I sent this email to the CoFounders of the Blog (Omar | Razib) and tomorrow I will send through the Monthly Author Report.
Iāll send a monthly report to all authors on how BP performed in October and cc you both.Ā Iām noticing that the blog getsĀ heavy Indian traffic;Ā probably one of the few remaining portals on the internet where Indians and Pakistanis still meet (though I could be wrong).
Views
Kabir remains controversial but heās doing a good job. Bringing him back annoyed parts of the Commentariat/Saffroniate crowd’ including my two editors, who I am very friendly with, but are currently on a silent boycott. Still, Kabir, for all his provocations, brings anĀ AuthentistaniĀ voice that our readers find irresistible, especially with my own shift over the last decade toward being āSaffron in the wool.āĀ By my reading, BP gets aroundĀ 50kā60k views a monthĀ (not sure how many are duplicates). I want to 10x the readership over the next year. To sustain engagement, I think we need aĀ stable base of 30ā50 regular commentators;Ā enough to stay lively, but not descend into flame wars.Ā The noise is masala but it’s really tough to keep the signal high. Because when I do moderate then I kill the buzz and when I don’t it gets to trash.
Saffroniate
What I found annoying after Kabir was interdicted from the blog is that the Saffroniate didn’t somehow to pivot to high-signal conversation but disappeared (admittedly it was Diwali). I also notice sbarrkum (our Sri Lankan commentator) getting the same ire, even though he is provocative. I’m pretty open about my biases (Is over Ps; India, Israel versus Pakistan, Palestine) but I’m also sensitive about us becoming one big echo chamber. Life has been a roller-coaster the last decade so I’m more focussed on site rather than politic views (age and pragmatism tend to twin together alas).
Authors
Iām keeping a close (monthly) eye on inactive authors; Gauravās re-engagement is encouraging. We really need to makeĀ authorship and editorship privileges rather than honorary titles. We have 15 authors right now and 2 editors; I do want posts and comments out of them (I’d say 3-5 are active).Ā On podcasts and YouTube, I think you both have more star power than I do. We also need the āheavy hittersā on those podcasts; people like Sam Dalrymple. I just havenāt had the bandwidth to reach out yet.
Subjects
For now, Iām keeping the blog steady. Itās very challenging to pivot from Desi (subcontinental) to Brown (diasporic) issues with our current readership base.Ā Still, given that BP is approachingĀ its 15-year anniversary (in December, around the time Razib first became a father and I met DLV), weāre among the last great survivors of the “blogging era”Ā and thatās kind of impressive. Weāre on the cusp of another cycle of growth; managing it will be the next challenge.
Sorry to bombard you both; just wanted to share my thoughts on where BP stands right now. If it’s ok with you guys I’ll post this as a post; the Is over Ps was an incidental thought but one worth exploring.
It’s unfortunate that the “Saffroniate” are on a silent boycott. They do have valuable perspectives to add when they are not focused on bashing Pakistan and/or Muslims. Like I said, if they want to post threads about Hindu specific issues (caste etc), I’m happy to stay off those threads. Honestly, I really don’t care about caste one way or the other since it is not a salient issue for Pakistanis or Muslims–at least not in the same way.
On growing the readership: 1) I think blogs are kind of over now. Substack is the platform to be on right now. 2) There probably are people who would read BP but who are turned off by the excessive focus on India vs. Pakistan and Hindu vs. Muslim. Also, there are people who might want to write for the site but are turned off by the Hindu Right biases of the site. Manav K. is an example. I don’t really know why he ended up on not writing for the site (maybe just got busy since he’s now an Assistant Professor at UT Austin).
Also, I don’t think Sam Dalrymple would want to go on a podcast which has Hindu Right leanings. That’ s not his brand. Obviously, I can’t speak for him but he seems like a left-liberal.
these are good points
my concern with Substack is that it’s very individualist and for writers.
also people are going to go inactive as and when
I don think BP has HR leanings; Kabir that’s an unfair comment
You yourself have called many of the commenters the “Saffroniate”. Furqan and I are the only Pakistani Muslims here.
We have gone over this before. The default assumptions about the “civilization state” etc. These are Hindu Right notions. Left-leaning Indians don’t think in those terms. Shashi Tharoor for example is against the concept of the “civilization state”.
It is very clear that many of the Indian commenters reflexively defend the BJP. That’s their right but let’s not pretend there isn’t a bias.
Anyway, I don’t want to speak for Sam Dalrymple. It’s quite possible he may be willing to speak on the podcast. But from what I have been able to deduce from his writings, he’s very left-liberal so maybe not.
anyway u r zeroing into Sam.. I’m making the point of South Asian focussed intellectuals
Most of the guests on the podcasts in the past were right-leaning–which is fine. But looking at that record, left-leaning people are not going to want to participate.
My experience when I tried to recruit some of my Indian friends to write on this forum was that they asked “Why do you participate in a Hindu Right forum”? So that is the impression that people get from the tenor of the discourse.
so if you are someone who entertains the hypothesis that India is a ‘civilization state’, thats a “Hindu Right notion”? How absurd.
>It is very clear that many of the Indian commenters reflexively defend the BJP.
Honestly, I barely tolerate the “Muudi” and BJP, and really despise some of their political rhetoric. But ironically its OTT assertions like you tend to make, that BJP = Nazi etc, that make even BJP-skeptics sound as if they are “supporters”. Its a bit of a vicious cycle.
India being a “civilization” state is not a hypothesis. A hypothesis is something that can be scientifically tested. Whether a country is a “civilization state” or not is an article of faith. There is no way of scientifically validating it. I specifically cited Shashi Tharoor. I would say he’s a centrist politician and he has vociferously defended India being a nation-state and not a “civilizational state”. I’ve written an entire essay about this so I’m not going to rehash it here:
https://kabiraltaf.substack.com/p/on-civilization-states-vs-nation
I am really not all that concerned about your personal politics–though certainly your comments here do not reflect the views of a good center-left voter. There are really no Indian voices on this forum that could be called Left-Liberal or Congress supporters.
I didn’t say BJP=Nazi. I said the RSS was influenced by European fascist beliefs. The latter is a factually correct statement. Anyway, I’m not going to re-litigate this here.
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Yes Iām thinking about it