Priyank 乔汉 (∆/∆)
@priyankchn
Followers
6K
Following
51K
Media
2K
Statuses
26K
Founder @sasc_india | Founder @india_irsoc आ नो भद्राः क्रतवो यन्तु विश्वतः भूयो भूयः 🔥
🇦🇶
Joined April 2010
Finally excited to announce the formation of Savarkar Ambedkar Study Circle at JNU, a dream project I had been working on for a long time. Do follow the project, and read the thread to understand its objectives. RT to spread the word.
On Savarkar's birth anniversary, we are excited to announce the formation of the Savarkar Ambedkar Study Circle at JNU. This initiative is dedicated to developing a deeper, more empathetic understanding of the works of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and B. R. Ambedkar together.
22
96
439
South Indian movies should directly start catering to the North Indian audience without going through the middle layer of Bollywood. Bollywood has never reflected the sensibilities of a major portion of the Hindi speaking masses, it doesn't represent us.
116
1K
7K
Notice a fundamental difference between Hindi newspapers and English newspapers today?
112
1K
6K
On the first day Brahma created the world. On the second day Justice Chandrachud was created to supervise the rest of the creation process.
83
916
4K
Bajrang Dal is probably the most underappreciated organisation in the country. It's made of people like Rinku Sharma, working for civilizational causes, organising community at local level. What they get in return are jokes about Valentine day.
47
1K
4K
A friend asked his father why the carpenter wasn't coming for work. His father casually told him, "He already earned 30-40k. Now he'll go back to the village, chill, play cards with friends, he will return only when he has the last 1000 left.". What work ethic is this?.
241
227
4K
"Tucker, I explain to you the inevitability of Akhand Bharat". "Like reversing the partition, the inherent instability of Pakistan, or. ". "NO, I must start with the Battle of Ten Kings and the deep spiritual meaning of the Indus river defined in the Rig Veda circa 800 BCE"
43
426
2K
Went through Afreen Fatima's TL. The same blinding rhetoric, everyday demagoguery that you find in the likes of Owaisi. No higher vision, no reflexivity or imagination. JNU should be producing forward-looking, progressive leadership but what we have are these miniature Jinnahs.
8
399
2K
Most of the muslim friends with whom I went to school in Bijnor have these kinds of whatsapp statuses, in solidarity with the Taliban. I really respect this kind of intellectual honesty. It removes a lot of ideological brain fog and makes honest conversations possible.
41
532
2K
This Notre Dame thing has opened my eyes to one thing. If you value your heritage and identity, other people will also do. If you neglect it yourself, everyone will deem it worthless. I hope as Indians, we understand this simple truth & start valuing our identity and heritage.
33
756
1K
"Mughals were Indians too" and "There was no India before the British" will seem like two contradictory takes but not really if the ultimate aim is to subvert the cultural basis of India's national identity.
30
322
1K
People talk about how mass influx of Indians on the English internet led to more exposure and soured Indian steretypes. But the opposite is also true. Western dehat is now online and people who grew up thinking West is Friends and Seinfield now have direct access to 4chan gutter.
11
145
1K
A subconscious rage I detect against the movie Kashmir Files is pretty much the same that I observed in the CAA protests. Accepting the idea that more than one community, especially the 'majority' could also be a victim of hate and violence is uncomfortable for many.
11
225
1K
At India's current income levels and the very visible poverty around us, even a semblance of any ideology that is anti-prosperity should be considered a national sin.
22
212
1K
The Palestine brutality is giving many closet Islamists in India a covert way to celebrate what they can not openly celebrate and wish for in India.
12
273
1K
Who are the closest Pakistani/Bangladeshi equivalent of these?. (Genuine question, not trolling)
India's problem is thinking they possess some superior genes, like the Nazis during Hitler's time. Sorry, my dear brothers in India, you don't. You're just average—like Bangladeshis or Pakistanis. Your only edge is a 1.4B population, which naturally boosts your economy.
35
76
1K
What exactly do people celebrate when they celebrate UPSC toppers? It's a celebration of deep stagnation. We need to laud thinkers, startup founders, sportsmen, people pushing the frontier in all fields. What bureaucrat has ever created history or changed the world?.
99
200
1K
One of my personal Diwali rituals is to watch this classic movie every year with cousins big and small. Never gets old.
26
78
943
Regionalism in India still stuck in pre-1900 dehati ethnic enclave mentality. Individual simply doesn't exist. At their aggrandising best, regions imagine themselves to be a nation, at even more stupid, they start imagining themselves to be civilizations.
Correction: Kerala belongs to Malayalis. You are welcome to work here and go back. You are welcome to bring your families and assimilate. You are not welcome to settle here and not assimilate. And that applies to anyone, not just other Indians.
19
123
899
Infact the upcoming film city in Noida should become the base for such direct collaborations. Regional industries should use their experience to experiment with new stories set in the Hindi belt.
5
113
844
There's a paradox around Modi, one of the most popular leaders in Indian history but frankly so little understood. This is not surprising, not in India, where to worship is to elevate and not necessarily to understand, often quite the opposite in fact. Here's a guide to Modi:.
29
218
848
Tulsi Gabbard single-handedly creates more discourse and international attention on persecution of Hindu minorities than all of Indian politics combined.
Hindus & religious minorities in Bangladesh continue to be targeted & persecuted, as they have been since 1971 when the Pakistani army systematically murdered, raped & drove from their homes millions of Bengali Hindus because of their religion & ethnicity.
13
232
815
Despite all its flaws, across geography, caste, age groups, BJP continues to be the party of Indian optimists (even the cynics who are optimists at heart).
3
128
854
There's something so serenely beautiful about this image. The moon rising behind Rama in a terrorised sky, his bare chest adorned with a flowing janeu, the absolute surrender of the ocean, his daughters rising above the waves to worship the Lord, who's also their brother-in-law.
13
113
809
The problem with this logo is not Dhanvantri. The problem is that it has that ugly Sarkari aesthetic. Whoever designed this logo literally copy-pasted a standard Dhanvantri image, logo would have been beautiful with a stylized modern depiction.
NMC (National Medical Commission of India) has changed its logo replacing its previous Ashoka emblem to Dhanvantari, known as Physician of Devas, An avatar of Vishnu, God of Ayurveda. Congrats to NMC for taking our modern medicine to 1000 years backwards and taking us back to
31
125
785
Puranas speak of Brahma's 59 मानसपुत्र, his sons born from the the pure potency of his mind. But his 60th son Chandrachud has such great creative potency that even Puranas feel shy in invoking his name in vain.
5
135
731
The most invisible way in which racism manifests today is in the idea of a universal history, in which cultures other than West are denied their own historical depth, and must justify their actions against Western historical experience, their notion of space-time.
Can someone explain to me why the PM of India is giving a long speech attacking a Mughal emperor who died 300+ years ago?.
9
151
673
Bibek Debroy's last column, a sagely reflection on life and death. Thoughts of Yayati, prayopavesa, rat races. A self-obituary. A fascinating mind.
4
128
712
China is increasingly becoming India's Rorschach. A lot of intelligent well-intentioned Indians look at our failures through prism of history, state, culture, economy, and find that China is probably the only other model of comparable scale worth understanding. But. .
5
79
689
Words have the amazing power to reveal what is deep and subconscious. Just like you can't be stranded in your home, you can't be marooned in your country, you can not be *dragged* through your *own* history. If a peoples' history is foreign to you, so is their future.
A leader who repeatedly drags you back into history, is incapable of giving you a future and has nothing to offer to you in the present. Failed leaders distract you with history, visionary leaders create the future you deserve. Always remember that !.
10
95
651
Carl Jung's first impression of India was rather dramatic:. "My own world of European consciousness had become peculiarly thin. it's quite possible that India is the real world and that the white man lives in a madhouse of abstractions.".
4
100
649
It's really funny how UP and Bihar have literally no subnational or regional feeling (because they feel *they* ARE India).
35
71
638
The median Indian:. 28 years old, speaks Hindi and broken English, lives in North India, is OBC, votes BJP, will pass through Delhi-NCR at some point, wants a sarkari job but will settle for a stable private one, hasn't been on a flight or Vande Bharat yet, hard life but hopeful.
33
59
642
One of the most brilliant analysis of 'Pajeet' phenomenon, from China surprisingly. Han Feizi psychologically dissects it by comparing it to Bo Yang's 'Chinaman' from 90s, which fell flat due to a boring transformation brought about by shift from scarcity to abundance mindset.
20
131
630
It's interesting how the whole Chola identity debate started as a Dravidian cope only after the movie PS1 was consciously marketed to a pan-India audience. This suggests that Dravidianism can be solved simply by altering the level of discourse from state to nation.
5
90
593
Nothing to celebrate in CAA. A late fulfillment of bare minimum obligation to subcon Dharmic minority. At civilizational level, saddest reminder that these erstwhile lands are now permanently hostile to us. No majestic temples will exist there, no cows will roam free of fear.
13
106
547
The MSc is in "South Asian" studies but she has no intentiom of working in South Asia.
40
131
503
Yogiji's birthday today. An old photo when he was appointed successor of Gorakhpur mutt at the age of just 22 years.
3
94
527
Many liberal commentators in India who disagree with PFI ideology and yet wish to extend a juridical protection seem to live in a fantasy land where Pakistan never happened, Kairana and Kashmir never happened, and local low-cunning wars aren't being waged everywhere in India.
7
121
521
Whatever this is.
What's the polar opposite of nihilism? I'm that.
5
27
495
Hinduism in our times, suffering through a long historical decay and finally the shock of modernity, has lost its original inner vigour and mostly become reduced to a bloated mass of culture, myth, ritual, and a pale imitation in politics.
15
59
498
Language is funny sometimes. Today I learnt that the phrase 'Changu-Mangu' used by Hindi speakers for a comedic duo or funny sidekicks actually refers to Changez Khan and Mongke Khan.
9
114
466
Kasab was told by his Pakistani handlers that when jihadis die their bodies start to glow and become fragrant. Rakesh Maria took Kasab to the morgue and showed him the dead decaying bodies of his comrades. Surrounded by unbearable stench, Kasab walked out a disillusioned man.
7
138
437
Ram Puniyani is the Platonic form of the cadaverous Indian boomer who get stuck up on some brainrot at age 40 and then will never learn or admit anything else. He'll keep repeating this same brainrot till the day he dies. For all intellectual purposes, already a kind of zombie.
There are 2% Hindus in Indonesia but the Hindus there have never been in danger because there is no RSS there. - Ram Puniyani (Indian Writer).
5
93
454
I haven't watched Kerala Story nor am I going to, but the discussion around it is amusing. One surprising thing I note is a narcissistic almost vulgar insecurity from Kerala. Even a movie like 'Udta Punjab' led to discussion about drugs, not accusations of targeting Punjab!.
11
68
433
UP (and Bihar) are the least parochial of all states because they are literally the core region of Indian civilisation. They do not suffer from the peripheral pressures that every other region does to some extent. For them, the idea of a subnational identity is impossible.
In Jewar Airport speech, Modi is also listing the works done by Centre all over India this month. Completely intentional, in my view. UP, for better or worse, is perhaps the least parochial of all states.
13
87
418
@chaitxnya @sankrant True. Nepali universities use only Vikram Samvat dates and months in the official notices. Here is the notice from Tribhuvan University regarding holidays for Vijayadashami and Deepawali.
16
201
395
Te laudamus, O Vishnu divinus 🎵. New experiment with AI. Enjoy this Latin chant for Shri Vishnu, this is what an aarti would sound like if sung like a Gregorian chant.
20
118
407
Modern India had two morality engineering projects. Both failed. 1. Nehruvian (Elite-driven).Focus on secularism, socialism, liberalism. 2. Ambedkarite (Subaltern-driven).Focus on social justice, post-Hinduism. Hindutva is the morality engineering project of the middle class.
15
77
397
@ajitdatta That mindset shines through in his book 'The India Way'. Excellent reading I'd recommend to anyone interested in a global yet rooted understanding of Indian geopolitics.
3
32
399
Many people may not like the sound of this but Hinduism is the only stable sheet anchor in all of the subcontinent.
India is an oasis in this neighbourhood. We can complain as much as we want, but nothing quite like being here.
5
71
419
Was watching an interview of Kapil Tiwari on Gond culture and he said something really insightful - . If you go to a Gond and say "Nature is so beautiful", he wouldn't understand because in his mental configuration the distinction between him/her and nature simply does not exist.
6
59
381
A friend did ground surveys as political consultant in Rajsthan elections. He said men talking politics were all about Rahul, Modiji, G20, etc. but women talking politics everywhere were about schools, electricity, water, always about the children.
3
37
389
Lots of crap gaslighting talk about 'Hindutva going global' related to the Leicester incident. Well, it's Hindutva going global only in the sense of Hindu resistance to Islamism, which is already a pretty global phenomenon and needs to be countered everywhere.
5
64
355
The actual problem with The Wire is not just the team, it's the reader base. Since that reporting is not read to understand anything but only to substantiate ideologically maximalist positions, it is never subjected to any logical or technical scrutiny.
3
63
354
Vaishnavism in all its variety is one of the greatest centripetal forces in Hindu society. Even layers of localisation (language, region) do not take away the centripetalism (this happens to some degree for Shaivism and Shaktism).
5
70
363
Something very pathological about the Hindi belt's exaltation of bureaucracy as the superlative life achievement. A very unique manifestation of the subsistence mindset in culture - in which meaning is derived not from expansion but from a state of satisfied existence.
19
72
353
I'm stuck between tradition and modernity. I have no exact approach to anything, my thought and behaviour on most things is moulded by a curious mix of ancient, pre-modern, modern, and now increasingly post-modern attitudes, none of which I really understand.
Tell me you are Indian without telling me you're Indian ??.
6
59
353
"You white people are all-powerful now but remember, it shall have our turn in the time to come, when we can do what we like.". - Madan Lal Dhingra, Indian revolutionary, to the British court that sentenced him to death
7
48
350
Thinking of starting a Savarkar-Ambedkar Study Circle in JNU. If there are two thinkers who deserve a very close reading *together*, it's these two.
7
26
342
An article in today's @IndianExpress in which @Abhina_Prakash and I argue that Hindutva must be understood beyond a reductive political context, as a culturally transformative framework for emergence of Hindu modernity in India.
18
85
341
Can't be the only one to notice that American TV series are overwhelmingly obsessed with food and sex. If you observe deeply, everything seems to happen inside a libidinal-gastronomical matrix.
20
29
321
We may suck at manufacturing hard stuff but we still produce the world's finest grade boomers. Unparalleled technology.
Call me old fashioned but had connected with a young fresh 2025 pass out from my college when he sent message on LinkedIn. His first message started with - Hi Saket, we are from same college…. And he lost me there itself. Son, you are 2025 pass out and address 1994 pass out with.
6
30
344
@myraemacdonald I think there's something pretty basic here and it's about UK's failure to provide basic safety and order to another sovereign country's embassy. This much is something that's taken for granted among respectable countries.
3
39
302
"We ate certain food, performed certain ceremonies and had certain taboos; we expected others to have their own. We did not wish to share theirs; we did not expect them to share ours. They were what they were; we were what we were.". - From Naipaul's 'An Area of Darkness'.
2
65
319
Karl Marx once wrote a letter to Ghalib, praising his poetry and advising him to address revolutionary themes. Ghalib's reply basically goes, "It is too difficult to understand what you are saying. Talk to the Viceroy and get me a pension 💸."
14
69
291
Another lesser known fact about Jambavant is that he was really really really old. He was there when Madhu-Kaitabh were slayed, he witnessed the churning of the ocean, and he circumambulated Vaman devta seven times when the three worlds were being measured.
4
52
309
There's so much about India that will change (and it desperately needs to) but I hope the spirit of eco-civilization will always endure.
4
28
299
Notice in Udaipur case that Kanhaiyalal is killed for merely expressing support to Nupur. If Nupur is the original sinner, the ideology that wants her head creates a chain of sin, designating everyone down the line fit for killing, whenever convenient. Decentralized insanity.
2
82
300
That person who slapped Kangana is peak dehati mindset. I don't like = I slap wriggling worm like mentality that belongs to the pre-empire tribal stage of civilization. But look at this english dehati here. These people are the rotten dregs of civilization.
9
45
313
I want UP to make rapid economic progress so that it can once again become a seat of high culture and not be reduced to celebrating a smattering of gaalis as some form of 'UP pride'.
A Lucknow teenager is a force of nature on Instagram. Meethika Dwivedi packs UP pride, gaalis. Tina Das @dastina2191 writes in ThePrint #POV .
4
53
277
Reading this much-recommended book now. It's about an American scholar's notes of his conversations with five judges of Indian Supreme Court. Looks exciting, will post interesting info in this thread.
12
171
294
A Sanskrit sukti for the hard realists:. अश्वं नैव गजं नैव व्याघ्रं नैव च नैव च ।.अजापुत्रं बलिं दद्यात् देवो दुर्बल घातकः॥. Neither horse, nor elephant, nor the lion, it's only the meek goat that is killed in sacrifice. Even the Gods kill the weak.
7
67
291
May Gen Rawat attain suryaloka, the final abode of the sinless warriors ☀️
With deep regret, it has now been ascertained that Gen Bipin Rawat, Mrs Madhulika Rawat and 11 other persons on board have died in the unfortunate accident.
0
33
284
No offence to Biharis who are good people but Bihar in India today exists as an anti-thesis of everything that is good, a kind of 'slum on the hill', a human disaster, a body-politic disease. For the state that worships the sun so fervently to exist in sooo much darkness.
16
35
281
Upanishads get really trippy sometimes. For example, out of nowhere Taittriya Upanishad throws this at you, . "We eat the food and the food eats us. " 🧐.
24
20
286
Savarkar, the most resounding voice of Hindu modernity in all of Hindu history. In him the romantic sensibility of a poet meets the spirit of a revolutinary. And his attitude to the past wow. He accepted no mythology other than that of the nation - the one he created himself.
5
30
276
Pretty much proves Yogendra Yadav is a total clown who got LS right purely by wish-thinking and contrarianism. Psephology in India today no different from astrology.
7
31
293
Praveen Togadia's recent statement. It's reassuring that hard-nosed community leaders don't give into purity spirals and have practical understanding of their goals.
10
38
289
JNU condition summarized:. Left wala right wale ko mar raha hai. Right wala left wale ko mar raha hai. Police wala sabko mar raha hai.
14
80
246
A really gorgeous Rajput painting. It shows Prince Subuddhi (an illustrious ancestor of the Rathores) meeting Shivji in the forest of illusion.
2
43
262
Very old Hindutva talking points that got mainstreamed across the world last week:. 1. Woke mobs across Western universities are clueless and agenda-driven.2. Humanities academia in the West is full of prejudice hidden behind expertise.3. International media (like BBC) is biased.
6
73
268
I don't *hate* any of these people for their choices. Having a solid framework for political thinking is an enviable thing. The clarity that such choices give me (as a political subject) is also interesting.
1
25
247
India now has more literary fests than the number of people across the country reading books cover to cover 🤷🏽♂️.
5
18
270
जय भास्कर ☀️. [Lt. Gen. Maharajah Bhavani Singh at City Palace, Jaipur]
9
29
265
A professor in JNU once said to me about the general problem of Indian academia:. It does not situate itself in the Indian tradition by choice, and being Indian, it can not really become embedded in the Western tradition. So it's a series of thoughts without a tradition.
2
57
252
A funny thing in some Western TV shows is when they have to cover a lot of Indian-type stereotypes but can't afford more than one actor, so they just cram all of those stereotypes into one single person. That man becomes a melange, the weight of entire subcontinent on his head.
6
52
255
Rereading VS Naipaul's trilogy and slowly realizing what makes him unique. His is neither the fetishizing colonial gaze nor the forgiving gaze of the native. He is an Indian looking at India from outside itself. Whatever he sees he lays bare, and he saw a LOT that was invisible.
10
40
261
To me Modi is much more interesting as a historical phenomena than as a person. He is a complex but successful synthesis of the Gandhi-Savarkar binary in the Hindu mind combining the rich ritual exterior of mass-politician Gandhi with cold internal clarity of Savarkar.
4
40
255
The gap left by disappearance of deep thinkers in our societies are being filled by journalists, a profession whose substance essentially is - "Things are happening". Asking them to intellectualise is a bit too much.
4
58
264
@aditimurti Most of us non-veg folks are decent human beings who respect boundaries of belief, habit and culture. We don't need to do pathetic shit to create some meaning in our lives.
3
14
257
What India did with Cricket can be the model for so much more (and not just sports). We take something from the world we like, we make it our own, and then we use our demographic scale and domestic market strength to make India the center of gravity and innovation (BCCI, IPL).
10
44
254
Sadhguru: Weed.Osho: LSD.Jiddu Krishnamurti: Mushrooms.Ram Dass: Ayahuasca.Alan Watts: Alcohol.Shri Ramakrishna: Opium.Swami Vivekananda: Adderall.
20
23
259
In what way can I relate to a Sharjeel Imam or Afreen Fatima, when it's pretty clear they are not interested in speaking to me besides recruitment for a 'cause'?. This kind of politics is literally the death of the idea of a university.
0
37
230