Have vested interests in free speech, liberal democracy. Atheist who likes the Buddha. Author of "Early Indians" published by @Juggernautbooks
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Sep 12 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
@RShivshankar The layers of ignorance and misreading/misleading embedded into the tweet above should not be surprising for anyone who has observed Indian television news media. But for the sake of verity, let us unpeel them one by one...
@RShivshankar 1. The interview RSS has attached to his tweet is over five years old, and was published on September 9, 2019. So let us first put to bed the idea that RSS has suddenly discovered a new revelation...
Jul 19 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Many do not understand that Indian languages fall into 4 different families: Indo-European, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic & Sino-Tibetan. These are not dialectal differences, meaning the differences go to the root & are structural, even if there are many shared words.
It is generally, though not always, easier for speakers of one language family - say Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu speakers - to pick up each other's languages than it is for speakers of two different language families to do so.
Apr 18 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
A fascinating new ancient DNA study is just out, titled “The Genetic Origin of The Indo-Europeans”. Among the co-authors are Iosif Lazaridis, Nick Patterson, David Anthony & David Reich. It brings greater detail and clarity to our understanding. Here goes: biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
“We thus propose that the final unity of the speakers of the 'Proto-Indo-Anatolian' ancestral language of both Anatolian and Indo-European languages can be traced to Caucuses-Lower-Volga (CVC) cline people sometime between 440 and 4000 BCE.”
Dec 30, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
"The only place where 'Aryan Invasion Theory' has existed for about half a century is the imagination of polemicists. And they keep it alive because it's good to have a handy strawman... It is surprising to see IIT Kharagpur giving them company."
My piece: thequint.com/voices/opinion…
What does exist in the real world is strong, multi-disciplinary evidence for the ‘migration’ of Central Asian Steppe pastoralists into the Indian subcontinent between 2000 and 1500 BCE, bringing Indo-European languages with them to this region.
Oct 16, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Starting a long-term thread on questions that need answers. Perhaps when media has free time after covering Kangana Ranaut, they could tackle these:
1. WHY is it that no other Asian economy has cratered like ours? 2. HOW did our neighbours manage a far lower Covid death rate?
3. WHY is it that India's richest have increased their wealth dramatically (35%) during a time of devastation that has seen GDP contracting & hundreds millions thrown into poverty? What does it imply in terms of wealth concentration, monopolies/oligopolies & creation of jobs?
Oct 7, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
The main driving force behind the Indian Rightwing movement is upper class resentment over ancient privileges diluted by democracy. Its objective is a hierarchical future similar to what tradition dictates. The hate you see is the necessary force to create the new hierarchy.
Does that mean that is the only force? Of course not. There are other forces too, but they are not formative or creative forces that shape policy in any way. They are mostly for show. For example, the movement gained from the anti-corruption sentiment built up between 2010 & 2014
Sep 21, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Su Venkatesan, well-known Tamil author and MP from Madurai, speaking in the Lok Sabha on the narrowly-constituted panel to study Indian culture
Partial, approximate translation:
"The committee has not a single member from South India, Northeast India, Minorities, Dalits or Women. All are upper caste Hindu men. It has no linguistic expert from southern classical languages, but has caste organization heads as members!"
Aug 26, 2020 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
If you are going to comment on matters of Science, read the research papers. It may be a tad difficult, but possible. Don't go by half-baked media reports
When people say they don't care about politics, what they really mean is that they are comfortable with the direction of politics and they think they will end up on the side of the oppressors rather than the oppressed. If they thought otherwise, they will care about it for sure.
It is similar to what people mean when they they don't care about caste. It means they never had to pay a price for the caste they were born into & don't expect to pay a price either. If it were not so, hell, you can take it for granted they would have been screaming about it.
Jul 20, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
if the economic situation and/or the external situation continues to deteriorate, expect the ruling party to resort to further domestic polarisation to consolidate and keep its support base. That‘s the all-purpose hammer that works for all jobs.
If you want to check out this hypothesis, ask any one who voted for BJP why he continues supporting the party despite the destruction of the economy; the utter mishandling of the Pandemic and the resulting loss of lives and livelihoods; the surrender to the Chinese; etc...
Jul 1, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
When you look at India in the 2 decades before 2014, what you see are govts that prioritized economic development & consequently, our global standing. The only blip on this steady progress was the Gujarat pogrom. The steady accumulation of global heft has now been mostly used up.
Starting from 2014, we not merely took our eyes off the economy, we proactively damaged it through political decisions like #Demon. Then we made a mess of our society for deliberate political polarisation. On top of that, we made wrong bets and took our eyes off the border too.
Jun 17, 2020 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
This full-page article was published exactly 3 years ago in The Hindu. And the response was almost instantaneous: it was shared about 100,000 times on Facebook. It also became the most read story for The Hindu that year. thehindu.com/sci-tech/scien…
Amidst all the positive responses, there were also 12-odd articles that were published in a range of Rightwing publications that tried to, as they said, “debunk” the story. Half of these were published just one platform – and you can imagine which one! 😊
Jun 16, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Dependence on propaganda is like drug addiction. It enhances imagination, but weakens the body and inhibits proper response to real events. A high price to pay. Most Indian media outlets should introspect on the damage they have done and continue to do.
Deep and exclusive preoccupation with domestic propaganda forces a govt to hide facts when things go wrong with an external rival, which encourages greater risk-taking on the rival’s part. Just as hiding economic data prevents dealing with the crisis and taking the right steps.
Jun 9, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I met the thief to demand my money back. We talked and decided to disengage.
I told him it was my perception that my wallet belonged to me, and he told me that it is his perception that my wallet belongs better in his pocket. So we decided to de-escalate and not let a difference in perception turn into a dispute.
May 31, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Just saw a video, apparently promoted by the govt, that talks about the 24,000-year-old civilization of India.😎 24,000 years ago, the world was in the grip of a glacial period, and all modern humans everywhere were hunter-gatherers.🤦♂️
The very word 'civilization' comes from 'civitas' (city) and presupposes the existence of urban centres. The earliest examples of cities anywhere in the world is around 5,500-6,000 years ago.
May 30, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
How we bungled it, step by step 1. Focused on NamasteTrump event, toppling Govt in MP & pogrom in Delhi when we should have been focused on international travellers. Stringent testing, quarantine & contact-tracing could have stemmed the Pandemic at this stage.
2. When some state govts were being seen as far more responsive and agile, a panic-stricken Centre announced an unplanned Lockdown with no thought for tens of millions left without incomes. Result: mass exodus that lasted weeks and months, worsening the situation in every way.
May 27, 2020 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
At the root of most problems we face today is the belief of this Government that there are simple solutions to complex problems and that the only reason these solutions were not adopted earlier was either timidity or malicious intent on the part of earlier govts.
So it blunders on with its half-baked decisions, with disdain for expertise and eyes firmly shut to the natural consequences of their actions - consequences that any person of judgement and wisdom (who is not overawed by their own ‘brilliance’) could have clearly foreseen.
May 4, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
The migrants issue is essentially because the Union Government wants them to stay were they are and suffer, not out of concern for their safety or those of others, but out of the worry that their cheap labour will not be available when lockdown ends. Human rights be damned.
Slavery has many forms and attributes. Absolute contempt for slaves and their humanity and their rights is one of them.
Apr 30, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Exactly 75 years ago, Hitler killed himself, after having caused the deaths of millions. How many Germans, who elected him to power, were Nazis? Under 10%. What about the rest? They went along for the ride & later claimed, falsely, that they knew nothing about the Holocaust!
Hatred can move the masses. Be a ladder to power for the ambitious and the unscrupulous. Be a useful blindfold that hides the violence and the ugliness from the middle classes who wilfully make themselves believe that nothing is amiss. But all this exacts a cost. A heavy cost.
Sep 11, 2019 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Happy Onam to all!
This is a good time to remember the Onappattu that will be reverberating around Kerala now - the song that kindles memories of how things used to be when Maaveli was King, before he was unjustly sent to the Netherworld through trickery.
“When Maaveli was ruling the land, all humans were equal”. Then the rest of the stanza: “They lived happily and there was no danger to anyone.”“There were no worries and no diseases. Evil people were nowhere to be seen."
Sep 6, 2019 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
This @EconomicTimes story, as usual, is bunkum. You only need to read the scientific paper to see that this story directly contradicts what the study says in plain words. economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-…@EconomicTimes A direct quote from the paper: “However, a natural route for Indo-European languages to have spread into South Asia is from Eastern Europe via Central Asia in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE, a chain of transmission that did occur as has been documented in detail..."
