On the 100th birth anniversary of George Washington, the US Congress commissioned a marble sculpture of him.

Who was he made to look like?
Like the God Zeus at Olympia.
What about the Lincoln Memorial in DC? It was inspired by the Parthenon - a temple in Athens, Greece. It was forcibly converted into a church and then a mosque. Only in 2017, did Greece recognise Hellenism as a religion.

There are many answers out there if you connect the dots.
What about the Mission that took Man to Moon? It was called Apollo, another Greek God.

In fact the planets have been named after the Gods and some of the months as well.
What about the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden?

It was called Operation Neptune Spear. The God Neptune’s, or Poseidon’s, spear is the Trident.

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More from @harshmadhusudan

13 Sep
We have to analyse why the Maratha Empire, which alone formed a proto-modern Indian state, lost out to the Brits, why didn't they send people to study the West, why couldn't they form a united front, why couldn't they win over Rajputs/Jats/Sikhs, why couldn't they win the Plains?
For far too long we have been lulled by romanticism of all kinds.

Yes we will always revere our heroes but we must ask what was it about our socio-political structures that prevented us from organising? Parts of the Indian elite openly welcomed the Brits, a tiny island far away.
No doubt that modern Hinduism as well as Hindu nationalism were impacted by Bengal renaissance. Bengal was first conquered by Brits, hence it first received a "modern" education. It was our genius that we synthesised and never converted.

But why didn't we try to study the world?
Read 6 tweets
13 Sep
Puri Shankaracharya ji says if one does inter caste marriage, the logical final step is marrying monkeys and goats :)
Savarkar

“A Shudra can become a Brahmin and a Brahmin can become Shudra…

To prevent commingling of blood is to build on sand. Sexual attraction has proved more powerful than all commands of all prophets…

A Hindu marrying another Hindu may lose his caste but not his Hindutva”
We must ask: does Savarkar who studied abroad suffer from false colonial consciousness as some imply? Even as he fought the British!

What are “Indic knowledge systems” views w.r.t this? Does Puri Shankaracharya ji represent them more? And is Savarkar inauthentic and deracinated?
Read 7 tweets
8 Sep
Do follow
@RamaInExile
- he has extensively researched, written about Swami Karpatri Maharaj - in Swamiji’s own words.

Of course writing about Swamiji’s problematic views on caste - which Hindu society, polity has decisively rejected - has made Gandhian Trads angry. Excellent.
Since Gandhian-Congressi “Trads” have openly started to ask for end of RSS BJP, which people could notice more than a year ago - unfortunately clear they are enemies of Dharmic Sangathan.

They have no standalone appeal but they can be spoilers. It is what it is. Clarity is good.
Of course these Trads also hate idea of Industrialisation. Except on Islam Christianity they are Gandhians. They like caste orthodoxy, they imagine some idyllic rural hierarchical India of khaps and they don’t like factories, expressways much though India is at per capita of $2k.
Read 4 tweets
8 Sep
The irony of comparing Periyar to Spinoza when former is on record attacking both Jews and Brahmins in one quote.

(Separate matter: Judaism considers Spinoza to be a heretic.)

Savarkar attacked caste consistently - he did not bully one group. Savarkar wanted to organise Dharma.
Here is Periyar making anti-Jewish and anti-Brahmin grossly essentialist and bigoted remarks in one flourish.
So let us not call Periyar a new age Spinoza.

Spinoza was a great man, he was excommunicated for effectively “rediscovering” Advaita Vedanta in some ways, though it was subterranean in the West. He changed Western thinking in profound ways, hastened what we today call modernity.
Read 4 tweets
6 Sep
I read a piece showing caste preventing conversions during British rule. In fact it could have added where caste was weak, more converted during Islamic rule too.

But so what? What works in slavery, hurts in expansion.

It also does not answer why we got enslaved in first place.
But preventing some or even most conversions only slows conversions. In fact even taking into account reconversions, the net was a negative.

Caste during slavery slowed the damage - but this social order partially also prevented formation of a political order to reverse damage.
More egregiously these neo-Karpatrites and Western Supremacists agree on two key issues.

1. Hinduism = caste. Essentialism of Dharma which is vast and has deep anti-caste strands as well.

2. Christianity = modernity. Negationism of the history of struggle for Liberty, Equality.
Read 8 tweets
4 Sep
The most important area to focus for infrastructure investments in India is the Kashi-Prayag-Ayodhya-Patna-Gaya zone and its nearby surroundings which contains 200m+ people or ~15% of India, probably the world’s densest large zone.

Such an area will be very poor or very rich.
In fact this region will almost certainly produce the world’s first real 100 million “city”.

The reason why I say such an area is very rich or very poor is because agglomeration economies (of scale, scope, network and hence specialisation) take over with such density + infra.
In fact if we zoom out a bit the close integration with Lucknow-Kanpur is all but inevitable.
Read 4 tweets

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