#local Indians

[lifewithaview]

F-Troop (1965) Scourge of the West

S1E1

Becoming a hero by accidentally leading a cavalry charge while sneezing due to allergies, Captain Wilton Parmenter is given command of Fort Courage. The fort's crafty Sgt. O'Rourke has a deal with the local Hekawi Indians to market their wares to the tourists. They must sometimes pretend to be enemies (and the Shugs really are enemies). Jane is out to marry the innocent Parmenter.

[fatehbaz]

Endangered Indian sandalwood. British war to control the forests. Tallying every single tree in the kingdom. European companies claim the ecosystem. Spices and fragrances. Failure of the plantation. Until the twentieth century, the Empire couldn't figure out how to cultivate sandalwood because they didn't understand that the plant is actually a partial root parasite. French perfumes and the creation of "the Sandalwood City".

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Selling at about $147,000 per metric ton, the aromatic heartwood of Indian sandalwood (S. album) is arguably [among] the most expensive wood in the world. Globally, 90 per cent of the world’s S. album comes from India [...]. And within India, around 70 per cent of S. album comes from the state of Karnataka [...] [and] the erstwhile Kingdom of Mysore. [...] [T]he species came to the brink of extinction. [...] [O]verexploitation led to the sandal tree's critical endangerment in 1974. [...]

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Francis Buchanan’s 1807 A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar is one of the few European sources to offer insight into pre-colonial forest utilisation in the region. [...] Buchanan records [...] [the] tradition of only harvesting sandalwood once every dozen years may have been an effective local pre-colonial conservation measure. [...] Starting in 1786, Tipu Sultan [ruler of Mysore] stopped trading pepper, sandalwood and cardamom with the British. As a result, trade prospects for the company [East India Company] were looking so bleak that by November 1788, Lord Cornwallis suggested abandoning Tellicherry on the Malabar Coast and reducing Bombay’s status from a presidency to a factory. [...] One way to understand these wars is [...] [that] [t]hey were about economic conquest as much as any other kind of expansion, and sandalwood was one of Mysore’s most prized commodities. In 1799, at the Battle of Srirangapatna, Tipu Sultan was defeated. The kingdom of Mysore became a princely state within British India [...]. [T]he East India Company also immediately started paying the [new rulers] for the right to trade sandalwood.

British control over South Asia’s natural resources was reaching its peak and a sophisticated new imperial forest administration was being developed that sought to solidify state control of the sandalwood trade. In 1864, the extraction and disposal of sandalwood came under the jurisdiction of the Forest Department. [...] Colonial anxiety to maximise profits from sandalwood meant that a government agency was established specifically to oversee the sandalwood trade [...] and so began the government sandalwood depot or koti system. [...]

From the 1860s the [British] government briefly experimented with a survey tallying every sandal tree standing in Mysore [...].

Instead, an intricate system of classification was developed in an effort to maximise profits. By 1898, an 18-tiered sandalwood classification system was instituted, up from a 10-tier system a decade earlier; it seems this led to much confusion and was eventually reduced back to 12 tiers [...].

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Meanwhile, private European companies also made significant inroads into Mysore territory at this time. By convincing the government to classify forests as ‘wastelands’, and arguing that Europeans would improves these tracts from their ‘semi-savage state’, starting in the 1860s vast areas were taken from local inhabitants and converted into private plantations for the ‘production of cardamom, pepper, coffee and sandalwood’.

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Yet attempts to cultivate sandalwood on both forest department and privately owned plantations proved to be a dismal failure. There were [...] major problems facing sandalwood supply in the period before the twentieth century besides overexploitation and European monopoly. [...] Before the first quarter of the twentieth century European foresters simply could not figure out how to grow sandalwood trees effectively.

The main reason for this is that sandal is what is now known as a semi-parasite or root parasite; besides a main taproot that absorbs nutrients from the earth, the sandal tree grows parasitical roots (or haustoria) that derive sustenance from neighbouring brush and trees. [...] Dietrich Brandis, the man often regaled as the father of Indian forestry, reported being unaware of the [sole significant English-language scientific paper on sandalwood root parasitism] when he worked at Kew Gardens in London on South Asian ‘forest flora’ in 1872–73. Thus it was not until 1902 that the issue started to receive attention in the scientific community, when C.A. Barber, a government botanist in Madras [...] himself pointed out, 'no one seems to be at all sure whether the sandalwood is or is not a true parasite'.

Well into the early decades of twentieth century, silviculture of sandal proved a complete failure. The problem was the typical monoculture approach of tree farming in which all other species were removed and so the tree could not survive. [...]

The long wait time until maturity of the tree must also be considered. Only sandal heartwood and roots develop fragrance, and trees only begin developing fragrance in significant quantities after about thirty years. Not only did traders, who were typically just sailing through, not have the botanical know-how to replant the tree, but they almost certainly would not be there to see a return on their investments if they did. [...]

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The main problem facing the sustainable harvest and continued survival of sandalwood in India [...] came from the advent of the sandalwood oil industry at the beginning of the twentieth century. During World War I, vast amounts of sandal were stockpiled in Mysore because perfumeries in France had stopped production and it had become illegal to export to German perfumeries. In 1915, a Government Sandalwood Oil Factory was built in Mysore. In 1917, it began distilling. [...] [S]andalwood production now ramped up immensely. It was at this time that Mysore came to be known as ‘the Sandalwood City’.

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Text above by: Ezra Rashkow. "Perfumed the axe that laid it low: The endangerment of sandalwood in southern India." Indian Economic and Social History Review 51, no. 1, pages 41-70. March 2014. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Italicized first paragraph/heading in this post added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[handweavers]

my go to sewing project whenever i want to make something but don't want to think about it is to make a huge box dress i love to sleep in/wear around the house i don't even need a pattern for it i can draft it straight onto the fabric and sew it with a needle and thread while lying in bed. long slits from the knee down so i can move around comfortably. they're my comfort clothes + they are esp so comfy when i'm in m'sia with the heat& humidity. but even in canada i wear them always i just add a sweater

[mahoutoons]

you know what else made me insane about the "nobody protects nature better than you, sweet amy" scene? in the hindi dub, sonic refers to her as "प्यारी एमी (pyaari amy)" which roughly translates to "cutie/sweet". means the same thing kinda but it made me insane to hear it in my language djzlpakfjalslsj

[rotzaprachim]

If you need to defer to a U.S.-based context of whiteness/not whiteness to understand regional systems of inequality and structural violence outside of the United States you are going to have a really hard time with decolonization writ large

[leroibobo]

the paradesi synagogue in kochi, kerala, india. the first synagogue on the site, built by the city's longstanding malabari jewish community, was destroyed by portugese who'd colonized the area in their persecution of locals. it was rebuilt in 1568 by spanish and portugese jews who fled persecution and later expulsion, hence the name "paradesi" ("foreign" in malayalam).

these sephardic jews and a community of jews of mixed african and european descent who were formerly enslaved ("meshuchrarim", "freedmen" in hebrew) joined the malabari jewish community of kochi and somewhat integrated. they were later joined by some iraqi, persian, yemenite, afghan, and dutch sephardic jews. the middle eastern and european jews were considered "white jews" and permitted malabari jews and meshuchrarim to worship in the synagogue. however, in what seems like a combination of local caste dynamics and racism, malabari jews were not allowed full membership. meshuchrarim weren't allowed in at all, but were instead made to sit outside during services and not allowed their own place of worship or other communal rights.

as the "white jews" tended to be rather wealthy from trade, this synagogue contains multiple antiquities. they include belgian glass chandeliers on its walls, hand-painted porcelain tiles from china on its floors, and an oriental rug that was gifted by ethiopian emperor haile selassie.

[imanes]

Langkawi day 1 🫶🏼

[hussyknee]

Current Sri Lankan social media meltdown: a bunch of white Russian immigrants had decided to have a "white only party" in Unawatuna, in the year of the colonizer lord 2024. Mfers are consequently "in a state of shock" from the "aggressive attacks" by furious locals. In hindsight, the shitheads have realized that having an apartheid party in a sovereign Asian country would bring a "negative vibe". Apparently "none of them came up with the idea of possible discrimination much less racism!!!" and they just (I shit you not) missed other white people. Like, this was prompted by the fact that they couldn't find any other white people...at raves...in Unawatuna. I'd ask whether they were looking under rocks, but there would be unwashed racist Europeans under those at fucking Una even in the off-season.

It's all very entertaining. Even some other Russians are mad at them because some have married Lankans and have half-brown kids. Along with their second or third butthurt non-apology, they just posted saying their entire team packed up and left the country because they got slammed with so many "malicious and insulting messages" and calls and "everything from accusations to direct threats".

This result has united Lankan bros everywhere, from 4chan to twitter to Reddit, like they just personally avenged the 1815 fall of the Kandyan Kingdom. I can only assume this means nobody's bottom lines were harmed by the scandal. As a country, we love kicking people out, but we hate to watch them go.

[000marie198]

The trailer of The Glassworker is here!

This is the frst ever Pakistani hand-drawn anime movie. And it looks so good! Very excited to watch it :D

Since it's a local movie, I can't wait for this to be the first thing I watch on the big screen!

[demigod-of-the-agni]

Truly mind boggling and yet unsurprising to see people Continue infantilising the One asian character in the ATSV lineup. Y’all think you’re so smart and revolutionary for your head canons about Pavitr but then you’ll meet actual desi people and think we’re fucking stupids and weird because we aren’t how you believe Indians are supposed to be

I just want to know what is going on in your brain. What makes you think applying the words “baby” “dimwitted” “bubbly and sweet” “unconfrontational” exclusively to Pavitr is such a good idea

[turkeydinner-jpeg]

(◠‿・)—☆

[bugsongs]

i still can't believe the one good vegan takeout place nearby closed 😭😭😭

[bell-of-indecision]

"How to watch an indian tv show that's available on youtube but has no english or hindi subtitles with my beginner but almost intermediate knowledge of the hindi language," I type frenetically on the google search bar as tears fall from my eyes

[theinfinitedivides]

someone tell white people stop reviewing Bollywood by mediocre Western standards i'm f*cking crying rn

[butch--dean]

Friday night date night (mediocre takeout for one, 2 cans of extra dry cider, and an evening of amv editing)

[maihonhassan]

Yes, i moved on, but sometimes i hope:

Aaoge tum kabhi, meri jaa keh rahi

Gayega ya sama, gayegi ye zameen

Badlega ye jahan, gayega asmaan

Aaoge tum kabhi, meri jaa keh rahi