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Interactions regarding this, with power being in hands of west to a larger degree has been the way over last few centuries, this has given a misplaced view among some Hindus that everyone are out to get them. There is some truth considering the influence of monotheism in culture in general and the fact that monotheism is bigotry. There are of course investments of various kinds, whether it be missionaries or left intellectuals, in India or outside whose nature of works is subversive at various times and not merely academic. This however is not to be seen in isolation that some of the best intellectuals, writers, actors ,philosophers have historically found positive interest in Hinduism . Julia roberts, russell brand among recent celebrities, Aldous Huxley infact wrote an introduction to Bhagvad Gita .George Harrison, one quarter of the famous “beatles” also found inspiration in Hinduism. Among scientists, Oppenheimer too was impressed by Bhagvad Gita and his choice of words are now immortalized in cultural memory. Schrodinger was another great physicist who also did find inspiration from ideas with in Hinduism.Among Philosophers, Schopenhauer stands tall, he too did find something of value in the writings of Upanishads.

So, it is not true to say this relationship was entirely negative. What is true is that it takes effort to build on the positive interactions and continue to keep building over that. And this effort must most certainly come from Hindus themselves and must be independent of politics through community effort. It is here that Hindus are found wanting. They have neglected humanities dept entirely and are now complaining of inherent malice.

They have not connected to the wider society through charity, education, tradition,literature & arts as other communities have done. It is also true that respect comes with power and wealth and India being poor compared to Japan or china had to face this. However here too they have no one else to blame but themselves for not distinguishing themselves economically from the left and make a reasoned argument for capitalism, distinguish themselves by standing for free speech and throw out rules engineered by congress govt under Nehru that bar free speech. By staying out of Humanities , they have allowed others to define them and have allowed the trajectory of Indian economy to be run by the left.This exacerbated poverty and all the faultlines in society . Even now, they cannot seem to make a case for why capitalism is better.When it is the greatest system for creation of wealth and helps mend faultlines and strengthen sovereignty .Nor do they seem to have a plan on how to mend the faultlines. To give an example, BJP govt has been in power in many states for well over 15 yrs, has been in power at the center for past 4 yrs, they have chosen not to give themselves autonomy over education in states where Hindus are minority nor have they spent much time over many decades to actually create avenues to rectify this lacunae by building institutions of learning and help them to mend the faultines in society tearing them apart or have regular events or meetings to bridge over faultlines. To even posit a future goal or trajectory requires a respect for intelligence which is not found in BJP/RSS but more importantly, there is no accountability asked by supporters of them either or by Hindus in general of all their leaders. The contempt for intellectuals is incredible and a good example of it is the Prime Minister India Narendra Modi declaring that “Hardwork is more powerful than Harvard”.This during the infamous demonetization which was carried out haphazardly & whose effects are being felt by citizens even now in form of cash crunch in various cities.

In general, it is those in power who can and should reach out to others, win over others. Come up with a more inclusive engagement with other communities, build trust and cultivate media relations that reflects this change. It instead seems as though a more cynical ploy is at play of allowing others to malign in hopes this will feed into anxiety of their supporters and unthinkingly get them to double down their loyalty and support them even further and carry forward this dynamic of tribalism that has helped them. To me atleast, it seems clear that for the BJP/RSS, they would rather have an electorate that never holds them accountable to anything and drive the anxiety of Hindus in general as it is politically useful to them. This is substantiated by the fact that they have no plan to ameliorate or redress any actual grievances. Nor transmute this anxiety by doing something constructive , whether it be in form of media ,literature, academia or any thing else. This leaves their supporters trapped.Which seems to be their only goal.

For Hindus in general, they need to ask themselves the hard question as to whether it is fair to ask others to stand up for them when they themselves chose not to do so for each other or hold their leaders accountable and blindly give their loyalty. The story of Bangladeshi Hindus is unknown to most Hindus themselves , how is one to make a case for it for world to hear?. It is not so that others are entirely biased for in others one find very many who know nothing or some have a positive interest, it is so that others do invest themselves at all levels and Hindus chose to not invest their own time or wealth and are calling others who they disagree with as being unfair because they do invest. Does it make sense to criticize missionaries or anyone else for courting dalits into their narrative if Hindus choose not to mend their own fault lines among themselves at a war footing with great urgency?. If they chose to not to share power through pre arranged power pacts among themselves first whose fault should it really be?. It requires investment of time, resources and activism to clear out even misplaced rumors.So lets not blame others even before we put our own house in order.

In present day world, countries need to deal with technology ,social media, smart phone apps and their capacity to foment trouble in their countries by people outside and inside. This can be used very cheaply to organize protests, campaigns & even organize riots.

This begins new era of politics for democracies. The cry of russian meddling has atleast brought up this news to public conscience. It would be interesting to see how both the developed and the developing countries shall react to this. The targeting ads that companies have used can be turned into targeted campaigns, the algorithms used to keep people engaged can be used as well.

With this new big data, it might be possible to test out political slogans everyday, find the perfect slogans, issues both locally and nationally. If ad campaigns are useful, why is it hard to believe that targeted campaigns are not as effective ?.

The use of politics has come only after social media has successfully used ads as a way to generate revenue for themselves. Is this the beginning of the new era of hacking the human minds, both at the level of individuals and at the level of communities?. Can anything be done to arrest this development or control this partially?.

Will govt try to follow the china model and create own online & phone media agencies to control or will they demand right to monitor social media agencies and phones inside their own countries.

Will this hurt the social media companies like twitter or facebook?

As per the request of Kabir I’ve closed comments on the post below. I’ll delete it soon. His new blog is here: https://kabiraltaf.wordpress.com/.

A few quick notes to be clear:

1. Three people have admin privileges here. Omar, Zach and myself. In various ways, we’ve been associated with this blog eight years now.
2. Myself, honestly I have only occasionally read blog posts by those besides Omar and Zach. Those I found interesting I did read. Until recently I very rarely read comments except on my posts.
3. To be honest, “some shit went down.” I don’t know the origins (posts have been deleted) or the relationships or the origins of the beefs, though I waded in a bit. The only people I added as contributors to this incarnation of BP are Omar and Zach.  I honestly have no idea who anyone else is.
4. I’ve been noticing the increased Indian traffic with wonder and concern. Wonder because talking to people of your own nationality/culture all the time is boring, concern because cultural differences are difficult to bridge.  I know this personally because I was a commenter and a little bit a contributor to the Sepia Mutiny blog, and the cultural differences came up and aroused hostility between people of good will. To give a concrete example a front page contributor told their story of rape and some of the India-born commenters said some things that they thought were helpful but no one born in the USA would think were helpful…rather, they were offensive. At least to us.
5. Zach and I have come and gone (I have another blog and write stuff elsewhere when I feel like it), Omar is the one person who has kept blogging here over the years. If only Omar contributed that would be sufficient. He’s busy right now with moving so Zach and I are having to step into this mess.
6. Some of you are mad at me because I’m offensive to you in what I post or mean to you in the comments. If I’m offensive to you (or Zach or Omar or anyone) you don’t have to read this blog. We are not monetizing it. As for the comments, I would not engage/read comments unless I was frank about who should or shouldn’t contribute. Comment sections which are  laissez faire turn into shit-shows quickly and the blogger usually never reads them. I’ve traditionally been very active in comments when I control the means of production (I don’t read comments when I contribute to National Review or India Today or when I contributed to mainstream media).
7. Some fair warning that I am very sensitive about two things: comments which might be indicative of physical intolerance of atheism, and comments which make imputations about my life. The first is just because I know people who were friends with murdered Bangladeshi bloggers. I’m not the most sentimental person about the country in which I was born, but I would never visit in the current climate. The risks are low, but I have a family, a wife and kids, and I can’t take the risk (people in my lab used to make fun of Bangladesh for atheist killing, and it was kind of funny since I was the most atheistic person they knew). And about that, people need to stop commenting about what they think they can glean about me in regards to my personal situation. I’ve been more open recently partly because I wanted to talk about my kids’ genetics, so  I had to admit in 2011 I was married and that I was going to be a father. But really I try to keep that shit offline. As for my personality, Omar has met me in person and can vouch for the reality that I don’t really have a separate “online persona” (as can many scientists who know me more from real life than the internet).

Finally, some of you know I’ve been at the forefront of communication about South Asian genetics. Like many things, this kind of fell into my lap because I know genetics, and I don’t live in South Asia and so am not part of any major social-political groupings (I’m not left-wing and some Hindutva types attack me as a Muslim). But honestly, I’ve been impressed by how clear-eyed and honest many Indian journalists and thinkers have been about the new research. And this has made me more optimistic and engaged in Brown Pundits’ future direction.

Also, BP has a twitter account. Most it pushes content right now from this blog.

Also check out, Pakistani media behind Asifa Bano Rape.

I saw this status on Facebook and it annoyed me (I removed any reference to the author etc).

What’s the difference except if one is Muslim and the other is Jewish; if they refuse to shake hands the same treatment should be meted to both.

There had once been a comment on this blog that the Kashmiris were more Aryan in cultural heritage than the Persians (even if the genetic contribution was the same). At the time I was a bit surprised but in retrospect when I think to modern Persian identity and the Iranian super-strate on top of it (what is Iran; the plateau, the people or the language family?), it’s astonishing to see that most of the influences are Safavid.

When I deconstruct my Persian national identity apart from the Sassanians, Achaemenians and Zoroastrians; it’s really to do with Sa’adi, Ferdowsi and Hafez. The evolution of Persian culture, under the rubric of Islam, has been so complete that as an example even the most hardcore Persian nationalists wouldn’t dare mess with the alphabet.

The Persian language, which is absolutely fundamental to Iranian identity, has wrapped itself around the Arabic alphabet. The pride in the “Aryan racial heritage” is at best correlated with being light skinned etc (in the West lots of Iranians like to bandy about being Aryan to fit in; good for them). However the Aryan heritage doesn’t really figure in a substantial way about what it means to be Persian.

In contract to India where the Aryan heritage is dominant and uninterrupted, constantly tussling with the Arabic-Abrahamic faiths (Islam is equally Arabic as it is Abrahamic; to be a part of the House of Islam is to accept that Arabs are primus inter pares, not exactly equivalent to Brahmins).

Of course Persian is an “Aryan language” but to deny its Semitisation and the glories that the Arabic infusion brought; as well as being the lingua franca (in a literal sense Persians has always had some similarity to France & French culture; is Iran the France of West Asia?) of the Great Gunpowder Empires.

The irony of course is that while Iran is an explicitly Aryan term; India probably is not. While Sindhu is a Sanskrit name for sea, it’s origins are obscure (am to be corrected).