Amit's Blog

How a bunch of ancient Indian materialists got cancelled by the priestly class, quietly became the operating system for every government and stock market since, and never even got a thank-you note Let me tell you about the most successful failed philosophy in human history. The Charvaka school—also known as Lokayata, which roughly translates to "what the cool, cynical urbanites actually believe when they're not at temple"—had the audacity around 600 BCE to look around at the elaborate Vedic sacrifice industry and ask a very simple question: What if all this invisible afterlife accounting is just a really profitable fiction? You can imagine how that went over. The priests, who had built an entire economy on the promise that your dead ancestors needed ghee and gold to be comfortable in the next world, were not amused. The kings, whose divine right to rule depended on those same priests blessing them, were even less amused. And the charlatans—well, the Charva...

How Bihar’s last migration frontier traded feudalism for remittances—and still lost For two centuries, Bihar has exported its people. Bhojpuri speakers went to Fiji as indentured laborers. Magahi speakers walked to Calcutta’s jute mills. But Mithila—the ancient Maithili-speaking heartland, trapped by floods and feudal lords—was the last to join the caravan. Now it has embraced Gulf migration with the desperation of a drowning man. Remittances constitute ~35% of Bihar’s GSDP. Sixty-five percent of households have at least one migrant. In Darbhanga and Madhubani villages, concrete houses rise from flood-prone soil, paid for by sons in Dubai who haven’t been seen in three years. The sugar mills remain closed. The roads remain broken. The young men remain absent. A river drowns the field each year, The landlord’s boat, the only steer. The son departs for Dubai’s heat, The village crumbles, incomplete. This is Mithila’s paradox: prosperity without development, houses without hous...

From the "Rubbish Heap" of the Raj to the Crown Jewel of the Indo-Pacific—The Improbable 2,000-Year Saga of India's Island Inheritances The Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep islands became part of India not through conquest or ancient destiny, but through colonial administrative accidents. The British established the Andamans as a penal colony after 1857, inadvertently creating a “Mini-India” of diverse settlers. During WWII, Subhas Chandra Bose’s Azad Hind government hoisted the tricolour there, providing a symbolic claim. In 1947, India inherited the islands as the successor state to British India, rejecting Pakistan’s demographic claim and Britain’s “crown colony” plan. Lakshadweep’s integration was a photo-finish: Indian police hoisted the flag hours before a Pakistani frigate arrived. The Maldives, a separate protectorate, became independent in 1965. Unlike Burma (separated in 1937), the Andamans remained Indian. The Coco Islands, however, were transferred to...