Why Pakistan Is a Colonial Project & India a Civilizational One

Over the past few months, I’ve noticed a marked improvement in the quality of conversation on BP. A large part of this, I suspect, is due to eliminating trigger-response dynamics; as seen when I barred Q on a technicality. It created space: suddenly, the commentariat was thinking, not reacting. In that quiet, something became obvious.

Whenever Kabir invokes “neutral experts,” they always seem to be Western, usually venerably white, often from institutions directly involved in the colonial rape of India. And yet these same voices are elevated as if they were impartial or above it all. They aren’t. They are the architects, not the observers. This is the paradox at the heart of Pakistan.

Pakistan Is Not the Heir of the Mughals

Let’s be clear: the Pakistani and Indian Muslim elites are not the successors of the Mughals, they are the successors of the collaborators (Quislingstanis?). The British systematically dismantled the Mughal elite. Every heir was hunted, humiliated, or hanged. What survived was not imperial pride but administrative servility.

The colonial state did not end in 1947. It was repackaged. The Pakistani state is a classic colonial continuation: created through divide-and-rule, managed by native intermediaries, and driven by a deep dependency on Western epistemes, weapons, and frameworks.

Q.E.A-Jinnah did not bluff and fail. He was played, used to fragment what might have been the greatest decolonial project in modern history: an organic, plural, civilizationally united India.

India Is a Geographic Expression, But That’s Exactly the Point

Yes, there is such a thing as the Indian subcontinent (Akhand Bharat); a land bounded by the Hindu Kush, the Himalayas, and the Indian Ocean. This is not a random term. It holds within it a deep coherence: cultural, linguistic, genetic, aesthetic, culinary, musical, spiritual. It is not homogeneous. But it is continuous.

And yet, colonialism broke this continuum; not just by drawing borders, but by replacing a shared sense of self with bureaucratic taxonomies like “South Asia.” What does South Asia mean? South of what? East of whom? These are compass points drawn from London, not Lahore. To even use the term “South Asia” is to admit, unconsciously, the primacy of someone else’s map.

Why “South Asia” Proves Pakistan Is a Colonial Entity

• Pakistan was created by British fiat, for British aims, and survives in the shadow of Western patronage.

• India, for all its flaws, is attempting to resurrect a civilization; not an ethnicity, not a religion, but an idea: that this land was once whole and can be whole again.

• When Pakistan invokes “South Asia,” it is not referring to a region; it is erasing one.

• The intellectual roots of Pakistan’s elite remain tethered to London and Langley; not Lahore or Lucknow.

That is why the term “South Asia” is so revealing. It is not descriptive. It is prescriptive. It is meant to replace the word India, because to acknowledge India as a civilization is to admit that Partition was a mistake.

The Real Civilizational Frontier Was Never the North But the East

The Indo-Gangetic plain was always vulnerable to northern invasion. The relationship with Central Asia and the Middle East was asymmetrical: India absorbed, transformed, and reinterpreted, but always in reaction. But the true zone of Indian expansion was the east, not by sword, but by ship.

• The Chola dynasty and other Tamil thalassocracies seeded what became the Maritime Dharma Belt.

• From Angkor to Borobudur, a distinct Mandala Zone formed; not colonies, but civilizational siblings.

• Here, India was not invaded. It invited.

• Islam arrived by trade, Christianity by conquest. The former adapted. The latter erased.

This Trans-Dharmic Highway, this Suvarnabhumi Sphere, remains India’s forgotten frontier. And it shows what civilizational India can look like: expansive, plural, radiant.

Rebuilding the Bridge, Brick by Brick

At BP, we are not defending Hindutva. We are not endorsing any party. What we are doing is harder: we are trying to recover the soul of the subcontinent; by refusing to forget that there was once a bridge, and that it can be rebuilt. Pakistanis are welcome in that project. But only if they’re ready to leave behind the colonial fiction that created them. If you’re still clinging to terms like “South Asia,” ask yourself; what are you really trying to preserve?

Mistake ≠ Malice. Love Persists.

Even if Pakistan was a historical bluff — the product of Qaidaism, imperial manipulation, and colonial rupture — it does not follow that one cannot love Pakistan. Mistakes can birth meaning. A child born by accident is no less loved than one meticulously planned. Pakistan exists. Pakistanis live, dream, create, and contribute. The call is not to delegitimize their being — but to question the origins of their framework. To disassociate from the colonial machinery that birthed Pakistan is not to hate Pakistan. It is to liberate it.

On the Bengali Brahmin Class: The Latinate Gatekeepers

A word, too, on the Bengali Brahmin intellectuals — the so-called Latins of the East. Fluent in English, steeped in privilege, and often cloaked in Leftist virtue, they have long functioned as the gatekeepers of South Asian discourse. But their vision of “South Asia” is still one born from Lutyens’ corridors — orderly, curated, frozen in Nehruvian amber. They don’t want evolution. They want editorial control.

What they fear is not Hindutva — but an India that outgrows their license to interpret it. And like many post-colonial elites, they are not post-colonial at all. They are heirs to a different empire — and still loyal to its language, its categories, and its map.