Saffron Strike

The silence on BP these past few days feels deliberate; a kind of Saffron Strike. If so, let it be known: this space was never meant to cater to ideological comfort.

It seems uncommonly quiet; I think I have been misunderstood. I do not care about the traffic and commentary of BP as much as I care about the integrity of the space.

For instance when I felt that Kabir had done wrong; interdiction was the answer. When I realised the narrative was being twisted so that I became his moderator (Kabir generally knows my red lines) then I realised I was wrong. Kabir’s recent postings and commentary have been very high-signal.

We now have a very strong left-liberal coalition at BP (sbarrkum, Kabir, girmit) and a few Pakistaniat voices (Qureshi, Furqan). I find it interesting that the Saffroniate want me to be copacetic when Pakistan is labelled Nazistan (which I am copacetic about) but when I highlight caste origins of the Saffroniate, that is beyond the pale.

I did not simply yield on the interdiction of Kabir because I wanted views; I yielded because I realised the Commentariat/Saffroniate were invested in Kabir being portrayed in a certain light (which to be fair Kabir absolutely did not help himself with).

I will not interdict the Left-Liberals of this blog simply to get the Saffroniate back even if that means we lose all our viewership and commentary base. BP can rebuild and reincarnate as it always has. We work because we span all sides of the divide.

The Iranian.com, which was a very old and popular website for the Iranian diaspora; had a great motto, “Nothing is Sacred.” A flip side to the Guardian’s “comment is free but facts are sacred.” Brown Pundits has always straddled that tension, between radical openness and factual integrity. That’s our sacred ground.