Comment by Riaz Haq on January 30, 2021 at 8:50pm

What the data were showing us was that the genetic distinctions among jati groups within India were in many cases real, thanks to the long-standing history of endogamy in the subcontinent. People tend to think of India, with its more than 1.3 billion people, as having a tremendously large population, and indeed many Indians as well as foreigners see it this way. But genetically, this is an incorrect way to view the situation. The Han Chinese are truly a large population. They have been mixing freely for thousands of years. In contrast, there are few if any Indian groups that are demographically very large, and the degree of genetic differentiation among Indian jati groups living side by side in the same village is typically two to three times higher than the genetic differentiation between northern and southern Europeans.39 The truth is that India is composed of a large number of small populations.

Reich, David. Who We Are and How We Got Here (p. 170). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 31, 2021 at 7:01am

The discrepancy between the Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA patterns (in India) initially confused historians.26 But a possible explanation is that most of the ANI *ancestral north India) genetic input into India came from males. This pattern of sex-asymmetric population mixture is disturbingly familiar. Consider African Americans. The approximately 20 percent of ancestry that comes from Europeans derives in an almost four-to-one ratio from the male side.27 Consider Latinos from Colombia. The approximately 80 percent of ancestry that comes from Europeans is derived in an even more unbalanced way from males (a fifty-to-one ratio).28 I explore in part III what this means for the relationships among populations, and between males and females, but the common thread is that males from populations with more power tend to pair with females from populations with less. It is amazing that genetic data can reveal such profound information about the social nature of past events.

Reich, David. Who We Are and How We Got Here (p. 162). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 7, 2021 at 6:29pm

Is #Biden backing away from #Trump policy of confrontation with #China? Where does that leave #Modi's #India? #US President hints at "extreme competition'" with China, says there's no need for conflict. Biden said he and Xi had "a lot to talk about." https://www.newsweek.com/biden-hints-extreme-competition-china-says...

resident Joe Biden is aware of the significance of the U.S. relationship with China, but his administration is going to navigate foreign policy on its own terms.

"We need not have a conflict, but there's going to be extreme competition," Biden said to anchor Norah O'Donnell in an interview to air in full Sunday evening on CBS Evening News. Referring to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, he said, "I'm not going to do it the way that he knows. And that's because he's sending signals as well. I'm not going to do it the way Trump did."

China's relationship with America "is probably one of the most important in the entire world," O'Donnell said. Xi's growing power will be extremely important to Biden's foreign policy agenda. Most Europeans believe China will surpass the U.S. as the most powerful nation in 10 years. Last year, EU-China trade from January to September surpassed $516 billion, far more than that between Europe and the U.S. during the same period.

When O'Donnell asked why Biden has not yet spoken with Xi since taking office last month, he told the anchor about his past experiences engaging with China's leader during his visits to China in 2011 and 2013, and later when Xi came to Iowa in 2015.

"We haven't had occasion to talk to him yet," Biden said. "There's no reason not to call him. I probably spent more time with Xi Jinping, I'm told, than any world leader has, because I had 24, 25 hours of private meetings with him when I was vice president. Traveled 17,000 miles with him. I know him pretty well."

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 12, 2022 at 9:09pm

The Indian economy is being rewired. The opportunity is immense And so are the stakes

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/05/13/the-indian-economy-is-...

Who deserves the credit? Chance has played a big role: India did not create the Sino-American split or the cloud, but benefits from both. So has the steady accumulation of piecemeal reform over many governments. The digital-identity scheme and new national tax system were dreamed up a decade or more ago.

Mr Modi’s government has also got a lot right. It has backed the tech stack and direct welfare, and persevered with the painful task of shrinking the informal economy. It has found pragmatic fixes. Central-government purchases of solar power have kick-started renewables. Financial reforms have made it easier to float young firms and bankrupt bad ones. Mr Modi’s electoral prowess provides economic continuity. Even the opposition expects him to be in power well after the election in 2024.

The danger is that over the next decade this dominance hardens into autocracy. One risk is the bjp’s abhorrent hostility towards Muslims, which it uses to rally its political base. Companies tend to shrug this off, judging that Mr Modi can keep tensions under control and that capital flight will be limited. Yet violence and deteriorating human rights could lead to stigma that impairs India’s access to Western markets. The bjp’s desire for religious and linguistic conformity in a huge, diverse country could be destabilising. Were the party to impose Hindi as the national language, secessionist pressures would grow in some wealthy states that pay much of the taxes.

The quality of decision-making could also deteriorate. Prickly and vindictive, the government has co-opted the bureaucracy to bully the press and the courts. A botched decision to abolish bank notes in 2016 showed Mr Modi’s impulsive side. A strongman lacking checks and balances can eventually endanger not just demo cracy, but also the economy: think of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, whose bizarre views on inflation have caused a currency crisis. And, given the bjp’s ambivalence towards foreign capital, the campaign for national renewal risks regressing into protectionism. The party loves blank cheques from Silicon Valley but is wary of foreign firms competing in India. Today’s targeted subsidies could degenerate into autarky and cronyism—the tendencies that have long held India back.

Seizing the moment
For India to grow at 7% or 8% for years to come would be momentous. It would lift huge numbers of people out of poverty. It would generate a vast new market and manufacturing base for global business, and it would change the global balance of power by creating a bigger counterweight to China in Asia. Fate, inheritance and pragmatic decisions have created a new opportunity in the next decade. It is India’s and Mr Modi’s to squander. ■

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 1, 2022 at 8:01am

The biggest crisis that India is facing today is the “possible collapse of the Indian nation”, Nobel laureate and renowned economist Amartya Sen said recently in Kolkata. https://youtu.be/IqKVHVpgXJI

He paraphrased American poet Ogden Nash who said any schoolboy can love like a fool but hate is an art that has to be cultivated. Without naming Modi or BJP, he said some people have cultivated hate in India to serve their own interests.

"I think if someone asks me if I'm scared of something, I would say ‘yes’. There is a reason to be afraid now. The current situation in the country has become a cause for fear," the well-known economist said.

"I want the country to be united. I don't want division in a country that was historically liberal. We have to work together," Sen added.

“The world came to know of Upanishads because of a Muslim Prince. Dara Sikhoh, Shah Jahan's son, learnt Sanskrit and translated some of the Upanishads into Persian", he added.

Asserting that India cannot belong only to the Hindus or to the Muslims, Sen stressed on the need to stay united in line with the country’s traditions.

"India cannot be (a country) of Hindus only. Again, Muslims alone cannot make India. Everyone has to work together," Sen added.

Comment by Riaz Haq on April 1, 2023 at 8:31am

Has Modi Pushed Indian Democracy Past Its Breaking Point?
With the media and judiciary already under attack, the Prime Minister’s main opponent was just banned from Parliament.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/has-modi-pushed-indian-democ...

New Yorker's Isaac Chotiner: Modi is probably the most popular leader in the world. His party has amassed incredible power to a degree not seen in India in many decades. Yet, at the state level, especially in the south, you see regional parties keeping the B.J.P. out of power. How has this been possible?

Christophe Jaffrelot: He’s not as popular as he claims. The B.J.P. never got more than thirty-seven per cent of the vote nationally. They control half a dozen big states, and most of them are in the Hindi Heartland. [These are states in the northern and central parts of the country.] If you look at the periphery, if you look at the states which are outside the Hindi Heartland—they do not control Tamil Nadu and they will never control Tamil Nadu. They do not control Kerala and they will never control Kerala. Look at West Bengal and Punjab, and even Maharashtra, which is not a finished story. There is a kind of exaggeration of the control they exert. And they exert control not because of the popularity of the B.J.P.; they exert control largely because Modi gets the B.J.P. elected every five years, which means that, after him, the B.J.P. may be in trouble. They have so much power because of their totalitarian modus vivendi, not because of their popularity.

NY: I’m looking at Morning Consult’s global approval-rating tracker for world leaders. Modi is currently at seventy-six-per-cent approval. That is fifteen percentage points higher than any other world leader.

CJ: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you go by the voting patterns of Indians, which is for me the real measure of popularity, Indians in more than half of the country’s states do not vote for the B.J.P. and for Modi when he is the candidate.

In that case, how do you understand this dynamic, where Modi himself is personally popular but he can’t yet lead the B.J.P. to take control of a majority of states?

There are very strong regional identities that are not represented by the B.J.P. The B.J.P. is seen as a North Indian, Hindi-speaking party. It’s also seen as an upper-caste party. So those who are not Hindus—in Kashmir, of course, and Sikh people in Punjab—do not vote for the B.J.P. And those who are not Hindi speakers in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Kerala cannot share this ideology of the B.J.P.’s.

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 16, 2023 at 11:28am

Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, used to say: “India is not a real country. Instead it is thirty-two separate nations that happen to be arrayed along the British rail line"


https://www.thequint.com/news/world/what-lee-kuan-yew-had-to-say-ab...

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 9, 2023 at 8:19am

#Modi's #Hindutva politics is pushing #India to the brink. World’s most populous country is degenerating into a conflict zone of sectarian violence. #BJP pumping out a steady stream of #Islamophobia & vile dog whistles. #Manipur #Haryana @Planet_Deb
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/opinion/india-modi-conflict-zone...

Indian social media is a brutal place, a window on the everyday hatred and violence that has come to colonize the country in the nine years since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government came to power. But the images from the northeastern state of Manipur that began circulating in July were shocking even by those low standards.

A video clip showed two women being sexually assaulted as they were paraded, naked, by a crowd of men who later gang-raped one of them, according to a police complaint. The horrific scene was part of an explosion of ethnic violence since May that has turned the small state into a war zone, killing more than 150 people and displacing tens of thousands.

The state has a long history of ethnic animosities that predate Mr. Modi’s rise. But the fuse for the current unrest in Manipur was lit by the politics of Hindu supremacy, xenophobia and religious polarization championed by his Bharatiya Janata Party.


India is a diverse nation, crisscrossed by religious, ethnic, caste, regional and political fault lines. Since Mr. Modi took office in 2014, his ruling party has torn those asunder with dangerous exclusionary politics intended to charge up the party’s base and advance its goal of remaking India’s secular republic into a majoritarian Hindu state. The repugnant nature of this brand of politics has been clear for some time, but the situation in Manipur shows what’s ahead for India: The world’s most populous country is slowly degenerating into a conflict zone of sectarian violence.

Under Mr. Modi’s government, the state monopoly on violence is being surrendered to extremists and vigilantes. Those targeted by the kind of mob violence that we are seeing in India may conclude that equal rights are no longer guaranteed, that political differences can no longer be peacefully reconciled or fairly mediated and that violence is the only way for them to resist.

The targeting of minorities — particularly Muslims — by right-wing Hindu extremists is now a way of life in many states. Vigilante mobs, who often assemble provocatively in front of mosques, regularly assault Muslims as understaffed and underequipped police fail to intervene. Lynchings and open calls for genocide are common. India now ranks among the top 10 countries at the highest risk of mass killings, according to Early Warning Project, which assesses such risks around the world.

In Manipur, Christians are bearing the brunt as the state’s B.J.P. government stokes the insecurities of the majority ethnic Meitei, who are predominantly Hindu. State leaders have branded the Kuki tribes who populate the hill districts, and who are mostly Christian, as infiltrators from Myanmar, have blamed them for poppy cultivation intended for the drug trade and evicted some of them from their forest habitats. The specific trigger for the current violence was a court ruling in the state in favor of granting the Meitei affirmative action provisions and other benefits that have long been enjoyed by the Kuki and other tribes, which sparked a protest by tribal communities opposed to the ruling. The Manipur government this year also began a citizenship verification drive that infringes on the privacy of Kuki. A similar drive in neighboring Assam state targeting Muslims has already reportedly disenfranchised nearly two million people.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 9, 2023 at 8:20am

#Modi's #Hindutva politics is pushing #India to the brink. World’s most populous country is degenerating into a conflict zone of sectarian violence. #BJP pumping out a steady stream of #Islamophobia & vile dog whistles. #Manipur #Haryana @Planet_Deb
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/opinion/india-modi-conflict-zone...



Emboldened by the state government’s rhetoric, Meitei militias in Manipur have gone on a rampage of raping, pillaging, looting police armories and burning villages. More than 250 churches have been burned down. Those were Meitei men in the horrific 26-second video, sexually assaulting two Kuki women. (The video was shot in early May but came to light only in July, possibly delayed by a government internet ban imposed in the state in response to the violence.) Many similar attacks on Kuki women have been reported. Mr. Modi has called the rape incident “shameful” but has otherwise said little about the chaos in Manipur.
The violent impact of his party’s polarizing politics is acutely felt in India’s heartland, too. The area near a tech and finance hub on the outskirts of New Delhi was rocked by violence last week as Hindu supremacists staging a religious procession clashed with Muslims. Mosques were attacked, an imam was killed, businesses were burned and looted, and hundreds of Muslims have fled.

In tandem with the B.J.P.’s demonizing of India’s nearly 200 million Muslims, television, cinema and social media are deployed to radicalize the Hindu majority, pumping out a steady stream of Islamophobia and vile dog whistles. Extremist groups, at least one of which appears to have received the public support of the prime minister, run amok. Muslims have been arrested for praying, had their livelihoods and businesses destroyed and their homes razed. Bulldozers, used to demolish homes, have become an anti-Muslim symbol, proudly paraded by B.J.P. supporters at political rallies.

As John Keane and I argue in our book “To Kill a Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism,” it’s a signature tactic of modern-day despots: tightening their grip on power by redefining who belongs to the polity and ostracizing others. In the ultimate subversion of democracy, the government chooses the people, rather than the people choosing the government.

India is already a complex federation of regional identities, many of which consider themselves distinct from Hindi-speaking north India, the power base of Mr. Modi’s party. This federal structure is held together by delicate bonds of social and political accommodation. But they are fraying fast under Mr. Modi, who has no appetite for either, shrinking the space for nonviolent political contestation. Some regional political parties see the Bharatiya Janata Party’s centralizing and homogenizing Hindu-first thrust as a cultural imposition from outside and are assailing it with the same divisive us-versus-them vocabulary.

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