Category: international relations

India’s revolt of the petite bourgeois Jatt class

Posted on by Razib Khan

What’s going on in India with the protests of farmers? The New York Times has a report, and that’s the sort of place many Americans will get their news from. But is that enough?

You might think this should be posted on Brown Pundits, but this story is an interesting illustration of how many international stories are about the United States, and its own tribal moods and affiliations, rather than “what’s really going on.” I talked to a friend who lives in India, and he provided his own perspective. This friend is a moderate BJP supporter, just to put his views in context.

One thing that I immediately asked about, because I’m crass and ignorant, was the caste/jati issues at play. The protests are driven by Jatt Sikh farmers in Punjab. Indians automatically know these things, but foreigners are unclear about communal identity and why it might matter. The New York Times mentions the Sikh aspect, but there are many Dalit Sikhs in Punjab, but since they are usually landless they are unlikely to be protesting.

The apportionment of land is highly skewed to Jatt Sikhs in Punjab for historical reasons. Though not really “upper caste,” the Jatts are not a marginalized community in Punjab. They are the ones who stock the rural gentry. They control the villages. For political and social reasons the British gave them title to the lands of the rural areas. If you do a little research you’ll see that Dalits are trying to claw back some of the land-grabs through legal means. The Green Revolution in India was to a great extent due to the revolution of farming in Punjab, away from marginal subsistence, to something resembling a modern economy. It was a massive benefit to Jatts.

In other words, the farmers are not incredibly poor subsistence farming peasants, but more prosperous rural landholders. The subsidies provided by the central government are a consequence of attempts to establish food security for India in the 1960s, and the general pattern across many nations of smoothing the volatility of farming as an enterprise for small-holders. Without massive subsidies often only large industrial scale corporations can engage in farming and make a profit over the long term.

We have farm subsidies in the United States, which are to a great extent the outcome of political compromises. The same is true in the European Union. Without massive subsidies, there would be depopulation in rural France, so society makes the calculation that the tourism value from rural areas exceeds the cost of the subsidies needed to maintain them economically. In the United States, one element of farm subsidies for families is that they maintain the Jeffersonian ethos that we are a nation of individual yeoman farmers.

Of course, we aren’t a nation of yeoman farmers. Fewer than 2% of Americans are farmers. Though farm families are often cash-poor, they are equity rich. One of the major complaints about farm subsidies in the United States is that they are transfers of funds to wealthier individuals and corporations.

Here’s one thing we can agree upon: farm subsidies maintain the status quo. I think one can make a case that in places like France, Japan, and the United States, there is a social good to retaining some number of farmers in rural areas, and not giving agriculture to rational corporations. These are rich societies. They can afford subsidies on various things. So why not to farmers? Even if they are somewhat rich.

But the situation in India is very different.  In India, 22% of the population are farmers (whether they own the land or labor on it). This is a very high number. I think one can make the case that in India it would be a good thing if corporations purchased rural land, and farming families declined in number. The case can be strictly economic, but it can also be cultural.

Rural Jatt society is very conservative and regressive in many ways. Punjab has the highest sex ratio imbalance in India and has to import brides from poorer regions. The culture of Jatts is very patriarchal and macho. Much of Diaspora Indian pop culture is actually Jatt pop culture. I’m not saying this to paint Jatts positively or negatively…but if The New York Times reported on the unique aspects of Jatt culture associated with these farmers its depiction of this group as villains or heroes would change a great deal.

Would it be a bad thing if rural villages in Punjab were depopulated as the children of farmers moved to the cities? That depends on your values. I, myself, think it would be good because caste is less salient in cities, and rural villages are oppressive culturally and socially. The old German saying is that “city air makes you free.”

Nevertheless, the bigger context is that the BJP is angering the farmers with attempts to restructure the subsidies, and the BJP and Hindu nationalism are “bad guys” for the respectable global liberal international, and The New York Times is a voice of that international. Since the farmers are against the BJP, the farmers are good, even if the farmers are sexist, racist*, classist, and chauvinistic Jatt farmers. Though the BJP is on some level deeply anti-liberal, how did it become the bête noire of the liberal international? I think this is a scholarly work that might warrant some labor because it seems that the invective and contempt against Hindu nationalism is greater than the ire directed toward Chinese Communism with its own national characteristics, even though in matters of human rights the latter dwarf the former as much as the Chinese economy dwarfs the Indian economy. To some extent, the same applies to Islamism, which seems to get less targeted anger than the BJP, even though Hindu nationalism and Islamism are similar in many ways.

Here’s my final assessment: this is a clash between a petite bourgeoise ethnic group and a national movement that is aiming to break down local solidarities in favor of broader identity markers (e.g., “Hindu”). If the BJP succeeds I do think this is going to be bad for Jatt Sikh farmers, who can’t extract as many rents as they would otherwise be able to. Creative destruction will go full blast on their communities.

Overall, I would suggest people be careful about figuring out who the “good guys” or “bad guys” are ahead of time. Dig deeper. And then decide.

* 90% of the trolls on Brown Pundits are racist Jatts who explain how they are genetically superior to black small ugly Indians due to being taller and lighter-skinned.

The battle for the soul of the Heart of Asia

Posted on by Razib Khan

Kumārajīva was one of the early translators of the Buddhist canon into Chinese. His father’s lineage was reputedly Indian, while his mother was from the elite of the city of Kucha, on the northern edge of the Tarim basin. It was one of the cities where a form of Tocharian was spoken. This enigmatic Indo-European language family is extinct and known from only a few examples in this region of the world (the different forms of Tocharian seem to have been mutually unintelligible, suggesting a long history in this region of the world for these languages). But Tocharian was not the only Indo-European language group that was represented in the Tarmin. Along the southern and western edge of the Taklamakan Iranian dialects were more common, such as in the city of Khotan.

Over the last 1,000 years, the Tarim Basin has undergone major changes. First, the collapse of the ancient Uyghur Turk Empire resulted in their retrenchment to the Tarim Basin. A previously pastoralist people, they became settled city-dwellers. By the time Genghis Khan rose to power, the Uyghurs had become a predominantly Buddhist people, with a focus around Turpan. They seem to have absorbed the predominantly Tocharian city-states of the eastern portion of the Tarim Basin.

But after 1000 AD a second change began to occur. A group of Turks, who spoke a Karluk dialect, converted to Islam and conquered Kashgar in the west of the Tarim Basin, and began to push eastward, conquering and converting the Buddhist city-states in turn. By 1400 the cultural expansion and military conquest reached the eastern fringe of the Tarim Basin, as Turpan and Hami were absorbed into the Islamic cultural sphere. With this, a new identity unified the city-states of the Tarim Basin. In language they spoke Karluk dialects, and in religion they were Muslim. In the 20th century the Uyghur ethnonym was resurrected in what was known as East Turkestan, but the cultural descendents of the ancient Uyghurs are actually the Yugurs (whose traditional language descends from that of Old Uyghur). Read More

Complementarity in the 21st century

Posted on by Razib Khan

The late Gordon R. Dickson wrote a series of books in a (mostly) future history termed The Childe Cycle. I’ve read a substantial number of the books in this series, and it’s rather uneven. On the whole, I would say that the earlier books are better than the later works. Dickson died before he could complete the series, but I don’t think that’s really that big of a deal, because the books are only loosely connected. I read the novels and short stories of the series all out of order, and it wasn’t a problem.

One of the interesting aspects of the universe is that there are separate human cultures/ethnicities that inhabit different planets and specialize in different economic tasks. If you look closely, the system doesn’t make economic sense, but that’s OK, we’re talking a setting for space opera.

Of the “splinter cultures,” two of them inhabit planets very close to each other in the same solar system, Newton and Cassida. Newton is home to pure scientists, while Cassida is a world of applied engineers. In Young Bleys it is stated that the engineers of Cassida admire and envy the scientists of Newton.

My point in posting about this is to a great extent I imagine that the United States of America will be the “Newton” of our world for a while longer. But, other nations will be will Cassida (you can guess which), and others the Friendlies. I don’t know who the Exotics or Dorsai might be, and the analogy might breakdown there.

The hegemon and world-citizen

Posted on by Razib Khan

On occasion, I read a book…and forget its title. I usually manage to recall the title at some point. For the past five years or so I’ve been trying to recall a book I read on Asian diplomatic history written by a Korean American scholar. Today I finally recalled that book: East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute.

The reason I’ve been trying to remember this book is that I’ve felt it told a story which is more relevant today than in the late 2000s, when the book was written and published. From the summary:

Focusing on the role of the “tribute system” in maintaining stability in East Asia and in fostering diplomatic and commercial exchange, Kang contrasts this history against the example of Europe and the East Asian states’ skirmishes with nomadic peoples to the north and west. Although China has been the unquestioned hegemon in the region, with other political units always considered secondary, the tributary order entailed military, cultural, and economic dimensions that afforded its participants immense latitude. Europe’s “Westphalian” system, on the other hand, was based on formal equality among states and balance-of-power politics, resulting in incessant interstate conflict.

Here’s my not-so-counterintuitive prediction: as China flexes its geopolitical muscles, it will revert back to form in substance, forging a foreign policy predicated on hierarchical relationships between states, while maintaining an external adherence to the system of European diplomacy which crystallized between the Peace of Westphalia and the Congress of Vienna, that emphasized the importance of equality between states. “Diplomacy with Chinese characteristics” if you will.

Stanislav Petrov and our common humanity

Posted on by Razib Khan


The first time I watched Gorky Park in the 1980s I remember how strange it was to see citizens of the Soviet Union, or as we called them all then irrespective of ethnicity, “Russians,” with normal human motivations and concerns. In other words, depicted in the fullness of their humanity.

As a child in Reagan’s America what we knew about Russians was that they were citizens of the Soviet Union, and what we knew about the Soviet Union were military parades and the dour mien of their leaders. When Mikhail Gorbachev emerged on the scene it didn’t really humanize the citizens of the Soviet Union. Rather, he was a totem or exemplar of a new spirit in the world, and that perhaps we weren’t all doomed to nuclear annihilation.

As for Russians. Who were they? In the 1990s they were our allies somehow, at least on paper. I think the truth of the matter is that we did take advantage of them as a nation and a people who were experiencing difficulties, insofar as America maneuvered itself into even more advantageous positions while they were down on their luck. Eventually, the images of godless Communists faded in the 1990s…to be replaced by kleptocrats and Russian mafia.

This is not to say I do not believe Communism was evil. I do believe it was evil. But, normal human beings with the same concerns and aspirations as those in the West were part of a system, which on occasion made them the tools of evil in this world. For that, perhaps they must be judged. Some say the same of American citizens. I may disagree in the particulars…but the principle is the same.

I bring this up because recently we found out that Stanislav Petrov died last spring. His story is well known at this point; he made a judgment call and ignored a false alarm that five American ICBMs were headed toward the Soviet Union. He acted humanely in a moment of high drama. As an American we are so often drilled into repeating the mantra we are the “good guys.” Petrov shows us that decency persisted even in the “evil empire.”

Our civilization’s Ottoman years

Posted on by Razib Khan

Some right-wing intellectuals are wont to say that multicultural and multiracial empires do not last. This is not true. Historically there are plenty which lasted for quite a long time. Rome, Byzantium, and the Ottomans, to name just a few of the longest. But, though they were diverse polities modern liberal democratic sensibilities would have been offended by them. That is because these empires were ordered and centered around a hegemonic culture, with other cultures accepted and tolerated on the condition of submission and subordination.

The Ottoman example is the most stark because it was formally explicit under the millet system by the end of its history, though it naturally evolved out of Islamic conceptions of the roles of dhimmis under Muslim hegemony. For 500 years the Ottomans ruled a multicultural empire. Yes, it decayed and collapsed, but 500 years is a good run.

I bring up the Ottoman example because I was having a discussion with a friend of mine, an academic, and he brought up the idea that the seeming immiseration of the middle to lower classes in developed societies will lead to redistributive economic policies. Both of us agree that immiseration seems on the horizon, and that no contemporary political movement has a good response. But I pointed out that traditionally redistributive socialism seems most successful in relatively homogeneous societies, and the United States is not that. American society is diverse. Descriptively multicultural. There would be another likely solution.

Eleven years ago Amartya Sen wrote a piece for The New Republic which could never get published in the journal today, The Uses and Abuses of Multiculturalism. In it he looked dimly upon the emergence of plural monoculturalism. Today plural monoculturalism is the dominant ideal of the identity politics Left, with cultural appropriation in vogue, and separatism reminiscent of the 1970s starting to come back into fashion. Against plural monoculturalism he contrasted genuine multiculturalism. I think a better word for it is cosmopolitanism.

The Ottoman ruling elite was Sunni Muslim, but it was cosmopolitan. The Sultan himself often had a Christian mother, while during the apex of the empire the shock troops were janissary forces drawn from the dhimmi peoples of the Balkans. This was a common feature of the Islamic, and before them Byzantine and Roman empires. The ruling elites exhibited a common ethos, but their origins were variegated.

Many of the Byzantine emperors were not from ethnic Greek Chalcedonian Christian backgrounds (before the loss of the Anatolian territories many were of Armenian, and therefore non-Chalcedonian, origin). But the culture they assimilated to, and promoted, as the core identity of the empire was Greek-speaking and Chalcedonian, with a self-conscious connection to ancient Rome. I can give similar examples from South Asia or China. Diverse peoples can be bound together in a sociopolitical order, but it is invariably one of domination, subordination, and specialization.

But subordinate peoples had their own hierarchies, and these hierarchies interacted with the Ottoman Sultan in an almost feudal fashion. Toleration for the folkways of these subordinate populations was a given, so long as they paid their tax and were sufficiently submissive. The leaders of the subordinate populations had their own power, albeit under the penumbra of the ruling class, which espoused the hegemonic ethos.

How does any of this apply to today? Perhaps this time it’s different, but it seems implausible to me that our multicultural future is going to involve equality between the different peoples. Rather, there will be accommodation and understandings. Much of the population will be subject to immiseration of subsistence but not flourishing. They may have some universal basic income, but they will be lack the dignity of work. Identity, religious and otherwise, will become necessary opiums of the people. The people will have their tribunes, who represent their interests, and give them the illusion or semi-reality of a modicum agency.

The tribunes, who will represent classical ethno-cultural blocs recognizable to us today, will deal with a supra-national global patriciate. Like the Ottoman elite it will not necessarily be ethnically homogeneous. There will be aspects of meritocracy to it, but it will be narrow, delimited, and see itself self-consciously above and beyond local identities and concerns. The patriciate itself may be divided. But their common dynamic will be that they will be supra-national, mobile, and economically liberated as opposed to dependent.

Of course democracy will continue. Augustus claimed he revived the Roman Republic. The tiny city-state of Constantinople in the 15th century claimed it was the Roman Empire. And so on. Outward forms and niceties may be maintained, but death of the nation-state at the hands of identity politics and late stage capitalism will usher in the era of oligarchic multinationalism.

I could be wrong. I hope I am.