Ashish آشیش ਆਸ਼ੀਸ਼ आशीष

Out-of-step English Teacher. Interested in intellectual history of modern India.

[Ashish آشیش ਆਸ਼ੀਸ਼ आशीष @AshishAlexander]

Thinking to develop this as a #Thread about #Missionary and #Christian contribution to the development of #ModernIndianLanguages #IndianLanguage

[Ashish آشیش ਆਸ਼ੀਸ਼ आशीष @AshishAlexander]

@RichardFoxYoung @christianenan1 @BharatDharma @hariya108 @SevakMasih @rakesh_pandra @K86761204 @YogiBabaPrem @iArvindKushwaha @pradeepraturig @ConversionOK Most #IndianLanguages owe their current state of advancement to the work of #Christian #missionaries—#linguists, #lexicographers and #Bible #translators.

From #JohnNewton and #LeviJanvier in #Punjab to #HermannGundert in #Kerala it’s missionaries all the way!

[𝖢𝖺𝗍𝖺𝗅𝖾𝗒𝖺 @catale7a]

If British hadn't colonized us, we would have been most likely living under some form of Brahmanical rule of law, a Parashar Smriti, a Manusmriti or some other crap, even today.

[Chandra Bhan Prasad @chandrabprasad_]

British united India and Ruled; Civilized to the extent possible...

[nigel biggar @NigelBiggar]

Without a doubt @philpaintsmost @ivor_bacon . The original Tata had his sons educated at Cambridge in the 1890s.

[Ashish آشیش ਆਸ਼ੀਸ਼ आशीष @AshishAlexander]

@robert_lyman @MrMaitra “British and American historical academies are loath to touch the subject, as that would force them to concede the British Empire’s role as a progressive and liberalising force: a modern Anglo-intellectual taboo.”

A fine piece, indeed.

[Robert Lyman 🇺🇦 @robert_lyman]

Clearly, for modern post-colonial sensibilities, its better to glorify the the Mahratta savage (at least he was an Indian) over the British savage (who clearly wasn't).
@MrMaitra

The death of Bengali liberalism https://t.co/tU3pdvAkAJ

[Vishal Arora @vishalarora_in]

People who see it as celebrity worship misunderstand the role Tamil cinema has long played in the state’s political culture.

[nigel biggar @NigelBiggar]

The reason that ‘decolonisation’, ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ have gained such traction in our institutions is that they contain perfectly reasonable, liberal ideas. After all, who could decently object to former subjects of European colonial rule recovering a due sense of cultural self-respect? Who could reasonably deny that a measure of cultural diversity can be enriching? And who could possibly champion exclusion?

The problem is, however, that under cover of these reasonable, liberal ideas a radically anti-Western worldview has been smuggled in—namely, the idea that the legacy of Britain’s history and Canada’s colonial past is nothing but a litany of racism, oppression, dispossession, and exploitation. Historically, that is nonsense and those who propagate it are either ignorant or lying. But it isn’t just nonsense; it’s poisonous nonsense, eating away at Canadian national identity and unity. For the sake of all Canadians, it needs to be called out.

Read why Canada’s core is European at the Biggar Picture: https://t.co/Gbm5LVcmEI

[The Tribune @thetribunechd]

Our songs and hymns preserve the deep magic of human and divine union, writes Ashish Alexander @AshishAlexander for The Tribune @thetribunechd #SpectrumTheTribune #Reflections #Universe
https://t.co/iTpW4qnLo6

[nigel biggar @NigelBiggar]

Britain today is not, in fact, a systemically racist country. According to the World Values Survey 2023, it is among the least racist on earth.

Yet narratives of colonial guilt and present racism remain precious to the “progressive” left. Why? Because they are politically useful. They furnish a moral drama of victims and oppressors, and a licence to shout down dissent.

That is why so many crusaders are unmoved by counter-evidence. Their politics is not really about raising up the downtrodden. It is about puffing up the crusader.

Read my thoughts at The Biggar Picture: https://t.co/H4oeYsyajO

[Robert Lyman 🇺🇦 @robert_lyman]

Fascinating to read this, as an expression of what some people believe. And yet none of this is true. What is described here is a straw man that exists only in the minds of crab-like activists who have no interest in objective historical truth.

[Vishal Arora @vishalarora_in]

https://t.co/UOzWGoToMv

[Vishal Arora @vishalarora_in]

AAP’s toxic workplace may be a reason for Raghav Chadha to leave the party, but it does not by itself explain joining the BJP, the ideological formation he spent 15 years opposing.

[Robert Lyman 🇺🇦 @robert_lyman]

Jesus was a Jew, and yet is the bedrock and anchor of the Christian faith, Britain’s established religion.

Hallelujah!

St George wasn’t born in this green and pleasant land, but is nevertheless the patron saint of England.

Why? Because George was a Christian, the New Testament expression of Judaism. Christianity - culturally - had and has no geographical and tribal boundaries or affiliations. It was uniquely powerful precisely because it turned conventional power-based pieties on their head (see @holland_tom Dominion to understand this)

Being English was long considered not an issue of geography but of the embodiment of Christian virtue, something our medieval forefathers considered critical in teaching us who we were and what we aspired to be as a Christian nation. They didn’t blink when appointing a Roman convert to Christianity as our patron saint. The warrior saint, protecting the weak, poor and fatherless from the depredations of the evil-doer, has thus for centuries been seen as a perfect depiction of what the English stand for, or should do, and strive for, or should do.

If we can’t have St George as our patron saint simply because he was born in modern day Turkey, we fail to understand what the ideal of St George represents. And if this is so, why can we have Christ, a Jew born in the Roman province of Judea, as the source of our faith?

That we don’t understand these issues, and treat them as an issue of geography or political tribalism, speaks of our own religious, cultural and political reductionism and the cultural, political and religious poverty of our age.

I, for one, am happy to live under the flag of this ideal, abjectly flawed though we might be, of piety, chivalry and bravery. It seems perfectly attuned to the particular challenges of our modern age.

[nigel biggar @NigelBiggar]

Pope Leo calls on all who have weapons to lay them down. But Jesus never once told a Roman centurion to abandon his profession. On the contrary, he commended them for their faith.

The Church has wrestled with war and political responsibility since Augustine answered two soldiers’ questions in the early 400s. Sixteen centuries of just war doctrine cannot be waved away with Palm Sunday platitudes. Pope Leo is an educated man. He must surely know all this.

I explain why the new Pope’s statements on war ignore his own tradition at The Biggar Picture:​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ https://t.co/vKL0An70LC

[Chandra Bhan Prasad @chandrabprasad_]

Lucknow, hrs back, met with Dalit BMW Man Mr Nandlal Gautam, makes Steel Furnitures; employs 32, hopes to cross 10 Cr in turnover by next March. His facility is built on 50 K S Feet, wishes to grow into Dalits' Godrej. Sobs while recalling his days controlled by Caste...

[nigel biggar @NigelBiggar]

Woke politics is undoubtedly religious. But not in a good way.

It borrows Christianity’s language of oppression and redemption, but sheds the humility that knows one’s own fallibility and sin. So it does not listen, does not reflect, and does not correct itself. It smears, misreports, intimidates, and calls that righteousness.

Read my thoughts on why wokeness is Christian heresy at The Biggar Picture: https://t.co/MU3uWNzOj1

[john milbank @johnmilbank3]

@Felix_Romanus @Hasan6747 Especially as we now know that the Nag Hammadi texts likely come from an orthodox, Great Church Pachomian monastery and not from some imagined ‘early Gnostic sect’.

[john milbank @johnmilbank3]

@Hasan6747 It really doesn’t at all.

[Chandra Bhan Prasad @chandrabprasad_]

*Grievances of the Scheduled Castes," submitted to the Governor-General in 1942*.
I hold this memorandum as the greatest piece of his writings after *Annihilation of Caste*.
Chandra Bhan Prasad
Lucknow