I’ve been watching Royals—Netflix’s palace drama starring Bhumi Pednekar, Ishaan Khatter and featuring Nora Fatehi—and it struck a familiar chord with where our comment threads, concerning Pakistaniat, have been going post-conflict.

It all began with grace.

Years ago, a Sinhala pop hit — Manike Mage Hithe — went viral as an IndiGo air hostess danced mid-flight. Simple. Elegant. Subcontinental. Un-Bollywood.

Two years later, it reappears: Nora Fatehi and Sidharth Malhotra, glammed up in Mughal court-wear, gyrating under chandeliers, mouthing Urdu couplets. Same song, different universe. Bollywood hadn’t remixed it. It had annexed it.

That’s the pattern: Bollywood doesn’t just Hindi-fy — it Mughalizes. Every regional input is re-rendered through a Ganga-Jamuni lens. The vibe is Ganges. The look is Indus. And the aesthetic is unmistakably Mughal. This is the real Indo-Pak cultural divergence: Continue reading From Yohani to Nora: How Bollywood Mughalizes Everything

Kabir: Lastly, KGS and other schools like it are never going to replace English with anything else. English is the way to get ahead in Pakistan (as it is in India to a large extent). The real divide in Pakistan is between those who are Urdu-educated vs. those who are English-educated.

As Kabir states, correctly, that Pakistan’s real divide is between those educated in English and those in Urdu. But what’s startling is that the English-educated class who should, in theory, be intellectually equipped to think critically often recycles the same tired tropes, increasingly unmoored from history or reflection.

The irony is sharp: those schooled in Pakistan’s vernacular languages, closer to the soil, are often more grounded in the idea that Pakistan should not be an alien implant, but a natural outgrowth of the subcontinent. It’s the Anglo-Urdu elite, disconnected from both India and the Ummah, that has imposed a post-colonial ideology designed to obscure origin and suppress complexity.

Let’s call this what it is: a mimic elite with settler instincts. Like Israel’s Ashkenazi founders or apartheid South Africa’s Anglo-Afrikaner elite, Pakistan’s ruling class sought to distance itself from the land it governed while claiming divine or ideological legitimacy to rule it. The mass displacement of Pashtun nationalism, the long war against Baloch identity, the obsession with Kashmir, the suppression of Bengali, the toppling of Afghan regimes—these were not accidents. They were acts of statecraft designed to fracture any natural civilizational or ethnic continuity that could threaten the state’s ideological foundations.

By contrast, Indian nationalism, especially that of the Congress, was pluralistic, even if patronizing. Its flaws were real: Brahminical bias, Hindu cultural dominance, an elitist bent. But it emerged organically from within the civilizational matrix. Nehru and Gandhi, despite their faults, belonged to the land in ways Quaid-e-Azam never did or, rather more tellingly, never wanted to. A fifth generation Hindu convert, QeA cosplayed as a brilliant British barrister with Muslim sympathies (the Pakistani elite are so proud of his pork-eating proclivities). QeA’s creation was brilliant—possibly a poker bluff played to perfection. But it came at enormous cost.

Partition wasn’t merely territorial—it was a civilizational rupture, most violently felt in Punjab, the Urland of South Asia: once serene and syncretic, peaceful and prosperous, suddenly shattered. Continue reading “Mimicstan”: the burden of Purity from Pagan origins

It’s been startling—at times dispiriting—to witness the tenor of Pakistani responses to recent BP posts. Not just the jingoism, but the denial. A refusal to acknowledge the civilizational reality of India before 1947. It isn’t just ahistorical—it’s tragicomic. And it reveals a deeper pathology: the English-speaking Pakistani elite is afflicted with Post-Colonial Derangement Syndrome. Omar has long argued this. I’ve become a convert over the past decade.

I love Pakistan. But that love doesn’t require denying India. I can honour my father and mother without disfiguring one to exalt the other. Civilizations are not exclusive claims—they are overlapping inheritances. Nationalism demands we choose. Patriotism allows us to belong. One blinds. The other binds.

Pakistan’s identity hinges on rupture. It claims to be not Hind, not Bharat—something purer, separate, superior. And yet, its elites remain obsessed with India. At least the Koreas and Vietnams acknowledge their shared past. Even China and Taiwan did—until foreign interference fractured that memory. But here? Not even a name is spared. There is no sign of “India” in the very land that birthed the name. If India truly didn’t exist in the Pakistani imagination, why the resentment? Why the rivalry? The schizophrenia is telling: deny the mother, envy the sibling.

Take Kashmir. If this is a political conflict—not religious—why were the victims in Pahalgam targeted as adult Hindu men? That wasn’t strategic. It was sectarian. Either the attackers acted from religious hatred, or the political cause they serve is entangled with it. You cannot claim secular nationalism while endorsing ideological murder. Continue reading The Arrogance That Binds: Post-Colonial Delusions in the English speaking Pakistani Mind

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

Ngl Kabir’s comments about the “Muslim Valley” kind of triggered me. It really does solidify Pakistan as a second class state for everyone who is not a Muslim (and that’s at least 5% of the population).

I find that majoritarianism unhealthy so I’m going to stick this picture of the above; Modi, for all his flaws, has presided over a shining decade for India, where it is recognised as an ascendant superpower while Pakistan is firmly a Chinese satellite.

Comment Policy Update (May 11, 2025)

A quick reminder for all:

1. Spam Filter: Comments with 2+ links may go to spam automatically. It’s a default safeguard—not a block.

2. Trusted Commenters: If you’ve commented twice before without issue, you should now post freely. No one is blocked or suspended right now.

3. If Your Comment Disappears: Just post a short note: “My comment went to spam.” I’ll retrieve it manually.

(Thanks to Nivedita for flagging the issue—otherwise, I wouldn’t have noticed Xperia’s comment got filtered.)

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