My point it let Russia loose. Let it be beaten by smaller country. Let it be beaten by a country (some) they say shouldn't exist. Let this Soviet imperialism die once and for all. Split it up into smaller countries, there are too many nationalities in there and most of the resources sit in Asian part, let the people there take the fruits.
This country needs to be cleaned from the head, just like Germany after WWII. If not it will always be a danger to world peace.
It is more like India doesn't trust that the west actually has an intent of stopping the conflict.
Or that Europe would in anyway want to give up on its Russian gas and oil, while pointing fingers at India which buys less than 1%.
In fact they fear it might go the same way as the sanctions on Iran, where India had to go through Germany banks to pay its Iranian dues, where Indian banks were expected to abide by sanctions while German banks were not.
My suspicion here is that most people who bring up "caste" or Anti-Modi here on HN are not Hindus at all.
Usually "upper caste" christians, Ashraf muslims/Paki or pro-congress children of super rich or super powerful bureaucrats who benefited greatly from the previous corrupt regime.
The speed at which things are improving in India combined with the restrictions in the covid lockdown has made many rethink their current situation.
The lockdown has forced people to their homes with limited opportunities for outdoor activity especially in the winter. Things start to look very different pretty quickly.
While it is definitely hot in many parts of India, one can have access to round the year gardening, house help is affordable.
I have now been living in the happiest country in the world for more than a decade.
As an Indian kid growing up on Cartoon Network, I was quite envious of western kids with skateboards and actual skate parks, tons of toys, gizmos and game consoles.
Once you start knowing people well, they start opening up about their past and I have come to realise 3 out 4 of them, pretty decent well educated people have had to struggle with alcoholic/abusive/loveless parents, addictions of their own, depression.
I just realised even though things were pretty bad in terms safety (traffic), sanitation, health or access to simple things like telephones or material comforts, most "middle class" Indians grew up in pretty safe social settings.
Somethings like safety has certainly improved substantially, but certainly some like alcoholism has grown exponentially bad.
Much of what the English speaking elite in India & much of the west consumes as a theory on caste is a handiwork of a colonial-evangelist mission.
So much of it has to be taken with a boatload of salt. Since it is politically incorrect to challenge the established views, one simply has to rely on ones own observation. Especially if they are missing the woods for the trees on these debates.
It is very much in line with the western debates on race inequality, feminism or gender pronouns. Those claiming to fight these inequalities, intentionally or unintentionally create more fissures and distrust.
And unlike the western world where there has been a systemic slavery or persecution of indigenous population, in India there are literally thousands of castes and not always a clear idea of hierarchy. The hierarchy was mostly an academic theory built on flimsy propaganda.
Also the very same people who see privilege among sections of the Hindus are completely blind to the privilege of Christians or Muslims, considering that large parts of India have been under Islamic and Christian colonisation for several centuries. And Hindus have faced the same kind of violence from these two groups as much of the rest of the world.
In a way caste might have been the social glue that allowed the indigenous people to put up a fight and maintain their Hindu identity.
There is a strong correlation between caste and economic mobility & urbanisation. The ones who preserve their caste the most are ones who can gain some privileges in the form of vote banks, social security or class benefits, this easily excludes 90% of the urban educated masses.
In a country of 1.4 billion, sure there are large swathes of population still behest with the caste problem, but also in a country where 1/3 of the people are malnourished and have stunted growth, caste is hardly the biggest problem and might actually be a evolved social survival mechanism.
That’s all very well but it’s pretty obvious that Dalits get a raw deal in India, and if you don’t think so, then you may just be kidding yourself. Equally, if you think of Muslims as “privileged” under the current BJP government, you need a reality check.
Many Poor muslims just as many poor Indian are now getting electricity, subsidised toilets, zero balance bank accounts, direct benefits transfer for the first time under BJP rule. Many muslim women are for the first time are freed from triple talaq.
Their life is certainly far better than the muslims in Pakistan, so much so that many parts of Pakistan are revolting and claiming to want to reunite with India.
Whatever your claims of muslim persecution is mostly manufactured. In may ways the more radical elements are testing the limits of the patience of the citizens. I wish India would follow the west and start De-Arabising the muslim population, after all each community has their unique dress and culture.
I am a big admirer of Ali Anwar, founder of Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz. The hindu-muslim binary of the Indian poltics is the biggest issue lower caste muslims are facing today. Every issue is about Hindu and Muslim or Upper and Lower caste Hindus but None talks about the plight of the Dalit and Pasmanda lower caste Muslims.
I know I will get downvoted by upper caste ashrafs and sayeed muslims but this it the trusth. Cast matters, even if you are a muslim in India.
Lower caste pasmanda Muslims are not even allowed to bury their dead bodies with those of upper caste pure blood Muslims, who claim to be descendants of the prophet Mohammed.
Ali Anwar despite being a Muslim was in the JD(U)-BJP alliance in Bihar. BJP is a Hindu-nationalist party that also bought some progressive changes in the Muslim community. I don't like BJP but sometimes even the devil does the right thing, banning triple-talaq was one of such positive things done to uplift oppressed Muslim women.
“The pattern of hate crimes committed against Muslims with seeming impunity – many of them in states where the Bharatiya Janata Party is in power – is deeply worrying. Unfortunately both the Prime Minister and various Chief Ministers have done little to show that they disapprove of this violence”
“ In December, Uttar Pradesh police arbitrarily arrested 10 Muslim men under a law introduced by the Uttar Pradesh Government that targets consensual interfaith marriages, and allegedly tortured them. The legislation, which has been termed the “love jihad” law by right-wing nationalists and leading politicians, had not been approved by the Indian Parliament or the state legislature.”
“ The government accused members of the Muslim Tablighi Jamaat minority of spreading COVID-19, and as a result, health care facilities denied access to Muslims. Instances of hospitals refusing Muslim pregnant women and cancer patients surfaced in April 2020. In the months following the nationwide lockdown of March, social media and WhatsApp groups were flooded with calls for social and economic boycotts of Muslims, alongside fake news stories and other misinformation.”
In many parts of India muslims block off roads and public spaces to "offer namaz". This is illegal in may islamic countries in the Middle East.
Many countries in "liberal" Europe have banned the hijab.
Amnesty is not a reliable source of anything.
When India bans namaz on the streets and hijab which I think it should, perhaps you can come back and make these complaints.
Islamists fear of BJP & Hindus might very well be true, since they are incapable of feeling guilt having killed or ethnically cleansed millions of Hindus from their homeland in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Kashmir, at least fear will keep them in check.
Two of the main perpetrators were christians, the movie deliberately substituted it with names and symbolism connected to a specific caste with the intent of falsely sowing discord between the communities while whitewashing the Christian angle.
Thanks to social media, this deliberate twisting of facts has come to light, but much of these stories manufactured by the evangelical groups as equally ridiculous as with Christian persecution or Caste atrocities.
Historically peoples names included their village name, son of x and their caste/jaati - which indicated their profession or specialization. That meant getting new business when introducing themselves in the neighboring village.
This is true with European names too (masson, taylor, carpenter, miller ....), and has the exact same origin.
However, today due to the politicization first by the colonialists and the church, and now mostly by a leftist-church nexus it has become politically incorrect if it feels like they have an agenda behind it.
Strangely at least among the current generation, I have experienced probing questions about my diet as well as probing hands (pretending to be a friendly shove or pat) not from Hindus but from Christians.
In my understanding it is a way for them to ensure that I am not an "evil Brahmin" and can be trusted enough to part take in what every gossip they have and an assumption I would have to submissively accept their "righteousness".
This has to the most contrived and ridiculous comment I have seen. Virtually all Brahmins proudly advertise their caste and their caste is also obvious from their last name. There is literally no need to pat their backs.
Not everyone has to be a David or John or a Mohamed or Abdulla.
India is a diverse country with many subcultures, each with their own unique traditions dating back many thousands of years.
Why should everyone loose their unique identity?
Why should people not be proud of their identity or uniqueness?
A lot of privileges that the "Brahmins" have can be mostly attributed to the fact that they were not competing with the colonial interests like business and were used as native informants and peons & clerks.
This gave them a head start compared to the rest of the population who were reduced to penury and in many case ended up as substitutes for black slavery in the form of bonded labourers.
So in using the caste card people are covering up the devastating effects of colonisation.
The privileges held by the colonising classes and collaborators, esp. Christians as they gobbled up enormous amounts of state resources, temple lands in the form colonial grants and 99 year lease to the church. Yet it is politically incorrect to point out these privileges.
I am calling you out for your fake story of Christians trying to figure out who is a brahmin by patting their backs. It is completely unnecessary as you can tell who is a brahmin from the last name. You just made up a fake story to play victim and transfer blame to Christians here and in several other comments.
It is a well known fact that the primary form of caste discrimination occurs against lower castes by upper castes. Your attempts at subterfuge are futile.
Hacker News is not a place for you to call people out for their "fake" stories, it's a place where you do your best to take comments in good faith. People have different experiences than you do, and yes, sometimes people will lie online. But that's no reason to immediately jump to accusations, and especially not here.
The fact that you responded to me and not to any of mama123 comments - a textbook case of what urban casteism looks like - tells me a lot about what an upper caste person's definition of good faith and bad faith is.
I picked the bottom of the thread as I skimmed by, which was capped by a clearly egregious comment. That doesn’t mean there weren’t others that were also bad. No idea why you think caste comes into the picture at all?
The caste comes into the picture because no one from a lower caste would find my comment out of line. There are a considerable amount of lies being peddled about Indian Christians by 2 commentors in multiple comments with minor doses of Islamophobia thrown in.
Of all the things you found out of line is my comment calling out one of these lies.
If you are engaging in good faith, you would be replying to any of the several lies being trotted out in this thread, such as "caste system was created by British and Indian Christians via colonialism" instead of expressing hostility to somebody who is countering the lies - by trying to make some irrelevant meta point to distract from the core issue.
I confused you with the OP. Unfortunately, I cannot edit my comment. Apologies for that.
Going back to the original comment- I was making it clear that nobody needs to pat someone on the back to figure out if they are brahmins - you can tell from the last names.
I dont really know the castes of my friends except Brahmins, because they keep informing me.
1. Tamil brahmins - any domestic post on Facebook has a reference to the "TamBram" community.
2. My manager informed me once that the reason he was light skinned while south Indian was because his ancestors were north Indian brahmins who moved to the south to work as priests. I never asked him about his skin color. He brought it up himself.
3. One of my peers - a maharashtrian brahmin explained to me how his particular brahmin subcaste was even superior to other brahmins because of some XYZ reason. I didn't know he was a Brahmin before this.
There are several more instances. Of course, there must be brahmins amongst my friends where I don't know about their caste. But the only friends who have brought up their caste voluntarily were brahmins.
> Of course, there must be brahmins amongst my friends where I don't know about their caste. But the only friends who have brought up their caste voluntarily were brahmins.
Yes, this is called selection bias. In what context did your friends talk about their caste?
I'm still not sure what you suggest about people's last names. This is not unique, it's also true for the last names of all sorts of people who have faced discrimination or discriminated against others - "white" people can be eg. Jewish, Irish, Italian, Anglo, German etc and there are names common to each of those groups.
Asking people to change their names is quite a heavy lift and impractical - I know some parts of India have historically made it easy for people to drop their last names and move to a system similar to Iceland where each generation uses the their parents' names as their last name.
The point is that no one apart from brahmins amongst my colleagues and friends bring up their caste. And absolutely no one asks fhem about their caste. In my managers case he brought up his own skin color in the presence of several reports and segued into his caste.
And I have not asked anyone to change their name. All I did was refute the fake allegation against the Indian Christians patting the back of brahmins to figure out their caste. For anyone coming from India this is a hilariously absurd lie.
When people refer to themselves as TamBram, they are just referring to their heritage.
If you are offend by them carrying their tradition or culture that they have inherited for 100s of generation.
How would you then think of Indians named John or Mohamed? You know that, these political religions spread almost exclusively through violence and colonisation.
India is a strange country where it is ok to engage in hate against indigenous people/culture, yet political incorrect to even speak of the violent history of Christianity or Islam.
You are perhaps engaging in the same kind of hate the Nazis spread of the jews.
> You know that, these political religions spread almost exclusively through violence and colonisation.
This is again pseudo history peddled by the RSS. Another instance of Hindu exceptionalism. This is completely counter to actual history and is a lie propagated by the Indian right wing. You should talk to an actual historian instead of relying on WhatsApp forwards by RSS.
> You are perhaps engaging in the same kind of hate the Nazis spread of the jews.
