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moontyger · 17 days ago

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It was a tip that brought a dog to the main post office in downtown Jackson, Mississippi. An employee there had reported seeing someone in the lobby putting pills into hot pink envelopes.

Hours later, Ed Steed, a police officer from the small city of Richland, just south of Jackson, walked into a back room at the post office where one of the envelopes had been set aside. Steed, a K-9 handler, arrived with Rip, his narcotics sniffer dog. Rip strode around and, when he got to the pink envelope, sat down. According to records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, Steed said this meant the dog had smelled narcotics. That claim became evidence to get a warrant to open the envelope.

This, though, was no ordinary drug bust. As it turned out, there were pills inside the package, but they were not the kind that Rip or other police K-9s are trained to detect. The envelope contained five pills labeled “AntiPreg Kit.” They were made in India, and their medical purpose is to induce abortion. Dwayne Martin, at the time the head of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Jackson, told me this was exactly what the initial tipster had suspected.

...

What will happen to abortion-pills-by-mail and the people who use them if Donald Trump is elected in November? As the accounts of the regional USPIS head and FOIA documents show, a piecemeal crackdown is already underway during a Democratic administration. Under a Trump regime, things might go much further.

Whoever is in power, the incident in Jackson provides a potential window into the future — one in which freelancing local Postal Service employees and officials can call on local cops to halt women from accessing reproductive care and potentially charge and arrest those providing or using abortion medication.

My FOIA request asked for records from past years of investigations of people who’d used the mail to send pills. The documents I got back show how a willing administration might go after distributors. The feds could even lend support to police in states that have criminalized abortion care as they pursue cases under local laws. Pregnant people who order the medications could get caught in the dragnet.

The documents I received after my FOIA request were highly redacted but still reveal many details about a federal investigation that began less than two years ago in Mississippi. Dozens of envelopes with abortion pills were seized. The bust followed on the heels of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, and came after a group of anti-abortion doctors filed a federal lawsuit in Texas, arguing that abortion pills should be banned from the mail.

The Jackson investigation apparently also employed what’s called a mail cover: a little-known Postal Service method for collecting data about people suspected of committing crimes. Using an enormous database of images of the outside of envelopes and packages, postal inspectors can digitally compare names, addresses, and other information on one item to others. And the findings can be freely shared with almost any law enforcement agency that requests them. The return address for the hot pink envelope in Jackson included an unused post office box number, the sort of information postal inspectors can use to correlate parcels to each other.

Reproductive justice activist Laurie Bertram Roberts worries about an anti-abortion regime taking power. They direct the Jackson-based Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund, which assists fellow Mississippians with any reproductive decision they make, from having a baby, to leaving the state to go to an abortion clinic, to using pills at home.

In a state where abortion is strictly banned post-Roe, Bertram Roberts is also a doula. Along with other doulas, they have organized help for people at the end of their pregnancies, including those which do not come to term. Whether that end is due miscarriage or to abortion is immaterial. “We don’t ask,” they said.

The pink-envelope investigation came out of a sort of collaboration between the feds’ regional offices and a local official: U.S postal workers and a city K-9 cop. Though no one in Mississippi has yet been arrested for helping carry out an abortion, Bertram Roberts fears that synergy. They leaned forward and tensed their lips as I opened my computer and pulled up images I’d obtained from the FOIA request: photos the USPIS had taken, in a post office parking lot, of vehicles suspected of belonging to the person who mailed the pills.

Bertram Roberts peered anxiously at the screen. “I don’t recognize them!” they said. Their face relaxed, but they shook their head. “The thing I worry about most is people getting criminalized.

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Using local dogs creates risk for abortion-seekers. With the post office inviting local law enforcement to assist with federal investigations, local police could theoretically do their own investigations, by copying names and addresses from the mail. And they could pass that information to anti-abortion district attorneys.

Police dogs, however, are trained to smell only the illegal drugs heroin, marijuana, ecstasy, fentanyl, and cocaine, not the ingredients in abortion pills, which currently remain legal. And the K-9s’ forensic reliability is suspect.

Why would a police dog alert on abortion pills in the first place, when they’re not narcotics?

Martel, the USPIS national spokesperson, speculated that the pills found in Jackson were contaminated in the manufacturing process by trace amounts of a drug such as marijuana, or perhaps someone was handling narcotics when they did the packing and left molecules behind that only canines’ super-sensitive noses can detect.

Theories along these lines are widespread among police, and they’re inherently impossible to disprove. Elisa Wells, a co-founder and co-director of Plan C, is skeptical. She said her group has conducted laboratory analyses of various brands of foreign-made abortion pills. They’ve all been pure, she said, and no one has ever complained about their containing narcotics.

There is another reason why a K-9 can zero in on a package that’s devoid of illicit drugs. Animal researchers call it “cueing.” Canines are exquisitely sensitive to the minutiae of a human’s posture, eye movements, and other subtle behaviors. Handlers wishing to develop probable cause to do intrusive searches for narcotics can coax their dogs into drug-alerting behavior. To get a reward, the dog will alert, even if nothing illegal is present. (Steed, the K-9 handler, declined to be interviewed for this story.)

Cueing can be deliberate, but it’s more often unconscious. In 2011, Lisa Lit, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, published a now-famous study in which she told the handlers of several police dogs that their K-9s would be searching for “target scents” hidden randomly in several containers. She put red tape on some containers and said it marked the targets. In reality, none of the containers had scents. Even so, most of the dogs alerted on containers, especially those with red tape.

#abortion rights #psa #acab #USPS #read the whole thing #reproductive rights #US politics #US legal system

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renamami · 10 months ago

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Facts About Romani People Because That One Person Asked For it On My Post About Azusa

A while back I made a post about how I wished people in the Diabolik Lovers fandom focused more on how Azusa is a Romani man and how cool that was for an otome game. Somebody reblogged and asked for somebody to make a post about Romani people so we'd have more reference on how to incorporate Azusa's heritage into more content of him so here it is!

I wanna preface this post by saying that I am not Romani or of Romani descent! I simply like learning about other cultures and groups of people and want people to learn more information about a race that has been villainized and oppressed for centuries. While I'll be discussing basic history, myths and stereotypes, and basics in culture, please make sure you go find Romani creators and people to get more information from! I love Florian on TikTok and YouTube so I recommend checking him out first!

As somebody who is not Romani, there might be some things that aren't completely correct since I'm relying on what is available. Always listen to Romani voices when looking for information. I'm just providing basics and am definitely NOT and expert!

Basic Terminology & History

First off, you might know Romani people often being referred to as the G-word. It's a racial slur that came from people believing they originated in Egypt and has been used for centuries to degrade and demean Romani people. NEVER USE THIS WORD.

The Romani people have a very closed culture and language which has helped them preserve it throughout the years. Translations and translators are hard to find and I don't recommend trying to find any out of respect for the community. What is known, though, is that there are masculine and feminine ways to refer to Romani people.

Romani: The race and communities as a whole

Roma: I'm slightly unclear on this one but it's another way to refer to the race and community itself. Take this with a grain of salt and do your own research

Rom: Way to refer to men as masc Romani people

Romni: Way to refer to women and fem Romani people

Romanipen: The Romani philosophy, rules, laws, and culture (note that there are a bunch of different communities since Romani is a race. There is Christian and Muslim Romani groups and people who's rules differ from others. Like all races, every community is different.)

Gadjo/Gadji: Someone who has no Romanipen, typically someone who is not ethnically Romani but can also mean a Romani person who does not live in Romani culture

Contrary to myth, the Romani people originate from South Asia, more specifically India. It's not clear when in India they came from but it's speculated that they came from the North-West region about 1,000 years ago. From there, they migrated to Europe and other continents. There are Romani populations all over Europe, commonly known mostly in Romania and Spain. Even now, the Romani language still has Indian and South Asian influences as well as Persian and Arabic influences.

From the very beginning, Romani people were discriminated against. They were labeled as wizards, thieves, baby-snatchers, etc. They were enslaved and coerced into chattel slavery in the Middle Ages by the Danubian Principalities where they were divided into groups by their owners. In the 16th-18th centuries, anti-Romani sentiment grew around Europe which led to many Romani people being murdered without any justice being served. They continued to be persecuted and blamed for a range of thing for centuries even up to this day.

In WWII, Romani people, along with Jews and black people, were at the very bottom of Hitler's totem pole and were targeted for ethnic cleansing in the Holocaust. While it's estimated that the death toll came in 150,000 people, others estimate it to be around 1.5 million victims of the Romani Holocaust. Unfortunately, the Romani victims are still very overlooked when the Holocaust and WWII is covered.

Right now, Romani people are still being persecuted and stigmatized. In Romania, they live in squatter communities with high unemployment. While some live a "nomadic" lifestyle, most migration is forced because a ton of communities don't accept Romani settlements. Discrimination is still rampant and all the violence and propaganda that racism entails is still alive and well when it comes to the Romani people, especially in Europe.

Please note that this is a VERY vague history and absolutely does not cover nearly a fraction of Romani history. This is just the cliff notes and I've only scratched the very surface and left out a lot of details.

Myths & Stereotypes

You ever see this shit before?

What you're looking at right here are racist racial caricatures and oversexualized fantasies of Romani women, specifically "fortune tellers".

Let's quickly get into myths.

Fortune Tellers: Romani people who were impoverished and desperate and down on their luck turned to earning money where they could. It was already a prevalent stereotype that Romani people were witches and mind readers, so many women turned to fortune telling and giving tarot readings because that was what was available to them and were thus painted as occult-loving scam artists. No, they are not supernatural being or seers. In the same way that somebody can practice spirituality, that's what they did. Nothing more, nothing less. Extra tidbit: tarot is not a closed practice specific to the Roma. Saying that it is is like saying banking is a closed practice for Jews. It's racist to push that narrative and if anyone tries to just know they're a dumbass.

The Exotic Wanderer: Romani people very rarely travel out of desire. They travel and migrate because everywhere pushes them out and denies them permanent residence. They aren't free-spirited nomads and portraying them as such further harms them. Speaking of exotic;

The Mysterious and Sexy Romani Woman: Notice how all the women in the picture above are super sexualized or have this air of mystery to them? That's because art, theater, and propaganda has painted Romani women as sexually available and provocative, gaudy, and "exotic". Women of color, you know what I'm talking about because we all deal with it. One of the biggest examples in recent history and the most popular in modern culture is Esmeralda from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame adaptation. She's portrayed as this mysterious and enchanting dark-skin Romni woman who all the guys are after in, again, stereotypical and oversexualized traditional Romani clothing. I mean, they had her essentially pole dance within the first hour of the movie. This portrayal of Romani women in media actively contributes to sexual violence against them. DO NOT ENTERTAIN THAT SHIT.

Thieves, Criminals, and Baby Snatchers: This one has been around for centuries. It's rather self-explanatory so I won't heavily explain the first two. Romani people have been painted as violent outsiders for as long as they've been in Europe and other places. Blaming disease, crime, and things going missing on them was (and often still is) a European's favorite pastime. The baby-snatcher narrative is common in media, again like in Hunchback where Esmeralda was originally a white French girl in the book who was stolen and replaced Quasimodo by Romani people. Obviously this is fucking gross and a vile narrative to push. When I talk more about Azusa, I'll get into adoption more.

There are obviously more myths and stereotypes but these are the biggest ones. Now, to cleanse your eyes, have what real Romani clothing and women look like.

See the difference? Modesty is a huge aspect of Romani culture.

Culture & Society

Again, much of Romani culture is closed and has been kept alive through remaining closed. This is just what they (or scholars) have chosen to tell and what I have personally learned. It is important to remain respectful of what Romani people do and do not want to share. That said, not much is left of Indian influence in Romani culture save for the people who still celebrate Hindu holidays. However, what has survived is the concept of universal balance. Many believe that everything, or almost everything, fits into a natural place. For example, birds are supposed to fly right? It's chill to eat those if your faith allows it. But a penguin? That bitch doesn't fly, it's a freak of nature, so don't eat it. A penguin is out of balance and, therefore, bad luck. That's why Romani people traditionally don't eat hen eggs because girlie can't fly. Of course, other faiths like Muslim Roma, who have special recipes, eat hen eggs.

Like every race, every community and individual has a different faith. Most popular is Christianity and Catholicism and it has become the primary faith among Romani people. Other religions like Islam and Hinduism are also practiced. These faiths have their own set of rules that they follow alongside Romanipen, which is not written and passed down orally. Romani people even have their own patron saints: Ceferino Giménez Malla, The Virgin of Hope of Macarena who is specific to the Spanish Calé, and Kali Sara who is an Indian deity and protector of the Roma. For Christians and Catholics, they also worship the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ.

Cleanliness is another big facet of Romani culture. Your genital area is considered impure and unclean. Because of this many Roma do not have pet cats or dogs because they lick their genitals. These rules are so strict that food must be entirely discarded should a strand of hair from these animals get into it as the whole meal is then contaminated. Additionally, tops and bottom are typically washed separately as to not mix pure and impure fabrics. This is especially true for AFAB menstruation, which is also seen as impure, as is childbirth. This is because of Romani code which is the most important part of Romanipen: pillars both honor and shame.

Like many societies, importance is placed on the men and subscribe to expected gender norms. In typical Romani home consists of a married couple, their unmarried children, at least one married son and his wife, and their children. Extended family and family in general are an integral part to Romani society so they will play active roles in a Romani child's life. It is possible to be expelled from your community, however, should you go against your community's rules or, for example, marry a gadjo. This is because, depending on the community, it would bring dishonor.

Every since the 16t century, Romani people have either made their livings or enjoyed their time through music and dance. Both still have Indian influences but have also added other elements depending of the region. For example, belly dancing is big among the Turkish Romani. Have you heard of flamenco music from Spain? Did you know that it came directly from the Romani Calé? Romani music has had a huge influence outside of the community, as it has inspired genres like bolero and jazz music.

Before I go onto how I want to see Romani culture integrated with Azusa content in the future, I want to touch up on adoption and interracial marriage. While interracial marriage is frowned upon in some communities, if a gadjo learns Romanipen and lives their life as if they are Romani, they are accepted as fully Romani. This also goes for adopted children. If they live by the rules and codes, dedicate themselves to the culture and society, then they are fully Romani.

Azusa Mukami, His Romani Identity, and What I Want To See More Of

While Diabolik Lovers does have it's problematic moments when referring to Azusa's past such as calling his community but the g-slur, it's super important to recognize how freaking awesome it is to have a Romani character who is largely not a racial caricature and not portrayed as less than simply for being Rom. He is a fully fleshed out and romancable character which is so cool.

It isn't explicitly stated whether Azusa was adopted by his community or is Rom by blood, but given the time period around the 1960's to 1980's (I recommend looking at @i-write-hurt-not-comfort's blog for more information on the Mukami's timeline) I would recommend steering FAR away from the idea of him being picked up since the baby-snatcher stereotype was and is still big. Plus, it's just so much more fun having a non-white Rom love interest. Let him be brown, y'all. Also, he's Romanian Romani, let me see him be Romanian Romani.

Speaking of which, know he's super pale but I want to see him be South Asian and anemic! It's so rare that Romani people are white and Azusa would look cute with tan or dark skin. I'd love to see more art where he has melanin. Brown and black people can be pale too due to things like anemia. Don't be afraid to make him look like a vampire that has not seen the sun in days who happens to be brown!

This man canonically loves spicy food! You know what race's food is super rich in spices and flavor? Romani food! I'd love fics where we get even a throw away line talking about him eating spicy stew or chile mole. Make him hold Ruki at knifepoint in the kitchen having him make some stuffed peppers.

Even small things like him not eating eggs or separating his tops and bottoms because that's what he learned to do as a child would be so damn nice to see. Tiny things that connect him to his race and heritage would be so cool to see in more content of him.

Final Thoughts

Romani people, each community and each individual, have such rich culture and history. They are incredibly interesting to learn about and have had so much influence over things we might not even thing about. They're not only in Europe. They're every where. South America, the US, Asia, every where. It's about time people started recognizing them outside of what governments and white supremacy teaches us and admire the resilience and beauty of the Romani people. Please do your own research and look for real Romani people to get more information from on TikTok, YouTube, hell even the damn bird app. I hope this helped whoever wanted to know more about the Romani people. Thank you sm for reading too, this was a long one.

#ren's essays #romani people #azusa mukami #diaboliklovers #Some of this information may not be fully accurate but I did my best #If you have anything to add please let me know! I love learning new things #This contained a lot of upsetting topics but it's history and that's expected #Thank you to that one person I had fun writing this

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vcqrupvt · 4 months ago

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Why Need Build Customer Loyalty? A Comprehensive Guide

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ohsalome · 2 years ago

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No one would call an artist from India “British” or an artist from Peru “Spanish,” so why do museums continue to label Ukrainian artists as “Russian”?

The misnomer issue is nothing new. Researchers and curators from Ukraine have been contacting institutions like the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Centre Pompidou for years to ask them to acknowledge the Ukrainian descent of some of the artists in their Russian collection. These requests were mostly ignored before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukrainian culture (and any other post-Soviet/post-Russian Empire oppressed culture, for that matter) is successfully erased from global art history. And virtually every museum collection is an example of this erasure. Ukrainian art historian Oksana Semenik, who is now studying at Rutgers University, provides more proof of that. As an assistant curator at the Zimmerli, the biggest collection of Soviet non-conformist art in the US, Semenik examined the museum archive to find out that out of 900 artists labeled “Russian,” 71 were Ukrainians, and 80 were artists of other nationalities like Belarusian, Latvian, Lithuanian, etc. “About 15% of the ‘Russian’ collection is misidentified. But when I asked if this could be changed, the response was: The identity question is not relevant these days,” Semenik said.

If this question is irrelevant, then why does “Russian” remain? “Some curators told me that using Ukraine in the caption is incorrect since there was no such country at that time,” Semenik continued. She also checked the online archive of the Smithsonian Institution and found 42 Ukrainian artists labeled “born Kharkov, Russia” or “born Odessa, Russia,” among other examples. In fact, a country called “Russia” did not exist before 1991, either. But the problem is bigger here — attributing Ukrainian cities to Russia, especially in the current context, rings like blatant Kremlin propaganda.

To be unable to recognize the difference between the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation or Russia is a shameful mistake for institutions whose archives are used as credible academic sources. “It’s tough to acknowledge that the history Western art historians were learning for years, all those tons of books about Malevych and the Russian avant-garde, were part of the Russian propaganda,” Semenik added.

#ukraine #russia #art #russian culture #russian art #ukrainian culture #ukrainian art #cultural appropriation #decolonisation #colonialism

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shoaibkha123 · 8 months ago

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mausam123 · 9 months ago

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averydennisonstore · 2 years ago

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phenakistoskope · 7 months ago

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The first step towards the crystallisation of what we today call Hinduism was born in the consciousness of being the amorphous, subordinate, other. In a sense this was a reversal of roles. Earlier the term mleccha had been used by the upper caste Hindus to refer to the impure, amorphous rest. For the upper castes, Muslims and especially those not indigenous to India, were treated as mleccha since they did not observe the dharma and were debarred from entering the sanctum of the temple and the home. Indigenous converts to Islam also came under this category but their caste origins would have set them apart initially from the amorphous Muslim. Now the upper and lower castes were clubbed together under the label of ‘Hindu’, a new experience for the upper castes.

This in part accounts for the belief among many upper caste Hindus today that Hinduism in the last one thousand years has been through the most severe persecution that any religion in the world has ever undergone. The need to exaggerate the persecution at the hands of the Muslim is required to justify the inculcation of anti-Muslim sentiments among the Hindus of today. Such statements brush aside the fact that there were various expressions of religious persecution in India prior to the coming of the Muslims and particularly between the Śaiva and the Buddhist and Jaina sects and that at one level, the persistence of untouchability was also a form of religious intolerance. The authors of such statements conveniently forget that the last thousand years in the history of Hinduism have witnessed the establishment of the powerful Śankarācārya maṭhas, āśramas, and similar institutions attempting to provide an ecclesiastical structure to strengthen Brahmanism and conservatism; the powerful Daśanāmi and Bairāgi religious orders of Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava origin, vying for patronage and frequently in confrontation; the popular cults of the Nāthapanthis; the significant sects of the Bhakti traditions which are to be found in every corner of the subcontinent; and more recently a number of socio-religious reform movements which have been aimed at reforming and strengthening Hinduism. It was also the period which saw the expansion of the cults of Kṛṣṇa and Rāma with their own mythologies, literatures, rituals and circuits of pilgrimage. What defines many Hindus today has roots in the period of Muslim rule. Facets of belief and ritual regarded as essential to Hinduism belong to more recent times. The establishment of the sects which accompanied these developments often derived from wealthy patronage including that of both Hindu and Muslim rulers, which accounted for the prosperity of temples and institutions associated with these sects. The more innovative sects were in part the result of extensive dialogues between gurus, sādhus, pīrs and Sufis, a dialogue which was sometimes confrontational and sometimes conciliatory. The last thousand years have seen the most assertive thrust of many Hindu sects. If by persecution is meant the conversion of Hindus to Islam and Christianity, then it should be kept in mind that the majority of conversions were from the lower castes and this is more a reflection on Hindu society than on persecution. Upper caste conversions were more frequently activated by factors such as political alliances and marriage circuits and here the conversion was hardly due to persecution. Tragically for those that converted on the assumption that there would be social equality in the new religion, this was never the case and the lower castes remained low in social ranking and carried their caste identities into the new religions.

When the destroying of temples and the breaking of images by Muslim iconoclasts is mentioned—and quite correctly so—it should however at the same time be stated that there were also many Muslim rulers, not excluding Aurangzeb, who gave substantial donations to Hindu sects and to individual brāhmaṇas. There was obviously more than just religious bigotry or religious tolerance involved in these actions. The relationship for example between the Mughal rulers and the Bundela rājās, which involved temple destruction among other things, and veered from close alliances to fierce hostility, was the product not merely of religious loyalties or differences, but the play of power and political negotiation. Nor should it be forgotten that the temple as a source of wealth was exploited even by Hindu rulers such as Harṣadeva of Kashmir who looted temples when he faced a fiscal crisis, or the Paramāra ruler who destroyed temples in the Caulukya kingdom, or the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king who tore up the temple courtyard of the Pratihāra ruler after a victorious campaign. Given the opulence of large temples, the wealth stored in them required protection, but the temple was also a statement of political authority when built by a ruler.

The European adoption of the term ‘Hindu’ gave it further currency as also the attempts of Catholic and Protestant Christian missionaries to convert the Gentoo/Hindu to Christianity. The pressure to convert, initially disassociated with European commercial activity, changed with the coming of British colonial power when, by the early nineteenth century, missionary activities were either surreptitiously or overtly, according to context, encouraged by the colonial authority. The impact both of missionary activity and Christian colonial power resulted in considerable soul searching on the part of those Indians who were close to this new historical experience. One result was the emergence of a number of groups such as the Brahmo Samaj, the Prathana Samaj, the Arya Samaj, the Ramakrishna Mission, the Theosophical Society, the Divine Life Society, the Swaminarayan movement, et al., which gave greater currency to the term Hinduism. There was much more dialogue of upper caste Hindus with Christians than there had been with Muslims, partly because for the coloniser power also lay in controlling knowledge about the colonised and partly because there were far fewer Hindus converting to Christianity than had converted to Islam. Some of the neo-Hindu sects as they have come to be called, were influenced by Christianity and some reacted against it; but even the latter were not immune from its imprint. This was inevitable given that it was the religion of the coloniser.

The challenge from Christian missionaries was not merely at the level of conversions and religious debates. The more subtle form was through educational institutions necessary to the emerging Indian middle class. Many who were attracted to these neo-Hindu groups had at some point of their lives experienced Christian education and were thereafter familiar with Christian ideas. The Christian missionary model played an important part, as for example in the institutions of the Arya Samaj. The Shaiva Siddhanta Samaj was inspired by Arumuga Navalar, who was roused to reinterpret Śaivism after translating the Bible into Tamil. The movement attracted middle-class Tamils seeking a cultural self-assertion. Added to this was the contribution of some Orientalist scholars who interpreted the religious texts to further their notions of how Hinduism should be constructed. The impact of Orientalism in creating the image of Indian, and particularly Hindu culture, as projected in the nineteenth century, was considerable.

Those among these groups influenced by Christianity, attempted to defend, redefine and create Hinduism on the model of Christianity. They sought for the equivalent of a monotheistic God, a Book, a Prophet or a Founder and congregational worship with an institutional organization supporting it. The implicit intention was again of defining ‘the Hindu’ as a reaction to being ‘the other’; the subconscious model was the Semitic religion. The monotheistic God was sought in the abstract notion of Brahman, the Absolute of the Upaniṣads with which the individual Ātman seeks unity in the process of mokṣa; or else with the interpretation of the term deva which was translated as God, suggesting a monotheistic God. The worship of a single deity among many others is not strictly speaking monotheism, although attempts have been made by modern commentators to argue this. Unlike many of the earlier sects which were associated with a particular deity, some of these groups claimed to transcend deity and reach out to the Absolute, Infinite, the Brahman. This was an attempt to transcend segmentary interests in an effort to attain a universalistic identity, but in social customs and ritual, caste identities and distinctions between high and low continued to be maintained.

— Romila Thapar, Syndicated Hinduism.

#reference #reading list #romila thapar #history #aijaz ahmad keeps using the phrase “syndicated hinduism”#and i needed an etymology

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