I have some devastating news for the hindutva fascists (not Indians in general): you will never be white or part of the west. Union carbide will dump chemicals on your land, Cargill will sell your farmers one time seed, metro PCS will make racist ass commercials about your accent. The only reason they are pumping you up is so you go fight china for them. You are part of the global south, embrace it. You are one of us.
Pakistan , India and bangladesh can never truly integrate into anti colonial and anti imperialist movement due to various reasons , specially the religious fundamentalism embedded into our culture.
Pakistan can't due to its elite (mainly its military being a complete puppet of the west and looting the country along with their civilian facade). Of course fundamentalism plays some part as the military utilizes it to a great extent, but a lot of it has to do with the country's resources being looted and its money stored in offshore accounts.
I can't speak for India or Bangladesh. I will say that the caste system is a detriment to development and that is definitely a form religious fundamentalism.
Muslims in India and Bangladesh don't have much caste system but Indian hindus have. Religious fundamentalism has played a crucial on the downfall of secularism and rationality in South Asia due to the funding of wahabi movements from Saudis and Qataris.
Oh yeah, Muslim and other nations primarily were gravitating towards left wing socialism post independence but the west and their puppets made sure there was a reactionary tilt. But let's not give colonization and compradors a bail out by blaming only religion. The Pakistan army and elites don't have a religion problem, they have a greed problem.
Pakistan was pretty much dead when it was pronounced that it will be Islamic republic and Urdu would be the national language. Pakistan is much more diverse and beautiful than what political parties , ulema made out to be. Pakistan has baloch , punjabi , sindhi (the land of sufis and indus valley civilization) and has numerous languages but in the long term military dictatorship and religious fanaticism has prevented pakistan to become a country of unity in diversity . Yes , Indians have those problems too but in Pakistan much of regionalism was suppressed at the start and you can see the departure of bangladesh because of that.
Bangladesh got separated because bhutto and his generals were power hungry, greedy pieces of shit. It had nothing to do with religion or culture. If they had just respected the elections, all that bloodshed could have been avoided. I am not saying religion isn't a factor but let's stop acting like little bill mahers here.
Edit: the bhutto family is still fucking up Pakistani politics and development with their greed.
To add: Those compradors ousting Imran Khan in the coup had nothing at all to do with religion and culture. All the elites saw the social welfare programs and corruption being curtailed (even 1%) and they got antsy and helped America do a coup.
I am not fan of any religion and you know very well Islamic Republic of Pakistan was the foundational problem for East bengal and Pakistan itself. You can gloss over the religion part but Jinnah thought declaring Urdu as national language will bring pious Muslims closer to Islam or will have a national identity. Even now Baloch people are suppressed there. You cannot build a sound society when you declare a society will be built on a particular religion not by pragmatic and secular law. You can watch Com.Taimur Rehman of Pakistan for his ideas and thoughts.
I have watched taimur rehman stuff before. In fact when I stopped listening to him was when he said the recent coup had no US involvement on Luna Oi's show and then the leaked memos came out that they did. He is a bhutto fan boy and that family sucks. So do the Sharifs, Zardaris, other elites and the military. Feudalist are not socialists, sorry not sorry bhutto family.
Is religion a particularly strong factor there? Yes, not the only one. Religious parties never win in elections there though and even trump pretended to read the Bible to kiss evangelical ass here. That's just how it goes.
Did Imran Khan use religious principles to garner support for social welfare programs and speak up for the oppressed? Sure did, it's a country full of Muslims after all. Did he give Sikhs access to their holy sites in a gesture of tolerance? Yep.
Did he win an election free and fair despite being pushtoon, a minority in Pakistan? Yep, and he is even further in the polls now despite tens of thousands of political arrests and military crackdowns. He even wins in Punjab province. People will put aside their differences there for a leader of good conscience, efficacy aside (even his fans admit he made mistakes, but he is a decent person).
Is Urdu a national language there? Yes, so is English actually. It has more English speakers than England even.
While I am not disagreeing with you 100%, I don't want to condemn pakistanis as too religious/ culturally bias to have better lives. It would take more than a few families and the military stripped of their wealth and power there but it would be a great start.
Edit: I also wanted to make it clear that I am glad we are having this discussion as we both clearly care about the country. No animosity on my part.
I love Taimur rehman, actually I had some friends in sindh who didn't like him too because he was too much this or that. I don't want to get into internal pakistani business but I also think it was not a coup per se, even Vijay Prashad of India agrees with it. There might be some pressure from US on Pakistani military but I think Imran khan was naive, he surrendered to the military when iron was hot, he should have gone for a wider change Or a democratic government. Well, it's unfortunate left wing parties are weak in Pakistan , India and Bangladesh.
its a wrong theory and ahistorical. Religious tensions was there and it will be for many years to come. Religion brings problems and anti materialism which is a false consciousness
How so? Or maybe I'm not making my point clear. The British didn't invent these tensions, but they did exacerbate them as much as they could, and the modern situation is a result of that far more than previous tensions.
I agree that religion is as anti-materialist as it gets, but people are religious and will fight for their religious beliefs, you can't just make people stop being religious overnight. I can't imagine a truly communist society having religion really, but it's a process that takes generations of people slowly losing the need for religion in their lives, the USSR's attempts at suppressing religion were ultimately unsuccessful and those same religious leaders would often work with enemies of the communists to undermine and overthrow them because they saw them as a threat to their power. Unfortunately it has to be done delicately because religion is such a powerful force for reaction.
USSR was very successful in their attempts. I recently watched a video from Uzbekistan in 1970s there was neither islamic fundamentalism or closures of mosques. Don't iterate the liberal propaganda that campaign against religion was a failure in USSR. The return happened due to the capitalism and chauvinists in every region of ex USSR states.
Bro there was saint Kabir, Meera, sufis etc. In their poems they always had written about the animosity and hatred between hindus and Muslims. British just sparked the tension in 20th century by aligning themselves with Hindus and Muslim fundamentalists. But obviously the partition was inevitable. There was either of the chauvinism, it's Islamic supremacist or Hindus. It was just a good moment in history of India that Nehru was socialist and secular oriented. Even his colleagues were pro hindu chauvinists like Sardar Patel and etc.
South India and Maharashtra have far less fundamentalism (I'm not trying to be chauvinist here, I've heard this from multiple non-desis who only learned what these provinces were after visiting India)
There's a strange type of "exclusively punch down + religious fundamentalism" brainworm complex that peaks in Northern India, including Bengal. It resembles the right-wing rhetoric that I see from certain Latinos
lol , no it is because in Maharashtra and in South India there was a anti vedic movement (Periyar , Ambedkar , Ligyayat , Joytiba Phule ) where religious reforms were carried out but I won't give these states free pass . Maha is ruled by Sena type extremists and TN has considerable casteism. Its a whitewash to say south India doesn't have religious problem.
Sure, but just anecdotally speaking, every Indian I've talked to online (so a few dozen) who had takes like the OP tweet ended up being northern. Very often Gangetic, Nepali Bahuns, some Assamese, a few from Uttar Pradesh, a few Bengalis. Not as many Punjabis as you'd think given their obvious ancestry differences.
a decent number of them have a weird combination of reactionary punching down + sucking up to white nationalists + defeatism
All of these people were english-fluent enough that I could understand them perfectly, so I'd imagine direct material conditions are not the problem, and that it has more to do with the previous history of the gangetic region and the cultural quirks that materialized from it
That's irrelevant. Being influenced by Sanskrit is no more noteworthy than China being influenced by English.
Southern Brahmins are not Southern people who were influenced by Sanskrit. They are Northern people who live in the South.
Southern Brahmins have elevated Steppe ancestry and R1a fractions, just like Northern Brahmins.
To the casual observer this just sounds like "calipers" but the real significance is that these people, regardless of when they got here, have against all numerical odds, managed to keep themselves "genetically pure" for a very long time, and such an act can only be achieved via active caste-based discrimination. If they began arriving at 200 BC like you say, rather than later, that just makes it worse--imagine keeping yourself ethnically separate from the 95% of the population around you for over 2000 years lmao.
These brahmins drove the sanskritization. This sanskritizing/brahminizing influence was more complete in Maharashtra and Odisha, and was totally complete in the Gangetic Plain.
Speaking a Dravidian language with Sanskrit influence is very different from being completely culturally captive to a Brahmin elite and all their whims--which is likely where the dysfunction of the Gangetic region comes from.