When I was young and in America, I always knew I was Indian and my country was India. That's because I knew what it felt like to be an unquestioned majority in India and had an instinctive sense of "ownership" of the country.
In America, I saw my subcontinental friends act like confused ducklings because their liberal teachers, the zeitgeist and their civics classes told them they were also Americans, but it was a hasty and uncertain reality, which they hesitatingly accepted or rejected.
I tried to knock some sense into them, but it never worked properly. I always got told "You just think like a white guy, you dont think like a desi!"
By thinking like a white guy, they meant my instinctive tribal views on "who belongs" made them feel very queer at times.
Israel is a state run by a population (Ashkenazi Jews) with an average IQ of 115 surrounded by Arab states with an IQ of 80. It’s not too hard to see why such comical scenarios ensure.
The average Ashkenazi is more than 2 SD smarter than the average Arab Muslim.
People running Israeli intelligence would be 1 SD smarter than the average Ashkenazi, think an IQ of 130. For reference, more than 15% of Ashkenazi would have an IQ higher than 130.
Not even 1% of Arabs (average IQ 80-85) would have an IQ over 130.
Nice thread, since you are being candid and following historical trends somewhat respectfully, let me just provide my own response to it.
It was very difficult to draw strict lines of separation in theological identity in pre-modern primary religions, so what makes up Hinduism *theologically* is not a clear cut bullet point list. The identity of Hindu has always been subjective but it comes down to what Savarkar has said. Hindus are a people, tied by genetics, culture, language and ancestral connections to 1 homeland. Hindus are those people whose homeland is bhArata.
There is a common philosophical base of Vedanta-Upanishads in India from which all sects source beliefs (historically, from a materialist analysis). Sikhi clearly also sources concepts from this, like literally every Hindu sect, but all the sects have their own interpretation of those concepts or build on them further.
- karma, reincarnation (punarjanma), individual soul (atman), world soul (brahman), panentheism (brahman pervades everything, and everything is sourced in it), concept of dharma, reverence for cows etc
What defines a sect from a religion now from that sense is completely based on self-identity. MANY Hindu sects can just make an argument that we are totally different than *xyz other sect* and hence not the same "religion"
However, reasonably, people understand they share a common identity based on many things and don't feel the need to do so.
Sure, there was a "Sikh identity" but there was also a Gaudiya Vaishnav identity, Shri Vaishnav identity, Pashupatin identity, Lingayat identity etc historically.
There was even a Shrautin vs non Shrautin identity, this is the point. My point was at a time in history in the 20th century, a portion of Sikhs chose to further a separation from the rest of Hindu civilization for a variety of reasons and started rejecting both habits and scriptural ideas found in Gurbani itself.
Lot of Sikhs bet on the strategy of completely divorcing themselves from the bad reputation and stereotypes of India by calling themselves “Punjabis, Sikhs” and believing in that exceptionalism. Indians obviously took glee in it when North Americans started rejecting this shtick.
I’m also a Punjabi, but why should I do Punjabi exceptionalism? If I really want to divorce myself from India’s bad reputation, then who cares about ethnicity? I should just bring in my caste (Khatri) which is responsible for most of Punjabi history as well as being elite human capital in modernity.
The reality is regional and linguistic exceptionalism is cope. The only thing that’s real in India is caste and we don’t do caste exceptionalism because it’s impolite and we wanted to build a unified civilizational identity by sacrificing our own caste for wider goals like Hindutva/Dharma. Lot of non-Khatri Punjabis just didn’t get this. You lead from ahead, not from behind.
White people have enemies in all kinds of violent and lecherous races living in their countries that kill and rape their family members but on Twitter they chose to just seethe against the most non violent and productive immigrant group 24/7
I get it no one wants their country or home to be overran by foreigners but literally what choice do you have at this point? Seethe and abuse a group that commits no crime, minds its own business, earns more than native Whites, pays taxes? That's the ideal kind of immigrant.
If I was becoming a minority in my own land
I wouldn't spend all my time abusing people who do me no harm but just look different. I'd rather abuse people who are violent criminals and physically harm my family or relations, or threaten to do so. Or people who make my society unsafe.
Has no one read this article? How did we miss this? Seems like lot of tensions with RSS might've cost us dearly in UP.
RSS pracharaks cutting down their campaigning in UP is like fighting a world war without proper equipment or resources.
Only those in formal leadership positions in the organisation are campaigning. The ordinary pracharak or karyakarta is not campaigning at all,” the Lucknow pracharak said, as he wound up his morning shakha, or gathering, in Lucknow. “Until the last election, shakhas would be one of the most important sites where campaigning was discussed and planned—now, there is nothing happening.”
“The RSS worker does not want material benefits like others,” said Lucknow lecturer Shukla. “But at least we would want the organisation that we nurture on the ground to have some basic sensitivity towards us.”
Shukla did not specify whether or not he is campaigning for the BJP this time, but affirmed “mann toh khatta hua ha (my heart has soured).”