I’ve been enjoying the new direction Brown Pundits has taken since the recent shake-up. Posts are now generating 100+ comments, and that kind of engagement creates a virtuous cycle. You want to write more, think more, respond more. I’m leaning into that.
For now, a lot of the content burden rests on me and that’s okay. It’s been encouraging to see older names return: Girmit, for instance. It feels like a slow reconsolidation of the original readership. Letting people return on their own terms.
Meanwhile, BRAHM, my newsletter, has taken on a different role; a home for more composed writing, life pieces, and the slow launchpad for my business. I just posted something there recently, which I’ll link to for now and follow up on soon. But here, on BP, is where I let myself think in public. Where I go long. Where thoughts breathe.
A line in the comments on my last post stood out, I think it was Dave who said. (& I paraphrase): Pakistanis will eventually have to reconnect with India and initiate a cultural opening. That got me thinking. Because I disagree.
Pakistan won’t go the way of Iran.
Take Iran. At a recent Bahá’í gathering, someone shared how modern Persian is evolving; shedding Arabic vocabulary, reviving older Persian terms, and even borrowing freely from Western languages. The Persian spoken by the Bahá’ís of Kuwait, who migrated there between the 1950s and 70s, is now radically different from modern Iranian Persian. (Many Gulf Iranians descend from the South, with dialects closer to Shirazi Farsi.) In Iran itself, a subtle de-Arabization is underway. Even under a theocracy, secularization is leaking through the seams of language, style, and thought.
Pakistan, by contrast, is consolidating. Islam remains its last consensus. Even when Pakistanis westernize, they tend to do it in an Islamicate register. They may watch Netflix, speak English, or dress freely but there’s almost always a religious subtext, even in rebellion. Religion is not what they are reacting against. It is often what they carry with them.
That’s where many Indian observers misread Pakistan.
Liberal Pakistanis like Kabir; who genuinely engages and, to his credit, debates in somewhat good faith, are rare. And as Kabir himself has noted, he belongs to the liberal wing of the elite, buffered by the privileges of a Western passport. For most Pakistanis, the West is both aspirational and suspicious. You migrate for opportunity, yes but you carry your Islamic identity harder abroad, because it’s the one thing that hasn’t collapsed. It travels.
Iran had 1979; a rupture. Religion was forcibly imposed from above, and that created resistance. Islam became institutionalized and thus resistible. But Pakistan’s Islam has always been bottom-up: not just state-led, but embedded in daily life, rituals, family structure, school culture, and sentiment. It’s not enforced, it’s inherited and fuelled by the trauma of Partition. That makes it far harder to dislodge.
And when an identity is under siege, as Islam is perceived to be globally, it doesn’t erode. It solidifies.
Pakistanis aren’t going to “Hinduify,” which is unfortunate. But neither are they going to Westernize in the ways some Indians seem to expect; not openly, not collectively. The underlying civilizational wiring is different. Iran, for all its authoritarianism, remains Persian, with a cultural memory that predates Islam and continues to shape resistance. Pakistan has no such pre-Islamic cultural continuity. Its story begins in 1947 and it begins with faith.
That’s why Pakistan won’t go the way of Iran. And India’s decision to shut it out, diplomatically, culturally, symbolically, alas isn’t fostering Hindufication. It’s entrenching Islamisation. Isolation has consequences. Sometimes, it seals in the very things one would hope would release.
Addendum:
Hinduism, like paganism, thrives on exposure. InshAllah the day will come when each Pakistani household has a pūjā room filled with intercessionary idols; quietly, privately, unapologetically. I find the exclusionary logic of Islam, and of monotheism more broadly, quite interesting. Though I myself am monotheistic, I believe there are many many paths to the Divine. That’s what allows me to participate, even enthusiastically, in Hindu rituals and idol worship without contradiction.
There’s a saying I’ve always loved: “God’s mercy is greater than His justice.”
That’s the lens I carry. This obsession with ideological purity, this need to define salvation through negation, has always felt a little foreign to me.
>alas isn’t fostering Hindufication. It’s entrenching Islamisation. Isolation has consequences.
I don’t think Indians have any strong desire to ‘hinduize’ Pakistan. And blaming isolation is tail wagging the dog, really. I mean, the 80s and even 90s had Pakistani cricketers star in commercials for Indian audiences – what did that acceptance and ‘non-isolation’ get Indians? 3+ decades of jihad deployed aimed at breaking India.
So this sort of chest-beating about isolation being ‘bad’ isn’t going to resonate at all.
And if Kabir is the ‘liberal elite’, I…am just going to leave that alone. 🙂
Pakistani problems are their own to solve. And I do not see any change in its identity defined based on “India is bad to muslims, and if it isn’t we must lie to ourselves that it is” fixation.
To use a colloquial phrase – India ne theka nahi le rakha Pakistan ka. Pakistan made its own bed, and needs to lay in it, fix it, whatever. Expecting India and Indians to continue paying a price in blood, while indulging Pakistan’s existential growing pains, is way too much to ask.
You are upset that Pakistan aims to “break India”. While that may be an aspiration, it is a fact that it was India that actually broke Pakistan in 1971. So who started this game? And you cannot use Pakistan’s pre-1971 actions in Kashmir to argue against this point because Kashmir is a Disputed Territory. East Pakistan was unequivocally part of Pakistan. It didn’t stop Mrs. Gandhi from dividing the country.
I am center-left. I am aligned with Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz). There are Pakistanis much further to my right. You don’t find them on blogs like this because they don’t have any interest in engaging with Indians whatsoever.
For the record, if there were right wing Pakistanis on this blog, I would criticize their views with as much fervor as I criticize those of soft Hindutvadis. The one category I despise is the right wing (in whichever country).
Q & u were allies.
Meanwhile I think some few of us have requested Honey Singh to stop trolling you on multiple occasions. Most recently I even idiotically mistook someone else to pre-empt a flame war.
Just saying. The comments history are at odds with your memory/self image.
The clunky English is intentional, I use it to express thoughts more lucidly pls don’t autopedant in response.
yes agreed Kabir needs to stop posturing about grammar and vocabulary.. I have made you Editor, Indosaurus. u can now edit any comment on any thread
Making my ideological enemies editor means you really don’t want me here.
Noted.
Don’t presume as to what I want and what I don’t want..
I will make that clear.
Clearly, you are giving power to one side. So whether you explicitly state it or not, your actions make that clear.
Actually I’m not- I’ve been exceptionally fair throughout, that’s why the Blog is growing.
All viewpoints are represented. It’s just that one has to have respectful discourse.
You have me on WhatsApp, you know that I have always stood by you when I felt you were being wronged.
OK, I’m not going to argue with you. It’s your blog after all.
But the fact remains that the only people who have the power to void comments are my ideological enemies.
Can Furqan (for example) void any comments he doesn’t like?
Consider what has actually materialised vs what you’re building up in your mind. Have you been voided unfairly?
Btw do Editors have the power to make Authors?
Don’t think so. Could be a limited view on my mobile, but I suspect not.
It’s a matter of principle.
I was asking if Furqan is equal to the two of you. I think the answer I’ve received is that he is. So problem solved.
It could be worse, Kabir. I could become editor.
You could if you didn’t write blatantly hateful comments like what you just did. And you know what you wrote was vicious and frankly hate speech.
You were deliberately glorying in the butchery of Muslims during Partition. It is not a scorecard, value your humanity; that was a very triggering comment.
I will not correct other people’s English. I will concede that much.
At the same time, self-appointed “hypocrisy correctors” also need to calm down.
I think BP has done very well in this incarnation and I intend to grow it. I’ve been very fair in my judgements thus far and I’ve built as broad a church as possible. but I don’t want to hyper-moderate; I’m focussing on broader and deeper posting so I do need to give latitude to Nivedita & Indosaurus to sort the threads, which are equally important.
You can justify yourself as you see fit.
From my POV, you are giving power to my ideological enemies.
Forget about me. No Pakistani Muslim will contribute to a site run by “soft Hindutvadis”.
I think lots of the commentariat just powered down alas..
Just a bit busy with work.
I do visit from time to time. Will comment a bit more in the future.
Not really. There is a record (going back years) of me disagreeing with him. I despise right-wing Pakistanis just as I despise right-wing Indians.
Not at all. That is a misrepresentation.
Q was rabidly pro PTI and Imran. I despise Imran Khan with every breath in my body.
Q and I are not the same.
only rabidly right wing Pakistanis believe that India ‘broke” Pakistan. Pakistan did it to themselves by genociding the Bengalis. A genuine liberal wouldn’t pretend it was India that did it. Seems like you are either ignorant of your own country’s history, or are choosing the rabid right wing version of it. And you wonder why your ‘center left’ proclamations don’t get accepted?
Liberals don’t lie about Bangladesh. And not just to others for ‘debate’. Even to themselves. You expose yourself repeatedly, and become rude when its pointed out. Its frankly exhausting.
Just because there exist folks who are more right-wing than you are, doesn’t make you center left. The way you express yourself on these threads, you are a right-wing Pakistani who unapologetically embraces Islamic apartheid within Pakistan, and loves to cherrypick anecdotes that (in my view, inaccurately) deny Indian secularism. You use religion as justification for secessionism if the national entity is non-muslim, and simultaneously use Islam to justify ethnic colonialism within Pakistan.
None of this is “liberal”.
Unfortunately for you, you are no one to issue certificates on who is a liberal or not. I identify as center-left and that is the bottom line.
On the other thread, you admitted you admire Modi. Therefore, you are not a liberal by any means. Anyone who admires Hindu Hriday Samrat is a soft Hindutvadi at best.
It is a fact that Mrs Gandhi was very happy to divide Pakistan into two countries. She was hailed in India as “Durga ma” for doing so.
So if Pakistan succeeds in taking Kashmir from India, India would deserve this “comuppance” (to use your own words).
If the territorial integrity of Pakistan wasn’t respected by India, we don’t have to respect your territorial integrity either.
where did I ever say I “admire” Modi? Lol, you really reside in alternate reality. Windmills if they don’t exist, must be fabricated.
Again, portraying Bangladesh’s emergence out of Pakistan as an Indian creation, is … rabidly right-wing take. Exploitation, injustice and ultimately genocide inflicted by “West Pakistan” on the Bengalis led to Bangladesh. India or ‘Indira’ didn’t initiate it. The refugee crisis is what ultimately forced India’s hand.
Citing post-conflict election propaganda as if it were gospel? To prop up Pakistani fantasies of Pakistan “taking Kashmir from India”?
You clearly have no idea what center-left means.
Calm Dave
I agree I shouldn’t get baited into yet another useless round of ‘friction’ with Kabir, but you cannot expect false assertions and comments of ‘breaking India’ to go unchallenged.
Pretending that Bangladesh was somehow an Indian conspiracy, and not the outcome of utter exploitation and genocide of the Bengalis? Come on now. And my comments get put on “delayed moderation”?
The guy repeatedly goes personal insults – talks about my English, ‘remedial education’ and what not, and I’m the one who gets filtered.
I understand that we have a minority of Pak opinions on this thread, so a bit of mollycoddling is to be expected. And I take your point about ‘more light than heat’ seriously. But lets keep things fair.
This delayed moderation seems to show up from time to time on the site. I think it’s possibly some setting, but it looks like multiple people are on it a.t.m, some apparently for no obvious reason.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yes – there is only one person who is on a Spam list and that is Q (the Pakistani chap) because he refused to apologise.
Apart from that – no one should be on moderation or filter. Voiding is my preferred strategy
OK, you need to do some research. You cannot seriously make the argument that India was not fishing in troubled waters in East Pakistan. Of course, the fact that the waters were troubled in the first place is on Pakistan.
Sam Dalrymple has just written a book called Shattered Lands. In it he describes how as early as the 1960s, Pakistan was aiding the Naga and Mizo insurgencies and India was trying to break Pakistan.
This is what historical research shows not some “Pakistani bias”.
Let it be Kabir
It is not delayed moderation; we have hyper-active spam filters. When ur comment is in limbo; email the email on the site.
India fished in troubled waters. I think we can at least agree on that.
Similarly, the Indian government over the years has done some horrible things to Kashmiri Muslims (e.g. Kunan Pushpora, Gawkadal). So don’t be surprised if Pakistan also chooses to fish in those troubled waters.
Pakistan can play any game that India wants to play.
On “center-left”: Wikipedia lists the PPP as a center-left party (The PML(N) is listed as a center-right party but I would argue it’s moved towards the center). My views are not very different from those of PPP. The only reason why I prefer PML(N) to PPP is because I live in Lahore. PPP is a Sindhi party. They will never win votes in Punjab. The Sharifs are a Punjabi dynasty.
Fake liberals who believe in religious apartheid secession will of course choose to cherrypick and believe what they want. The BLM has multiple generations of suffering to to point to.
I don’t see the need to name call Kabir, a fake liberal.
If he chooses to identify as a liberal, that is his prerogative?
why shouldn’t India want to rebuild Akhand Bharat?
Because Akhand Bharat doesn’t require a modern nation state to enforce sovereignty. The modern political nation-state with passports is a 20th century creation. The ‘idea of India(Bharat) is woven with its Teerth spots scattered all over the sacred geography. And yes, many of these lie outside the present-day extent of the Indian nation’s political borders. Be it Kailash, Multan, ShardaPeeth or others. And that’s OK.
India needs to build a better Akhand Bharat within its national borders, and then work on spreading that prosperity beyond that. Yes, it ought to be a priority for GoI to work on acquiring access for Indians to sites such as Nankana Sahib, Kailash etc. But beyond that? What even is the point of trying to ‘rebuild Akhand Bharat’?
perhaps
I heartily agree with this. Akhand Bharat is our civilizational expanse, built out on trade, prosperity and philosophy. Not conquest rape and pillage.
That age has passed. Now India needs to build itself up, by the bootstraps if needed, and Akhand Bharat should be amended to represent our diaspora and ethos.
On syncretism: the one god is a fundamental tenet in all Abrahamic faiths. Christian missionaries in India apply a very syncretic approach, Jesus enters the pantheon and occupies the primary position, the converted often keep many of their rituals intact, even sometimes those of marriage and death are hybrid affairs.
The children of the converted however are far quicker to abandon their ancestral ways completely, they have christian names and climb the creeper to the west. If they leave India, even association with the diaspora tapers off.
For the record, Pakistan gives visas to Sikhs to visit Nankana Sahab.
Our fight is not with Sikhs.
But since you are an advocate of the Indian government not giving visas to Pakistanis, the same applies to you. We have no need to give Hindus visas to visit anything in Pakistan.
I’m willing to bet good money that Pakistani govt will be falling all over themselves to woo Indian pilgrims with visas.
The ‘fees’ from Nankana are an easy example of the profitability of such a move.
Once this current generation of jihadis dies out – naturally or unnaturally, and if Pakistan hasn’t splintered in the process, their optimal road to prosperity is to be a Mexico to India. But that’s easier said than done.
Mexico is not a nuclear armed country. Pakistan is. That’s a fundamental difference.
My broader point was that visa policy is a game both countries can play equally well. You were adamant on the other thread that Pakistanis are not going to get visas to India. So that’s fine. But we will also not give visas specifically to Hindus. If I can’t go and visit Nizamuddin you can’t come to Katas Raj. I think that seems fair.
We have no issues with Sikhs. In fact our strategy is to use Sikhs against Hindus.
I’m not in charge of visa policy so I don’t make these decisions. But this is how the establishment thinks.
Pakistan will never “splinter”. That’s a complete non-starter. We are a nuclear armed country. No part of Pakistan will ever get to secede.
The Soviet Union had plenty of nukes. The USSR crumbled when the entire world least expected it.
Not saying that Pakistan is definitely going to splinter. But you never know. The faultlines are there. The economic pressures, undeniable. Nukes do help, because without them, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. But they only go so far.
I think more than the nukes, its the CCP that Pakistan’s borders depend on. And for the foreseeable future, its eminently useful for the CCP to keep Pakistan as it exists, going. On the flip side, the CCP quite likes its vassals to be teetering and dependent. A la ‘DPRK’. Not exactly a desirable state of being.
Btw, the Jong Kingdom also is a nuclear weapon state. But most analysts would agree that the longterm sovereignty of ‘DPRK’ is not something they’d bank on…
btw, I find the relatively recent Pakistani vector of ‘no issues with sikhs’ quite…fascinating. I mean, bulk of the partition violence was with sikhs. But I guess the suicidal insistence on 1000 years enmity against the ‘dastardly hindus’ requires all kinds of dissembling, either with the infidel CCP or whoever else.
The Pakistani establishment is using Sikhs against Hindus.
Also, let’s not forget that Sikhs are Punjabi. We share bonds of culture, language etc. Pakistanis don’t feel the same way about Maharashtrians or Tamils.
Sikh & Muslims are very very close in the Punjab.
It is a caste thing right; Jats are Muslim and Sikh.
Khatris are Hindu & Sikh. So those original identities are very prominent. Same lineages became different Faith.
Presumably Hinduism was very different in the Western Punjab; Buddhist inflected
I find the violence of partition distressing, so haven’t drilled down too deep into the specifics of the violence, as much as I enjoy history. But my superficial understanding was that a large chunk of the violence was muslim-sikh..
On Hinduism, I mean, there’s a bewildering variety of it all over the subcontinent, not just in the western Punjab…Go a couple of dozen klicks in any direction and you start seeing significant variances…
It was mostly Muslim-Sikh. The whole, let’s use the Sikhs against the Hindus is just cynical realpolitik.
Sikhs know their history pretty well and Aurangzeb killed Guru Tej Bahadur.
The trouble with Indian diplomats is that they have to uphold the moral stance of their country, as a result they come off as preachy. No one likes it when you point out western inconsistency. Meanwhile…
I think the antipathy that led up to Partition was mostly between Hindus and Muslims. Sikhs got caught in the middle. Quaid-e-Azam saw Congress as a “Hindu party” and the fear was that British Raj would give way to “Hindu Raj”.
Sikhs were naturally upset because most of their holy sites are in West Punjab and the creation of Pakistan meant that they would lose access to them (not inevitably but as it transpired in practice).
Anyway, don’t underestimate the Punjabi bonding between Pakistanis (about half of whom are Punjabi) and Sikhs.
Also don’t underestimate the serious issues Sikhs have with India’s Hindu majority.
Ahem. You do realize Hindus and Sikhs intermarry, we celebrate each other’s festivals and worship in each other’s temples with little exclusion. Sikhs are Hindu in Indian law. My best friend from college is Sikh by heritage. I don’t know what’s there to underestimate, Sikhs are simply not viewed negatively in any media portrayal. Indians view the Khalistanis as some bizarre Canadian madness.
Also your partition history is just simply wrong.
I am aware that some Punjabi Hindu families raise one son as a Sikh. That’s not what I’m talking about.
Pakistan was only able to fish in troubled waters because things like the attack on the Golden Temple and the 1984 ant-Sikh pogroms occurred (and yes, these were done on Congress’s watch)..
It’s not particularly controversial to say that the tensions that led up to Partition were mostly between the Congress and the League. Sikhs were not a major player. I’m not talking about specific incidents of violence that occurred in 1947.
Anyway, the Kartarpur corridor shows that Pakistan’s establishment doesn’t have a fight with Sikhs. The fight is with the Hindutva vision of India’s majority population.
Is this the history you learn? Operation blue star and the congress encouraged rioting was the end of the Khalistani movement in India, not the beginning.
Sikhism is a dharmic religion. The Sikhs are a militant offshoot of Hindu dharm to counter Mughal and Islamic dominance.
The Kartapur corridor suits Pakistan, it’s a cash cow like all religious pilgrimage sites are.
Going to end this here. There’s just too much deviation from settled history to bother countering.
“Sikhs are militant offshoot of Hindu dharm”– That’s certainly a POV. Not all Sikhs would agree. The first thing Guru Nanak said was “I am not a Hindu nor am I a Muslim”. Sikhs are monotheistic. They don’t pray to idols. “Waheguru” is in many ways like Allah. The Guru Granth Sahab contains the poetry of Bhagat Kabir and Baba Farid.
“Is this the history you learn?”– That’s a very condescending comment. I have read all the great scholarship on Partititon. I was educated in the United States. Please remember that. So these implications that I’ve gone through some bigoted “Pak Studies” curriculum are ridiculous.
One of my friends from SOAS did an entire PHD dissertation on the Rababi community (Muslims who sang kirtan at Sikh temples). So things are a lot more nuanced than you seem to think they are.
Always the victim of insults never made and never a missed opportunity to trumpet your education.
My comment was about the ass backwards history you pushed about blue star and 1984 enabling Pak involvement in the Punjabi Khalistan movement. Read a wikipedia page, your causality and timeline is off.
Guru Nanak aside (who is trying to start a syncretic tolerant faith, something hardcore Muslims tend to be intolerant towards), most of the Sikhs gurus spent their lives fighting Mughals.
Hinduism has had many movements breaking with brahmin/ritual dominance. All of them still fall within the umbrella of dharmic faith, both in common consciousness and under Indian law.
Anyway enjoy your last word. Am back to pearl hoarding.
You’re entitled to your POV (you don’t have to be so aggressive about it though).
Kahn Singh Nabha wrote a book in 1898 entitled “Ham Hindu Nahin”. Just the title is enough to disprove your point. Many Sikhs (obviously not all) are deeply offended when Hindus claim that Sikhism is a Hindu sect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_Hindu_Nahin
monotheism and even atheism are strong strands within the Dharmic tapestry.
There is nothing in sikhism that negates or conflicts with Hinduism.
But anyway, you do you. There is no point to debating this.
This is a hateful ugly comment.
Considering the diverging economies, Pakistanis will soon give visas to Indians in a bid to transform Heeramandi to what Tijuana is for Americans.
Stop trolling. Referring to “Heeramandi” was gratuitous.
Editors:
This crosses XTM’s red lines.
This is not “banter”. It’s misogynistic and quite disgusting.
I’ve voided his last two comments due to a deeply communal statement; gloating about the killing of Muslims during Partition. It was dehumanising and hateful.
Unless he issues a full, clear apology, none of his comments will be allowed through. He’s trying to walk it back, but the intent is clear; it reads as a dogwhistle, and I’m not allowing that kind of rhetoric on this platform.
This isn’t censorship. It’s curation and decency.
Thank you. He repeatedly crosses lines and then claims it was only “colorful language”.
I found “La Whore” off-putting but that is not why he is moderated atm.
No one caught his comment except me thankfully
His comment was very offensive to Pakistani women.
I am not going to moderate on offense per se but rather on intent and seriousness; what is Hate Speech and communalism.
Otherwise if we have an offense-free space; we may as well discuss nothing. But yes there is a venom to HS’s comments towards you and Pakistan; that the others do not have.
Making comments about Muslim women being used by Hindu men (which was the implication in his remark) just relives for all of us the trauma of our women being deliberately defiled by the other community.
Needlessly gratuitous.
In other news: the rumour is going around that the centre is going to grant statehood to Jammu and Kashmir individually.
What is wrong with you?
this would be an interesting post; what is Bharat’s true borders. I do love maps haha
I had seen a ‘teerth’ map on some twitter thread that Dr Ali had commented on, a few months back.
All history nerds love maps! 🙂
Do u have the link
let me see if a search turns it up. Btw, I tried to register for the site but not getting the link in email?
I mean, there’s a whole bunch of places where Hinduism managed a presence but not necessarily a pilgrimage site. That generally tends to happen if the ‘faith’ manages to institutionalize and plant roots across multiple generations.
I sometimes wonder how cool it would be to see the Kanishka Stupa, the actual Colossus of Rhodes.
But we have to settle for what’s still accessible today. And there’s …so many wonderful sites on the planet, have been to a few – Acropolis, Ajanta, Lothal, Knossos, Angkor, Machu Pichu, Tikal.
ur comments are going to spam for some reason
someone obviously made that happen no? I was wondering why I keep seeing “waiting for approval”.
Wtf, who is down voting this? I feel it’s a setting, this is not the spam filter. Happens to ‘Hoju’ too. (I cannot see the setting)
yes, Bali is….a very interesting place to visit. Although I found the Balinese practice of attaching whole chickens to puja thalis a bit…. surprising 🙂
Why should every Pakistani household have a puja room? We are not Hindu. We are a 97% Muslim country. The country was founded as a Muslim homeland. If we were going to practice Hindu rituals, there was absolutely no need for Partition.
I personally have some idols (Saraswati etc). But they are objets d’art. I would never think of praying to anything other than Allah.
Incidentally, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan is supposed to have said that if every household in (British) India had had one child who learned Hindustani classical music, there would have been no Partition.
I don’t know I like idol worship and fire worship. I feel we should lean into our Hindu origins rather than against.
Yes the Dharmic – Abrahamic cleft is how one sees Idols, whether as “statues” or beings of Power.
Al-:at, Al-Uzzah & Al-Mannat are the intercessors to Allah
The basic precept of Islam is that one doesn’t pray to anything other than Allah.
You’re not a Muslim and are free to worship whatever you want. But for Muslims idol worship is a complete non-starter.
I think there are many Islams..
There are some red lines. We state in the Kalima “There is no God but Allah” and we take that extremely seriously.
woah. That kinda talk is suicidal in some parts of the world.
I’ll admit, my knowledge of Islam is fairly basic, limited to an undergrad ‘religions of the world’ class back in the day, and general exposure to interactions with friends etc. But from what I’m aware, I thought idol worship would be a hard no.
This does remind me of a fellow Bombay dude I had hired few years back for my team – he was an Ismaili I believe (Aga Khan etc), even tithed his income etc. He told me that his grandfather and father still did chopda poojan on Diwali – they were business folks, used to own a shoe store back in BOM.
Syncretism fascinates me.
Yes no need to do hard & fast rules
“Al-at, Al-Uzzah”– Now you’re referring to the Satanic Verses which opens up a whole new controversy.
Believing Muslims would say that Allah abrogated those verses.
There is absolutely no compromise with monotheism in Islam. We don’t even pray to the Prophet of God. That would be un-Islamic.
Dressing your child as Krishna is different from considering Krishna God.
The Kalima clearly states that there is no God but Allah.
I’m not an “Islamist”. It’s in the public domain that i have sung Meera Bhajans. But I am clear that Sri Krishna is not God in my faith.
Also Q would have absolutely frowned on me for singing bhajans. That’s why I’m not on the right-wing spectrum in Pakistan.
Absolutely –
I think (like most Muslim classical musicians) I am able to separate the art from my personal religious beliefs. I have also trained in classical Western music which involves singing a lot of music like “Ave Maria”. I can sing this without actually believing Mary is the Mother of God.
To give you an example going the other way: Pandit Jasraj composed a bandish in Raga Bhairav “Mero Allah Meherban”. Not only does this refer to Allah but also to the Prophet of God, and to Imam Hussain. The fact that Pandit Jasraj composed and sang this didn’t mean he had converted to Islam.
Hindustani classical music is a syncretic example of Indo-Islamic culture. It remains that way despite efforts on both sides to communalize it. For example, Pandit Bhatkhande in the early 20th century was deeply upset that music that he saw as coming from the shastras was in the hands of “Muslims and dancing girls”.
Hindus can believe in Islam without necessarily converting out of Hinduism.
Many Bahá’ís have Puja rooms and are Bahá’ís and we are as monotheistic as Islam; we emerge from the Shaykhi-Shi’ite tradition.
Sunnism is just very exclusivist
I don’t think Pandit Jasraj would have said he believed in Islam. He was a very proud Brahmin. If you listen to his alaaps (in any raga) they always invoked the Hindu gods.
The point is that Hindustani music is a syncretic tradition. Pandit Jasraj had no problem singing about Allah. Similarly Parveen Sultana has no problem singing “Bhawani Dayani”.
In my own case, the first composition I was taught in Bhairav was “Jaago Mohan Pyaray”. My ustad was a Muslim Bangladeshi-American. It didn’t bother him to teach it and it didn’t bother me to sing it.
I don’t think Sunni Islam is necessarily more exclusivist than the Shia version. I have many Shia relatives and they would be horrified at the thought of praying to any god other than Allah.
XTM: Pandit Jasraj singing “Mero Allah Meherban” for your listening pleasure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rrg3iH37Gvg
Listening to the late Zakir Hussain talk about music and his reverence for his vidya was such an….Indian sentiment.
Finally! Something we agree on.
Here’s something I wrote about Zakir ji:
https://kabiraltaf.wordpress.com/2024/12/17/in-memoriam-ustad-zakir-hussain-1951-2024/
Much as I like an active commentariat I would wish to generate more light than heat..
That requires more active moderation.
“Trump tariff forces India to shed illusion. Stop conflating status with power” by Swasti Rao
https://theprint.in/opinion/trump-tariff-forces-india-shed-illusion-conflating-status-power/2709632/
This is a good example of exceptionally lazy journalism. The economists are saying the GDP hit is about 0.2%, the market is saying it’s nothing, the negotiators seem very comfortable holding their ground. And yet Journos push reams of copy and hyperbole.
In my more cynical moments I wonder if Modi’s boys are poking Trump on the back end (he’s very easily baited) to shore up support for the coming election.
Bihar elections are very local, but Nitish and the BJP have little to show in terms of outperformance.
Whatever the details, the larger point remains that the US is turning against India (at least for the remainder of the Trump term).
That should worry all Indians.
Not this Indian. I’ve always been a bit dismayed at the pew favourability ratings of the US amongst Indians. The US has veered between hard antagonist (Task force 74 vs Admiral Kruglyakov) to talking-down security opportunists (Obama had the gall to lecture us from Delhi). The more abusive Trump gets the better.
Which ally has the US not done over? It’s like inviting a known abuser to babysit. I actually admired Musharrafs juicing of geo-strategic importance, there was fun in watching the US generals bilked for Afghan access. I don’t feel Mr.Field Marshal is playing with the same deck.
US foreign policy has a lot of problems. I’m not a fan of Trump (I’ve never voted Republican). However, whether we like it or not, the US is the most powerful country in the world both economically and militarily. A deteriorating relationship with the world’s most powerful country is a worrying sign.