holy ghost, i'm on fire

some people will experience suicidality even in the most favourable circumstances. I'm more interested in ways people live with chronic suicidality than in knowing that some people go on to no longer experience suicidality.

I hope all of us who experience suicidality when we are no longer/have not ever been in environments that contributed to it are treated as people whose thoughts and feelings on the topic are valued.

thank you for running this blog! spaces where people can openly talk about suicide make a difference

there's lots of ideas that are pithily summarised in this ask that can lead to confusion as to which colonial encounter and when said social processes are happening. i've not added any doorstopper theory type books and preferred an essay when i can.

caste as apartheid, essential to hinduism and the role of brahminisation in it

br ambedkar. annihilation of caste (edited speech) and castes in india (paper)

kancha illiah. why i am not a hindu (book)

anand teltumbe. persistence of caste: the khairlanji murders and india’s hidden apartheid (book)

modern hinduism as created in the colonial era in response to the pressures and the encounter with british colonisation and how caste changes with it

john zavos: representing religion in colonial india (essay) and arya samaj and the history of hindu nationalism (essay)

richard king: colonialism, hinduism and the discourse of religion (essay)

caste in modern india by tanika and sumit sarkar (essay collection) rec essays by dirks, bayly, guha, bernard cohn, sekhar bandopadhyay, anupama rao, sumit sarkar and jaffrelot

alternatively i really like sumit guhas book beyond caste

the forces of sanskritisation and brahminisation which predate colonialism — the encounter between hegemonic vedic religion and little tradition

mn srinivas: a note on sanskritisation and westernisation (original 1956 essay on what it is)

romila thapar: syndicated moksha (essay) and why can't we think of civilisation as a process of tracking cultures (speech) and her textbook early india from origins to AD 1300 really explicates it.

hinduism as settler religion i'd look to treatments of advasis

tribes & adivasi: religion and the politics of tribal identity

on the tribal schools: eklavya model residential schools (btw if you're not aware, eklavya is famously the tribal archer in the mahabharat who is made to chop off his thumb because he is lower caste and secretly learns from the image of a brahmin teacher and his skill shows up the brahmin arjuna)

nandini sundar: subalterns and sovereigns (book) traces the pre, colonial and post colonial encounter in bastar

Amazon’s super bowl ad where the Alexa mocks Chris Hemsworth for being worried about giving spy software control over his entire life. Waymo’s ad with the intro “the robots are coming!” mocking people who are rightfully extremely concerned about sharing the road with, or riding in, self-driving cars.

Palestinian cameraman says that despite risking their lives covering Gaza, Al Jazeera fired staff with no prior warning

Mahmoud Shalha, a Gaza-based cameraman and producer who worked for Al Jazeera throughout the genocide, has publicly condemned the network after being dismissed, describing the decision as a betrayal of Palestinian journalists who risked their lives to document the genocide.

Shalha said he spent three years covering Israel's assault in northern Gaza, surviving bombardment, famine, and repeated threats to his life before being informed in a phone call lasting less than 15 seconds that his employment had been terminated "without any warning" or explanation.

Questioning the network's decision, Shalha said, "Is this the reward for someone who slept on the streets, endured famine, survived targeting, and lived through war, genocide, siege, hunger, deprivation, and thirst so that the image could remain on your screens?"

He recalled documenting famine and destruction while Israeli forces "killed anyone who moved" in northern Gaza, adding that he had rejected offers from other news outlets to remain with Al Jazeera.