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Hindustani Culture as a Link culture?
Arguing that the Hindustani vernacular and Bollywood bind South Asian desis from Tamil to Pashtun, the author writes as both insider and outsider to this cultural complex, citing his Urdu-speaking…
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What does it mean to be “Brown?”
Disliking ‘Brown’ as a New World term, the author prefers ‘desi’, and argues its haziness is its strength: it centres on the Indo-Gangetic plain, fades in Sri Lanka, Nepal and…
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Why is white such a problematic term
Following Ta-Nehisi Coates, argues ‘white’ is as loaded as the n-word, since Europeans needed new racial categories only after 1492 and the New World slave trade, when ‘Turk’ and ‘Christian’…
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Too light-skinned to be Pakistani?
Recounting a white dinner guest’s remark that he looked too light to be Pakistani, the author reflects on how Westerners read him as Indian or Muslim, and on his own…
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Religion trumps race in Sri Lanka
Citing a monk-led mob attacking Rohingya refugees in Sri Lanka, the author argues South Asians grasp the power of religion over race better than most, pointing to South Asian Muslims’…
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Good on you Mahira Khan-Kapoor – now please stop playing the Virgin
Backing Mahira Khan’s right to date Ranbir Kapoor despite online abuse, the author asks her to stop playing the ‘Virgin in Distress’ in her dramas, arguing that Pakistani culture projects…
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Sushma Swaraj’s hard hitting speech
Links NDTV’s report on Sushma Swaraj’s UN speech (‘We made IITs, Pakistan made Lashkar’), and remarks that even a weak Hindustani speaker could follow most of it, wondering why the…
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When all you have is postcolonial theory everything is about the white man
Reacting to a piece on confronting white supremacy as a South Asian Christian, the author argues postcolonial theory flattens a richer story into one about the white man, citing the…
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Inter Services Public Relations; ISPR (Pakistan)
Hamid Hussain examines how the Pakistan Army manages its public narrative through Inter Services Public Relations, noting that conflicts between army and civilian institutions produce competing narratives, and recommends a…
The Indian Subcontinent Argues with Itself
Sunday, 8 November 2026Since December 2010 · 4,170 posts · 93,920 comments
