Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra
There is a great divergence in how Indians in America are understood vs. how they actually are on a very basic level. For example, Indians are implicitly seen as an ethnic group, and "Hinduism" is assumed to be a religion like Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, with the implication that it's congregational, institutionally based, and transmissible across generational and cultural lines.
But both of these are false. India and by extension Hindus are really a conglomeration of ethnic groups and and "Hinduism" is similarly best understood a collection of spiritual traditions that are grounded in Indian culture, celebrate similar festivals, and draw upon a common philosophical foundation. There is no Hindu "church" to speak of, nor is there a Hindu Pope telling people to build 80-foot Hanuman statues in Texas or do anything else for that matter. It's a highly centrifugal tradition.
Indian immigrants can certainly be insular, but they are not collectivist. First generation Hindu immigrants largely congregate along linguistic/ethnic lines, hence the prevalence of Telugu/Patel/Marathi/Tamil associations, e.g., but these provincial ties largely fade away among their American-born children, who increasingly identify simply as "South Asian" or "Indian American."
Contrary to popular belief, the fact that Indian Americans are heavily left-leaning is evidence of this acculturation. B/c of the centrifugal nature of Indian/Hindu ethnicity and religion, Indian Americans are particularly likely to assimilate into the voting patterns of their peer groups, which b/c of our socio-economic status means upper middle class neighborhoods, elite high schools/universities, high status jobs, all of which are heavily left leaning environments.
https://x.com/vjgtweets/status/2101804926880153869
The modern assumption that a wrinkled shirt is inherently unprofessional or that an unpressed garment represents neglect is a cultural legacy of European colonial rule. In ancient and medieval India, clothing was designed to move, breathe, and adapt to the living human form. Before ironing became a widespread use case in nineteenth-century South Asia, the daily act of flattening clothes through heat was virtually non-existent from the domestic life of Bharat, that is India.
https://substack.com/app-link/post? publication_id=5510425&post_id=216604661
I value this essay by Edward Said a great deal. His one of the key remarks that “facts do not at all speak for themselves” is particularly interesting as it draws to our attention that facts may merely add to each other without affecting politics until these facts are somehow produced within a narrative that supplies them with sequence, causality and historical weight. Equally memorable, for me, is the phrase “Palestine yes, Palestinians no”, which articulates an analogous dynamic: although Palestine may be present as a geographical entity, as a++
https://x.com/praxiss/status/2101752163781210206
In other words, loyalty isn't distributed evenly. Helping "my own" can, in practice, require bending the truth before a judge or not returning what a stranger lost. Helping "anyone"—even someone you don't know—is another ethic, more typical of cultures usually called individualist and that Meijer prefers to call *universalist*: They cooperate on a large scale with strangers, not just the clan. That doesn't mean one way of life is better than the other, nor that responsibilist cultures lack generosity: They have it, and often intensely, but it's concentrated.
https://x.com/pitiklinov/status/2101555920828297542
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s “Empire” became a sensation because it offered a master theory for globalization at a moment when old Marxist categories seemed exhausted. It has aged terribly.
https://x.com/jacobin/status/2101665181806006297
Atilio Boron’s “Empire and Imperialism” was a sharp critic to these clowns in that time. It's much more worth reading.
https://x.com/balamgal/status/2101713020711813494
'States do things' is not an adequate rebuttal to Empire. Of course they do, but when the Hormuz strait is blocked and fuel prices around the world go up, that's Empire; just as the BDS movement is multitude.
https://x.com/gaoblai/status/2101739171920662766
I like personal, fragmentary, autobiographical Agamben more than the big systematic works. I’m looking forward to Agamben’s notes from Heidegger’s Le Thor seminars, mixed with recollections of the place, walking, memory and youth.
https://x.com/timesflow/status/2101598872346767618
China did not rise despite the West, but because the globalist West built it that way. Short-term profit was prioritised over national security, industrial sovereignty, and local workforce stability. A rootless, stateless elite in New York, Brussels, Berlin, and Shanghai feels at home everywhere and takes responsibility nowhere. In its wake are stranded communities, stripped of industry and upward mobility, entirely dependent on supply chains controlled by a foreign power. This was no mistake. It is how the system was designed to work.
https://x.com/PeterDClack/status/2101595561090805979
He took the Alinsky manual, the Gramscian strategy, the Frankfurt School’s cultural framework, and synthesized them into the most electorally successful progressive project in American history. He didn’t design the long march. He was its most gifted product – and its most effective accelerant. The institutions he found captured, he left more captured. The Overton Window he found shifted, he left shifted further.
What he built – or rather, what he accelerated and consolidated – did not depend on him personally. The officials installed remain. The regulatory architecture expanded. The cultural assumptions shifted. The pipeline filled with people who wanted to be him and learned, from watching him, exactly how it was done. The most complete product of the long march became its most effective teacher.
https://x.com/Kristof_Poland/status/2101707685569724835
Sundar Sarukkai’s new book, ‘Homo Philosophicus’, is for anybody seeking a head start in a philosophical education or who is simply curious about the world, writes @aditya_mani_jha
https://x.com/Mint_Lounge/status/2101619882697851245
Dr. Mrittunjoy Guha Majumdar's "From Shiva to Schrodinger: Unravelling Cosmic Secrets with Trika Shaivism & Quantum Insights" belongs to a growing body of literature that seeks to place Hindu philosophy in conversation with modern physics, particularly quantum mechanics. The author seeks to place a metaphysical tradition in dialogue with a scientific theory by exploring their apparent convergences on questions of consciousness, reality and non-duality. To his credit, the author is aware of the methodological difficulties involved... In seeking common ground, the book blurs the very boundaries it rightly urges us to preserve.
These observations extend beyond this particular volume. They point to a broader intellectual tendency within modern Hindu writing that seeks scientific legitimacy for ancient metaphysical doctrines and religious traditions. Works such as "Maya in Physics" by Dr. N. C. Panda, together with numerous books and popular lectures drawing parallels between quantum mechanics and Vedanta, Yoga or Tantra, illustrate the persistence of this apologetic impulse. The issue, therefore, is not this book alone but the philosophical assumption underlying an entire genre: that Hindu religious truth becomes more credible when it resembles contemporary science. Yet science and religion are not rival claimants to the same territory. They belong to different epistemic orders and pursue different purposes. Neither requires the other for its legitimacy.
The search for scientific validation neither strengthens Sanātana Dharma nor enriches science. It obscures the distinction between two fundamentally different orders of inquiry: religion and science. Each has its own methods, standards of truth, epistemic foundations and purposes. Neither requires the other's endorsement.
https://x.com/MNageswarRaoIPS/status/2078128238929527143
The term fascism gets thrown around constantly in political debate, usually as a label for far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist ideology, paired with moral condemnation of anyone drawn to it. Yale philosopher Jacob McNulty thinks that condemnation gets us nowhere. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, he argues fascism's real pull isn't ideological, but psychological. It’s closer to addiction: genuinely pleasurable for those inside it, destructive in the long run, and brutally hard to walk away from. Understanding it from the outside means taking seriously the desires of those who find it compelling, not just condemning them. Read the full article. iai.tv/articles/fasci…
https://x.com/IAI_TV/status/2101726859985613134
The best of The Marginalian this week, in one place – Tolkien on how to fall in love with life, regret vs. remorse and how to reconcile your most painful mistakes, getting over heartbreak in stone and clay: mailchi.mp/themarginalian…
https://x.com/themarginalian/status/2101811717986456035
What happens to the Self when the body changes? Explore Gita 2.22–2.23 with Sri Aurobindo’s profound insight into the soul’s journey and its indestructible nature. Join @PariksithSingh youtu.be/fBjxfbaisaM?si… @MakrandParanspe @AmazingVedas
https://x.com/sriaurobindochr/status/2101658635550273969
Experience the beauty of Gita 2.23–2.25, chanted and explored through Sri Aurobindo’s vision of the Self as indestructible, eternal, all-pervading and beyond grief. Join @PariksithSingh youtu.be/3Qc_Vx-J2p0?si… @MakrandParanspe @AmazingVedas
https://x.com/sriaurobindochr/status/2101779431505399962
Can India’s past shape its future? Listen to @MakrandParanspe and Sudheendra Kulkarni discuss history, identity and continuity, chaired by Vir Sanghvi. Listen now! youtube.com/live/GUz0uWxtZ… @PariksithSingh @AmazingVedas
https://x.com/sriaurobindochr/status/2101734384642511343
[PDF] Swadeshi globalization: Dattopant Thengadi's Hindu Nationalist path for globalization in late twentieth-century India
globalization in the twentieth century was not characterized solely by a steadfast
assertion of its fascistic or majoritarian tendencies. In fact, often borrowing from (neo)liberal …
Book review: Jan Breman and Ghanshyam Shah, Gujarat, Cradle and Harbinger of Identity Politics: India's Injurious Frame of Communalism
Hindutva politics, from the early twentieth-century Gujarat to its consolidation under
Narendra Modi. Its combination of history, ethnography and political economy offers …
[HTML] Buddhism, Frontier and Nation-Building: The 1955 Visit of the “Indian Xuanzang” to China
contemporary Sino-Indian Buddhist cultural exchange. The diary he kept in Hindi
offers a detailed record of this journey. However, this episode remains scarcely …
[HTML] Inconsistencies and Vulnerabilities of The Steppe Homeland of the PIE Hypothesis
(PIE) languages was in the Pontic steppe. The hypothesis suggests that IE-speaking
steppe nomads invaded Western Europe during the Bronze Age, leading to …
Anticolonial Scholarship and the Politics of Location: Can Social Theory be Truly Democratic and Truly Global?
thought and ideas, but their stance has proved too mild and lukewarm for the
aggressive agendas of contemporary Hindutva. Serious efforts are on to remedy this …
Literature of return: a critique of Indian unity in Indian travel writings in English
Indian returnees after a period of displacement, as intervening in the discourse of
Indian unity, and traces its emergence as a conscious generic shift shaped by the …
Reclaim the Night: fight for people-centric security and belonging, collectivisation in the everyday public
movement in the citizen's upsurge against RG Kar rape and murder in West Bengal.
It discusses the question of security which has been the much-debated issue in …
The Great Indian Family: An analysis of religious othering through food identity
sociocultural mechanisms. Unlike the vegetarian diet which is often associated with
upper‐caste Hindu practices, traditional Muslim cuisine typically includes meat …
11 Mapping the body politics of autonomy and respectability
autonomy in India and Ireland. The importance of such a comparison lies in its
potential to address the structural deficiencies in feminist knowledge production (Sandoval …
[HTML] CONTENT INDIAN CULTURE AND HERITAGE
continuously changing status of Hindu women from antiquity (Prevedic era, c1500-1100BCE)
to modernity (Early Modern Era, 18th Century). In my paper I will try to establish my …
No comments:
Post a Comment