Ep. 114: Shadow Warrior | G20, Bharat v India, and the invented Dravidian identity
September 7, 2023
Podcast:
G20:
Coming out party, like tokyo olympics, seoul olympics, beijing olympics
Expensive, and we’ll have to wait and see what the benefits are
It’s a branding exercise, as much for domestic purposes as for foreigners
Xi is not coming. Why? Is he sick, is he insulting india, is he overwhelmed?
Bharat v India:
This is silly, because the two words have always been in use, especially in indian languages where ‘bharat(am)’ is the standard name
A much worse name issue was the subsuming of the ‘india’ brand into ‘south asia’. I wrote long ago ‘why i am not a south asian’
Even worse was the appropriation of ‘indian’ by north americans and south americans. ‘Bureau of indian affairs’
Dravidian distinctiveness
Acting as though hindu lives do not matter but that’s not true, nor fair, nor acceptable. Calling for genocide of hindus is not acceptable. Stalin jr needs to be given exemplary punishment, be jailed and lose his job as a constitutional office holder
There is no separate ‘dravidian’ identity. It was manufactured by caldwell and co for religious conversion purposes. tamils are very much part of the mainstream hindu identity
The very first tamil work tolkappiyam (tol=old, kappiyam=kavyam) invokes the 4 vedas, according to sanjeev sanyal
What is today considered hinduism is very much a southern product. Adi sankara from kerala, the prachanna bouddha, defeated the buddhists through logic. The tamil bhakti saints, alwars and nayanars, sang in the local languages, later jayadeva, mirabai
chidambaram temple, manikkavachakar, the pancha bhuta temples. Tamil nadu is hindu land, with some of the greatest temples: brhadeswara, madurai meenakshi