I am a big fan of neo-soul/neo-funk, so good to see Indian artists also doing something in that style.
A remix of an old Pakistani* song.
*XTM edit; I do not condone intellectual theft. The original version was sung in Pakistan in the late 80’s.
Please note to all I’m now going to be far less tolerant of tricks & provocations on ALL sides.
It’s in very poor taste to appropriate the hard & beautiful work of a now deceased female artist.
A small administrative note that matters more than it sounds. Brown Pundits now has 3,920 posts. Every single one is categorised. There are no uncategorised posts left. The entire archive is structured.
That is not glamorous work. It does not trend. It does not go viral. But it is the difference between a website and a timeline. Writing is not just producing new content. It is tending an intellectual garden. Adding categories, refining tags, standardising slugs, back-tagging fifteen years of material; this is not clerical labour. It is editorial discipline. It forces you to reread your own history. It reveals patterns. It exposes gaps. It shows where the site has been narrow and where it has been expansive.
Substack has made everyone an author. It has not made everyone an editor. Most platforms reward velocity and outrage. The incentive is to post faster and louder than the next person. Community becomes an audience. Conversation becomes branding. Writers become marketers. We are structured differently.
Different Eras of the Internet Continue reading 3,920 | Building out the Archive
The last few days have really been dominated by a cacophony of ….tu, tu, mai, mai in the BP comment threads with competitive “patriotism” flying thick and fast. Amidst all the noise generated by …certain hostility focused agendas, its easy to lose sight of the fact that for all the problems and challenges faced by the 2 nation-states, the people that inhabit the subcontinent, still continue to have a bunch of things in common.
So allow me this …palette cleanser of a post. The ICC T20 Cricket World Cup is in progress, and the teams of both India and Pakistan have managed to qualify for the “Super 8” stage. Usman Tariq, is a rising star who has recently joined the Pakistani team, as a bowler who serves up ‘mystery spin’ from a unique bowling action, enabled slightly in part due to an anatomically exceptional elbow which has elicited some allegations of chucking (throwing). He has undergone test and has been cleared of this allegations already.
What I found notable about Usman, apart from his repertoire of unique googlies and arm angles, is him sharing the fact that watching an Indian movie inspired him to pursue his dream – a career in cricket. M.S. Dhoni a former India captain, had a biopic made about him a few years ago, which was a massive hit in India and beyond. Usman, as we know, is hardly an exception when it comes to Pakistanis consuming Indian content including movies. Pakistanis, in some ways, are arguably even more ardent consumers and fans of ‘Bollywood’ than Indians. As an Indian listener to Pakistani podcasts, you can’t help but notice how movie and song quotes from Indian films and pop culture, are seamlessly used by Pakistanis as metaphors to describe situations. Even more so than is common for Indians to do so.
On the flip side, Indians are enthusiastic consumers of Pakistani music – the popularity and opinions on the ‘quality’ of Pakistani Coke Studio abound, so does a sizeable number of fans for Pakistani soap operas.
The point is, as much as the interactions of India and Pakistan is dominated by the disproportionate shadow cast by the history of conflict between the two states, and especially the untenable history of PakMil sponsored multi-decade history of terrorism and “non-state actor” violence, we still see a common culture interwoven through the day-to-day existence of the …awaam
“No one wants a strong India. But PM Modi opened doors. He strengthened the military, advanced the economy, maintained balanced relations with the West, Russia, and China. That is serious statecraft” –Aleksandar Vučić, President of Serbia
India is richer
Strip away the noise and a simple asymmetry remains. India will almost certainly remain richer than Pakistan for the foreseeable future. The gap in GDP, fiscal depth, technology, and demographic scale is widening, not narrowing. On material indicators, India has the advantage. Yet material advantage does not always translate into strategic dominance.
India is louder
India is a mass democracy. It is electorally accountable, media-saturated, and sensitive to public opinion. Governments must justify escalation. Markets react to instability. Voters punish miscalculation. This imposes restraint.
Pakistan is tighter
Pakistan is structured differently. Power is narrower. Decision-making is concentrated within a smaller elite, with the military as the central institution. That creates rigidity in some domains but flexibility in others. Strategic continuity does not reset every five years. Public opinion matters, but it does not directly determine policy in the same way it does across the border.
Structural Differences
This structural difference shapes behaviour. India must think about global markets, coalition politics, and reputational cost. Pakistan can absorb economic stress more easily because its political system is already insulated from full electoral volatility. That insulation produces durability, even under strain.
The list gets smaller. There are six countries who sent the head of state/government to all three: 1) Beijing military parade 2) Davos Board of Peace launch 3) Washington BOP 1st meeting They are: Armenia | Azerbaijan | Indonesia | Kazakhstan | Pakistan | Uzbekistan
Like Israel Continue reading Poorer Pakistan OutFoxes Richer India?
Kohrra is a police procedural series set in Punjab whose second season is now available now on Netflix which I highly recommend.
Some relatively spoiler free thoughts. I am skipping plot details etc because I don’t want to spoil anything plus there are many reviews already available on the internet.
Five billionaires have as much wealth as half of humanity ~ Vandana Shiva
Prime Minister of Uzbekistan, Singing Raj Kapoor’s Song.
Seems LV also stole its TM design from India.
Continue reading Open Thread: Bharat overawes France
Post header image is of War Criminal Nobusuke Kishi, later PM and founder of LDP. At the right is Shinzo Abe PM and grandson of Kishi
This post is text details of YouTube video. The main crux of the post is that Japan was ruled by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that was founded by Nobusuke Kishi a War Criminal. The LDP had 38 years of continuous power. CIA uses Moonies Church to Launder money and support the LDP. Nobusuke Kishis grandson Shinzo Abe PM, assassination leads to investigation of Moonies
This is the outline on video
a) 3:10 How the CIA Built Modern Japan
b) 7:29 The Moon Cult, Money Laundring and Christian Zionism
c) 10:17 Shinzo Abe’s Assassination and the Collapse of the Unification Church
a-i) Nobusuke Kishi was imprisoned as a suspected Class A war criminal, but U.S. occupation authorities did not charge, try, or convict him, and released him in 1948 during the Reverse Course (see wiki)
During this time, a group of influential Americans who had formed themselves into an “American Council on Japan” came to Kishi’s aid, and lobbied the American government to release him as they considered Kishi to be among the best men to lead post-war Japan. The American Council on Japan included former ambassador to Japan Joseph C. Grew, retired diplomat Eugene Dooman, Newsweek journalists Harry Kern and Compton Packenham, and corporate lawyer James L. Kauffman
a-ii) Kishi becomes Japans PM in 1957 with US and CIA help. Kishi creates the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) LDP has a 38 year uninterrupted run of power. Continue reading Japan: War Criminal Dynasty and Moonies
Dr. V and I spent Valentine’s week in the Green Mountains. Clean slopes, functioning lifts, small towns organised around winter.
It is hard not to compare that with the Himalaya–Hindu Kush arc. The Karakoram, western Himalayas and Hindu Kush contain some of the highest and most snow-reliable terrain in the world. Peaks above 7,000–8,000 metres. Glaciated valleys. Long vertical drops that exceed most Alpine resorts. Gulmarg in Kashmir already has one of the highest gondolas on earth, reaching nearly 4,000 metres. Parts of northern Pakistan and Ladakh receive heavy winter snowfall and have multi-month seasons.
In purely geographic terms, the region has the ingredients for a major winter sports economy. Yet large stretches of this highland are militarised or politically contested. Infrastructure is thin. Insurance is expensive. Foreign tourism is episodic. Investment flows elsewhere; to the Alps, to the Rockies, to Japan. The comparison is not moral; it is structural. Geography offers potential. Institutions determine whether that potential becomes an industry. That contrast stayed with me on the drive back.
Similarly the core Hindu-Dharmic civilizational nature of India, that is Bharat, is for Indians to decide. Outsiders demanding secularism often mistake their own preferences for universal law.
