Sunny Narang in Conversation with Dr. Omar Ali.

 

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!

 

Sunny Narang, a Punjabi born and brought up in Delhi with ancestral roots in Pakistan, speaks with Dr. Ali on post partition Punjabis in Delhi; they also talk about culture and people who have and continue to shape the history of the sub-continent, from Jain bankers in Mughal India to the business clans of modern India.

 

 

Some of the books talked about on the episode.

Indiraji Through my Eyes: Usha Bhagat
The City of Hope The Faridabad Story L.C. Jain
The South Asian Papers” , a collection of 16 papers by Stephen Philip Cohen
All These Years: A Memoir by Raj Thapar
Civilization and Capitalism: 15th-18th Century by Fernand Braudel
Punjabi Century by Prakash Tandon
 

 

 

 

Science in Ancient India (aka “Hindu Science”)

 

A couple of days ago i saw a tweet from @theliverdr on twitter that made fun of some recent initiative to add Ayurvedic medicine to the medical school curriculum. I don’t know what they will teach and how useful it will be in practice (as a boomer of Pakistani origin my first thought is that expectations should be low, at least initially), but I thought the summary dismissal of the entire corpus of knowledge is also unscientific and tweeted out the tweets pasted above.

My point was not so much about what the Indian medical system will actually end up teaching. It was more a philosophical point that we should not dismiss the products of an ancient and sophisticated culture summarily; there is likely to be real knowledge that is captured in it, but the framework is very different (and “pre-scientific”) and will need “translation”. As an example I mentioned Ida, Pingala and Sukhmun Naadis, channels in which energy supposedly flows along our spine. Modern science recognizes no such channels, but that does not mean that the lore built up around this theory is all valueless. Methods to manipulate these channels can still work even if the channels do not exist, but even beyond that we know less than is advertised, and it is conceivable that we will discover elements in biology that we will then recognize as being the modern (and presumably far more scientific) equivalents of whatever observations and theories the ancients had along these lines. But having tweeted this out, I also know that I know very little about Ayurveda, my thoughts were just on “general principles”. So I asked a few friends if they had a good article introducing ayurveda or ancient Indian science in general.

Lo and behold, I was sent a large document that has been written by a blogger who goes by the name “Manasataramgini“. Acharya ji (since he is anonymous, this title will have to do) is a Hindu nationalist who blogs at manasataramgini.wordpress.com and many of whose writings will no doubt be grounds for cancellation in left-liberal circles, but he is also a very serious and competent scientist, and an intellectual with very deep knowledge of Sanskrit and ancient Indian lore. It is a 51 page document, but it seems to me that this is worth posting on the internet. People can draw their own conclusions 🙂

A review of Hindu Science

The entire document is at the above link. I am posting a couple of excerpts from the intro and the text as screenshots, but it is really easier to read at the above link (but since I know how lazy I am when reading blog posts, I am posting some screenshots.. note that similar early scientific speculations by the Greeks are treated as “the beginning of science”).

 

Ami Ganatra on Yoga – The Higher Learnings

On the 24th Episode (Part 2) of The Indic Explorer Show, I spoke to Ami Ganatra on The Higher Learnings related to Yoga.

The Indic Explorer YouTube channel focusses on the interplay of Indic culture with modernity explored through different facets in the socio-cultural sphere.

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Ami Ganatra on Yoga 101 – The Fundamentals of Yoga

On the 24th Episode (Part 1) of The Indic Explorer Show, I spoke to Ami Ganatra on Yoga 101 – The Basics & Fundamentals of Yoga.

The Indic Explorer YouTube channel focusses on the interplay of Indic culture with modernity explored through different facets in the socio-cultural sphere.

Do subscribe to the channel at https://www.youtube.com/theindicexplorer

and follow me here

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American University in Delhi?

India might open to foreign universities. That could be a game-changer:

And India’s higher education system badly needs shaking up. Setting aside issues of quality (as if those can be set aside), India does not come close to providing sufficient seats to those aspiring to higher education — a glaring shortcoming as India’s burgeoning middle class strives to prepare their children for the opportunities of the future.

India’s system has its successes, of course, but they are narrow. Just nine Indian higher education institutions made the top 500 of the most recent QS World University Rankings. The top one — the Indian Institute of Science (at 155) — is a highly specialized institution focused on postgraduate studies and research in the sciences. The other eight are part of the well-known Indian Institutes of Technology, which specialize in engineering. The highest-ranked comprehensive university was the University of Delhi, falling in the 520s.

That is simply not good enough. All told, India has just over 1,000 institutions of higher learning. China, with a similar population, has three times that. The United States, with a much smaller population, has four times as many.

This all sounds find, but India will replicate some of the US’s pathologies in the education sector. The “consumer model” of higher education has been causing serious problems here over the past few decades. The op-ed even states that “Private universities, too, are overly regulated and cannot operate for profit. That deters the best entrepreneurs from entering the sector.” Entrepreneurs entering the sector was a disaster, and for-profit colleges were a way to absorb student loans from the public fisc.

But I wish India well.

Hindenburg vs. Adnani

Don’t know much about this, but I noticed it hit WSJ today, India’s Adani Group Fails to Halt Short-Seller Driven Decline:

A giant Indian conglomerate couldn’t stop the freefall in its shares and bonds set off by an American short seller in what has grown into a bitter fight over the empire created by one of India’s richest and most politically connected businesspeople.

Adani Group, an energy and infrastructure company, released its 413-page rebuttal to the short seller’s claims just as the trading week began in Asia. Investors weren’t convinced and dumped shares of the company on Monday, bringing the total value lost to $64 billion since last week.

The fight could have wide implications for India’s power industry and for its transition to clean energy. It has also caused billions of dollars in losses for Indian investors who have helped drive up the company’s share price to stratospheric levels.

You can find the Hindenburg Ressearch Report here. This part jumped out at me:

Most large companies hire credible, well-known external auditing firms in order to give investors confidence that their financials are being independently reviewed by a capable team.

Given the complexity of Adani Total Gas and, particularly, Adani Enterprises, with 156 subsidiaries and many more affiliates and joint ventures, one would expect a large, highly experienced team to be monitoring its labyrinthian corporate structure.[62]

But Adani Group has apparently shunned this approach, choosing a tiny auditor named Shah Dhandharia to oversee the audits for these two public companies.

Shah Dhandharia’s website has gone offline during our investigation and now appears to have no website. Archived versions of the website as of February 2020 show that the firm was comprised of only 4 audit partners and 7 support staff.[63]

Of the partners featured on its team page, we found that 3 were in their 20s – hardly the level of experience or seniority needed to seriously scrutinize one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful businessmen.

Apparently, the Adani group has a 413-page rebuttal to the short-sellers. Rebuttals often take more time/space…but I not going to lie, I am not surprised at the length here…

(though some short-sellers have done sketchy things, my own view is short-sellers are an essential part of af functioning market and discourage crony-capitalism)

Open Thread, 1/27/2023, Brown Pundits

Some stuff from my Substack: Genetic history with Chinese characteristics – How two Bronze-Age tribes became the world’s 1.3 billion Han (without even changing much genetically) and Venerable Ancestors: untangling the Chinese people’s hybrid Pleistocene origins origins – More than 40,000 years of human evolution in East Asia. I’ve written more about India because it’s super genetically variable, unlike China. But China has more written history.

Also, if anyone wants to know what I’ve been doing with most of my time the last few years, I founded a tech startup, GenRAIT.

Indian Idol, Super Singer Star Maalavika Sundar on Learning Carnatic Music in a Traditional Gurukul

On the 23rd Episode of The Indic Explorer Show-my weekly podcast, I spoke to Maalavika Sundar one of the top contestants in Super Singer as well as The Indian Idol. We spoke about the how the training and practice of Carnatic Music is carried out within a Traditional Indian Gurukul.

The Indic Explorer YouTube channel focusses on the interplay of Indic culture with modernity explored through different facets in the socio-cultural sphere.

Do subscribe to the channel at https://www.youtube.com/theindicexplorer

and follow me here

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Substack-https://digitaldharma.substack.com/

Brown Pundits