Month: August 2024

Capsule Review: To Raise a Fallen People

To Raise a Fallen People is an interesting collection of Indian writings from the late 19th century, compiled by Professor Rahul Sagar, who is Associate Professor at Yale-NUS College and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

Professor Sagar has gathered together several Indian writings on national and international affairs from the late 19th century and he has chosen to frame the book as “Indians were not morons and had thoughts about the rest of the world in the 19th century that can tell us about Indian foreign policy today”, but this editorial frame adds nothing to the book. The book is good because the selections are interesting and worth reading, not because it sheds any light on current Indian foreign policy.

One sees what various Indian thinkers thought about their own position in the world in the late 19th century, when the mutiny had been crushed and British rule in India had stabilized and seemed almost permanent. The writers range from famous authors and politicians such as Bankim Chatterjee, Mohandas Gandhi, Annie Besant and Salar Jung, but the one i found most interesting was a letter from Anandibai Joshi (first Indian woman to go to the USA for medical studies) explaining her decision to go to America. The “prohibition” against foreign travel is discussed (and vehemently rejected). The wonders of Great Britain are described, but so are her crimes. There are interesting pieces from some Muslim thinkers, all of whom regard the Hindu majority as basically irrelevant and are focused on the “clash” they think is going on between islamdom and Western powers (with complaints against Russians as oppressors of Ottoman Turkey and invaders of central Asia, but also against the British for raking up Armenian massacres; Muslim writers feel the British empire is also a Muslim empire (since more Muslims were subjects of Victoria than of any Muslim sovereign) and wish Britain would heed their concerns about the caliphate, etc). In short, a great window into late 19th century colonial India and its intellectuals. Ignore the foreign policy hook that the author has used to set up the book and just enjoy the excerpts.

Some representative screenshots follow: Continue reading Capsule Review: To Raise a Fallen People

Demographic Destiny: Power and Identity in India

Across India, discussions about demographics are charged with questions of destiny and identity. In the Hindi belt, particularly in UP and Bihar, the focus often turns to birth rates between Hindus and Muslims, a dynamic sometimes referred to as a “cradle race.” This term reflects deeper concerns about societal balance, yet paradoxically, it also influences high birth rates among upper castes. I know a (Hindu) woman from Bihar who recently had her third son, a personal example of how this dialectic pervades everyday life.

How would decline in Total Fertility Rate (TFR) below the replacement level, in many states Of India affect the future population structure of the country? – UPSC Geography Optional Mains – 2022 - Blog

Globally, the Hindu population has grown modestly from 11% to 15% over the past five centuries. In contrast, the share of the Abrahamic faiths has surged from 37% to 54%, moving from a plurality to a Scottish majority.

In the same period, within what is the modern boundaries of India, the Hindu population has seen a subtle decline—from 85% to 79%—reflecting a complex history of migration, cultural shifts, and geopolitical changes. The most pronounced demographic shifts occurred in areas now known as Pakistan and Bangladesh, which made the Hindu population of the Greater Indian Subcontinent dropped from 78% to 66%. Despite this decline, these two countries still rank as the 2nd and 5th largest Hindu populations globally, underscoring their profound & immovable Indic substrate.

Imperialism in India over a long millennia

Mughal imperialism significantly reshaped Bengal’s religious landscape with taxation settlements, British colonialism introduced Christianity with further irrigation works also impacting demographics in Western Punjab, and Partition irrevocably redrawing demographic lines.

The narrative of global demographic displacement—often framed as the decline of a lighter-skinned, prosperous population in a democracy—oversimplifies and distorts the real dynamics. The Parsis of Mumbai, for example, despite their dwindling numbers, continue to wield significant economic and cultural influence. Their enduring presence in South Bombay, marked by landmarks and institutions, underscores a critical point: demographic numbers don’t necessarily dictate power or presence.

Dishoom is a homage to the Bombay-Irani cafe culture; one of London’s most prominent restaurant groups

Historically, the emergence of elites often resulted from historical accidents rather than pure meritocracy. The upper castes in India, consistently representing 15-25% of the Hindu population over centuries, exemplify this. Their enduring influence, despite societal changes and efforts toward social equity, highlights the deep-rooted structures that shape contemporary realities.

the new French cabinet

In France, the overrepresentation of white individuals in parliament—estimated at 90-95% despite whites comprising 70-85% of the population (but these numbers are notoriously hard to get by as France doesn’t do official racial & ethnic counts so as to not undermine the indivisibility of the French people & nation)—reflects a global issue: power doesn’t always proportionally reflect demographic makeup. This discrepancy invites a broader reflection on how historical advantages and institutional control determine who holds power.

Democrats Are Learning “Demographics Aren't Destiny” - IslamiCity

This discussion is crucial, not just academically, but for understanding how identity, power, and demographics intersect in complex ways. By critically examining these narratives, we can better understand the realities of demographic changes without succumbing to deterministic thinking.

The myth of democratic liberal capitalism is the presumption that voters determine the true shift of power. The growing inertia of the deep state—civil services and military administrations—makes genuine reform difficult, echoing George Orwell’s observation: “but England will still be England, an everlasting animal stretching into the future and the past, and, like all living things, having the power to change out of recognition and yet remain the same.”

England Your England: Buy England Your England by Orwell George at Low Price in India | Flipkart.com

It’s nigh on impossible to imagine India that is not Bharat, to envision a future where Hinduism isn’t deeply & inextricably intertwined with its land of origin. It is much more likely that one day, Vedic traditions will once again flow across the banks of the Indus, reclaiming the lost civilization of the past.

Un-naming India: Unsettling the Firmly Established Identity

Anandibai Joshi goes to America-1883

This is an interesting snippet from the book “To Raise a Fallen People”.

This excerpt was written by Dr Anandibai Joshi, the first Hindu lady to qualify as a doctor in America. It is her explanation of why she is going to America, and is a window into a very different time. What a clear headed thinker!

The book (to raise a fallen people) is well worth reading (you can ignore the editorial elements, just read the original texts from the 19th century). It is always good to have an idea of where things were… makes it easier to understand where they are..

My Future Visit to America, 1883

— Anandibai Joshi

. . . Our subject to-day is, “My future visit to America, and public inquiries regarding it.” I am asked hundreds of questions about my going to America. I take this opportunity to answer some of them. . . Continue reading Anandibai Joshi goes to America-1883

Bangladesh podcast # 2 -Regime Change; The Fall of Sheikh Haseena and its Consequences

It will also be on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. as well as on Libsyn and a variety of other platforms.

In this podcast we talk to two Bangladeshi expats who have been involved in recent pro-democracy activism within the BD diaspora. Dr Shafiqur Rahman is a political scientist who teaches in Vancouver. Mr Jyoti Rahman is an activist and blogger who is also an economist and a fiscal policy expert who has worked with the IMF and other institutions. We asked them about what is happening in BD and how this is likely to play out in the coming days..

If you want to support the costs for hosting and Zencastr, you can give to my Patreon.

Thoughts on the “Model Minority Myth” Discourse

Reproducing a recent (slightly edited) tweet in full, originally written in response this article:

Yes, I read your piece, and I’ve read countless others like it over the last decade. That Indian Americans are a “model minority” is not a myth, it’s a statement of fact that is apparent to anyone who has taken even a cursory look at the community’s social/economic outcomes in recent decades as measured by any reasonable metric. It’s not culturally chauvinistic or triumphalist to point this out. There is an important conversation to be had about the structural factors that enabled this including, e.g., inequities in Indian society and American immigration policy (so-called “double selection”), but it is also apparent that our success as a community in recent decades has been a product of both the openness and economic dynamism of American society and the Indian community’s emphasis on financial success, educational attainment, and family stability. That this picture doesn’t capture the diaspora community as a whole is obvious, but it doesn’t have to. That’s why we use averages.

The assertion that the model minority is a “myth” is not an empirical argument, but an ideological one, and in my view it reflects an underlying anxiety among Indian Americans regarding their position in the elite left/democratic coalition. On the one hand, Indian Americans enjoy socio-economic outcomes that surpass those of the average white American, but on the other hand we are from a post-colonial country, are brown, largely non-Christian, etc. and therefore have a natural affinity to the “POC” coalition. It’s a tenuous position to be sure, and the result is an emergent elite that feels the need to apologize for the community’s success, to be embarrassed of it, or to attribute it to wholly structural factors. Even more pernicious is the characterization of certain cultural values that enabled our success in the first place as “White, Christian” measures of success. This is nonsensical and dismissive of the struggles of first generation immigrants who escaped destitution and successfully created a better life for themselves and their families.

The success of Indian Americans in recent decades throws a wrench in the American racial binary (in fact this has been the case since Bhagat Singh Thind), but it also casts doubt on the prevailing ideological shibboleths of the left, namely that America is a white supremacist country, that we are all victims of structural racism, etc. Look, these critiques of American society might have some truth to them, but Indian Americans are not convincing spokespeople for a view that is so at odds with our own experience. To pretend otherwise is to try and fit a square peg in a round hole. So when someone holds up Indian Americans as “ideal” or “model” immigrants, this aggravates the anxiety, because it reveals the truth that our community’s success has been enabled by a political and social culture that many Indian Americans are ideologically compelled to condemn as fundamentally inequitable.

What is most ironic, however, is that the result is often not considered reflection on these ideological axioms, but rather the construction of a “model minority” of their own. The dutiful, hard-working immigrant who is grateful to their adopted country and a model for other immigrants is rejected as a normative ideal in favor of the committed ally who recognizes their privilege and dutifully subordinates the lessons of their own experience and culture to the demands of the coalition. Those who dissent from this model are increasingly condemned as some sort of traitors to the “culture” or, increasingly, “hindu supremacists.” I’d like to think there’s a third path, one that unabashedly celebrates Indian American success and the society and culture that enabled it, while also thinking critically about how Indian Americans can leverage that success to contribute to the national fabric in a way that does not require ritual self-flagellation as a demonstration of political and ideological loyalty.

Major Amin: How the British Ruled India (and the USA failed in Afg)

 

Some Musings from Major Amin. 

What the US could learn from the British ?  An English Private Company Conquered India and Chastised Afghanistan not by superior weapons but a superior strategy
Agha H Amin
What the US could learn from the British
• July 2024
When I researched the English East India Companys history of conquest of India I arrived at the following conclusions :—
1. An army which was 80 % native was used to win the battles against Indians,Nepalis,Bumese,Afghans,Iranians,Chinese,Indonesians,Ceylon etc.
2. The weapons used were almost similar although the company had an edge in superior strategy, superior tactics, better synchronisation of firepower and movement, superior naval power.
3. After 1780 native states also increasingly mastered European way of warfare that were then considered the best in the world through increased use of European military instructors.
4. However superior diplomacy and superior naval power to switch troops worked in companys favour.
5. The elimination of French naval power after the 1789 revolution also removed the only major naval threat to the English company.This was significant as it is questionable if the Americans could ever have won their War of Independence without French naval support. It was lack of naval interdiction which enabled the British to deploy the biggest army in British history to India in 1858. An army bigger than those used in Europe or the Americas till that date.
6. The companys costs of war were low as native troops constituted 80 % of the army and were very low paid as compared to private european troops or British Army regiments hired for India.
7. It was superior strategy and diplomacy through which the British held India in First World War with just 15,000 troops.
8. It was a superior system under which Indian Army with a large Muslim component was successfully employed against Muslim states like Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan etc.
9. Brilliant employment of the old Roman strategy of Divide et Impera or Divide and Rule enabled the British to control India with a very small British military presence and a corp d elite of just 500 civilians who made key decisions.
10. Various races and ethnicities and religions and sects were brilliantly pitched against each other and a healthy balance was maintained.
11. Afghanistan’s government was controlled with just a small personal retainer to the Afghan king of about 15 Lakh Rupees per year by a private company. Afghanistans foreign relations were kept subservient to the British successfully from 1842 to 1919 and the Nadir Shah dynasty was also installed in Afghanistan in 1929 with British largesse.
12. A small example of setting things right by attacking the centre of gravity. In the  1890s and 1900s it was seen that foreign weapons were arriving in North West India. The origin appeared to be Oman . A naval squadron was deployed and the weapons supply route cut.
13. In 1850-1880 the religious militancy threat was eliminated by creating new sects and religions and infiltrating 80 % of Indian Muslim religious scholars and Mullahs.
14. German efforts to use Afghanistan as a base were totally defeated in Afghanistan.
15. Russian efforts to woo Afghanistan were firmly checked from 1839 to 1947 with a gap of 1919-29 when Afghanistan was hostile.
16. Brave enemies like Nepal were treated with chivalry and their manpower used in British Indian Army as a corp d elite.
17. Brave enemies like Sikhs were specially cultivated and recruited in the army and they proved a strategic asset against any Muslim uprisings .
18. Punjabi Muslims were correctly identified as politically docile and militarily useful and used as mercenaries in the army , sometimes as a counter balance against Sikhs who became increasingly anti British after 1918.
19. Their government was just at non political level, financially clean, forgiving politically, but eliminating ruthlessly where their enemies were regarded as a threat. Thus they treated Afghan kings and opponents chivalrously and gave them estates in their exile in India.However where they saw an enemy who was irreconcilable even that enemys body was destroyed and his place of burial kept secret and his houses raised to ground level as with Pir of Pagara in 1942.
20. Their policy was executed by administrators mostly from British aristocracy but younger sons who could not acquire the family estate ! Educated in Roman and Greek classics who understood how the Roman Empire was run.
21. A relative remembers how the civil servants in the academy were taught how to deal with each man differently !
22. The foundation of British rule was justice at basic level , creating good rural infrastructure , reward of lands and estates to loyal classes ,sophisticated intelligence , divide and rule,maximum use of natives , rewarding old foes if it was politically sound and exreme Machiavellianism at policy level.
23. All intelligence records were destroyed on transfer of power in India leaving no clue for future analysts ! A relative in the Indian Intelligence supervised burning of some records !
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BRITISH AND US POLICY
• THE US UNITED THEIR ENEMIES INSTEAD OF DIVIDING THEM.
• THE US RELIED ON UNRELIABLE AND DOUBLE DEALING STATES LIKE PAKISTAN WHICH COMPROMISED ALL ITS STRATEGIC INTERESTS.
• THE US FAILED TO RELY ON SMALLER BUT MORE SECULAR AND STRATEGICALLY RELIABLE ETHNICITIES LIKE THE KURD, BALOCH , HAZARA, UZBEK ETC.
• THE US FAILED TO INTERDICT AND DESTROY THE FINANCIAL AND LOGISTIC SUPPLY LINE OF INSURGENTS.

A Conversation on World Cinema

 

 

 

 

“It was not the best of times , it was the worst of times , it was not the season of light , it was the season of darkness , it was not the spring of hope , it was the winter of despair ”  I am talking about the 2020-2021 period when the world was battling Covid.. Like the rest of the world I too was stuck in my house , hearing bad news after other and trying to put on a brave face .  Cricket briefly for a few months , the great India tour of Australia ending with the great heist at Gabba gave us moments of great joy but such events were few and far in between.

It was in this background that , for my motley set of  old classmates and fellow “Cricket Tragics” as we called ourselves had a blast , thanks  to  Bansi ( Ajay Bansiwal)  one of our founding members  , who took us through a masterclass of World Cinema. He is a movie buff , one of the lucky few whose day job also involves movies and he has a treasure trove of great world movies – that were non English and Non Indian Language and gave us a sampling of great movies across various languages – Korean , Scandinavian , European and such.  These were not “High Brow” art movies , in the situation that we were with near and dear and friend and colleagues all suffering , all of us needed some escapist fantasy without compromising on our aesthetics. So the movies Bansi recommended were not sad or serious movies even though they took upon real and serious issues but always in a entertaining “masala” way or as a black comedy. These are all as Desi or Indian as movies can be only in languages and cultures that are vastly different from us. Sort of gives us the reaffirmation that human emotions are rather universal  !

In this podcast , Bansi and I talk about 15-20 such movies in no particular order of priority – the only common theme being , we enjoyed watching all of these possibly the most. These range from hard core violent Revenge movies to Slow Burn Crime Thrillers set in Argentina to absurdist black comedies and some picture perfect French work of art movies ! We have tried not to share spoilers in most cases and hope to hook you enough to make you search for these movies and have as much fun seeing them and discussing them as we had .  These prove that a good yarn well narrated is always engrossing whatever language it be in or the culture or country it is based in !

The Movies discussed are

Sympathy for Mr Vengeance –  Korean
Oldboy –  Korean
Lady Vengeance – Korean
Memories of murder – Korean
Barking dogs never bite  – Korean
I saw the devil – Korean
Welcome to Dongmakdol –  Korean
Secretly Greatly – Korean
In China they eat dogs – Danish
Adam’s apples  – Danish
Department Q series -Danish
The Alzheimer case  – Dutch  – Belgian Movie
Micmacs –  French
Welcome to the Sticks –  French
The band’s visit  – Arabic/Hebrew –  Israeli Movie
Marshland  – Spanish
Nine Queens –  Spanish – Argentinean Movie
Killing Cabos  – Spanish  Mexican Movie
Two rabbits  – Portuguese – Brazilian Movie
The man who copied  – Portuguese –  Brazilian Movie

 

Brown Pundits