the Shah and the Saint

May 5, 2026 X.T.M 5 Comments filed under Precedent, X.T.M

A month ago the Shah wrote to the Saint:

Naah it is a good film… I will make you say Bharat Mata ki Jai by infiltrating into Pakistan and pointing a gun at your head.

The threat to Kabir, however jocularly framed, is the trigger. BB has a habit of strict adherence to the Letter of the Law while frantically attempting to violate its Spirit, and BP’s continued tolerance is contingent on Kabir’s goodwill. If Kabir lodges a reasonable complaint, the sanction escalates.

The next rung is a 40-comment fine and a one-week revocation of authorial and commentator privileges. This applies to BB under any handle or avatar as a lasting Precedent.

We are not heavy-handed and Authorial Autonomy deeply matters to us, but the issue is what the transgression actually was. We want genuine contrition, not a mea culpa followed by the old tricks in slightly more sophisticated form.

The “Prakrisation” of Hindi

May 5, 2026 X.T.M No Comments filed under Comment as Canon, X.T.M

FlyeDie, presumably not one of BB’s handles, has left an excellent high-signal comment on the Hindification of East India. It posits Prakrit as a Latin analogue that spurred the development of the various Indic languages, and reads modern Hindi as walking the same path.

A wider blog admin note. We have been encouraging the Saint and the Shah to litigate their ongoing duel through the mechanism of high-signal posts, and this is the spirit in which we offer FlyeDie’s theory.

As an aside, there is also a very good comment by Calvin on the segregated political nature of the Indian Muslim community, which we may return to separately.

Brown Pundits exists to advance the bounds of niche knowledge on the Subcontinent. Our specific role is to stimulate excellent conversations, or guftugū as nos ancêtres les Mughalois would have punned it, and the comment below is one such endeavour, the more valuable because so much of our past has been lost or distorted. We reproduce it unedited.

Okay, I think I am going on a weird comment streak and losing my mind. So, I have a weird tin foil theory; it is going to be long, and it is going to sound like bullshit, but please bear with me. Here is my tin foil hat theory: Hindi is the Prakrit of the modern age, and it is destined to follow the same path as Prakrit. To explain what I am trying to say, I am going to talk about my favorite book about Prakrit: “Language of the Snakes Prakrit, Sanskrit, and the Language Order of Premodern India” by Andrew Olett.

Continue reading The “Prakrisation” of Hindi

You cannot be a leftist if you support fundamentally illiberal positions

May 5, 2026 Bombay Badshah No Comments filed under Bombay Badshah

There is a lot of recurring debate in the comments repeatedly about who is a leftist, especially pertaining to subcontinental politics.

Rather than aim this post at a specific country or an individual, I would like to give some general thoughts regarding this.

Firstly, what is a leftist? This is the Wikipedia definition.

Left-wing politics or leftism is the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole

So you can say that democracy is a very leftist idea as it achieves a semblance of “social equality”. No matter how rich or poor you are, no matter your gender/race/caste/creed, you get one vote which counts the same as everyone else’s.

Similarly equal rights for all is also a very leftist idea as it aims for “social equality”. Of course, in real life it is not so clear cut because certain groups do have advantages over other groups due to historical reasons. But having equal rights “on paper” is at least a start towards leftist utopia. If you don’t have that at all, then equality is a non starter.

Continue reading You cannot be a leftist if you support fundamentally illiberal positions