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Race is not just skin color
Starting from Arrian and Strabo’s descriptions of Indians and a 2007 paper on the convergent evolution of light skin in Europeans and East Asians, the author argues race is not…
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Home – Lost, Found and Imagined
Reposts Ruchira Paul’s 2007 personal essay from her Accidental Blogger archive on being an NRI and the idea of home, with an excerpted passage on her late father-in-law, a noted…
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The Mujahid Revolt in Arakan in 1952 (and a SOAS report on the Rohingyas)
Reproduces a 1952 British Foreign Office report on the Mujahid Revolt in Arakan around Burmese independence, followed by a 2005 SOAS researcher’s report, as background to the Rohingya issue.
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Life expectancy in South Asia
Posts a table of life expectancy by Indian state, led by Kerala, and remarks on the curious contrast between Assam and Bangladesh.
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Review: Jaya by Devdutt Pattanaik
Reviews Devdutt Pattanaik’s Jaya, a highly condensed modern retelling of the Mahabharata, introducing the epic’s composite authorship and length and the author’s path from medicine and pharmaceuticals to writing on…
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To be brown is to be a civilization
Replying to Zach, the author argues South Asia is a civilisational entity squeezed by history into a few nation-states, and that India and China are not comparable because the Han…
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Why Brown Pundits?
Razib Khan on why he writes at Brown Pundits, going back to early-2000s email discussions with South Asian friends and growing up in white America.
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Turkish Turbulence – Shock Therapy for Turkish Armed Forces
Hamid Hussain argues the failed July 2016 coup was the last phase of the first republic founded by Atatürk, and traces how the Turkish Armed Forces changed over two decades,…
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What is Brown Pundits?
Reflecting on trying to write a novel, the author says it is hard to pin down what Brown Pundits is about, since it is not for cricket, desi politics or…
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The Obliquity of Oriental Culture
Inspired by the book Obliquity, the author reflects on his own indirect style, tracing the reserved, private-versus-public manners of Persian-influenced Bahá’í communities in the Gulf and South Asia, and contrasting…
The Indian Subcontinent Argues with Itself
Sunday, 8 November 2026Since December 2010 · 4,170 posts · 93,920 comments
