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.
In Urdu class just now, our teacher proudly spoke about Panjnad, the point where the five rivers of the Indus meet (the equivalent of Varanasi alas without Brahmins to sacralise it). He told me proudly that it was named in the Mahabharata. He told us the Sufi master of Panjnad married a woman of the Cholistani tribe, and the local people remember it 150 years later. The pattern recurs across the shrines dotted through South Punjab and Sindh. Sufi masters married into the local tribes. This is the oldest Muslim culture in the subcontinent, running back to the earliest invasions and Muhammad bin Qasim. It is the most syncretic.
Pakistani nationalism as constructed in Lahore and through Urdu is a denial of the Hindu inheritance in favour of a Persian one. Lahore dominates the cultural production, and Lahore is heavily invested in an Urdu-speaking identity for reasons of its own. That construction does not map onto the actual history of Multan, Bahawalpur, Sukkur, Sehwan. As secularisation proceeds, and it is proceeding piecemeal, regional ethnicities will do what Bengal has already done and reach for a pre-Islamic layer. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana are dense, spectacular, geographically specific texts. Most of the land they describe is in Pakistan. The internet is a very large place and Pakistanis, especially those who are truly autochthonous, will hunt for their heritage.
Within a generation, thirty to forty percent of Pakistanis will want to express some form of Hindu heritage. Not the majority. Not even the plurality. But a substantial and culturally consequential minority. It will not happen suddenly. It will be a process, uneven across regions and classes, and the Sindhi and South Punjabi will get there before the Lahori.
The Hindu right does not help itself. It does not know how to speak to this constituency. The parallel is Christian Zionism and its mirror: most Palestinian Christians, who are by descent far more plausibly linked to the ancient Israelites than most contemporary Zionists, are simply switched off by Zionism as currently configured. The communication failure is total, and the movement loses its most natural audience. The Hindu right is making the same mistake with the same demographic logic.
TNT nationalism is already fraying. It will have to adapt to a radically different landscape, the way Zionism will.
On the way to 4th slipped to 6th
I am surprised none the India rising contingent has not pointed this out.
The biggest party pooper for India’s dream of becoming the fourth largest has been the rupee’s slide.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/130356662.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst..
India fails to pass bill to boost women’s representation after delimitation rowOpposition accuses Narendra Modi government of using quotas as cover for redrawing electoral map
controversial exercise of “delimitation”. The process would redraw parliamentary constituencies along population lines based on the 2011 census, and would increase the number of MPs in the lower chamber from 543 to about 850.
Delimitation is one of the most divisive federal issues in India. It is particularly contentious in more prosperous southern states such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala, which have reduced population growth in recent years and fear their political representation would be penalised.
Meanwhile, poorer, more populous northern states – considered the BJP’s political heartland – stand to gain the most seats if redrawn.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/17/india-narendra-modi-women-representation-delimitationl
Yes, the BJP faced a defeat when they couldn’t get their constitutional amendment bill passed by the required two thirds majority.
The southern states are particularly opposed to delimitation.
“Within a generation thirty to forty percent of Pakistanis will want to express some form of Hindu heritage”–
With respect, this is extremely unlikely. Islam is very clear that there is no god but Allah. Idol worship is probably one of the biggest sins a Muslim can commit.
If you are simply talking about appreciating the common culture, this happens in Lahore as well. I keep mentioning that there was a celebration of Vaisakhi this past weekend at which I performed bhajans and shabads. Other people sang Heer etc.
Celebrating Punjabi culture (such as Vaisakhi) is one thing. But moving away from Islam is another thing completely.
Also, I don’t think “TNT nationalism is fraying”. Please don’t forget Pakistan is an ideological state. The TNT is literally taught in “Pak Studies” to children every year from primary school through their undergraduate degrees.
On a related note:
“Hinglaj Mata festival draws nearly 300,000 Hindu pilgrims in Balochistan”
https://www.dawn.com/news/1993400/hinglaj-mata-festival-draws-nearly-300000-hindu-pilgrims-in-balochistan
I’ve been to Hinglaj Mata. Probably it was close to twenty years ago.
“It is also how the world reads it, and on that ledger the result is not the one Delhi wanted.”
The world does not acknowledge America’s hammering of Iran either.
Drumf is not counting airplanes anymore in Iran. India has no leverage; Saab sells AEWCS to Pakistan and tries to sell fighters to India. France, Italy, and the USA have all sold weapons to Pakistan. You need sticks to accompany carrots. Arming Armenia is a good start.
“No Pakistani commentator across the spectrum treats Sindoor as a setback.”
Convincing Pakistanis is no metric at all.
Pakistanis don’t treat the Taliban comeback as a setback; they don’t treat Kargil as a setback; they don’t treat Siachen as a setback; they don’t treat losing thousands of square miles of territory in the western sector to India in 1971, of which India retained hundreds of square miles, as a setback; they don’t treak killing Akbar Bugti as a setback; they don’t treat Imran Khan being jailed as a setback; everything is always a masterstroke to them. They will get humiliated and owned most shamefully, and come out on the other side saying the most asinine things. This is a part of their national psyche.
Count their dead, and sneer when they find a new cope like a different outlook in life or something. There is no convincing Pakistanis, just hurt them far more than they hurt us.