Namit Arora
@NamitArora0
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Storyteller, writer, humanist, travel photographer, @IITKgp . Author: Indians: A Brief History of a Civilization; The Lottery of Birth; Love & Loathing in SV
Gurgaon, Haryana
Joined January 2012
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Announcing INDIANS—A History Web Series (in ten episodes)! 🎊
In which I tell the story of Indians and our extraordinary civilization.
The first episode is on the Harappans and their city of Dholavira.
A new episode drops every weekend. Check it out!
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India: A Forecast 🧵
India is on a sinister path, much darker than most worried citizens foresaw in 2014. Things have gone downhill rather fast. So what do I see as the near-term outlook (5–7 years) for India? I offer my provisional thoughts in this thread. Hope I’m wrong. (1/20)
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Birds of a feather: the non-fiction shelf at an Om Books store in a Gurgaon mall (clicked yesterday).
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We are living in the Hindu Rashtra. It’s not a future project; it has already arrived, after a thousand cuts to the fabric of law, justice, policy, policing, media etc, intensifying around us as proverbial frogs in heating water, killing all that is good & just in public life.😕
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I see a bleak economy. Its key features: anemic growth, rising deficits, falling rupee; crony-corporation-led model of growth; chronic joblessness & under-employment; auctioning of the public sector; shortage of real skills despite paper degrees; growing inequality. (2/20)
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Hope lies in movements that resist this fascist turn. Think anti-CAA protests, the farmers’ movement. ✊🏼 Political opposition needs to get its act together fast. World needs to wake up to this far more debilitating virus—a social virus—that’s ravaging India. (20/20)
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The economy is being run by unqualified hacks high on simplistic ‘privatization’, amid stifling authoritarian command, mixing the worst impulses of technocrats & nationalists. I see a demographic time bomb (not dividend), with skewed sex ratio & few females in labor force. (3/20)
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To mitigate electoral blowback, we’ll see more populist welfare/handouts, sold as largesse of Party honcho. The Party will also keep redirecting public concern by intensifying sectarian strife through fear of Muslims, Hindu pride, mythic national glory, Pak-bashing, etc. (4/20)
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Hijab in schools; azaan from mosques; namaz in public; halal as economic jihad; land jihad; cheering for the wrong cricketers; dietary moral policing, esp. during Hindu festivals; removing Urdu from public spaces; bogey of Muslim ghuspathiye & love jihad; etc, etc. (6/20)
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Indeed, we’ll see aggressive, Hindutva-led polarization and fascist mobilizing against Muslims and ‘anti-nationals’ in up to a dozen states. It’ll turn on endlessly manufactured issues, of the sort we’re seeing, to cynically incite and keep the communal strife simmering: (5/20)
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More divisive issues yet to be dreamed of will join older Hindutva agendas—led by lumpen mobs, hateful propaganda, fake news, and manufactured historical grievances—many of them brewing for a century, first inspired by racist European ethno-nationalisms. (7/20)
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The police, working with Hindu mobs & militias wielding pistols, trishuls, and JSRs, will produce more oppressive, one-sided police action against Muslims; more UAPA incarcerations, with colluding/ spineless courts, where most law professionals have already gone saffron. (8/20)
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How long will NRIs—in western, plural, liberal democracies—fail to see through the false facade of his oratory & remain hypocritically supportive of his brutal regime that’s systematically gutting democracy & the rule-of-law? He personifies ‘muh mein ram, bagal mein ...’ (11/20)
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Socio-economic boycott of Muslims will escalate, as will open apartheid in housing/ rentals/ jobs. Most Hindus—though opposed by a notable minority among them—will happily or silently support the marginalization of Muslims & jailing of critics without trial. (9/20)
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Recently in MP, a govt. bulldozer razed, with apparent impunity and mob support, both the shop and the home of a Muslim man who dared to enter into a relationship of mutual love with a Hindu woman. No blowback or recompense. This is who we have become. (12/20)
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Hindutva may downplay caste divisions, but its model of Hindu unity relies on weaponizing Hindus against Muslims, and turning India into a cauldron of religious hate. It’s also distracting from, and successfully overshadowing, people’s economic/ aspirational grievances. (10/20)
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We’ll see more rabid dharam sansads; our media channels are already not much behind the caliber of RTLM radio of ’93–’94 Rwanda. These divisive forces may well crack, burn, & wreck India—making it a future case study of how societies go terribly wrong. (14/20)
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A new reality dawns, in which the barbarians aren’t at the gates but are emerging vertically, as if from the trapdoors, all around us in our streets, homes, offices. This is the time to take stock, regroup, and prepare for a whole new battle for the soul of our society. (19/20)
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Climate change will only make things harder: More crop failures, extreme weather events, internal mass migrations => xenophobic politics. More ecological distress, air pollution, water woes. With heat waves, ‘wet-bulb temperature’ will rudely enter public awareness. (18/20)
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We’ll see more Hindu mobs—chauvinists, dolts, bullies, fanatics, fascists—armed with pistols & trishuls, high on violent millenarianism and muscular Hindu pride and domination. They are now even indulging in ‘compensatory’ desecrations of mosques/ dargahs. (13/20)
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We’ll see Muslims forced further into ghettos, poverty, and civic exclusion; they’ll face more frequent arson, violent vigilante ‘justice’, deadly communal riots and pogroms (some urban quarters/addresses are already being marked & mapped out, as if with yellow stars). (15/20)
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The moral degradation of the much-vaunted ‘spiritual/dharmic Hindus’—long politically immature, gullible, illiberal, mired in inferiority complexes—is turning out to be an amazingly low-friction affair, at least for the clear and growing majority of them, esp. UCs. (17/20)
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Muslims will be provoked into response, escalating the conflict. We’ll see attacks on the few to instill fear in the many; persecution of ‘fifth column traitors’/‘urban naxals’ by organs of state, via tax raids or prison, w/ most victims forgotten amid mounting tragedies. (16/20)
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Met Dr. Romila Thapar last week & requested her to sign her latest book. She had already read 'Indians', she said, has been 'eagerly watching' my web series based on it, liking it for its 'no-nonsense approach' and said other nice things about it! It was thrilling to hear that.😊
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A seemingly anguished Hindu asked me a question on YouTube about what, if anything, is worth admiring in the Hindu past. Here is my relatively quick response.
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Ambedkar was simply wrong about Nalanda, as Gail Omvedt noted too. Much less was known ~100 years ago.
There is no evidence that Bakhtiar Khilji destroyed Nalanda.
Discover the complex causes of Nalanda's demise in this episode of my web series, Indians.
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@TheDeshBhakt
hits it out of the park, as he reviews how the spineless Indian media behaved during the farmer's year-long protest movement, and how the farmers won against their propaganda.
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The Gujarat model of sanctimonious hypocrisy is getting rolled out to many universities and now also to my alma mater,
@IITKgp
.
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@tishasaroyan
Hiuen Tsang, in the 7th cent., also wrote about Shashanka of Bengal, a near-contemporary Hindu king, who ‘slandered the religion of the Buddha’, and raided and ‘cut down the Bodhi tree’, ‘burnt it with fire’ and destroyed the Buddhist monasteries around it.
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Yay, my first book, The Lottery of Birth: On Inherited Social Inequalities, is back in print in India. It's also available worldwide in print & as a Kindle ebook.
@SaibBilaval
Check out this review by Mohan Rao, former prof, JNU.
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Folks, if you can, please support good journalism in India with ₹. More imp. than ever. I currently support:
@AltNews
,
@thecaravanindia
,
@scroll_in
,
@thewire_in
,
@thenewsminute
,
@the_hindu
,
@newslaundry
,
@TheIndiaCable
,
@newsclickin
,
@Himalistan
Please help the ones you like.
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This intense heat will soon be worsened by humidity—an even more dangerous combo. Air conditioning will help but only a few. Earth's heating will only get worse with more ACs on fossil fuels. That’s the terrible bargain of 'progress'. We're on the road to an unmitigated disaster.
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Saw this today—an exceptionally good exposition of the 2300+ years old custom of Sati by historian Dr. Ruchika Sharma, who has been fighting malicious fictions by Hindutva dodos & other bad history on the net very well. More power to her.
@tishasaroyan
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// Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. // —Seneca
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Maybe this man would be better off pursuing something for which he has natural aptitude, rather than being a political pundit for WSJ. He could setup a 7-Eleven franchise, or best of all, be an admin for the VHP?
Recently I pointed out the obvious fact that Rahul Gandhi is unsuited to politics and would be better off pursuing something for which he has natural aptitude. He could set up a private gym in south Delhi, or start his own travel show on YouTube. Maybe he’ll finally get the hint?
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Only Modiji's jaadu ki jhappi can now save the people of Ukraine.
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With a new Nalanda University in the news today, learn about the great Nalanda Mahavihara of our past. What was it like to be a student there? Why and how did it come to an end?
@thewire_in
Indians | Ep 5: Nalanda and the Decline of Buddhism
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He really is a dunce. INC was up against frozen bank accts, big money disparity, hostile godi media, huge fake news ecosystem, poached legislators, ED/CBI raids, partisan ECI, etc. Elec. wasn't free & fair. It’s a miracle INC got as far as it did—renewing hope for saner politics.
Many Modi supporters acknowledge the obvious fact that his political star has dimmed. But RG fans seem unable to see that though 99 seats is a lot better than 52 seats, it still represents the Congress Party’s third worst performance ever. They’re acting like they won 300 seats.
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Indians | Episode 1: The Harappans
The ruins of the Harappan (aka Indus Valley) Civilization were unearthed a mere hundred years ago. And what a discovery it was! It greatly expanded India's civilizational past ...
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WhatsApp school of history in action from one among the legions of upper-caste Hindutva foot soldiers in America who depend on that society's liberal-plural ethos but support majoritarian hate politics in India.
Guess who British colonial rulers feared & hated most in India? Yup it was the RSS & JanSangh. Highly organized, disciplined & fierce, they scared the sh
#t
out of Brits. RSS is India’s crown jewel, it’s backbone & its most loyal civil society protector. We shd be proud of them!
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Happy news! My 3rd book, "Indians: A Brief History of a Civilization", is out from Penguin India.😊
It's a book of ideas, journeys, and discovering what it means to be Indian. A story of big trends, transformations and fault lines of Indian civilization.
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This is a loud & clear pushback against the adharma this man & his ilk have cheerled, mistaking it for dharma—of hate against minorities, religious chauvinism, bulldozer raj, weaponizing agencies, authoritarian rule, gutting constitutional democracy & its institutions, etc, etc.
Longstanding well-wishers will criticise hard & still hope that you bat for Dharma.Newly minted post-2014 Hindutvawadi SJWs & "Hindutvawadis of good times" will show their true colours & either jump ship, or claim neutrality. Watch closely and observe:-)Humesha Jai Shri Ram!
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This regime denies Aryan Migration Theory because it doesn't fit Hindu nationalism's origin myths. So it has elevated ideologically aligned yes-men in Govt research institutes who obfuscate and/or tow the official line, like this head of aDNA lab at Birbal Sahni Inst. ‘Nuff said.
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#Indians
| Ep 8: The Vijayanagar Empire
What were the sources of its wealth & cosmopolitanism that impressed foreign travellers? Was it a bastion of Hinduism bravely resisting the ‘onslaught of Islam’?
Watch full episode on
@thewire_in
YouTube channel:
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All institutions in post-ind India were led by Brahminical elites. Their dismal performance in delivering even basic social services to fellow Indians—of edu, health, water, sanitation, electricity—says volumes about their ‘merit’ or for any system that consolidates their power.
China accelerating its meritocracy based education, while India going in the opposite direction lowering standards and even eliminating exams.
Result: Next gen Chinese will be STEM leaders, while Indians will be even more emotional & addicted to 'feel good' tamasha.
India is
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@tjoseph0010
Distressing indeed. I responded to their vacuous 2021 calendar and posted on various IIT Kgp forums on SM but these fools have moved even closer to absurd gobbledygook this year. 😒
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Also read my brief statement about Nalanda’s demise in this article in today’s Hindu.
PDF version is here (with my quote highlighted):
Or read the article online at
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@SadhguruJV
That’s pretty ignorant, Jaggi!
Bharat in ancient times referred only to a small part of the Gangetic plain, excluding the Deccan & the South.
India in ancient times referred to the entire land east of the river Indus/Sindhu, which is much more accurate. As is Hindustan.
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Fixed it …
I am:
–An aging Brahminical twit still unable to denounce the caste system
–An overzealous Hindutvavadi hellbent on whitewashing caste
–A hypersensitive Hindu who sees Hinduphobia everywhere
–A sophist who confuses chauvinism with scholarship
I am:
-Brahmin when researching for my books
-Kshatriya when fighting for my civilization
-Vaishya when investing, managing budgets, filing tax returns
-Shudra when doing my own chores & hands-on work
-Outcast/Dalit when
@surajyengde
’s Harvard cancels me, declaring me outcast.
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Vernon Gonsalves on oxygen support ... others "in custody are Sudhir Dhawale, Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut, Arun Ferreira, Anand Teltumbde, Gautam Navlakha, Hany Babu, Sagar Gorkhe, Ramesh Gaichor & Jyoti Jagtap." —
@TheIndiaCable
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"A record 1,500 private jets have arrived at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland to discuss what they can do about YOUR carbon footprint."
#Davos2022
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Hindutva “historian” peddling sh!t again: Vedas composed in 4K–3K BCE, no Indo-Aryan migration, Harappans are the Vedic people, Ghaggar Hakra channel is Sarasvati river, reads vedas/epics as straight history, and other nonsense. 🤮
Antidote: Read
@tjoseph0010
's 'Early Indians'.
Here is a recording of my lecture today at
#NationalYouthFestival
about the Saraswati - the archaeological, textual & geological evidence about the river that gave birth to Indian civilisation:
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#Indians
| Ep 8: The Vijayanagar Empire
Most kings of Vijayanagar kept large harems for which the ‘fairest and healthiest’ women were sought throughout the kingdom. Learn more about their lives & the culture of Vijayanagar.
Full episode on
@thewire_in
:
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Hindutva ideologues complain about the difficulty of uniting Hindus. But Hindus have just shown that they can be united—to defeat hate speech, communalism, persecution of minorities, sectarian nationalism...😀
The task ahead is to unite them more—to oust the BJP for good in '29!
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I think the biggest complaint I have against her ilk is that they are all so predictable, doltish and banal! 🤬
The man who broke bank of England & is designated by nation an economic war criminal has now pronounced his desire to break Indian democracy. George Soros an international entrepreneur has declared his ill-intention to intervene in democratic processes of India: Smriti Irani, BJP
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@tishasaroyan
Thanks for this.
@NirajRai3
is an intellectual coward. One finds the same two-faced behavior in
@ProfVasant
Shinde too. Perhaps their govt. funding will stop if they displaced a spine and proclaimed the truth with which they associate in papers with coauthors from the West.
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@tishasaroyan
Such doofuses these folks are! They can simply end this debate by citing just one historical source saying that Bakhtiar Khilji destroyed Nalanda—just one! 😀
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'Indians' excerpted in
@thewire_in
:
Alberuni approached India like a scholar-journalist. His "readings of a large number of Hindu religious, philosophical and astronomical texts led him to make observations on society that hold even today."
@PenguinIndia
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@sandeep_PT
Reminds me of the thousand-year reich proclaimed by another megalomaniac in 1933, which, not surprisingly, lasted only 12 years.
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Please listen carefully! If you find a missing boy named
@PrashantKishor
on the mela grounds, give him a glass of water and contact the nearest control room. His very worried mummy papa are looking for him.
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#Indians
| Ep 10: The Faiths of Varanasi
From its earliest beginnings & antiquity as Kashi to its life under the Mughals & beyond, Arora explores why Varanasi lies so much at the heart of Indian civilization.
Watch full & final episode on
@thewire_in
:
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Vishwaguru ishtyle move!
"India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati will now entirely rely on the RSS-backed news agency Hindusthan Samachar for its daily news feed."
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"People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within." —Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
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@tishasaroyan
Another case: "Late in Sarnath’s history, [archaeologist Federica] Barba argues, the Gahadavala dynasty, which provided many temples at Varanasi, was responsible for taking over Sarnath and building a very large temple at the site identified as Monastery I".
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Episode 4 of Indians: Coming Saturday, Jan 27 at 11 AM!
Meanwhile, the first three episodes are here:
Episode 1: The Harappans
Episode 2: The Aryans and the Vedic Age
Episode 3: The Mauryans & Megasthenes
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The worst terrorist massacre since 9/11 is happening in Gaza, you frickin' dunce!
@Syaahkaar
I don’t think it should be difficult for anyone to condemn Hamas, a terrorist group that has a long history of brutally murdering civilians. Though my question was specifically about condemning the October 7 attack, the worst terrorist massacre the world has seen since 9/11.
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Meet Palki Sharma Upadhyay (twice twice-born), exec editor WION, an English news channel from the far right Zee Media corp.
She's exhorting India to weaponize rivers flowing across Indian Himalayas into Pakistan. Another day in the life of this morally bereft Hindutva nation.
The Indus Waters give India immense strategic advantage over Pakistan. 80% of Pak agricultural fields depend on these waters that India controls. India can engineer floods & droughts in Pakistan. Why has New Delhi been shy of exercising this power? Time to leverage the Indus?
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God save us from Savarkar scholars who "think that he would be disappointed with the direction of intellectual life among his supporters today." Today's India, by and large, would have been Savarkar's wet dream.
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@tishasaroyan
"... At the same time, [Barba] suggests, [the Gahadavalas] converted several other Buddhist structures to Brahmanical shrines." Source: Asher, Frederick M; Sarnath: A Critical History of the Place Where Buddhism Began; Getty Publications, 2020, p 11.
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Brahmins & the Law 🧵
That Brahmins generally had it good in Indian history is well-known—via records of land grants, donations of cows, stipends. They monopolized literacy, scholastics & related jobs. Were main beneficiaries of temple wealth & had more social status/respect. 1/5
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The paragraph in which I mention the Gyanvapi mosque, in ‘Indians: A Brief History of a Civilization’ (Jan 2021).
More here:
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New anti-conversion laws in Modi's India have drastically curtailed "both religious freedoms and the freedom of adults to choose their partners—for companionship, for sex, for romance and for marriage—outside their faith." Important piece by
@harsh_mander
.
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Pleasantly surprised to discover that The Lottery of Birth, my first book (or parts thereof), is part of the curriculum at IIM-A, IIM-K, and likely other IIMs. Appears in the course, The Social & Cultural Environment of Business. Exactly the sorta audience I’d hoped to reach!
At IIMA, we have to read a book named “The Lottery of Birth”, as part of a course.
As the name goes, the book talks about how people tend to attribute their success solely to merit, while ignoring their privilege.
Not everyone likes that book as it questions their privilege :)
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In which I review Ajantha Subramanian’s 'The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India', exploring the role of caste and the language of "merit" in shaping elite engineering education in modern India.
@ajanthasub
,
@tmkrishna
,
@YashicaDutt
,
@surajyengde
Social Structure: Caste and the delusion of “merit” in Indian higher education
@NamitArora0
in the August issue:
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@RajivMessage
All institutions in post-ind India were led by Brahminical elites. Their dismal performance in delivering even basic social services to fellow Indians—of edu, health, water, sanitation, electricity—says volumes about their ‘merit’ or for any system that consolidates their power.
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More evidence that experts in one domain can be very ill-informed in other domains. Could they not have invited real dog experts before pronouncing so vapidly and illogically—and attempting to penalize acts of kindness and our eons old love of dogs?
People Feeding Street Dogs Can Be Made Responsible For Vaccinating Them & Bearing Costs If Somebody Is Attacked,
#SupremeCourt
Suggests
#SupremeCourtOfIndia
@Deepankar_0047
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A weird piece. Savarkar may or may not have condoned plagiarism—his times were different, so our standards need to prevail in our own times. What matters far more is that his writing brims with toxic sh!t, which this author fails to emphasize.
But when it came to his own writings and publications, he [Savarkar] clearly situated himself in a textual economy of the twentieth century in which copyright rules and royalties were to be respected and paid.
Vinayak Chaturvedi writes
Read:
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"Saints, I see the world is mad.
If I tell the truth they rush to beat me,
If I lie they trust me."
–Kabir, 15th century.
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I have a review essay in the Baffler that looks at Indira Gandhi's Emergency—how and why it unfolded as it did—and its similarities and differences with Modi's undeclared emergency.
@pratinavanil
,
@jaffrelotc
,
@Prakashzone
,
@Ram_Guha
,
@thebafflermag
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The awardees of France’s Légion d'Honneur include eminences like Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad, Benito Mussolini, Manuel Noriega, Harvey Weinstein, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Fulgencio Batista, Nicolae Ceaușescu, Mohammed bin Salman ... and this list just grew longer.
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Saw RRR. Beneath the slick CGI, its patriotic fantasy tale turned out to be the sort of intellectually arrested toxic juvenilia that I occasionally get stuck in & keep watching just to know how much worse it can get.
This review resonated with me.
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The only antidote to such paranoid, insecure, Hindutva crapola is evidence- and science-based scholarship that's peer-reviewed in globally respected journals and forums. Watch this episode of INDIANS for the latter view:
The Aryans and the Vedic Age.
Aryan Invasion Theory : A Colonial Myth | Wisdom Sutra
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// Almost 4,000 academics, students and graduates of the prestigious Moscow State University, Russia’s oldest university, have signed a letter saying they “categorically condemn the war that our country unleashed in Ukraine”.//
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Exhibit A: What it takes to be a ‘good Muslim’ and get ahead under the current dispensation.
Anyone who is born in India, anyone who eats India's food, who drinks water from India's river is Hindu. Call me a Hindu
: Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan
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I'm absolutely delighted to find myself on this list! Thank you Karwaan and the Longlist jury.
@PenguinIndia
,
@MeruGokhale
,
@richaburm
,
@sorcerical
#LONGLIST
2022: Karwaan Book Prize
Karwaan is delighted to announce the Longlist for this year’s
#KarwaanBookPrize
. It is awarded annually to recognise the outstanding scholarship on the History of Indian Subcontinent.
Stay Tune for the
#Shortlist
Announcement!
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Indians | Episode 5: Nalanda and the Decline of Buddhism
What was it like to be a student at the great Nalanda Mahavihara? What did three Chinese monks observe about Indian society & culture of the 5–7th centuries? And why did Buddhism decline in India?
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To Hindutvavadis condemning the attack on
#SalmanRushdie
: Do you realize y'all have a lot more in common with his Islamist attacker than with Rushdie?
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Climate change is easily the most significant & unprecedented crisis ever faced by humanity.
How did we get here? Many ways of answering this. Check out
@Usha__Alexander
's new series of essays, now running twice a week in
@thewire_in
. Here's
#1
.
@seemay
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An explanation of "political philosopher John Rawls’ classic thought experiment about what principles we need to design a fair society."
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@saurabhmundra1
@IITKgp
See any age mentioned in the order? Most final year UG students turn 21+ well before graduating. The IITs have significant PG enrollment too, all 21+. And if drinking is illegal below 21 in WB, why does the institute desire its own parallel penal structure beyond the state?
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@NeilHD108
@tishasaroyan
@thehindumapper
@Rtam86418021
@aryaismm
@br_llm_lock
@NirajRai3
@vikramghanekar
@Ugra___
@Nash_Siddiqui
@goyals_00
@arya_amsha
@yajnadevam
@finalpill
Kuch bhi? The earliest domestication of the horse anywhere is no earlier than 3500 BC. Indian finds are khur, not horse. Citing Bhimbetka is really pathetic. Its paintings were done over many millennia, the most recent ones, incl. the horse, date centuries into the common era.
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Indeed, the only time our fervent nationalists, mostly urban upper-caste/class Hindus, mourn the deaths of lower-caste/class citizens is when the latter die in uniform.
the hindtuva nationalism project is an upper -caste hindu bid to usurp power without personal risks. other castes are cannon fodder. the jawans who died in Pulwana are only being coopted in a discourse where those like them will forever remain powerless
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Today is one of my favorite marked days of the year. Today I celebrate my early decision to never have children—one of the greatest decisions of my life—among my surest, bestest, zero-regret life choices. I feel like I dodged a bullet!
More context here:
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@tishasaroyan
@NirajRai3
@ProfVasant
For e.g., listen from ~9:00 to Vasant Shinde (he coauthored the famous papers in Science & Cell) embarrassing himself and his profession, and proving yet again that Indian scientists can be severely deficient in scientific temper & intellectual honesty.
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"The case for an inheritance tax is particularly strong because disparities of inherited wealth (the ultimate freebie) are the anti-thesis of equality of opportunity."
—Jean Drèze in a sensible short piece on the idea of redistribution.
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Good old friendships are the rarest of gifts, and are among the most beautiful things in life. They anchor us in the world and give it meaning. Of all the things that make life entirely happy, wrote Epicurus, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.
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@Aakar__Patel
I wish I shared your optimism. We've also greatly regressed on economic equality; ecological health; extinction of species; air, soil, water pollution; citizen surveillance; loss of a shared reality; social polarization; corp. control of the commons ... with no relief in sight.
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