I’m calling us Hindus because American-born Hindus like us aren’t Indian. Hindu is also an imperfect term, but it’s more accurate than calling us all Indians, because we’re not.
🎙️Episode Breakdown
00:00 – 05:00 | Setting the table
Regionalism inside Hinduism — TamBrahm vs Gujarati Brahmin vs the UP village priest.
The diaspora’s changing regional nature.
How the Indian tech diaspora is a historical accident of immigration law, and what Silicon Valley would look like without Indians.
05:00 – 10:00 | Diaspora class formation
Our Indian ancestral backgrounds — Tam Bram for Rajeev, UP-Gujju mix for me.
How Google became the finishing school of the professional class.
Recruiting, HR, and the symbolic labor economy inside tech.
The distinction between project vs program management and why process-worship is feminized.
10:00 – 15:00 | Feminization, process, and control
“Process for the sake of process” as a feminine pathology.
Indians as the most status-obsessed managers on earth.
How the diaspora mirrors professional-class anxieties while triggering white ones.
Why Indian success provokes resentment — the optics of outperforming your ideological patrons.
15:00 – 20:00 | ABCDs and assimilation
ABCD = American-Born Confused Desi — the diaspora’s self-own.
Why American-raised Hindus aren’t considered “real Indians.”
Guilt as a class marker: success must be laundered through performative politics.
Women perform leftism; men perform libertarian tech-brohood.
20:00 – 25:00 | Gender and rebellion
Indian-American women raised conservatively, trained in classical dance, embodying Hinduism literally.
Leftism as rebellion against patriarchy + a bid for white professional approval.
White adjacency through money and credentials.
How Indian men assimilate by worshipping Elon instead of Kali.
25:00 – 30:00 | Assimilation, authenticity, and faith
The impossible balance between Tamil piety at home and American identity outside.
Upanayana as a Hindu bar mitzvah; girls excluded from knowledge.
The inversion of Brahmin values — spiritual lineage turned materialist.
Why Hindu Americans will never be fully “American.”
30:00 – 35:00 | Status anxiety on both sides
America’s racial axis (white/black) leaves Indians unclassifiable.
Sports, food, and cultural codes as barriers to belonging.
Triggering white discomfort by outperforming them economically.
How we became the overachievers everyone needs but nobody wants to see win.
35:00 – 40:00 | Co-opted goddesses and liberal rituals
Kali as a feminist mascot during #MeToo.
Shakti reduced to “girlboss energy.”
Hillary Clinton as the secular Devi of the diaspora auntie class.
The Western rebranding of Hindu metaphysics into therapy and décor.
40:00 – 45:00 | The metaphysics beneath the memes
I explain Shakti as the life-force principle — not domination, but creation.
Shiva + Shakti as consciousness + energy, not man + woman.
Discernment (viveka) as moral clarity, not judgment.
Bhakti as emotional intelligence before Silicon Valley made it an app.
45:00 – end | What’s been inverted
How modern Brahmins worship wealth instead of wisdom.
How Hindu imagery props up Western guilt instead of dissolving it.
The diaspora as a case study in feminization, status anxiety, and metaphysical confusion.
Why Bhakti remains the truest technology of all: surrender that isn’t submission.
