Why Pakistanis Should Say Jai Hind: Civilizational Fractures in a Post-Nation South Asia

In an unexpected way, this war has revived Brown Pundits. A site that had drifted into silence is now surging with life again—threads are active, arguments are sharp, and the intellectual pulse has returned. Conflict, for all its tragedy, has a way of clarifying identities and sharpening thought. It’s given many of us the urgency—and the material—to write. I’ll be resuming active moderation and will be onboarding new moderators and authors shortly. But one key requirement for any new authors & moderators (we are only 6 right now), beyond what is stated: you must be active. Lurking is fine, but contribution is what keeps this platform alive.

Three comments caught my attention, each illuminating a deeper tension at the heart of South Asia. But all point to the same truth: the deeper our wars go, the more we are forced to ask, what are we really fighting for?

(1) Why Should Pakistanis Say Jai Hind?

Because India, that is Hind, is Pakistan’s mother civilization. Even if Pakistan opts out of Bharat the polity, it cannot opt out of Hind the civilizational source. The Indus Valley, Gandhara, Panini, Taxila; these are not Indian territories. They are shared cultural DNA.

Jai Hind isn’t just a political slogan. It’s a civilizational salutation. One can reject Hindutva, Modi, the RSS and still salute the land that birthed Sanskrit, Sufism, and syncretism.

To put it plainly, if Pakistan’s father is the Islamic Ummah, its mother is Indian civilization. But a child that murders its mother is eventually disowned by its father. That’s Pakistan’s dilemma. It turned its back on Hind—and ended up adrift in the Muslim world, without cultural gravity or civilizational legitimacy.

Compare that with Iran. Iranians are no longer Zoroastrians—but they revere the Zoroastrianesque Achaemenid kings (Shiraz is full of Sassanian iconography even now under the Islamic regime). Kurdish schools in Syria teach Arab children, to the chagrin of their parents, about Zoroaster (continuing the legacy of the Indo-Aryan Mittani in the Fertile Crescent). There is no shame in descent. But there is danger in denial.

Pakistan’s refusal to accept its “Hindic” roots has become a form of civilizational amnesia. Partition didn’t just redraw borders. It severed memory.

(2) “Planes are equipment. Not people.”

Our resident Pandit, responding to the Pahalgam attack, wrote:

“The key function of an army is to defend its population and ensure its personnel are safe… Indians gave an excellent account of themselves on both these metrics. Planes are equipment, not people. The body count was 2–3 Indians versus over 100 Pakistanis. pañcatve gatāḥ.”

This is not callous. It’s civilizational. In much of the West—and now India—wars are fought with tech, not people. Soldiers are protected. Lives are politicized. Every death is counted, mourned, and often weaponized. Every US President worries about “body bags to Dover.”

But across the broader Asiatic-Muslim world, death is sanctified. Martyrdom is the medium and this is correlated to the type of government (democracy versus autocracy). This is not a moral judgement, for instance Martyrdom is an electrifying concept in many religions and it seems that the Democratic axis (West, Japan, Korea, Israel, India) are trying to do Xbox wars, which don’t really work out until and unless you start ramping it up to nuclears. The American misadventures in the Middle East, this century, have probably ushered in the multipolar world.

Pakistan, like Iran’s IRGC or Hamas, builds legitimacy through loss. It’s a different doctrine. Not deterrence—but sacrifice. Not cost—but offering. But this result in dehumanisation, the civilian count becomes more a tit-for-tat toll.

(3) The Misinformation War Pakistan Won

S. Qureshi is right to note: Pakistan’s real success may be in narrative, not battlefield. Despite a near-total media clampdown, Pakistanis emerged claiming victory. Even if India achieved tactical goals, Pakistan’s perception of resistance—and Asim Munir’s consolidation of power—have turned military ambiguity into political capital.

We once believed social media would be the disinfectant. Instead, it’s become the fog machine. Truth fragments. What matters is coherence, not accuracy. And Pakistan’s state media has created a siege mythos that many find comforting.

Final Reflection: Civilizations Don’t Die—They Get Forgotten

Jai Hind can be inclusive. So can pañcatva gatāḥ—if we understand it not as a body count, but a civilizational cycle. Pakistan was born denying its mother. India risks strangling itself to prove it never lost a child. But if we cannot agree on whether life is a cost or a calling, a wound or a weapon—then it’s not just two states. It becomes two philosophies and perhaps, two worlds.

Interestingly enough no one will like this post and maybe what’s interesting is Dr. Lalchand & I are one of the few individuals who straddle these two very different worlds.