Dear all,
I have not been busy elsewhere and dont get to pay much attention to the blog and unfortunately, we seem to be seeing a lot of harsh comments and blog posts and general unhappiness. I am not promising miracles (I think the comment section will remain something of a mess, but we will try to clean up even there) but I hope we can get on even keel soon. Please do stick around, we will try to make some improvements and if you are an author who has not written for a long time, please do write more so that the quality of the posts can go up..
Omar
[…] Calm Down and Carry on. November 17, 2025 […]
I want to (very humbly) offer some feedback based on my experiences on BP both in the previous iteration (I was active from 2018-2021) and in this present iteration (since May 2025). The admin is of course free to reject this feedback.
To start with the positive: BP is one of the few places on the Internet where Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Hindus, Muslims etc are at least talking to each other. It may be negative much of the time, but at least there is dialogue. This deserves to be appreciated.
Now the negative: For a long time (at least since May 2025), I have felt that BP had a “soft Hindutva” bias. I have written about this at length so I’m not going to belabor this point here. But suffice it to say notions like the “civilizational state”, “Akhand Bharat” etc were taken as default assumptions and anyone who pushed back against them (usually me) was labeled an “Islamist” and singled out for criticism. This is not fair moderation and is unacceptable to me. It didn’t help that the two people who were made “editors” (I’m not going to take their names here) were both sympathetic to the Hindu Right and thus were hostile to me. I literally cannot count the amount of times I was called an “Islamist”.
Recently, XTM banned me from commenting. I accepted that because ultimately XTM is the admin of this blog. He then brought me back of his own volition and made me “editor”. This led to the exodus of the “Saffroniate” (XTM’s term) along with the fact that XTM called them “Brahmanical” which they didn’t like. No one forced them out. They chose to boycott. That left myself and sbarrkum as probably the most regular contributors. This change in the ideological makeup of BP is what has led to a lot of recent dissatisfaction.
I am not going to apologize for my ideology. I am a center-left Pakistani American. The Hindu Right is my foremost ideological enemy. I’m also not a fan of Islamists but there aren’t any on this blog.
I do respect the rights of others to have their own ideological leanings. The compromise that we have come to– that each author can moderate their own posts as they see fit– is a reasonable one. I do wish there were some ground rules (such as that attacking someone’s religion, nationality or caste is unacceptable).
If someone is given the role of “editor” that person needs to be scrupulously neutral and honest. The previous editors had their thumbs on the scale on the Hindu Right side. I don’t envy the person who takes this role since it is a thankless task.
I also wish we could get beyond the India vs. Pakistan framing. It’s honestly getting boring now.
This is all meant in the spirit of feedback and ultimately the admin is free to accept or reject it.