April 20, 2026 – Brown Pundits

This post is to be treated as Precedent on two matters.

First, on moderation

We have been alerted by Hamza that a number of Pakistani commentators on this site have been using anti-Dravidian racialised language against South Indian communities. This will not be tolerated on Brown Pundits.

Any comment that uses racialised language against Dravidian, Tamil, or South Indian communities will be removed, and the offending commenter will have twenty comments removed instantly as an automatic fine. There is no warning phase.

This is personal as well as editorial. DLV’s family was driven out of Sindh by Muhajirs at Partition. It was the Dravidians and the Tamils of Chennai who welcomed them, gave them a second home, and treated them as their own. Any racialised language against those communities on this site will be met with the full weight of the moderation tools available.

To Kabir’s credit, as far as we are aware, he is the only regular Pakistani voice on this blog who has never used racialised language of any kind, even in sharp disagreement. He remains institutional and high-minded even when the argument turns to nuclear rattling. He does not share in the wider Desi pathology with regards to skin colour and race, and that exception is worth naming. It may be the American side of him. Whatever the source, it is the standard this site expects of every commenter, Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, or otherwise.

Second, on substance

The post below establishes a framework for how this site will discuss the sacred geographies of Partition going forward. The recent Kabir-Kishore exchange on Sikh holy places, is the occasion, but the framework is intended to apply across all such disputes: Hindu sites in Pakistan, Muslim sites in India, Sikh sites on both sides of the Wagah, Buddhist sites across the subcontinent. Future BP posts on sacred geography should refer back to the founder-institutional distinction laid out here.

Founder Sites and Institutional Sites: A Note on Sikh Sacred Geography

A recent exchange on this site sets out two claims about Sikh holy places. The first says Sikhs lost most of their sacred sites to Pakistan in 1947. The second calls that claim nonsense. Both are right, and the disagreement turns on a distinction neither has named: founder sites versus institutional sites.

The Pakistan-side Holy Sites

Continue reading Founder Sites and Institutional Sites: A Note on Sikh Sacred Geography

Two days from the tragic anniversary of Pahalgam (may those brave Martyrs rest in Peace for their sacrifice for Dharma). A useful moment to set down precedents, because a year out the narrative has hardened in places it should not have, and we would like the comments to stress-test these before they calcify further.

Precedent one. Operation Sindoor was not a Pakistani defeat.

Pakistan entered 2025 as a failed state. It exits the Pahalgam year as a diplomatic champion. Whatever happened in the skies over those days in May, the outcome in global perception is unambiguous. A military operation is never only a military operation. It is also how the world reads it, and on that ledger the result is not the one Delhi wanted. No Pakistani commentator across the spectrum treats Sindoor as a setback. Our Pakistani readers can confirm this in the thread, and we invite them to. The Indian premise that Pakistan might now re-engage to recover from some imagined humiliation makes zero sense. The humiliation is not where Indian commentary locates it.

Precedent two. The Crescent commentariat cannot have it both ways.

There is a pernicious Pakistani trait, most visible in the diaspora and the Anglophone class at home. They live distinctly Western lifestyles. They then want Islam for all. Live your beliefs. It is a genuinely offensive thing to cheer on the Iranian revolution, a revolution deeply devastating to the Iranian people, from an American suburb or a DHA drawing room. Only a Pakistani commentator could manage the trick of celebrating the Islamic Republic while exempting themselves from its consequences.

In the Iranian diaspora, religious Shias are quietly ostracised. Persian pride, across pre-Islamic, Islamic and post-Islamic registers, is astonishing in its depth. Some of us, the Baha’is for instance, integrate all three.

The TNT move, which imports Islamist preferences onto others while the class that holds them escapes the reality (QeA typifies this), is the opposite.

Precedent three. The rediscovery of Hinduism is coming, and it will come from South Punjab and Sindh. Continue reading Op Sindoor Was Not a Pakistani Defeat: Precedents Two Days From Pahalgam