering up these basic things.
hard hitting lines.
At the outset I am sorry for not watching the complete video. Hopefully our AI whizkids come up with integrated solutions to transcribe and summarize videos for people who prefer text.
Does the podcast cover the reasons for why freeing up temple from government control has not happened? Main reason is opposition by OBC parties. Temple committee elections will become separate Hindu electorates where OBC leadership will be disadvantaged wrt UC leadership. If temple freedom does come about, what happens if different caste orgs end up mutating into Singh sabhas and Prabhandak committee.
Emphasis on outgroup threat is necessary not sufficient.
all such things can be done away with by nominations by temple head committee that is necessarily diverse.
who does the nomination? if gov then they are not really free of gov control rt? what am i missing?
free the temples and let them nominate people of diverse background periodically after a term for people of different backgrounds where the criteria is aastha.