July 2025
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Partition Never Ended: We Just Stopped Talking About It
X.T.M argues that the India–Pakistan conflict is also civilisational: each side knows little of the other, with Bollywood and state narratives supplying caricatures, while real conversations across the border turn…
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Addendum: On Labels, Nations and Misunderstandings
X.T.M adds that Indians and Pakistanis misread each other’s vocabulary and media, with India seeing itself as civilisational and Pakistan as ideological, and argues that curiosity rather than suspicion would…
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Open Thread
Open thread: X.T.M is busy, will keep it sticky, and invites readers to talk about anything.
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Bharat Needs No Validation
X.T.M takes a commenter’s remark that the Ramayana did not resonate as a cue to argue that Bharat is civilisational, that Pakistan is an ‘Urdufied Punjab’ still colonised in mind,…
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Ramayan in Karachi ?
Nachiketa shares news that a Pakistani theatre group has staged Ram and Sita, under the line ‘It’s our Ramayana too’, and asks readers for their views.
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Hans Zimmer and the Polite Dismissal of the Ramayana
X.T.M argues that Hans Zimmer’s polite refusal to hear the Ramayana explained was a dismissal, not reverence, and that Indian awe at it shows civilisational confusion; he adds a reflection…
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Open Thread: From Flattery to Fatigue — What the Iranian Diaspora Can’t Admit
Open thread on the Iranian diaspora: X.T.M links his Ta’arof post to Sharghzadeh’s ‘Iranian Diaspora Fatigue’ video, arguing the diaspora performs flattery toward whiteness, and asks whether it preserves Persian…
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Pakistaniat & Urdu from Qasim to Quaid
X.T.M reflects on Urdu as a language between Persian and Arabic, shares a Bahá’í prayer in Urdu, and suggests Pakistan is a project rooted in sentiment rather than soil, in…
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Ta’arof & The Art of Flattery
X.T.M argues that Ta’arof, the Persian art of ritualised courtesy, is misread in the West as ‘saying no three times’, and is better understood as high-context negotiation, like Korean nunchi,…
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Visibility, Voice, and the Indian Muslim Dilemma
X.T.M reads the prominence of Muslim families in BBC coverage of the Ahmedabad plane crash as showing three things: selective visibility, Indian Muslim emigration, and a surprising willingness to speak…
