Category india

India should replace the UK on the UN Security Council – Michael Rubin

VOI

UN Security Council

With the unravelling of the last aspects of the British Empire, the notion that the United Kingdom should have any seat as a permanent member of the UN Security Council has no logical or moral basis. – Michael Rubin

That the structure of the United Nations is antiquated is not news. The Security Council rewarded the victors of World War II, but ignored both their colonial holdings, the practical impact of decolonization, and general shifts over eight decades.

Upon the United Nations’ founding, for example, 74 countries were independent including those like Germany and Japan still under occupation. Of these, 51 became UN members. Today, the UN has 193 members, plus the Holy See and Palestine, both of which have observer status.

The Security Council is important; it provides a check on the General Assembly’s mob mentality and also resolves the problem of tiny autocracies like Guinea-Bissau having as much power as industrialized democracies like India or Germany. Yet it is also archaic.

The United Kingdom symbolizes how dated and unjust some membership on the Security Council is. In 1945, the United Kingdom’s share of the world’s economy was 6.5%, and that was despite the devastation of Nazi bombardment during World War II. Today, however, the International Monetary Fund estimates the British share at just half that. Today, by purchasing power parity, India ranks third globally and the United Kingdom ranks ninth.

Consider also population. In 1945, the United Kingdom’s population was just shy of five crores, while India under British rule had more than eight times as many people. Today, the United Kingdom’s population has just shy of seven crores; India has 148 crores.

As the United Nations prepares for the selection of a new secretary-general after eight years of António Guterres, India should use its diplomatic heft to demand reform now. Broad reform would be impossible in the short-term, but India has another out: Assuming the United Kingdom’s Security Council seat permanently.

Technically, any structural reform needs an amendment to the Charter, which each of the permanent five members of the Security Council can block. But there are precedents:

On December 17, 1963, the UN expanded the Security Council from 11 to 15 seats. Within the General Assembly. France and the Soviet Union voted no, the United States and United Kingdom abstained, and Taiwan voted in favour. Ultimately, however, all five ratified the amendment anyway.

Technically there is no withdrawal clause for Security Council membership, but there have been changes. Article 23 of the UN Charter recognizes the “Republic of China” and “USSR” rather than their successors, the People’s Republic of China and Russia. In both instances, the seat changed hands without an amendment. Taiwan lost its seat in a credentialling vote, while the Soviet Union ceded its seat based on a no-objection letter.

The United Kingdom recognizes that it no longer deserves its permanent Security Council seat; it is a vestige of its imperialist past for which its government continues to make amends.

On May 22, 2025, the United Kingdom and Mauritius signed a treaty committing the United Kingdom to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, though the United States and United Kingdom would retain a 99-year-lease over the Diego Garcia base for an annual payment of approximately £101 million to Mauritius. The United Kingdom has not yet ratified the deal though, largely due to President Donald Trump’s opposition. With the midterm elections confirming Trump’s lame duck status, though, this is likely a temporary problem. Regardless, it does not change the bigger shift in British self-awareness.

Today’s Chagos will likely be tomorrow’s Cyprus. The United Kingdom still claims 3% of Cyprus, in theory as sovereign base areas, but London has consistently betrayed Nicosia. The British did nothing when Turkey occupied one-third the country nor did the United Kingdom act when Iran launched drones against Cyprus. The sad reality is that Britain occupies Cyprus to use its beaches as a resort and little more.

British control over the Falkland Islands are also again at stake; after all, it is hard to justify recognition of Palestine and not simultaneously acknowledge Argentine sovereignty over Las Malvinas.

With the unravelling of the last aspects of the British Empire, the notion that the United Kingdom should have any seat as a permanent member of the UN Security Council has no logical or moral basis.

India should demand the United Kingdom voluntarily relinquish its seat and that the new secretary-general, whomever he or she might be, support that decision as a condition of receiving Indian support. Prime Minister Narendra Modi should further demand that the support of Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are the price of resuming the bilateral relationship gratuitously shredded early in the second Trump term. Russia will support India, and France has no reason to object. One West European Security Council permanent member is enough. China may be more reluctant but may not veto. Beijing’s own veto will protect Pakistan, and China has much to lose in its own quest for appointments and General Assembly influence if it stymies New Delhi. After all, the Global South would cheer for India’s new status, seeing a crack in the door to UN reform while bringing insufferable Britain down to size. – The Sunday Guardian, 8 Novermber 2026

› Michael Rubin is Director of Policy Analysis at the Middle East Forum in Washington, DC, and a Distinguished Fellow at the Usanas Foundation in Udaipur.

UN NYC headquarters with India flag in the flag row.

The secularisation of Diwali – Utpal Kumar

VOI

Diwali Lamps

The problem with the “Festival of Lights” narrative is that it seeks to secularise Diwali by divorcing it from its sacred roots. It distorts the Indic notion of festivity—one that embraces diversity while being bound by a shared civilisational core. – Utpal Kumar

We are living in an era of great Hindu awakening. After centuries of civilisational amnesia imposed through colonisation, political manipulation, and intellectual distortion, Hindus are rediscovering who they are. There is a growing self-awareness and self-esteem—a recognition that Sanatana Dharma is not a relic of the past but a living, breathing continuum that is as ancient as it is modern, as sacred as it is rational, and as religious as it is scientific.

Yet, as this consciousness rises, so too does a more sophisticated form of opposition. Gone are the crude, overt attacks on Hinduism. The new offensive is subtler: it praises the tradition outwardly while hollowing it out from within. The sacred is stripped away, leaving behind only a cultural shell—sanitised, commercialised, and secularised.

Diwali is a classic example.

Once a deeply spiritual celebration grounded in profound human and moral values, Diwali is now often reduced to a vague “festival of lights” symbolising the victory of “good over evil” and “light over darkness”—but stripped of its rich Hindu context. While these phrases aren’t inherently wrong, divorced from their sacred roots they detach Diwali from the core religio-cultural traditions that give it true meaning: the joyous return of Sri Rama to Ayodhya, Krishna’s slaying of Narakasura, and Goddess Kali’s triumph over demonic forces.

Imagine if Christmas were explained merely as a “festival of love conquering hate”, with all references to Jesus erased. That’s what has happened to Diwali. No gods, no demons, no religion, no story—just a feel-good celebration. At this rate, even “light” might soon be declared polluting. Recall how a Samajwadi Party leader recently questioned the rationale of spending on diyas, drawing parallels with Christmas celebrations abroad, and suggested Bharat should emulate them. One day, someone may well ask why Diwali is even needed when Christmas is just a month away. Why not club the two together—to save money for a “poor” country like Bharat?

And this secularisation—or should one say desacralisation?—is not accidental. Each Hindu festival now faces its own “civilising campaign”. Before Diwali, one is compulsively reminded to save the environment; before Holi, the campaign gains ground to conserve water; before Raksha Bandhan, gender rights come to the fore; and before Shivratri, one witnesses an online movement to stop “wasting milk”. Under the guise of modern-day morality and sensibility, the sacred fabric of these festivals is systematically targeted and assaulted.

Environmental consciousness and social justice are causes worth emulating, but their selective invocation only against Hindu festivals betrays their dubious, anti-Hindu intent.

The problem with the “Festival of Lights” narrative is that it seeks to secularise Diwali by divorcing it from its sacred roots. It distorts the Indic notion of festivity—one that embraces diversity while being bound by a shared civilisational core.

Diwali in the North celebrates Rama’s homecoming; in the South, Krishna’s victory over Narakasura; and in Bengal, Kali’s triumph over demons. In Tamil homes, Diwali morning begins with an oil bath, invoking the presence of Goddess Lakshmi and the sacred waters of the Ganga. “Ganga snanam aacha?” (Have you had your holy dip in the River Ganga?): This is a customary greeting exchanged on Diwali, referring to the ceremonial oil bath. Invoking Ganga manifests a strong sense of civilisational unity in the Sanatana Dharma.

Such assaults aren’t just limited to the popular/cultural arena; they run deeper into academia as well. Sheldon Pollock, a prominent American Indologist, for instance, has interpreted Sanskrit texts and traditions as a tool of oppression and elitism. In his book The Battle for Sanskrit, Rajiv Malhotra exposes how Pollock has worked tirelessly to strip Sanskrit of its sacred identity.

The American Indologist, for instance, has accused Sanskrit of “Brahmin elitism”, besides influencing British colonialism and German Nazism. Pollock describes Sanskrit as “at once a record of civilisation and a record of barbarism—of extraordinary inequality and other social poisons”.

His discomfort with Sanskrit’s Sanatana roots is such that he interprets the Ramayana as a political code through which “proto-communalist relations could be activated and theocratic legitimations rendered”. He alleges that the Ramayana’s portrayal of Ravan and the Rakshasas as “others” forms the ideological foundation for later-day hatred for Muslims. In his view, the sacred Hindu epic itself has been instrumental in legitimising violence against Muslims.

Pollock’s dangerous assertions aren’t mere academic theories. They are ideological weapons designed to delegitimise Hindu civilisation by attacking its moral and spiritual core.

When sacred stories are desacralised, the culture they sustain begins to erode. Once memory fades, replacement histories can be written. That is how a civilisation is colonised—this time, not by armies, but by narratives.

The battle, therefore, is not about fireworks or rituals—it’s about their sacred, innate meaning. It’s about whether Hindus will continue to define their festivals, their texts, and their traditions, or whether others will define them for them.

As Kundera warned, when people lose their memory, they lose themselves.

The “modern” sanitisation of Hindu festivals, the intellectual deconstruction of its sacred texts, and the cultural detachment from its civilisational roots are all parts of the same process—a slow liquidation of Bharat’s civilisational identity.

Diwali is merely the battleground; the real target is Sanatana Dharma. – Firstpost, 21 octoberv 2025

Utpal Kumar is Opinion Editor at Firstpost and News18 and is the author of the book Eminent Distorians: Twists and Truths in Bharat’s History.

George Orwell Quote

Emperor Xi’s War Lab – Ravi Shankar

VOI

President Xi Jinping (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who is the paramount leader of China. He has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Party Central Military Commission (CMC) since 2012, and as the president of China and chairman of the State Central Military Commission since 2013.

“Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake up the world.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon’s prophecy is about two centuries old. It is coming true now. The man who has awakened it is Xi Jinping, China’s paramount leader (Zuigao Lingdaorén), General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, and its powerful nationalist president since 2013. His Made in China 2025 policy seeks to realise the Chinese dream of world hegemony. His instrument is self-reliance: reducing China’s dependence on foreign technology to become a fully capable military manufacturing power in its own right.

That technology is what Napoleon warned the world about. The warning is echoed by a capable officer who knows the India-China frontier not as a line on a map but as a difficult, unforgiving stretch of mountains where weather, altitude, distance and the smallest movement of troops can have strategic consequences. On October 22, the Director General of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Shatrujeet Kapur, warned: “To face China through traditional ways would be tough now. Because China has invested heavily in the modernisation of its forces and has moved ahead. But through drones, small nations can fight bigger nations, as we have seen in the Russia-Ukraine and Iran-US conflicts. Russia is sacrificing 10,000-15,000 soldiers every month.”

The warning came a week before the Fifth Plenum. Past sessions have reaffirmed Xi’s position as the “core” of the Party. The abolition of presidential term limits in 2018 opened the way for him to remain in power indefinitely. His personal philosophy, known as “Xi Jinping Thought”, is being elevated to a status comparable to that of Mao Zedong’s ideological doctrine. Xi has unleashed a wave of purges of Party and government officials for “moral corruption”—a term often used as shorthand for those perceived as insufficiently loyal to the 73-year-old strongman. Estimates from the Asia Society Policy Institute suggest that only two of the 44 military members of the Central Committee in 2022 have survived the purge. The number is the same in the seven-member Central Military Commission, which oversees China’s armed forces: only Xi Jinping and one other general remain.

What does this mean for Xi, China, India and the world? Following the Fifth Plenum, Xi is set to consolidate his position as the most powerful man in China and one of the most powerful leaders in the world. Under his leadership, China has taken a quantum leap across the vectors that determine global power: technology, military strength, the economy, diplomacy, and development.

Supertech Sultan

Xi, to strengthen China’s position against its top competitor United States, has ordered investments in billions in advanced chips, artificial intelligence, and renewable energy. China now dominates global supplies of several industrial, automotive, and defence micro controllers, and is integrating AI into national security, and pursuing its “AI Plus” strategy to expand Chinese software across Global South markets.

Its “Big Three”—electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and solar energy—have become major export engines, replacing the traditional “Old Three” of clothing, furniture and home appliances. A “New New Three”, comprising AI software, industrial and humanoid robotics, and biotechnology, is emerging. Dr. Srikanth Kondapalli, Professor of China Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, traces this rise to science and technology initiatives launched in the 1980s, including the 863 Programme, which targeted robotics, telecommunications, space technology and biotechnology. “Today, China is a major player in 5G, solar manufacturing, electric vehicles, batteries and critical-mineral refining, and is advancing towards 6G. However, technological dominance does not mean complete self-reliance. Semiconductors remain a key weakness.” Although China has advanced in seven-nanometre chip technology, it still trails the US in aspects of semiconductor manufacturing. Nevertheless, Dr. Kondapalli argues, sustained technological investment remains central to Xi’s ambitions to create economic assets and China-centric global influence.

Defence Dragon

This is where the maximum growth is, since China is the world’s second largest defence spender: its official defence budget 2025 was about $245 billion—up by 7.2 per cent the previous year. The real spending is substantially higher, because R&D and the People’s Armed Police are partly excluded. The PLA’s 13 group armies spread across the five theatre commands has 4,500-5,000 main battle tanks including several hundred Type 15 light tanks built for high-altitude areas like Tibet and Ladakh; thousands of armoured personnel and infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled howitzers PCL-181, and long-range rocket systems PHL-03 and PHL-16; Z-10 attack helicopters and Z-20 utility helicopters. China has the world’s largest navy: roughly 370 ships and submarines. It has three aircraft carriers with electromagnetic catapults, 8 -10 Destroyers, innumerable frigates, amphibious ship helicopter assault ships, 6 ballistic-missile subs, 6 nuclear attack subs, 48 diesel-electric subs, a naval aviation arm with J-15 carrier fighters, with the J-35 and the KJ-600 early-warning aircraft for aircraft carrier use. Air Force (PLAAF) and naval aviation together operate about 3,000 aircraft, including over 2,400 combat aircraft, making this the largest air force in Asia: J-20 stealth fighters, J-16, J-10C, J-11, Su-30 and Su-35, and now J-35 stealth fighter entering service. Stealth bomber H-20 is under development. China’s huge drone fleet is fast-growing, and includes the WZ-7 high-altitude surveillance drone, the WZ-8 supersonic reconnaissance drone and the GJ-11 stealth combat drone. Dramatic growth has been in rocket force and nuclear arsenal: over 600 operational nuclear warheads as of mid-2024, up by 400 in 2019, with more than 1,000 projected by 2030. Its missile inventory includes ICBMs DF-41, DF-31AG and silo-based DF-5 variants, the DF-26 intermediate-range missile (nicknamed the “Guam killer”), the DF-21D anti-ship missile (“carrier killer”), and the DF-17 hypersonic glide missile. It has estimated the world’s largest inventory of land-based ballistic and cruise missiles. Chinese space and cyber forces operate over 1,000 satellites, of which 359 are ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) systems, triple the 2018 figure. Since April 2024, space, cyber and information warfare have been handled by three dedicated forces: Aerospace, Cyberspace and Information Support. Dr. Saibal Dasgupta points out, military modernisation is about more than acquiring advanced weapons. “China’s priority is to establish global leadership in the eyes of its own people, counter American influence in its neighbourhood and achieve reunification with Taiwan. China has strengthened its Rocket Force and integrated AI, drones and robotics into military operations. However, technological superiority alone does not guarantee the ability to win wars.”

Economic Superman

Xi’s relentless drive for economic hegemony makes China the world’s second-largest economy, with a nominal GDP of approximately $21.5 trillion; it ranks first in purchasing power parity. Its research and development expenditure has grown and is now estimated at approximately $584-588 billion, making it the world’s second-largest spender in absolute terms. China ranks 12th globally in R&D intensity. Xi, by controlling Chinese businesses, has forced private corporations to bear the vast majority of the research costs, which are approximately 77.4 per cent of China’s R&D expenditure. This integration of government priorities, corporate investment and technological development is Xi’s brainchild to give Beijing the advantage in directing resources towards strategically important sectors. However, China’s economic and technological ascent has vulnerabilities. It is dependent on certain advanced semiconductor technologies. The PLA’s ability to translate technological superiority into battlefield success is yet to be proved in real-time action.

Diplomacy Daring

Xi Jinping’s defining diplomatic formula is “building a community with a shared future for mankind”—read helmed by China. The Communist country’s diplomatic clout has grown alongside its economic and military power. Its share of the UN’s regular budget is up from approximately 2.05 per cent in 2006 to around 20 per cent today. China is the second-largest contributor to UN peacekeeping operations and sends the largest contingent of peacekeepers among the Security Council’s permanent members. Through infrastructural investments, diplomatic partnerships and defence cooperation, Beijing continues to expand its strategic reach, particularly across the developing world.

Dr. Kondapalli places these ambitions in historical context. “When Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, he advanced three key concepts: the China Dream, national rejuvenation and a community of shared destiny.” The China Dream seeks global leadership in technology and the economy, while national rejuvenation involves reclaiming territories Beijing considers historically Chinese, including Taiwan and parts of the South and East China Seas. Together, these ambitions reflect China’s goal to become the world’s dominant power.

Yet India is far from incapable of challenging China. Its defence budget for FY 2026-27 is $ 7.85 lakh crore, approximately $86-93.5 billion, as the world’s fourth-largest military spender. China has around 2.035 million active-duty military personnel against India’s roughly 1.435 million. India’s challenge is not to simply match China tank for tank, aircraft for aircraft or ship for ship. Its ability to detect threats, process intelligence, make decisions without hesitation and coordinate military operations quicker and more effectively than its adversary is what matters.

Strategy Wiz

Counting tanks isn’t enough. In modern warfare, the side that sees first, thinks fastest and connects best has the advantage. Operation Sindoor underscored this lesson, placing C4ISR—Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance—at the centre of the confrontation. China has sought to exploit its capabilities through Pakistan, whose Chinese-made J-10C fighters reportedly targeted Indian Rafales with PL-15 missiles. Justin Bronk, an air-warfare specialist at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told Reuters: “The Indians were not expecting to be shot at.” Lieutenant General Rahul R Singh described the China-Pakistan partnership through an ancient Chinese dictum: “killed by a borrowed knife.” Beijing, he suggested, could weaken India through its partner without directly confronting it on the border.

Singh revealed how Pakistan received real-time intelligence from China during the operation. “When the DGMO-level talks were going on, Pakistan was mentioning that we know that your such and such vector is primed and is ready for action,” he said. “So, they were getting live inputs from China, which is comparatively far from the theatre of action.” Retired British Air Marshal Greg Bagwell, a RUSI fellow, distilled the lesson: “The winner in this was the side that had the best situational awareness.”

Singh described India’s northern frontier as a “live lab” for China, which can assess its military technology through its Pakistan partnership. Operation Sindoor offered Beijing the opportunity to demonstrate its equipment power against Western systems. It had potential commercial consequences for the West. Indonesia, which has ordered Rafale fighters from France, is reportedly weighing the Chinese J-10.

Former ambassador and author Rajiv Dogra says, “China and Pakistan are virtually Siamese twins in military cooperation and defence technology.” Their joint Karakoram 2026 exercise in Xinjiang, held from October 14 to 23, highlights their union. China supports Pakistan’s nuclear technology, satellite capabilities, military aviation and telecommunications, and has emerged as Pakistan’s major defence supplier by upstaging the United States.

Dogra warns that the partnership has wider implications for India. His statistical model identifies an India–China or India-China-Pakistan conflict as a potential flashpoint for a major war. “Whether we look at our western or northern neighbour, India remains the common strategic consideration shaping their military cooperation,” he says.

Therefore, India’s challenge goes beyond disputed borders and touches satellite intelligence, cyber capabilities, defence manufacturing and the growing military coordination between Beijing and Islamabad.

Master of Symbols

Xi Jinping’s global strategy must be understood through China’s growing military and economic power. Sun Tzu’s maxim that “great results can be achieved with small forces” resonates in Xi’s philosophy. During his September 2014 visit to India, Xi took a riverside stroll with Prime Minister Modi and tried his hand at a charkha at Sabarmati Ashram. At the same time, approximately 1,000 Chinese troops entered Ladakh, withdrawing after Xi left. During his September visit to the BRICS summit, satellite images showed Chinese troops advancing into disputed territory along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The lesson for New Delhi: summit selfies do not stop soldiers. There is no evidence he personally directed every military move, but China demonstrated its willingness to deploy substantial military resources to a border confrontation, using territorial claims and sustained pressure to influence negotiations. The pattern is striking: diplomatic warmth accompanied by conspicuous military manoeuvres. Chinese emperors understood symbolism; sometimes, a circle drawn by an emperor conveyed approval more powerfully than a direct command. So, Xi’s message is both subtle and clear: China is willing to negotiate, but on its own terms. Contrary to earlier American expectations that Beijing would accept the liberal international order and defer to Washington, its military moves in the South China Sea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and along the Indian border suggest otherwise. Xi’s global strategy is simple in its duality: expand Chinese regional influence while preparing to challenge American global leadership. Xi no longer wants merely to rule China. Whether he intends to extend that influence over India remains the million-dollar question along the border. But ambition does not guarantee success.

The One and only Ruler

The West is waking up to Xi’s China only now, having overlooked a crucial history lesson. For much of recorded history, China was a global centre of wealth, culture and technology. From the Xia, Shang and Zhou to the Qin and Han dynasties, successive emperors pursued the idea of a bigger, stronger and more unified China. Constraints of geography and internal divisions limited the reach.

While the West built the liberal international order after the Second World War, Xi’s “Chinese Dream” draws on a much older legacy, epitomised by Qin Shi Huang. In 221 BC, Qin became the First Emperor of a unified China by consolidating political, economic and cultural systems while expanding fortifications that laid the foundation for the Great Wall. He commissioned the Lingqu Canal, an extensive road network and a vast mausoleum guarded by the Terracotta Army. His achievements came at a terrible human cost. Through Legalism, an ancient Chinese authoritarian system, Qin Shi Huang enforced strict laws, harsh punishments and intellectual repression. Yet his vision of unity, stability and national strength continues to echo in Beijing’s gilded halls of power.

Xi Jinping appears to draw on a similar playbook. Before succeeding Hu Jintao, he remained relatively unknown to the world. His formative years as a “sent-down youth” living in a cave and doing arduous labour in rural Shaanxi, may have shaped his political resilience and appetite for risk. The province lies in the ancient Qin heartland, near Xianyang, the emperor’s former capital. The connection may be coincidental, but the parallels are striking. By 2017–18, Xi had consolidated personal power, dismantling collective leadership and benefiting from the abolition of presidential term limits in 2018. The post-Mao safeguards against one-man rule weakened, placing him at the centre of China’s political system more firmly than any leader in decades.

More than 2,200 years after Qin Shi Huang, China once again has a powerful leader whose ambitions invited comparisons with its imperial past. Xi’s supporters portray his anti-corruption campaign as necessary reform, while affectionate nicknames such as “Xi Dada” (Uncle Xi or Daddy Xi) helped cultivate a paternal public image. His wife, Peng Liyuan, became “Auntie Peng” or “Mother Peng”, while the viral 2014 music video Xi Dada Loves Peng presented the couple as approachable and relatable. But beneath this carefully cultivated image lies the central reality of Xi’s rule: concentration of power in one man’s hands, justified by the promise of national rejuvenation through strong, centralised leadership.

Economic Engineer

Geopolitical experts, presidents and tycoons all want to know what Xi Jinping is thinking. But guessing his psychological impulses is like guessing where a dragon will breathe fire next. The smarter approach is to follow the paper trail: the priorities Xi has hard-wired into the Chinese state. The picture that emerges is of a leader who sees China’s rise as his historical mission, treats security and economics as two sides of the same coin, builds global clout using every available instrument, and believes the project will succeed only if power remains firmly at the centre—preferably with him. The real story lies in how these pieces fit together. Weeks after becoming Party chief in November 2012, Xi toured a historical exhibition at Beijing’s National Museum and popularised the phrase that would define his era: the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”. A decade later, at the 20th Party Congress, the slogan remained central to his political vision. Its significance lies in the way it combines economic growth, military strength and diplomatic reach into a single historical narrative. China is not simply a developing country seeking prosperity; it is an ancient civilisation reclaiming what Beijing considers its rightful place after a century of humiliation.

Dr Kondapalli explains how this historical narrative forges China’s technological and strategic priorities. For Beijing, technological development is not an isolated economic objective but an instrument of national power. China’s investments in semiconductors, AI, robotics and advanced computing serves both its domestic development goals and its ambition to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers. The integration of civilian industrial innovation into military modernisation is particularly important. Technologies developed for commercial applications can be used to strengthen surveillance, communications, intelligence gathering and battlefield coordination as well.

This civil-military integration is central to Xi’s ambition to make China technologically self-reliant and militarily formidable. But the ability to innovate, coordinate forces, respond to uncertainty and sustain operations under pressure remains just as important. As Dasgupta notes, is the PLA’s advances in AI, drones and robotics that give China technological strength alone sufficient to ensure victory in war? The answer matters enormously for India, which faces China not only across a contested mountain frontier but also through a growing network of Chinese strategic partnerships, technological capabilities and military investments.

Mystery Man

A significant talking point in diplomatic circles is the health of the 73-year-old Xi. After he skipped the official dinner at Rashtrapati Bhavan immediately after the BRICS Summit got over, the Delhi grapevine murmured Xi had a sudden stroke to exhaustion after a packed schedule. ThinkChina, a Singapore-based publication under Lianhe Zaobao, used proprietary algorithmic analysis to examine Xi’s movements after he left. It reported “no significant anomalies were observed in Xi’s movements when he boarded the plane on September 13 for the return journey; and at the meeting the day before”. His measured step-length asymmetry was 0.33 per cent, while his left-right auto correlation was 0.6910. The analysis concluded that “this suggests that Xi’s cardiopulmonary function is quite good”. When Modi reportedly asked Xi twice whether everything was okay, the algorithm found predominantly positive emotional responses, with a confidence level of 93 per cent. However, such readings must be treated cautiously: movement and body-language analysis alone cannot reliably diagnose a medical condition.

If the algorithm is right, guessing what it means for Indo-Sino relations is playing the 2,500-year-old Weiqi, one of the most complex strategy games in human history despite its simple rules. The players must surround more territory than the opponent while capturing enemy stones by fully surrounding them. The game reflects Taoist concepts of balance, flow, yin and yang, and strategic patience rather than immediate aggressive annihilation. Xi Jinping is an emperor-leader who methodically rebuilt the Chinese state around clear national priorities. The shatranj equivalent to Weiqi is sente: the ultimate form of initiative or tempo. Hence, India cannot afford to play passive moves just because its opponent threatened something small. Instead, it must ask: “Do I really need to answer that, or can I play a bigger move elsewhere?” Retaining sente will dictate the pace of the entire match. – The New Indian Express, 1 November 2026

› Ravi Shankar is an author and cartoonist. He is currently a columist and editor at The New Indian Express in New Delhi.

Xi's Mind Graphic

Why Indian-Americans are under attack in America – Makarand R. Paranjape

VOI

Hanuman statue in Sugarland, Texas.

Indian-Americans find themselves in an unenviable predicament. Their extraordinary educational, economic and professional achievements, instead of guaranteeing acceptance, have made them targets of suspicion, jealousy and, increasingly, outright hatred. – Makarand R. Paranjape

Indian-Americans may be facing their worst wave of hostility in the United States in half a century. The irony is that they are under attack not because they have failed to make it in the US, but because they have succeeded so spectacularly.

Caught between an increasingly identitarian, socialist Left and a resentful, revanchist Right, they find themselves in an unenviable predicament. Their extraordinary educational, economic and professional achievements, instead of guaranteeing acceptance, have made them targets of suspicion, jealousy and, increasingly, outright hatred.

Consider two recent incidents, seemingly unrelated but symptomatic of this disturbing development. Nineteen-year-old Alexandros Paporakis, a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi, attempted to open fire outside a temple. Luckily, his rifle jammed. He subsequently spoke of returning to finish his murderous mission. Fortunately, his co-workers alerted the police, who arrested him.

One wonders at their miraculous escape: what saved hundreds of Hindu worshippers from a possible massacre at the Sri Venkateswara Swami Temple in Aurora, near Chicago, on October 11? Among those worshipping that day were Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi and his family. One shudders to imagine what might have happened had the rifle fired.

Some devotees might attribute their miraculous escape to Lord Venkateswara’s protection. Some would rule out divine intervention and point simply to a malfunctioning rifle. My question is different: Why should Hindu worshippers in America become targets of murderous racial hatred?

Vivek Ramaswamy, the brilliant, ambitious Indian-origin Republican gubernatorial candidate in Ohio, has landed himself in an entirely avoidable controversy. His campaign released an advertisement featuring the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, accusing her daughter of dishonesty. Given Acton’s traumatic childhood and allegations of sexual abuse, the advertisement struck many as gratuitously cruel.

Even Republican Governor Mike DeWine demanded its withdrawal. Could this prove a turning point? A mid-October poll already showed Ramaswamy trailing Acton by seven percentage points.

But apart from a tasteless and offensive ad, might there be another factor? Perhaps voters in this predominantly white Midwestern state may not be comfortable with a Hindu governor of Indian origin. Any excuse, including being vegetarian or walking about barefoot at home, might be enough to tilt voter sentiment against him. The advertisement could give wavering voters an excuse to reject Ramaswamy without interrogating their own prejudices.

Remember Bobby Jindal, the Indian-origin Republican who converted to Catholicism? He successfully governed conservative Louisiana for two terms, but his presidential ambitions came to nothing. Religious assimilation, evidently, is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for political success.

Let me state my larger proposition bluntly. Indian-Americans may be facing their most uncomfortable political moment in half a century. Why? Because on the Left, large sections of the so-called Progressives have moved beyond traditional liberalism towards an amalgam of radical identity politics, anti-capitalism and accommodation of Islamist political movements. Hindu Americans, notwithstanding their minority status, can be portrayed as privileged white-adjacents, whose legitimate concerns about discrimination and religious freedom deserve little sympathy. Yet religious liberty cannot be selective. Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Sikhs and others must enjoy equal constitutional protection.

The Right presents a different problem.

Indian-Americans are among America’s most successful immigrant communities. According to Pew Research Center, Indian-headed households had a median annual income exceeding $151,000 in 2023. Their educational and professional achievements are equally impressive.

Instead of celebrating this contribution, parts of Maga increasingly regard Indian professionals as economic competitors, even interlopers stealing the jobs of US-born native Americans. Read that as fellow whites. Yes, let’s face it. Maga anti-Indianism has not only Christian fundamentalist but also racist undertones.

The Trump administration has imposed all kinds of barriers on new H-1Bs, including an extraordinary $100,000 fee on certain new H-1B petitions. Although federal courts have blocked it, Trump has come up with a new $103,265 fee proposed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through a a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking $108,000 fee on new applications. This move is considered legally more resilient than the earlier, $100,000 fee. Vice President J.D. Vance has also attacked abuses of H-1B visas, using some unparliamentary epithets. But reforming immigration is one thing; vilifying immigrants quite another. America cannot maintain technological supremacy by discouraging the very scientists, engineers, physicians and entrepreneurs who help sustain it.

There is also a distinction that fashionable multiculturalism has been reluctant to acknowledge. Not all immigrant communities are identical in their educational backgrounds, cultural practices, religious beliefs or attitudes towards integration. To pretend otherwise is intellectual dishonesty.

Consider Britain’s appalling grooming-gang scandals. In notorious cases, including Rotherham and Rochdale, networks of predominantly Muslim Pakistani-origin men sexually exploited vulnerable underage girls. This was done in a systematic and prolonged manner while the police and judicial authorities, apparently, turned a blind eye.

But an underlying question remains to be addressed: why persist with the indiscriminate and blatantly inaccurate designation ‘Asian’ when nearly all of these rapists were Muslim, not to mention Pakistani? What do Hindus, Sikhs, Bangladeshis, Nepalis or other Asian communities have to do with these criminal networks? Why should they bear the shame?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born former Dutch parliamentarian who suffered female genital mutilation herself, has spent decades challenging the horribly sexist, even misogynist, practices of Sharia law in Muslim-majority countries around the world. Her books Infidel, Heretic and Prey expose the dangers of refusing to examine cultural and theological assumptions.

Swedish research on rape convictions has also identified disturbing disparities associated with immigrant backgrounds. It is Muslim immigrants whose numbers are disproportionately high among perpetrators of sexual crimes. Such findings demand investigation, not ideological suppression. Although we mustn’t simplistically assume religious causation, religious and cultural differences should be investigated honestly rather than concealed beneath politically convenient labels.

The irony is that Indian-Americans, despite their conspicuous achievements, are themselves increasingly subjected to indiscriminate suspicion. Even though they are among the most law-abiding and non-violent of all immigrant communities. Racial prejudice compounds economic resentment. The evidently white-supremacist motivation behind the Aurora attack cannot be explained away as concern about jobs or immigration.

But another political calculation may be involved. Indian-Americans have traditionally leaned Democratic. Some MAGA strategists may therefore reason: why bother courting a community that won’t vote Republican anyway? Yet Indian-Americans are hardly politically homogeneous. Ramaswamy himself, and the prominence of Usha Vance, demonstrate their growing presence within Republican circles.

What, then, should Indian-Americans do?

My answer is simple: organise, participate, influence. For too long, this remarkably successful community has concentrated on education, professional advancement, entrepreneurship and family prosperity, leaving political activism to others.

That must change.

Indian-Americans need stronger civic associations, effective lobbying, greater political participation and a confident presence in public debates. Hindu Americans, particularly, must defend their religious freedoms through constitutional institutions rather than occasional expressions of outrage.

But integration also demands reciprocity.

Indian-Americans must not retreat into comfortable cultural ghettos. They must learn more about America’s history, traditions and institutions. Participate in neighbourhood organisations, school boards, voluntary associations and public life. Build friendships and alliances beyond ethnic boundaries. Above all, they mustn’t allow their identities to be defined by those who dislike them.

The United States remains one of humanity’s boldest experiments in accommodating differences within a common constitutional framework. Indian-Americans have benefited enormously from that promise and contributed handsomely to its fulfilment.

The question is not whether they can become sufficiently American to satisfy their detractors, but whether America can remain sufficiently faithful to its founding ideals to embrace them as they are. – Firstpost, 28 October 2026

› Makarand R. Paranjape, author and public intellectual, is currently Sri Aurobindo Chair, Vedere University & Director of Education, AHCP LLC.

Shooter Alexandros Paporakis and the Sri Venkateswara Swami Temple in Aurora, Illinois.

Gen-Z, revolution is the ballot, not the barricade – Yuvraj Pokharna

VOI

Gen-Z stident protest at New Delhi 2026.

Bharat at 2047 is not built on barricades. It is built in classrooms, laboratories, boardrooms, farms, and yes, in voting booths. The ‘Suvarn Kaal’ does not wait for those busy performing revolution for an audience that does not have Bharat’s interests at heart. – Yuvraj Pokharna

Let me speak directly to my Gen-Z, the Yuva of Bharat. That is the generation I write for, argue for, and refuse to give up on. You are being played! Not by the government. Not by the system, but by a well-oiled, well-funded, ideologically rehearsed ecosystem—one with a singular agenda—to manufacture a generation of permanent protesters out of a generation that was born to build.

India is growing at a pace that is forcing even the IMF to revise its numbers upward. This very quarter, the Fund was compelled to upgrade India’s growth projection from 6.5 per cent to 7 per cent. From sui to space, from UPI to ISRO, the Bharat growth story is not a government press release. It is documented, data-backed, and a globally acknowledged reality. The Indian Yuva is at the centre of that story as engineers, entrepreneurs, coders, creators, and contributors to a civilisation reclaiming its rightful place. And yet, someone wants you on the street instead.

Let us be clear about something. India has earned its revolutions. The rebellion against British colonial plunder was not anarchy; it was civilisational self-defence. The JP Andolan against Indira Gandhi’s Emergency was not disorder, it was democracy fighting back against a despotic ruler who had strangled the Constitution with her own hands. Those were different times, drastic times: times when the protest was the only constitutional tool left standing. Those times are not these times. When a democratically elected government is functioning within its full constitutional mandate, when the judiciary is not just intact but actively engaged, when elections are held on schedule, when the EVM remains the most powerful instrument of change available to every single citizen, anarchy dressed in the language of constitutionalism is not resistance. It is sabotage.

Look at the pattern. Because there is always a pattern. JNU erupts and two faces emerge for national primetime: Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid. The anti-CAA protests ignite and Sharjil Imam arrives, complete with his maps and his proposals for cutting the Northeast off from Bharat. Jamia burns and the ecosystem gifts us its heroes. And now, from the current round of mobilisation, we are being asked to accept Neha Bora—after the July rounds of protests that gave us cockroaches or so they would like to call themselves—AISA president, Rahul Gandhi’s new poster girl, and Marxist agitator as the new youth icon of India.

Rai ka pahad banana. A trimmed fingernail elevated into a certificate of martyrdom.

Here is what Bora actually said on record, in a video address to the Socialist Students’ Front conference in Bangladesh: “We know that the Gen-Z movement that we are seeing everywhere in this country first started in Bangladesh. Congratulations to you for showing us the way.” Bangladesh. A country where a student-led uprising led to over 500 deaths, forced a prime minister to flee, and plunged a neighbouring nation into chaos. That is the model being held up for your inspiration, Gen Z of Bharat.

And standing alongside her at a press conference at the Press Club of India today, senior advocate Prashant Bhushan said this – also on record: “There will definitely be a regime change. We all want a regime change.”

Not at the ballot box. Not through elections. Through the street. When Bangladeshi anarchists and Pakistani handles applaud these protests, what exactly are they celebrating? India’s democratic health? Or India’s destabilisation? The foreign connection is not a conspiracy theory. It is a documented, observable, consistent feature of every manufactured uprising this ecosystem has produced.

The government’s decision to denotify Jantar Mantar as a protest venue and redirect demonstrations to Ramlila Maidan is being spun as petrification. Let us apply basic logic here. Ramlila Maidan is the same ground where JP Narayan stood and shook a despotic government to its foundations. If the government were afraid of protest, it would not have designated one of the most historically significant protest grounds in the nation’s memory as the space for dissent.

It has not banned protest. It has maintained constitutional order. And if at any point it overstepped that mandate, the judiciary, neither absent nor captured, would have intervened. It has not needed to. Because the government has not overstepped.

My Gen-Z, let me say this with the love and the sharpness that this moment demands.

You are not the problem. You are the target.

This ecosystem needs your energy, your numbers, your social media fluency, and your genuine frustration with real issues—issues that matter and resonate with the youths—to fuel a political project that has nothing to do with your future and everything to do with its own survival.

Neha Bora did not build anything for you. Neither does she intend to. And that Yogendra Yadav, born as Salim Yadav—who declared “Sansad se nahi, sadak se faisla hoga”—is not fighting for your future. Prashant Bhushan, who wants regime change through the street and has previously spoken of revolution and bloodshed, is not your ally. They are using you. Do not be the fuel for someone else’s fire. If the government has failed you on any count—and no government is above that accountability—your weapon is the ballot. That is the most powerful instrument of peaceful, civilisational revolution ever designed. JP used the street because the ballot box had been suspended. You have not been robbed of yours. Use it.

Bharat at 2047 is not built on barricades. It is built in classrooms, laboratories, boardrooms, farms, and yes, in voting booths. The ‘Suvarn Kaal’ does not wait for those busy performing revolution for an audience that does not have Bharat’s interests at heart. You are not here to live in ‘delulu’. You are not here to merely find the ‘solulu’. You are here to become it. – News18, 20 October 2026

› Yuvraj Pokharna is a Surat-based educator, columnist, and social activist. He is the author of the book Hindutva For Gen Z.

Prashant Bhushan, Neha Bora and Abhijeet Dipke

There was never a Nazi Out-of-India theory – Koenraad Elst

VOI

Out of India Map

The objective finality of Sheldon Pollock’s thesis is to blacken the Out-of-India Theory (OIT) by associating it with Hitler’s National Socialism. Reality, however, is just the opposite: more even than other Europeans, the Nazis espoused and upheld the Aryan Invastion Theory (AIT). – Dr. Koenraad Elst

While we were working on the argumentation against the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT), an improper and utterly false argument against the presumed association of the rivaling Out-of-India Theory (OIT) with Nazi Germany was being prepared in high places. This becomes clear from a refutation of the latter in a paper published by the International Journal of Hindu Studies (no.16, 2012, p.189-252), and written by the German scholar Reinhold Grünendahl (Göttingen): “History in the making: on Sheldon Pollock’s ‘NS Indology’ and Vishwa Adluri’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’”.

The homeland debate

Ultimately, a question of ancient history, such as the location of the homeland of the Indo-European language family inside or outside of India, will not be decided by its real or putative association with political tendencies in the modern age. Thus, when Hindus are writing for the umpteenth time that the AIT stems from colonialism and racism, they may be wrong or they may be right, but at any rate they are wasting their breath. Historians know that even a theory-generated history plays out in a time when other concerns were at stake than in the present by the wrong motives may prove to be right, and even a point of view stemming from noble political positions may be wrong. We all would like to domesticate history into political usefulness for today, but have to acknowledge that it doesn’t work that way.

All the same, the AIT school do occasionally try to blacken the Hindu nationalist movement’s newfound enthusiasm for the OIT with a wrong political association, viz. by fitting it into their well-established narrative that somehow this is a “fascist” movement. Thus, in a newspaper column, Robert Zydenbos (“An obscurantist argument”, Indian Express, 12-12-1993) tried to associate Navaratna Rajaram’s arguments for the OIT with Adolf Hitler’s National Socialism. More crassly, Yoginder Sikand (“Exploding the Aryan myth”, Observer of Business and Politics, 30-10-1993) likewise tried to link the OIT with Nazi Germany, playing on their common concern for (but diametrically opposite interpretation of) the term Arya.

Of course, nobody who follows the debate, closely or even from afar, can be taken in by this. Very obviously, the Nazis themselves never believed in the OIT but were more ardent than most in espousing the AIT. Practically all Westerners at the time, and many Indians as well (including the Hindu nationalist leader of the Congress party, Balagangadhara Tilak, and the ideologue of the Hindutva movement, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar), took the AIT for granted. The Nazis had an extra reason for putting their faith in it, viz. that the AIT served as the perfect illustration to the Nazi worldview. The Aryan immigrants had demonstrated their superiority, they had sought to protect it by instituting a colour-based (to the Nazis: race-based) caste system, and they had lost part of their European quality by succumbing to race-mixing nonetheless. So, if anyone should be likened to Hitler, it is the AIT advocates themselves, including Zydenbos and Sikand. The OIT school rarely misses a chance to highlight this political identification of the AIT: with British imperialism as well as with European racism epitomized by the Nazis.

We may assume that Zydenbos was a newcomer to this debate, that he objected to the OIT in good faith and that he hadn’t informed himself of the Nazi view on the homeland question. But two decades down the line, the AIT belief has definitely lost its innocence. And already back then, a specialist like Columbia professor Sheldon Pollock published a paper titled: “Deep Orientalism? Notes on Sanskrit and power beyond the Raj” (in Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, eds.: Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, UPenn Press, 1993, p.76-133), which includes a chapter titled “Ex Oriente Nox: Indology in the Total State” (p.86-96). He and his acolytes have since kept on elaborating this thesis, viz. that Germany invested much in Indology and used it in its project of self-definition as “Aryans” contrasting with the “Semites”. A recent example of this polemic is Vishwa Adluri’s paper in Pollock’s defence, “Pride and Prejudice: Orientalism and German Indology” (International Journal of Hindu Studies, no. 15, 2011, p.253-294).

While we, both in the OIT and AIT camp, were concentrating on the scientific evidence pertaining to the homeland and to the direction of the Indo-European expansion, someone somewhere was working on a large-scale and truly daring attempt to finally link the OIT to the National Socialist regime. Nonetheless, a Hindu industrialist recently donated Pollock a fabulous sum of money for his work on Sanskrit literature, trusting him more with this heritage than other Indologists including the native scholars, both traditional and university-trained, who are far better at home in Sanskrit and financially far cheaper than an American academic. So, this highly reputed Sanskrit specialist sharpened his long-standing hatred of the Hindu nationalist movement into a paper alleging that Indology in general and the OIT in particular was much beloved of the Nazi establishment.

Edward Said

In this paper, Pollock at first seeks to supplement Edward Said’s unjustly famous thesis Orientalism (1978) with the German chapter which Said purposely left out. If truthful, such a chapter would have refuted Said’s whole theory, viz. that “Orientalism” was nothing but the intellectual chapter of the political-economic colonial entreprise. The mainstay of “Orientalist” scholarship was Central Europe, then thoroughly German-speaking at least at the intellectual level. Prussia only had colonies at a late date and far from the lands that interested the Orientalists, while the other countries involved, including the Austro-Hungarian empire, had no colonies at all. In the colonial countries too, many Orientalists were by no means part of the colonial entreprise (pace Said’s conspiracy theory), but in the German-speaking world, there was not even a colonial entreprise to integrate the Orientalist endeavour in; yet Orientalism flourished there like nowhere else. Moreover, Orientalism took wing when the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s Oriental neighbor, the Ottoman Empire, was by no means a colony but a threat and an equal trading-partner.

Indeed, even in its better-developed “British” part, Said’s theory was deeply flawed from the beginning, and the numerous errors of detail as well as the general error of his theory have ably been pointed out by Robert Irwin (For Lust of Knowing: the Orientalists and Their Enemies, Allan Lane, London, 2006) and Ibn Warraq (Defending the West. A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism, Prometheus, Amherst, NY, 2007). A comprehensive work on German-language Oriental scholarship has been produced by Suzanne Marchand (German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race and Scholarship, German Historical Institute, Washington DC and Cambridge University Press, 2009). With the benefit of hindsight, we can now pass judgment on Said’s influential publication which has seriously damaged the fair name of the academic discipline called “Orientalism”.

Academics who still rely on Said’s thesis, actually rely on a profoundly mistaken and highly politicized piece of scholarship. His thesis is a thin attempt at justification for anti-Westernism. Much as this is in vogue among Hindus, they are only making fools of themselves by espousing Said’s conspiracy theory. For everyone, it is academically weak and factually full of mistakes, but for Muslims at least, they would be supporting their own man. They would be cheering for a Dhimmi, someone upholding Islamic causes, in that as well as in other books. In supporting Said, Pollock is true to his own camp, i.e. the anti-Hindu coalition. But for Hindus, there is nothing in it, they are cheering for someone serving a declared enemy.

What Nazi rule really meant for Orientalism

Grünendahl cites many examples where Pollock and his defender Adluri manipulate quotations to make past authors witnesses for their accusations. I vaguely knew that Pollock was wrong in associating the OIT with National Socialism, but not that he was so spectacularly wrong. His thesis is first of all that India was a central concern for the Nazis. This is put forward most emphatically (but only with bluff) by Pollock and, on his authority, generally taken for granted. Adluri elaborates that Germany was very worried about building its “identity” as contrasting with the Semitic heritage and the Semitic people in their midst, and used India for that purpose.

But Grünendahl shows from old and neutral sources that the Indology departments received no special attention, that they were small compared to Ancient Near-Eastern Studies, Sinology etc., and that the Nazi period showed no special interest in Orientalism in general or Indology in particular. If anything, they suffered in their orientation on India from the reigning emphasis on “Indo-Germanic studies”.

Marchand notes that the number of German Oriental scholars as a whole fell from 360 in 1931 to 180 in 1940. [2009:488] What connection she cites between Indology and the Nazis [2009:499] is wholly based on Pollock, who estimates that one-third of the (only!) ca. twenty-five Indology professors in the Third Reich were active in the National Socialist party or in the SS. This is the only time she cites him in her 526-page book. (She also naïvely gives credence to other anti-Hindu scholars such as Reza Pirbhai, p.311.) According to her: “Worst of all among the Indologist collaborators was Walter Wüst, the Vedic specialist at the University of Munich who became the director of the SS Ahnenerbe.” [p.499] But Wüst is not known to have championed the OIT, on the contrary. The Nazi regime’s favourite historian H.K.F. Günther believed the homeland lay in Southeastern Europe. This was the reigning opinion in Europe, challenged only by some Nazis who insisted on Germany or Scandinavia as the homeland. All of them agreed that the Indo-European language family had only reached India through an Aryan invasion.

Let us add that Marchand agrees to include among the Nazi Indologists Paul Thieme, the revered teacher of Michael Witzel; and he was, like his more militant pupil, a believer in the AIT. According to Marchand, one of the Nazi concerns in Oriental scholarship was “the refutation of the Jewish origins of monotheism” (p.489) namely in Mazdeism. The picture of religion in National Socialism was complex and diverse, but belief in the superiority of monotheism was unchallenged. Like racism, it was then part of the general consensus.

She also notes that: “Among the Islamicists, there were also numerous collaborators (…) things looked rather promising for this bunch in the period 1936-39” when the Nazi leaders Joseph Goebbels and Baldur von Schirach toured the Middle East, and the Islamologists were used to liaise with Muslim leaders like the Jerusalem Mufti, so that they “successfully disseminated Nazi ideas throughout the Middle East”. [2009:490] Wouldn’t that be a good topic for Orientalist scholars: Islamic-Nazi similarities as the reason for Nazi-Muslim friendships?

The Nazi concern for “Aryans” speaking “Indo-Germanic” (innocently so named after its two extremes: Indo-Aryan in Bengal and Germanic in Iceland) or Indo-European, now and originally conceived as a language family but then also conceived as a racial unit, couldn’t seriously be bothered with India. Their main concern was with the North, so Grünendahl argues:

“The fundamental flaw of Pollock’s narrative is that it hinges entirely on the exact reverse of the ‘Nordic’ notion. This reversal, which provides the basis for the ‘founding myth’ of the entire discourse machinery he set in motion, is enshrined in the grotesque proposition that ‘the Germans … continued, however subliminally, to hold the nineteenth-century conviction that the origin of European civilization was to be found in India (or at least that India constituted a genetically related sibling)’ (1993:77) Even to the Romantic period [end of 18th, early 19th century, when this notion was upheld by Johann Herder], this assertion only holds with considerable qualifications. (…) To make it the basis for theorizing any aspect of the NS period is rendered absurd by the above-mentioned texts alone”. [p.199]

Hitler on the Hindus

Reference is to texts revealing Hitler’s position on the Hindus. In 1920 already, he laid his cards on the table, and would never waver from this position, not in Mein Kampf, which disparages Hindus as also German neo-Pagans, not in his speeches nor in his wartime table talks. There he had evolved to mocking religion in general and his native Catholicism specifically, though he appreciated its organization and mass psychology and its anti-caste way of recruiting its priests from the people rather than from a separate priestly caste (yes, Hitler was also a comrade-at-arms of Pollock in their common anti-Brahminism). He only knew of the Hindus through the lens of the AIT:

“While Hitler does refer to ‘the Hindus’, he does so not with the intent to employ them as distant relatives in the ‘creation of Indo-German as counteridentity’ (Pollock 1993:83), but merely as an illustration of ‘racial decline’ (Rassensenkung) due to the destruction of ‘national purity’ (nationale Reinheit.)” (p.218, with reference to Adolf Hitler 1980 (1920): “Warum sind wir Antisemiten?” in Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn, eds: Hitlers sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, 1905-1924, p.184-204: specifically p.195-196)

So, Hitler’s rare utterance on the Hindus was a racial interpretation of the AIT. These are his own words (1980/1920:195): “Wir wissen, dass die Hindu in Indien ein Volk sind, gemischt aus den hochstehenden arischen Einwanderern und der dunkelschwarzen Urbevölkerung, und dass dieses Volk heute die folgen trägt; denn es ist auch das Sklavenvolk einer Rasse, die uns in vielen Punkten nahezu als zweite Judenheit erscheinen darf.” (“We know that the Hindus in India are a people mixed from the lofty Aryan immigrants and the dark black aboriginal population, and that this people is bearing the consequences today; for it is also the slave people of a race that almost seems like a second Jewry.”)

For Grünendahl, this is merely an example of how the primary sources of German history contradict the free-for-all that amateur historians make of it, in this case the manipulated narrative by Sheldon Pollock. He sounds like defending Germany’s true history against American (and then, by imitation, Indian) distortions. Probably he doesn’t realize that this distortion, about the presumed Nazi love for the OIT, constitutes Pollock’s ultimate motive. We don’t want to pretend to read inside a man’s skull, so we will not speak out on his intimate motives. But the objective finality of his thesis is at any rate to blacken the OIT by associating it with National-Socialism. Reality, however, is just the opposite: more even than other Europeans, the Nazis espoused and upheld the AIT. Hitler-Pollock, same struggle! – Swarajya Magazine, 9 December 2012

› Dr. Koenraad Elst is a Belgium Orientalist and Voice of India author who often visits India to lecture.

See also

India (Meluhha) trade by sea with Mesopotamia ca. 2500 BCE.

Durga we worship, women we doubt – Tejusvi Shukla

VOI

Durga

Dharma is not set once and preserved in amber; it is re-established in every age. Civilisations endure by shedding what has worn out so that what is eternal may continue. Even the Constitution of India, barely 76 years old, has been amended over a hundred times because the society it serves is alive. Continuity depends on change. – Tejusvi Shukla

Navratri brings nine nights of a civilisation remembering who it believes holds up the universe. Each night unveils another face of Shakti, and the journey ends on Vijayadashami, or Bijoya, when Durga stands over the slain Mahishasura. She is not the rescued but the rescuer.

There is something extraordinary about a culture whose very word for power, shakti, is feminine. That inheritance is also a mirror. A society that bows before the Devi for nine nights sometimes returns, on the tenth morning, to imagining her daughters as fragile, and calls that culture. Bijoya leaves us one question: what do we keep of her once the pandals come down? The answer is not to worship less but to let worship mean what it says.

The Goddess who speaks for herself

The idea is ancient. In the Devi Suktam (RV 10.125), the rishika Vak Ambhrini does not pray to the Goddess. She speaks as her:

Aham rashtri sangamani vasunam chikitushee prathama yajniyanam.

I am the rashtri, the sovereign of the universe, the knower of Ultimate Reality.

This is not a goddess waiting to be defended. She is sovereignty, knowledge and righteous force, declared in a woman’s own voice. The same tradition gave us Gargi, who questioned Yajnavalkya, and Maitreyi, who chose knowledge over wealth.

What the shastras also said

The Dharmashastras are often held responsible for the distance between the Goddess and the woman, though the record is richer than that. The Manusmriti carries the much-quoted

Na stree swatantryam arhati (9.3). Yet the same text declares: Yatra naryastu pujyante ramante tatra devatah (3.56).

Where women are honoured, the gods rejoice; where they are not, every rite is fruitless.

Kautilya’s Arthashastra, in its chapter on the superintendent of yarn (2.23), fines any officer who looks upon a woman worker’s face or speaks of anything but the work, in a workshop where the lamp is kept only as bright as the yarn requires. The burden of propriety fell on the official, not the woman. The text secured the space; it did not confine her.

How the two voices came to part

If both voices belong to one tradition, how did they come to part? The divergence between the exalted status of the feminine in sacred thought and the lived position of women was neither instantaneous nor uniform. It grew through the interaction of normative texts, customary practice, social institutions and changing material conditions. The authority of Vak Ambhrini, Gargi and Maitreyi coexisted with later juridical formulations that increasingly located women within the structures of the family, and even within the Dharmashastra tradition the record cannot be reduced to a single position.

Every text carries the worldview of the world that wrote it. The hymns belong to an age that made room for women as seers. The legal literature that followed was composed as settled households, inherited property and lineage became society’s central concerns, and its authors, writing as men of their time, spoke of women chiefly in relation to the family. Even the verse on independence is framed as guardianship, with father, husband and son each keeping watch in turn. It reads less as a verdict on a woman’s worth than as the assumption of a household-centred world. Over centuries, custom repeated those assumptions until they felt like scripture.

What changed, then, was not the disappearance of the feminine principle from our religious imagination, but its uneven translation into social practice. Shakti remained divine, sovereign and unconstrained in the sacred sphere, while the autonomy of women in the social sphere became progressively mediated by custom, family structures and patriarchal readings of tradition. Neither the reverence nor the reflex is foreign to us. Both are ours.

A civilisation that is alive

Which one we carry forward is a question the tradition itself prepared us to answer, for it never claimed to be fixed. The very Manusmriti that records the household’s rules also observes that dharma differs from age to age:

Anye kritayuge dharmas tretayam dwapare apare; anye kaliyuge nrinam yuga-hrasanurupatah (1.85).

Sri Krishna gives that understanding its grammar: Dharma-samsthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge (Bhagavad Gita 4.8).

Dharma is not set once and preserved in amber; it is re-established in every age. Civilisations endure by shedding what has worn out so that what is eternal may continue. Even the Constitution of India, barely 76 years old, has been amended over a hundred times because the society it serves is alive. Continuity depends on change.

To read the old texts as living thought is therefore not to defy them but to follow them. Their authors answered the questions of their age; ours is to answer our own. Restricting a daughter’s movement instead of making the street safe for her, or questioning a woman’s clothes rather than an offender’s conduct, is not preservation. It is a quiet disservice to a civilisation whose own statecraft fined an officer for a lamp that burned too bright. The Saraswati we invoke before examinations holds the book and the veena in her own hands; her daughters can hold their ambitions the same way.

The victory we celebrate

The Devi Mahatmya tells how the gods, unable to defeat Mahishasura, pooled their radiance into one feminine form and placed their weapons in her hands. She did not need their protection. She needed only their trust, and she won. Its best-loved hymn salutes her in every being:

Ya Devi Sarvabhuteshu Shakti-rupena Samsthita.

In every being, not only on the altar.

The hymn to the sovereign Devi was voiced by a woman. The rules of the household were written by men of their age. What is written next belongs to us, for every generation of this civilisation is handed the same pen. The Devi has already answered what a woman is. The question that remains is ours: when a daughter stands at the door with a book in one hand and a dream in the other, which of our two voices will she hear?

Shubho Bijoya! – The Pioneer, 20 October 2026

› Tejusvi Shukla is the Assistant Director (Research) at Bharat Ki Soch. Her focus of research is internal security, left-wing extremism, medical diplomacy, and the weaponization of social media. 

Women apply vermilion on each other's face during 'Sindoor Khel' on Vijayadashmi the tenth day of Durga Puja in Lucknow.

Even the creator-god is Durga’s creation – Aravindan Neelakandan

VOI

Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Indra and other devas pray to Durga.

For the Hindu, evolution being the work of a blind watchmaker creates no problem. The creator-god is not the supreme power. He is not infallible. He is but a form of the Mother Goddess. – Aravindan Neelakandan

Unlike Christendom, Hindu intelligentsia did not have a problem with the idea of evolution. Evolution came to India within a few decades of 1859. In 1879, the Krishna Samhita of Kedarnath Datta Bhaktivinoda was published. He was the grand guru of Abhay Charanaravinda Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada Swami, the founder of ISKCON. Particularly interesting is the way Bhakitivinoda Swami treats the Dashavatara concept in his book:

Here the Samhita describes how each incarnation of God successively assumes a physical form to match the evolutionary development of the embodied soul (jivatma) from its most primitive invertebrate state to its highest vertebrate and intelligent state. Not only do these passages suggest the evolutionary theories of Darwin, they also reflect the view that the passage of time is synonymous with progress. – Shukavak N. Das, ‘Bhaktivinoda and Scriptural Literalis’ in the Hare Krishna Movement: The Postcharismatic Fate of a Religious Transplant, 2004.

Whether such a progressive evolution is consistent with Darwinian evolution is another question. But that the Hindu scholarship of that time could approach religion with what Vinoda Swami himself called Adunika Vada or modern approach is what is important.

Again, two important savants of Hindu dharma in modern context, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo had no problem with evolution. In fact, Sri Aurobindo could sing it in his Savitri.

Hindu puranas speak of the humbling of both Brahma the creator-god and Indra the celestial sky-god. In Skanda Purana, we see Skanda-Muruga humbling the creator-god because he did not know the meaning of Aum through which alone, he creates. In Bhagavata again, we see that Brahma is humbled by Sri Krishna—who emanates the entire population of cowherds, when Brahma hides them. Again, Indra is also humbled when he becomes jealous and seeks to get revenge for the cowherds worshipping the Govardhan mountain.

Knocking down of Brahma, humbling of Indra—the conceited creator-god and the jealous sky-god is known to every child of Hinduism. As Swami Vivekananda says, it is manifestation not creation—and a Hindu child knows this truth. So, when science speaks of the random mutation and natural selection ushering in the infinite variety of life, the Hindu child can say with Darwin, “there is grandeur in this view of life.…”

Sri Aurobindo in his commentary on the Kena Upanishad explains:

Uma is the supreme Nature from whom the whole cosmic action takes its birth; She is the pure summit and highest power of the One who here shines out in many forms. From this supreme Nature which is also the supreme consciousness the gods must learn their own truth; they must proceed by reflecting it in themselves instead of limiting themselves to their own lower movement.

The gods, devas, are hence just movements in the infinite consciousness that is She.

In fact, the names from 256 to 262 in the Sri Lalita Sahasranama speak of Her as doing the five functional archetypes of creation, sustenance, dissolution, veiling and liberation as the five gods themselves—Brahma, Vishnu, Rudra, Ishwara and Sadashiva (Names: 264 to 273).

So, for the Hindu, evolution being the work of a blind watchmaker creates no problem. The creator-god is not the supreme power. He is not infallible. He is but a form of Her.

In the nascent stages of Christianity, particularly during its Gnostic phase, the same insight into the Divine Feminine was present there too.

In Gnostic tradition, the creator of the material universe was not the ultimate god but a deity by name Yaltaboath who was actually a creation of the Wisdom Mother Goddess, Sophia. However, having forgotten Sophia, Yaltaboath, who thinks he had out of his own power created humanity in his image, declares that he is the jealous god and that there is no other god besides him. Through a heavenly voice, Sophia reminded him who he really was and called him Samuel—the blind god. Gnostic Christianity even tried to structure a mytho-theological universe with a break from the literalist textual traditions—the creator-god and a higher God whose wisdom was Sophia.

Unfortunately, Sophia went into exile as Christianity became more institutionalised. Had Christianity not been a separate religion but a mere sect of Judaism—incorporating the mythology of Sophia as its theological basis—one wonders how the Western common religious mind would have responded to the science of evolution.

The Goddess tradition in India is such that it makes us like a child look up to the Devi as the Mother Universe and then approach material science with the same awe and veneration. – Swarajya, 12 October 2021

› Aravindan Neelakandan is an author, psychology and economics major, and contributing editor at Swarajya.

Yahweh / Jehovah

Ma Durga is the innermost power of consciousness – David Frawley

VOI

Sri Durga Devi

Ma Durga is not a mere formation of human thought, an image or archetype of our minds or culture. She is Adi Shakti, the inmost power of consciousness, ever taking shape within and around us as the creative and transformative force that is the essence of the cosmic life. – Dr. David Frawley

Ma Durga is one of the oldest, most powerful and widely worshipped of the great Hindu mother goddesses, claiming the very name of Jagadamba, the “Mother of the Universe”.

Ma Durga arises from Agni, the Vedic deity of fire and light as a protective force, as is mentioned in the ancient Vedic Durga Sukta. All the devatas arise through Agni, the flame of immortal consciousness within us that brings our spiritual potentials into manifestation.

Durga literally refers to difficulty. She takes us across all difficulties like a ship across the sea, the great Vedic metaphor for going beyond all the sorrow of our samsaric or worldly existence. Durga Devi delivers us from darkness to light, from non-being to being, from death to immortality.

Durga as Agni, the Vedic deity of speech, is the power of the divine word, the mantric vibration of cosmic intelligence that is our inner guide and guru. Agni is invoked as the first of the divine powers that manifest the divine light within us. Unless we have awakened that divine flame, will and awareness, our spiritual practices may not take us beyond the illusions of our own minds.

Skanda Mata

Agni is the divine child, Kumara, who holds the potential of immortality. Durga is his cosmic mother. She gives birth to and nurtures the Agni within us by directing the movement of our lives. Agni becomes Skanda or Murugan, the son of Shiva and Parvati who has the nature of fire and destroys all negativity. Skanda is Durga’s son as Skanda Mata, one of the nine forms of Durga worshipped over Navratri.

Tara

This saving power of Ma Durga is also called Tara, who similarly takes us across all difficulties like a ship across the sea. In this regard, Durga represents divine compassion that we need to help us go beyond our karmic limitations and attachments.

Aditi

Ma Durga is Aditi, the great Vedic mother goddess from whom the solar godheads or Adityas arise, who is invoked as a ship to take us to well-being or swasti. Aditi is the unbounded, a-diti, or the infinite. She represents the cosmic space that is the womb and matrix of all existence, yet she is also Mother Earth, who upholds the ground of our own being.

Taking us beyond ignorance and death 

Yet the most important action of Ma Durga is to take us beyond death, the greatest of all calamities and its related factors of time and karma. It is not our mere physical death that she saves us from but the spiritual death that is the ignorance of our true nature.

To accomplish this extraordinary task Durga assumes her multi-armed martial form and wields her many weapons, extending to Lord Shiva’s trishula, to destroy all the powers of darkness from our minds and hearts like so many intractable demons.

Ma Durga removes the evil forces that plague us, the forces of duality, division, conflict, and egoism that our mortal world abounds in. Yet the saving grace of Durga will not shield our own ignorance or arrogance that she will purify with her fiery force and burn away from the core of our being. She also protects the earth and its creatures, for which humanity is becoming a great oppressor. We must honour her power and her rule over the entire universe. She does not function for our personal benefit or to fulfil our desires.

Ma Durga is not a mere formation of human thought, an image or archetype of our minds or culture. She is Adi Shakti, the inmost power of consciousness, ever taking shape within and around us as the creative and transformative force that is the essence of the cosmic life.

It is the greatness of India that Ma Durga represents its inner reality and guiding spiritual force. This same Durga becomes the Yoga Shakti that arises like a flame within the mind, expanding and uplifting our awareness to the universal Self.

May that supreme Durga Shakti arise within all! May we have the receptivity to allow it to both purify our faults and energise our highest aspirations! Jai Ma Durga! – Daily-O, 20 September 2017

› Dr. David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri) is the director of the American Institute of Vedic Studies and the author of more than 30 books on Yoga and Vedic traditions. 

Ghatasthapana Puja

What DNA reveals about 65,000 years of Indian ancestry – Meghna N.

VOI

Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj

What can our DNA tell us about where Indians came from? How far back can scientists trace human migration? And can artificial intelligence help decode the genetic history of one of the world’s most diverse populations?

For Dr. Kumarasamy Thangaraj, a geneticist at the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CSIR-CCMB), Hyderabad, these questions have shaped more than three decades of scientific research. A CSIR Bhatnagar Fellow, Dr. Thangaraj has worked extensively on population genetics and human evolution. His research has helped trace the ancestry and migration of Indian populations, including studies of the Andaman tribal populations that provided evidence for an early modern human migration out of Africa through a southern coastal route about 65,000 years ago.

In an interview with The New Indian Express, Dr. Thangaraj discusses India’s genetic ancestry, the Andaman populations, the limits and possibilities of DNA evidence, the health implications of endogamy, and how AI could help scientists analyse the country’s vast genomic diversity. – Meghna Nath

Q : You come from a village in Tamil Nadu. What sparked your interest in biology and genetics first?

A : I was born and brought up in Cheyyur, a village in Tamil Nadu located between Chennai and Puducherry. I completed all my schooling in the village before moving to Chennai for my undergraduate studies and later pursuing higher education, including my PhD. Having spent my early years in a village, I had the opportunity to spend a great deal of time around plants, animals, and diverse ecosystems. This naturally sparked my interest in the life sciences, particularly genetics.

Growing up in a village, I often heard people say that a child has a nose like their mother’s or hair like their father’s. They may not have known the science of genetics, but they understood, through everyday observation, that certain characteristics are passed from parents to their children. The same principle can be seen in plants. When a plant produces a better yield, farmers often preserve its seeds and use them for the next season. These simple, everyday practices are all examples of how genetic characteristics are transmitted from one generation to the next.

Q : What were some of the major milestones in your scientific career, and what led you to focus on the genetic history of Indian populations?

A : My lab has been working on human evolution and medical genetics for more than three decades. One of our major areas of work was studying the enigmatic tribal populations of Andaman and Nicobar islands. There are four tribal groups in the Andaman Islands, including the Great Andamanese, Onge, Jarawa and Sentinelese. The Sentinelese continue to live in isolation, so researchers cannot approach them. We had the opportunity to collect samples from three Andaman populations. When we analysed their mitochondrial DNA and other genetic markers, we found evidence that these tribal populations migrated from Africa and reached the Andaman and Nicobar Islands around 65,000 years ago through a southern coastal route. Some groups remained in South Asia, while others continued towards Australia.

Q : What does genetic evidence tell us about when and how modern humans reached the Indian subcontinent after leaving Africa?

A : The evidence indicates that modern humans reached this region around 65,000 years ago. Some groups settled in southern parts of the Indian subcontinent, some moved towards the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and others eventually migrated towards Australia. There are genetic affinities between some present-day populations in South India, the Andaman region and Aboriginal Australians, suggesting connections with these very early migrations.

Q : How can the DNA of people living today act as a record of migrations that happened thousands of years ago?

A : Mutations occur naturally in DNA, and some of these changes can accumulate over generations. When a genetic change is inherited and persists in a population, it can be passed from one generation to the next. By studying these genetic variations and comparing them across different populations and with ancient DNA, we can infer genetic relationships and reconstruct aspects of population history.

For example, if we sequence an ancient DNA sample that is 50,000 years old and compare it with genomes from contemporary populations, we can identify genetic changes that have accumulated over the intervening 50,000 years. By examining these genetic differences and shared patterns of variation, we can gain insights into the relationships among populations, as well as their evolutionary history and migration patterns.

Q : Your research has reshaped our understanding of the ancestry of present-day Indians. What were some of the most significant findings?

A : There are several important findings. One is that genetic evidence indicates that the earliest modern human populations in the region were connected to out-of-Africa migrations. Our research also challenged the idea of an Aryan invasion in which a population from outside India arrived and displaced or pushed existing populations towards the south. Genetic evidence does not support that simplistic model. Another important finding is that present-day Indians have evolved from two ancient ancestries—Ancestral South Indian (ASI) and Ancestral North Indian (ANI)—and these two ancestries admixed around 2,000–4,000 years ago. Today, populations across India share genetic ancestry from both ASI and ANI, irrespective of caste or tribal identity. This also illustrates the idea of “unity in diversity” from a genetic perspective. There is also an important medical dimension. For roughly the last 2,000 years, many Indian populations have practised endogamy—marriage within the group. Because of this, certain mutations can become more frequent within particular populations, and some of these may be responsible for population-specific diseases.

Q : India has extraordinary genetic diversity. How much of this diversity reflects ancient migration, later population mixing and isolation?

A : Population-specific marriage practices have existed for a very long time. The caste system, as we understand it today, developed later, but endogamy existed before the present-day caste identities emerged. Communities may have different names and identities today, but these identities do not necessarily represent separate ancient populations. Genetic studies show that different Indian populations have shared ancestry and have experienced admixture at different points in history. Therefore, genetics should not be used to assume that present-day caste or community identities correspond directly to distinct ancient biological populations.

Q : AI is increasingly being used to analyse large genomic datasets. Could it help identify migration patterns or ancestral relationships that conventional methods may have missed?

A : Geneticists have been using various statistical tools to analyse genetic data. What we now call artificial intelligence provides opportunities to analyse large datasets much more efficiently and quickly. However, AI itself does not provide the final scientific conclusion. Scientists have to interpret the results and draw conclusions.

Q : What are the risks of AI producing misleading conclusions from genetic data?

A : There are risks. If something goes wrong during analysis, AI or any computational method can produce incorrect information. That is why we don’t rely on a single method. We use multiple methods or approaches. If two or three independent methods produce consistent results, we have greater confidence in the finding. If one method produces a different result, that needs to be investigated. Ultimately, scientists have to validate and interpret the results.

Q : What are the biggest unanswered questions about Indian genetic history that new genomics technologies and AI could help address?

A : India is inhabited by 4,635 populations. Since these populations have been practising endogamy for 2,000 years, each population is expected to acquire population-specific mutations. Some of these may be associated with genetic diseases, some with responses to commonly used drugs, some with adaptation to the environment, and some may provide resistance or susceptibility to infectious diseases. We have now sequenced the whole genomes of 10,000 individuals from 83 populations and identified 130 million variations. This means that we need to sequence every single population to understand their health and design precision medicine. Therefore, we need to generate genetic data from every single population. Once we generate sufficiently large datasets, AI and other computational tools can be used to analyse them and identify patterns that may otherwise take a very long time to detect. AI alone cannot generate the data; it can only help us analyse the data.

Q : After decades of studying India’s genetic history, what is the one thing you want the public to understand about where Indians came from—and what our DNA can and cannot tell us about our ancestry?

A : One thing is very clear from our studies: we all descended from early humans who migrated out of Africa. Present-day populations have mixed genetic ancestry. Genetically, we are all connected, supporting the idea of unity in diversity. Genetic testing can help identify disease-causing mutations in appropriate situations. Once a mutation is identified, there can be opportunities for counselling and preventive measures to reduce the risk of passing certain genetic conditions to the next generation. – The New Indian Express, 30 September 2026

› Meghna Nath is a Chennai journalist specializing in education, transport, civic issues and human-interest stories.

Human migration out of Africa.