There isn't a single Indian analyst who has the slightest clue about China, the World, and how and where India fits in between. I know this is a bold claim but after decades of reading the absolute pablum that is churned out by the Indian 'strategic community', I had to reach this conclusion.
It is entirely focused on geopolitics, that too hilariously wrong. And only the last paragraph will be left for economy. When it should be the opposite.
Their economic theories are equally moronic.
Anything goes wrong, privatize. Law and order? What? Contract enforcement? Huh? Baseline infra? Labor and land? Well.... Education? Privatize!
Americans will talk about trade and sanctions. But no American will claim that Dalai Lama can be used as a leverage against China in 2020. Yet this is practically a
staple theme in Indian writings. Now if they said that India can fund a Tibetan militia to physically attack China, that would be one thing (results notwithstanding). But they don't even say that! You ask them - "No no no! We are talking diplomatic pressure on China, internationally
. That's all." Ya that will sure work.
In the similar vein, you have Quad, or Pentad, or whatever. Indians will fight China to the last American. America will fight China to the last Viet. Vietnam will fight China to the last Indian. It's the perfect alliance.
Nowhere in this thread I claimed Brahmins aren't powerful in India. I said they are not dominant
alone. Circlejerking about 'Brahmins' alone will get you in a dead end. Even Dalits and Muslims understand this.
Secondly profession is no longer a marker of caste in India. This isn't 500 AD. Brahmins' job profiles span from security guard, to cowbelt mafia to ISRO chairman. Same for other castes. Caste in present times is entirely hereditary.
And therein lies the irony. You are constantly harping about Kshatriyas as if they are this meritocratic group of people with special professional skills, when in reality they too are another entirely hereditary caste. And therefore, while talking anti-caste ideology, you are actually legitimizing pro-caste ideology.
Do you seriously think that Brahmins who aren't doctors, are all sitting inside their homes, doors locked, for last 8 months? And other castes running the show?
You will have to start your research here -
Actually, I'd push that you're not well-informed about Indian history, and that you might be well-served by both reading Indian and overseas histories of India.
The caste system is partially blamed on the British because the caste system ossified under their rule to make India simpler to govern. When you bring up A.D 500, well, I can bring up Harsha, an Indian king of North India in around A.D. 600, who happened to be a Brahmin. The Nandas who preceded the Mauryas, in contrast, were also Shudra by varna, and well, the histories seem to have been quite cruel to them. We are unsure whether this is because they were just plain brutal and incompetent, or hated because of their caste.
Another example is when I'm talking about Kshatriya domination over Brahmins as an alternative. The real reason I dislike Brahmins is that when I look at Indian history, I have a very tough time seeing any redeeming features; and to avoid strict Indophobia, I note that the history is written mostly by Brahmins (Puranas) and that they've provided the ideological justification for the Caste system and all the backward elements in various Indian cultures. But North Indian Kshatriya actually have socioeconomic dominance over Brahmins in their region. Not only are they not present at all in Tamil Nadu and parts of the Indian south, but they're actually socioeconomically dominant up there in North India. Despite that, what we are still seeing is the preservation of caste as well as backward features of Indian society, so Kshatriya alone are not a solution for India. But you didn't even pick up on Kshatriya domination in North India.
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As far as the failure of Brahmins go, my criticism of my Brahmin friend is over his refusal to get his hands dirty, I've brought this up as a criticism of Brahmins insofar as Chinese Shidafu / Scholar-Literati did the same damn thing in the past, devaluing physical labor. The gentleman definitely did his job as a GoI employee, but the criticism is basically over Kshatriya values, i.e, putting himself into the real danger of contracting COVID-19.
IIRC, there was a gentleman in India who despite his FC status, was also the head of an Indian food charity. This man apparently personally delivered food to the families camped outside the hospitals treating their loved ones. What I can't remember, unfortunately (this news story was months back), is whether he was a Kshatriya or a Brahmin, but he was either one. If it was the latter, it was definitely an exception to my criticism, but if it was the former...
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As to other comments, my interest in India basically began after Galwan, when I found that the state of Sino-Indian relations, given the attempts to make the Quad a thing, required in-depth research on India. I worked my way through 4 different popular history books and textbooks on India, including Romila Thapar's Marxist history on India, and began reading the Upanishads as well as the Bhagavad Gita (protip: stop bandering it around. Quite a few, but only a few, Indian intellectuals have actually skewered it as plain puerile, and while it has obviously positive aspects, the logic, the justification, and the implicit doctrines underlying it are horrific). Before my research began, I had this conception of India as being the "spiritual" and "intellectual" high water mark of human achievement. What I actually found was disturbing and depressing. The entirety of Indian history, to me, seemed to have been caste oppression this, caste oppression that, as well as an endless succession of badly run polities (barring perhaps the Cholas) that blew themselves up in political infighting within the monarchies. When i looked at the Upanishads, coming from a philosophical Taoist background (Zhuangzi, primarily, and when you look at philosophical Taoism it's the high water mark of Chinese philosophical achievement), I found it extremely casteist and vaguely fascist. And if you look at the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, you find sections that use marital rape and incest as creating the world, or sections that implore the devotee to rape. I was expecting both a lot less and a lot more!
To describe this experience, I have to think about Lu Xun's
A Madman's Diary, wherein a disaffected intellectual has a break in reality, opens his histories, and declares all Chinese history "cannibalism". The joke is that he eventually recovers and returns to his duty, but when Lu Xun wrote it, "cannibalism" was intended as a metaphor, i.e, the thesis of exploitation. Reading Indian histories and textbooks, both Western and Indian, gave me the same feeling!
Likewise, if I am referring to Lu Xun and his disavowal of Chinese tradition as well as a search for modernity, I have to say I'm extremely critical of traditional Chinese culture. Coming from this perspective, when I start reading about India, the critical attitude just magnify further, and I have to suspect that all of Indian history might be summarized by the term "rape".
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The next move was finally reading Ambedekar's "The Annihilation of Caste", and realizing how well he explained to me what I found offensive in reading about India. This drove a search for means to drive the Annihilation of Caste in a realistic way, as opposed to just simply trying to enforce caste-blindness (race blindness in the United States does not work either because of socioeconomic factors of privilege). My first idea was that perhaps left Kshatriya could be the saving grace, since unlike Brahmins they're less tainted by the caste system in using political and military power as the basis of their privilege. But as noted above, the Kshatriya-dominated North India has been a failure, perhaps because Kshatriya were too right-wing and unwilling to make a real alliance with Shudras. The current conclusion I am moving toward is OBCs and Shudras, since Shudras have the numbers to be politically dominant; the Dalits are often more radicalized, but they are in too low numbers to make a real change.
The actual path forward for me is to find a non-Brahmin and a non-Kshatriya history of India, i.e, to find Indian histories that are focused not on the religious movements (feudal) or state developments (stupid) of India, but rather the living and achievements of Shudras and forest tribes. It's a typically Marxist approach, is it not?
