November 2025 – Page 25

The hype over Yogi’s L&O record is justified

Saiarav · November 2, 2025 · 18 comments

Hello everyone! I would like to thank Omar Sb for providing me this platform. Some of you may know me as the guest poster at BP or as @Saiarav on X. One of my earliest posts on BP was on Yogi’s economic track record – an unflattering take which got me a fair bit of grief from Yogi supporters on X. But fact is, I am not really a Yogi hater – I just went where the economic data led me. I am actually modestly constructive about Yogi. He has got a herculean task on his hands, turning around a mammoth state (UP would be the 5th or 6th most populous country if it was an independent country) which has a historic record of being terribly governed. In my now suspended avatar on X , I had written about Yogi government’s phenomenal performance in dramatically changing the educational outcomes in government schools – a highly critical area which has scarcely received any attention, as his supporters obsess over more “sexy” issues like infrastructure & economy and law & order. As I keep pointing out, Yogi’s record on economy is highly overrated. What about law & order? Is the hype justified? The data on crime appears to suggest that Yogi has indeed brought in significant improvement to L&O in the state and especially has been extremely effective in clamping down on riots, which has traditionally been a major bane in the communally charged polity of UP.

(I plan to do a follow up post on Yogi’s economic record and Yogi’s performance in the education sector, but that is for a later day)

UP, of course has the image of being a lawless badland swarming with bahubalis of dominant communities, with the writ of the State being quite tenuous. The general perception among political watchers is that the Samajwadi Party is especially terrible at enforcing the law whereas the Dailt CM, Mayawati is seen as relatively better. Yogi supporters have, for long claimed that, he has totally transformed the L&O situation in the state with his tough-on-crime policies and zero tolerance for bahubalis. There is obviously an element of exaggeration in this narrative considering UP BJP itself houses bahubalis. So what does data say about how much the situation has changed on the ground since Yogi took over as CM in 2017?

I look at the data on crimes from the National Crime Records Bureau’s annual reports for some clues. I pick the data for the last year of governance by Maywati (2011) and Akhilesh (2016) to assess their record as CM for 5 years. For Yogi, I look at the change in crime levels between 2017 and 2023 (the latest year for which data is available). Admittedly, the analysis is seriously constrained by the high degree of under-reporting of serious crimes with the scale of under-reporting varying significantly over time. Take cases of kidnapping, for example. Up reported only 3,318 cases of kidnapping during calendar year 2006. By 2011, the last year of Mayawati’s rule, that figure had jumped to 8,500 and by 2016, the figure had moved up to ~16,000. Clearly, a case of improving reporting of kidnapping rather a 5x increase in kidnapping over a 10 year period. I therefore focus on some specific categories of violent crime, where arguably, there is lesser scope for underreporting. Continue reading The hype over Yogi’s L&O record is justified

Islam the religion of Peace

X.T.M · November 2, 2025 · 15 comments

He also brokered the fragile ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia after deadly border clashes earlier this year – he stepped in after Trump threatened to impose tariffs on both sides if the fighting didn’t stop.

Some called it a diplomatic victory for Malaysia, while others said Anwar was simply in the right place at the right time – this year, it was the Malaysian PM’s turn to lead Asean.

Two Theravada Buddhist neighbours go to war over a Hindu Temple Complex and come to peace because of a Muslim & Christian President.

I know the Commentariat – Saffroniate are a bit miffed by my sudden change of tone; but as you can see I would be intellectually dishonest if I didn’t cover all sides of the story. This is where Dharmic civilisation, which is ordinarily peaceful, had to be *helped* by Abrahamic one.

On closer interrogation; I think when the Blog becomes dominantly “one-tone”, I then flip to ensure we maintain a parity of sorts.

Who is Anwar Ibrahim

New writing ideas

X.T.M · November 2, 2025 · No comments

G’s future posts:

« I am thinking on a longish post on how the Hindu Epics actually made Geographical India into cultural India – more than wars of Ashoka or Gupta’s or Mughals. »

A very high Signal Comment by G again:

Guys discussing high HDI and Low HDI of North and South without discussing coastal connectivity?

All states which have a sea barring Odisa are doing well. Bengal used to do well but has gone to shit due to 70 years of Communist and bad economic strategies.

Among “Northern” states GJ has a long coastline.
HR PJ are doing fine due to connectivity to capital and extremely high irrigation and other stuff.

The only places which comprise the “backward” north are UP,Bihar – badly governed since independence and landlocked and JH and CH which have extremely difficult terrains and very very dense forests along with being landlocked.

Geography, historic and economic reasons often supersede cultural though people who want always focus on those.

Zia-Era Pakistan & Today’s India

X.T.M · November 2, 2025 · 53 comments

There are actual leftists and other folks who don’t regurgitate PakMil propaganda – of this I’m aware. But even amongst those, illiteracy on India is rife. I laugh with bemusement at the number of times self-appointed Pakistani intellechawals sagely nod their heads and compare Zia-Era Pakistan to present-day Hindootva. I ‘get’ that such comparisons soothes Pakistani insecurities vis-a-vis its larger, democratic neighbor, but it really destroys their credibility.

Kabir removed three of Dave’s comments, and while I felt it was over-moderation, I’ve kept my promise not to interfere unnecessarily in his threads.

The excerpt above, though, is interesting — the comparison between Zia’s Pakistan and Modi’s India. What’s striking about both is the twin emphasis on capitalism and cultural conservatism: the promise of economic growth wrapped in moral revival. It raises a deeper question — whether right-wing politics are, paradoxically, the only antidote societies find to extreme inequality.

Class, even more than caste or creed, is the fundamental distinction in any society. The bottom half ultimately has more in common with each other than with the top half. Yet society endures only when that bottom half is so compromised that it cannot mount effective resistance. When the Establishment promise uplift but depend on the passivity of the lower half, then the “distribution of prosperity”, twinned with ideology, itself becomes the subtlest form of control.

Saffron Strike

X.T.M · November 2, 2025 · 9 comments

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. Continue reading Saffron Strike

Sunday reads

Furqan Ali · November 2, 2025 · 6 comments

I recently read a piece I’d like to share: about the life of Bacha Khan and how he initiated an anticolonial school, the Azad School in Utmanzai, in 1921. It was a Pashto-medium institution where Manmohan Singh, the former Prime Minister of India, also studied. Nehru and Gandhi visited the school as well — Nehru in 1937 and Gandhi in 1938 — delivering speeches and spending time there. Due to his dissent against the British, he had to spend about 37 years in jail out of his 93-year life.

The Genius of Bacha Khan

“Most geniuses have one masterwork for which they are famous. For Che and Fidel, that work was surely the Cuban Revolution and its international humanism, just as it was for Lenin, the Russian. For CLR James, we can list “The Black Jacobins” as an extraordinary work of genius, as well as the underground Marxist group he co-led, known as the Johnson-Forest tendency. For Selma James and many other women of the 1970s Marxist Feminist movement, it was about recognizing the economic contributions of housework and children and establishing organizations that advocated for fair compensation for caring and reproductive labor. Their slogan, ‘invest in caring, not war’, remains the blueprint. For Spivak, it has been to chart a path for activism while working beyond Eurocentric Logocentrism.

The list is long, but I never thought that a tall, six-foot-three, broad-shouldered, soft-spoken Khan from Utmanzai, Hashnagar, a mere graduate of King Edward’s School, Peshawar, would, before he turned 30, have three works of genius to his name. Abdul Ghaffar Khan, honorifically known as Badshah Khan (King of the Khans) and also Bacha Khan, a title bestowed upon him at the mere age of 27, created three masterpieces. In order of creation, they were: Anjuman-i-Islahul Afaghina (The Society for the Reform of the Afghan), Pakhtun magazine, and the greatest non-violent organization the world has yet known, the Khudai Khidmatgar. Here I want to write only of the first, Anjuman-i-Islahul Afaghina. “

Continue reading Sunday reads

Too Much Masala Ruins the Curry

X.T.M · November 2, 2025 · No comments

I actually agree with Kabir on one key point — I don’t think people should be brought back to Brown Pundits merely as bait or for spectacle. The value of this space has never been provocation for provocation’s sake.

What makes Brown Pundits “gold” is that it forces us to face uncomfortable truths: about ourselves, our societies, our religions, our histories. The goal isn’t comfort; it’s clarity.

That’s why I push back when people say “don’t talk about caste” or “that’s offensive.” Caste, class, and every other structural reality are not optional topics — they’re fundamental to understanding how our societies actually work. Discussing them honestly is the only way to make sense of why things function, and malfunction, as they do.

If we avoid those hard conversations, the whole project collapses into noise. The point is not to inflame, but to illuminate— even when illumination burns a little.

Loki has come to Asgard once again

X.T.M · November 2, 2025 · 23 comments

1. The Return of Loki

Loki is the harbinger of Ragnarök. Even I’m surprised — but perhaps it was inevitable. The Saffronite dialectic on caste had become too self-referential, too performative. The same arguments recycled endlessly, as if volume were a substitute for depth.

Girmit wasn’t speaking on national unity; only perceptions. So any analysis of the structure of society is now to be replaced by moral superiority onto their counterparts. It has become, in short, a perpetual three-minute hate, directed outward at “the Other.” That is not intellectual inquiry; it’s emotional exorcism.

2. The Editorial Shift

So, to reset the balance and an apology, I’ve made Kabir an editor. He now has the rights to create and onboard new authors — part of what I call the Crescentisation of the blog. Think of Brown Pundits as a Saffron-hued Moon, where all Desi identities can find their place. In terms of editorial hierarchy: Continue reading Loki has come to Asgard once again