Thread by @brunomshirley

I would add (to this excellent comment on an excellent commentary) that the term "Brahmin left" itself is *also* historically inaccurate. Here "Brahmin" operates as a shorthand for intellectuals without praxis (cont)

https://twitter.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1457897026675363841

But as @SikotiHamiltonR shows for the NZ left, this distinction between "theorists" and "practitioners" is rather artificial. The Brahmin varṇa was made up of hereditary priests and scholars, yes, but that doesn't mean they were homogenously apolitical (aloka)

@SikotiHamiltonR Individual Brahmins throughout South Asian history served as court officials, as royal ministers, and even as military leaders. And while we think of religious institutions as fundamentally "non-secular," in reality many were significant economic and administrative centres

@SikotiHamiltonR This isn't to bring Mclauchlan to task for drawing on an orientalist trope (although...); this is to point out that it's actually very rare to see "pure intellectuals" (cf. Gramsci's "traditional intellectuals") throughout history! Theory and praxis are rarely so distinct

@SikotiHamiltonR So "working class" NZ Leftists study Marx; Brahmin scholars and priests (and, to make this more relevant to my own field of research, Buddhist monks) engaged in political and economic activities; we separate these spheres of activity only to our own analytical and political loss.