The Commentariat on the “Long Night” has been busy. The Saffroniate counts Hindu babies, the Crescentiate counts Muslim babies, both sides argue with conviction over a future neither seems to have read the Weather Report for.
A heatwave advisory graphic maps much of Pakistan’s plains into extreme-risk zones for the final week of May 2026. Jacobabad, Multan, Bahawalpur, Sukkur, D.G. Khan and Sargodha sit in an extreme zone marked 47 to 50°C. Lahore, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and Islamabad sit in a high zone at 42 to 45°C. Karachi, sea-cooled, stays at a relatively merciful 35 to 38.
The Indus does not read Radcliffe. The Punjab that cooks at 45°C on the Lahore side is the same alluvial plain that sears the Amritsar side. The Thar runs through both Sindh and Rajasthan. The Gangetic plain inherits the same dome of heat a fortnight later. The cradle of Desidom that the Commentariat are fighting over, will soon turn into a Heat Dome. Conversations on who fills it faster, who outbreeds whom, ultimately elide that Radcliffe drew a paper line. The thermometer does not pause at Wagah.
Demography is downstream of habitability. A 50°C summer is not a future scenario for the subcontinent’s hottest belt. It is this week. Outdoor labour ceases. Livestock dies. Wheat ripens early and shrinks. The Indo-Gangetic aquifer that the Saffroniate and the Crescentiate both depend on is being drawn down by both, in the same basin, with the same straws. Fighting over fertility is rearranging deck chairs in a scorched beach.
As Bahá’ís, we remember our (very) distant kin once draped the walls of their Lahore house during Partition with:
“Moslems, Sikhs and Hindus are all brothers – but, O my Brothers, this house belongs to a Parsee.”
We have never quite understood the appeal of these subcontinental divisions in the first place. God (Allah, Brahman, Ahura Mazda) is One. Mankind is One. The heatwave is one too. Sukkur and Bikaner sweat together. Multan and Hisar steam together. Karachi and Mumbai find relief in the same sea air.
The subcontinent may just about survive partition – but, O my Brothers, the sun will scald us all.
Open thread. The floor is yours.
In related news, India rejects Court of Arbitration’s pondage award on Indus Waters Treaty.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-rejects-court-of-arbitrations-pondage-award-on-indus-waters-treaty/article70987602.ece
violating international law is never a good precedent
Arguendo, terrorism as state policy isn’t, either.
Well countries and nations aren’t defined by shared climatic conditions or weather systems. Maybe I’m too American but we have multiple climatic regions so I don’t understand the reductionist attempts at trying to box countries into one nation or cultural group just because there’s a heat system affecting the south-central portion of the Asian continent – an area larger than the European Union. Moreover, the subcontinent, is a colonial pseudo-geographical term, the term itself is divisive. Why should we hold onto colonial labels like “the subcontinent” that splits us from our other Eurasian brethren, or even if we’re being universalists in the true sense, why split us off from the rest of humanity.
the Indian Continent has very VERY geographical boundaries. the Hindu Kush, Himalaya, the Indo-Burman range, Indian Ocean.
it’s truly shaped like a Diamond
saare jahan se achha Hindustan hamara
The United States is not a good expression of a Nation State but an Empire. the Revolution was simply to be able to expand beyond Appalachia.
Geographical “boundaries” are subjective because there are stark geographical boundaries with south Asia itself, it’s up to an individual and their political biases where they choose to draw the line. Some say Aryavarta (an endonym) stretches from the Indus down until the Vindhya mountains, you could say the entire northeast is part of southeast Asia and not south Asia while everything north of the Margalas could be central Asia. It’s all subjective and defined by political and ideological bias. Also trying to split of the south-central portion of Asia from the rest of world and human race seems counter to any universalist humanistic creed.
if we are not mistaken the Margalas are hills not mountains.
mountains usually make excellent borders up to the water shed. Pakistan is essentially the Indus Valley water shed like Iraq is roughly the Mesopotamian water shed
Traditionally Indian nationalists always claimed the Indus river divided India’s territorial claims from Afghanistan’s – only recently I have seen even more revisionism and now the claims are getting bolder, most now insist the Hindu Kush is the border between “Akhand Bharat” and Afghanistan. Either way from a Pakistnai perspective its all quite absurd.
Rivers are usually not good border as the same population lives on both sides of the border.
https://ia801304.us.archive.org/32/items/frontiers00curz/frontiers00curz.pdf
Rivers were not a natural Frontier in those primitive days. More often they were a means of access to a country than a line of division between races: indeed, both banks were not unlikely to be occupied by the same race.
Mountains constituted the earliest and most obvious barriers.
Interesting, I guess that’s why Kurdish nationalism/separatism is so strong – it’s mainly based around being indigenous to the Zagros mountains. South Azeribaijanis say something similar about the Talysh mountains giving them a distinct identity. In America we also have some subcultures defined by mountains like the appalachians and rockies but some regional cultures are more defined by waterways or bodies of water like the Mississippi and Great lakes.
Btw I don’t know why my comments keep going into moderation?
Same with my comments, they keep going in moderation.
Apparently, only Indians can reply outright, we have to wait for the comments to get approved by Indian moderators.
NDG and you go to the pending column, which only Admins can enable.
We have no idea why that is the case, as no individual or IP is blocked.
We have to do some technical work on the website as is and get to the bottom of it. Furthermore you are also an Author so it’s even more perplexing.
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Again we have no idea – but urs is much more sporadic than Q or NDG.. NDG’s seem to have quietened down.
Well look at the issue of why certain commentators are going to spam (there is a 2 link rule but that doesn’t apply here).
Also there is no Indian continent at all – there is a Eurasian continent,
The “Indian subcontinent” is the usual geographical term.
Eurasia is a continent.
.
That’s just a satellite topographic image of a political region, you know the image doesn’t magically cut off at those borders – could easily generate an image showing Afghanistan or Iran.
Clearly cannot read a topographical map. The boundaries are blindingly obvious if you are not blinded by ideology.
Which boundaries? The ones that were British drawn?
This map actually shows Pakistan completely seperated from India and only connected at the North-East Punjab corridor. rest is cordoned off by mountains and deserts.
It also shows India is not geographically coherent, but divided by North/South.
yes that north east Punjab corridor is a holistic link.. it is fine maybe Indus nationalism will evolve on the blood of the Punjab and the waters of the Indus but Wagah is an artificial border.
Amritsar is the Holy Suburb of Lahore.. the Punjab will not stay apart forever
I always maintained Punjab should have never been divided, and should have gone entirely to Pakistan.
Why? Eastern Punjab was heavily Hindu/Sikh majority and the division was done correctly.
Same with West and East Bengal (which Pakistan then proceeded to lose anyway).
Even Jammu and Kashmir – The Maharaja and the National Conference gave Kashmir, Ladakh and parts of Jammu to India. Muslim Conference and Gilgit Scouts gave the rest to Pakistan.
There was no East or West punjab. Punjab was one province and was Muslim majority. So was Bengal. These both all have been part of Pakistan but because of weakness of Jinnah, they were divided.
The reason why Nehru & Patel wanted to divide Punjab was because most of the British Indian army was Punjabi and they were afraid that they would get overthrown by the Punjabis.
Kashmir was, is a natural part of Pakistan. India wants to control it because they continue to have designs on Pakistani territor and Kashmir is a good forward based for them, with the option to control Pakistani rivers.
If Jinnah had not shown weakness, none of these problems would have existed.
Both Punjab and Bengal were “majority” Muslim but not by much. It was not like UP or Sindh where almost all districts had Hindu/Muslim majorities.
Both Punjab and Bengal had a sort of line in the middle with one part being Hindu/Sikh majority and the other being Muslim majority. The international borders for the most part followed this line.
How can Kashmir be a part of Pakistan when never in human history has it been a part of Pakistan?
India wants to control Kashmir not because they have “designs on Pakistani territory” but because they got it in 1948 and control it NOW – the same reason it wants to control every other part of India like Goa, Mumbai, Calcutta, Delhi etc. All countries want to control the territory they already have. There need not be an ulterior motive.
India has no designs on Pakistani territory. India has never initiated an invasion of Pakistani territory and only maintains the claim on “POK” because Pakistan maintains theirs.
Rivers flow through international borders. That’s geography.
55-60% Muslim population in each Punjab and Bengal is a wide margin.
But you should not be making this argument, you claim 80% Muslim Kashmir without second thought.
There was no reason to split them. It caused all the violence and scars. and obviously your other Indian ethnic groups could not have given a damn because they were not affected. The only reason Jinnah agreed to this was because he was dying and he just wanted a resolution. This was his fault for ceding it.
What kind of logic is this? There was no India or Pakistan before. Kashmir was an independent state but also part of the Mughal Empire and Sikh Empire. Kashmir is geographically located inside Pakistan. Look at the map, it occupies the high ground and all the rivers that flow into Pakistan.
And GB is part of Pakistan just fine. Infact they have been wanting to formally be inducted but because of the Kashmir issue they have to suffer.
>India wants to control Kashmir not because they have “designs on Pakistani territory” but because they got it in 1948 and control it NOW
No, India was given access to Kashmir deliberately because they wanted to control Pakistan. First Punjab was divided to give India land access, and then Muslim majority districts of Gurdaspur and Pathankot were awarded to India to provide a land route into Kashmir.
This is not even a conspiracy theory at this point. You took Hyderabad, you took Junagarh, even when these have been independent kingdoms for centuries. Fair you justify they were Hindu majority. But why is the same rule not applied to Kashmir. We know the answer. Your denials are hollow.
you may want to switch to the new thread?
Exactly, they wanted to be part of Pakistan in 48 so they became part of Pakistan. The valley wanted to be part of India (remember the National Conference fought on the side of India) and became India.
What happened later on is a different matter between the Kashmiris and the government of India.
It literally doesn’t. Pakistan is a political entity. Kashmir lies outside it.
Rivers flow across international borders as do mountain ranges. Using this logic, Tibet is “geographically located” inside India.
And why would the British do that? If the British wanted that, wasn’t there an easier way – just not do partition?
Not even contiguous with Pakistan.
1 million deaths is not a correct division.
Yes, partition was not done in a proper manner. British should have done in it a slower more phased manner.
A lot of people might have even stayed back in both countries.
beautiful
Pretty low brained reply to try to show something that does not exist. This shows the British Empire politically, while geographically it shows there is no ‘India’, since the south tip is competely cut off from the North. Where is the contiunous map?
It is there for those who want to see it.
Heavily inhabited plateaus =/= Sparsely inhabited mountains.
Pretty much all pictures you post are either fake, have no relevance and are distracting from the content. I don’t know why image posting is allowed. XTM should look into it.If everyone starts doing it, this will resemble Tumblr and X.
Neither are they fake nor are they irrelevant.
Images provide a nice visual medium which are often more succinct compared to walls of text and/or supports something already expressed in a comment.
@X.T.M had already described the boundaries of the Indian subcontinent. I saw no point in describing them again so shared the topographical map to give a visual representation.
He himself has appreciated it.
it’s a great map. Mother India in her full Attire (With her Wings so to speak)
Its a map of the British Empire in this region.
There was never any Indian polity that looked like this.
the Mughals? or the Mauryas?
Mughals didnt obtain South India and even in their region most rulers were local vassals. Not even the British attempted to bring them in which is why there were 562 states in South Asia in 1946. There was barely any reliable cartography or records for Mauryan empire’s extent and how centralized it was.. most maps today are just fantasy maps about them. Besides that was 2000 years ago so completely irrelevant to today.
It is a topographical map of the Indian subcontinent. No more. No less.
It is written on the map.
A pleasant 76 f in Srinagar – the capital of Kashmir. Weather over the next week is gonna average between lows in the low 50s and highs in the low 80s. Probably further proof for why Kashmir isn’t India, if we’re strictly going off of climate-based nationalism.
https://weather.com/weather/tenday/l/1d591336b00cd63543645160ddb05572d93b981e12d821a2c6770487af2740d1
nor is it Pakistan in that case..
Yeah but I never advocated for climate-based nationalism or racial taxonomy. Btw Pakistan has a lot more regions in its North and west that share climate and culture with Kashmir so has a relatively much better claim in this regard.
First decide and sort out what type of Pakistani ‘nationalism’ you want to identify as – Bin Qasim nationalism, Iqbalian acronynm nationalism, ‘INdus nationalism’ etc etc. Once you sort that out, then you can dream of coveting others land and ghazwa what-have-you.
Can’t keep your own house in order, constant shambles, but still have delusions of land-grab.
Who is dreaming of “Ghazwa-e-Hind”?
You just can’t help yourself from taking digs at Pakistan.
You called me “pathetic” on a thread recently. What is truly pathetic is having nothing better to do then coming on this blog to take digs at Pakistanis.
Talk about needing a hobby!
“was I talking to you”? — Clearly you don’t understand how blogs work.
You “jump in” to conversations I have with others.
My point stands. You have some psychological need to dump on Pakistan and Pakistanis. You contribute no substantive material to this blog.
“Recycled rubbish” is subjective and passive aggressive.
@XTM: This man’s passive aggression must be brought into control. Or he must be told in no uncertain terms not to reply to me.
All of it if fine by me, even if contradictory.
Just like you kang on Marathas and Rajputs combined despite them being enemies. You guys should know about being fine with contradiction, you guys come from a land where for thousands of years the Brahmin and the Sudra lived side by side and never mixed, never touched, and you kang as one unit despite history and DNA suggesting otherwise.
Liberalization/modernization has changed all that. Plenty of mixing going on between castes, religions etc. This will only accelerate with time.
Pictured: Hina Khan marrying Rocky Jaiswal under the special marriage act
>Liberalization/modernization has changed all that.
1) No it hasn’t
2) It has nothing to do with history
3) The image has nothing to do with the topic
Why do you keep spam level posting?
1) Yes, it has.
2) History is history. This is the present day.
3) It does. It is an example of the changing norms in modern India.
I’m not the one whose comments are being flagged as spam. 🤭
Admin Note: please be polite.
intermarriage maybe a solvent but not a very good one.. caste is VERY strong and will stay strong simply because of British rule and also the 50yrs from 47-92 ..
Indian society stayed exceptionally conservative.. so it has given Caste a ton of time to adapt and evolve (exactly like the Monarchy)..
also “castes” are consolidating, so in urban setting the elite will be drawn disproportionately from a certain pool (like Bollywood).
as you yourself note in the hospital example
Yes, that exists all around the world. Even in Japan samurai families dominate politically/economically. When I was on vacation in Tokyo, the guide exclaimed about it during a trip when she read the surname on a shrine.
What will happen/is happening is that the hard lines will have disappeared allowing people to “enter” these groups – for example the Bollywood elite which while mostly upper caste Hindu has a sizeable Ashraf minority as well as other castes including Dalits (Neeraj Ghaywan, Vikrant Massey, Shikhar Pahariya etc).
Slow progress is still progress.
caste now is just another marker of social class. Its socioeconomic ‘class’ that matters above all else.
Being dismissive on ‘intermarriage’ is a classic example of outsider failure to understand a subject. Marriages in Indian culture are generational family bonding. To pretend that they don’t have impact is………silly. And I am being very, very kind.
This is, with respect, a rather kind view on caste.
The United States has legalised intermarriage since Loving vs. Virginia in 1967.
It doesn’t mean racial inequity doesn’t exist.
It’s interesting how the Saffroniate only us when we are supportive of their interests but then attempt to disown us as outsiders when we call out their Shibboleths.
Care to disclose your caste marker in the interests of this discussion.
Presumably thrice or even twice born?
where did I claim inequity does not exist?
I am disagreeing specifically with your assertion that ‘intermarriage’ does not impact it.
Its amusing how you think throwing around random half-truths makes you sound so …confident in hurling such nonsensical assertions around. Carry on.
The fact that the entirety of Kashmiri Muslim cuisine is mutton based and that Hindu processions openly take place there means it is very much India.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moow-Lq1mUE
Having a preference for a certain meat doesn’t make it India, besides, Indians are mainly vegetarian especially the good “sanskari” ones (True high caste Indians), even butter chicken goes against Hindu rulings as its tamasic. Kashmiris also eat beef although not to the same extend as mutton but it would be more common if there wasn’t an undemocratic beef ban. As for Hindu processions in a Muslim majority area, that’s being imposed on Kashmir by 700,000 plus Indian troops; I believe in freedom of religion but acting like Kashmir has any freedom and ignoring how they have no control over the affairs of their land is beyond ignorant.
beef is banned in Kashmir?
Yeah it’s banned in Kashmir ever since the Dogra occupation and has only gotten worse under Modi. Democracy has never mattered in Kashmir anyways.
Modi actually removed the beef ban by revoking Article 370.
https://thewire.in/law/jammu-and-kashmir-article-370-beef-ban
Funnily enough, it isn’t.
The beef ban was imposed by the Dogra ruler.
Once Article 370 went, the old laws went too and now that ban is technically over.
https://thewire.in/law/jammu-and-kashmir-article-370-beef-ban
Considering beef bans are a state subject, the demographics mean that an elected government doing another beef ban is very difficult.
Modi actually liberated Kashmiri Muslims in a way.
That’s just based off a technicality because after the abolition of ariticle 370 the beef ban went off the books but in practice its still in place and can be confirmed by many Kashmiris living there – the federally controlled union territory(no longer a state) of Jammu & Kashmir now just doesn’t issue permits to slaughter cows, so they came up with more creative ways to enforce an unofficial ban. Claiming the man that has killed and imprisoned so many Kashmiris, has “liberated” Kashmiris is an insult to them but that’s par for the course for you since you have a habit of insulting Islam and Muslims and then in the same vein appropriating the culture and history but then also gloating about Muslims have lower birth rates or celebrating about the supposed loss of deen among Indian Muslims.
Yes, claiming “Hindu Hriday Samrat” has “liberated” Kashmiri Muslims is a bizarre take.
I also find the gloating about declining birth rates among Muslims very disgusting.
“Vanvaas” clearly hasn’t changed anything for BB.
I never “gloated” about Muslims having lower birth rates. Just “pointed out” that like Indians of other religions, they too have had their birth rates decline. India’s economic growth/modernization is affecting them too.
You yourself have talked about how poorer countries should be more focused on increasing their level of development.
Well, one of the consequences of that is lower birth rates and loss of “deen”, and amongst all religions, not just Muslims.
We believe in balancing deen and duniya and it is through this maxim why most Muslim countries outperform India on every social indicator. Development has nothing to do with the globalist depopulation agenda, we don’t want to turn into south Korea. That’s also why so many conservative Christian families in America have like 6-7 kids. Depopulaton will lead to civilizational collapse as has been happening in Eastern Europe and now East Asia.
The Muslim countries which are “balancing deen and duniya” and the Muslim countries which “outperform India on every social indicator” are not even the same countries.
The richer Muslim countries have indeed subscribed to the maxim of “global depopulation agenda” and not one of “balancing deen and duniya”.
Muslim countries with a very high TFR are the low HDI ones – Gambia, Senegal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan etc. The ones in orange and yellow on the map.
We believe in balancing deen and duniya and it is through this maxim why most Muslim countries outperform India on every social indicator
Balance the Pakistani budget first, instead of ‘outperforming’ India in seeking IMF loans. Water table collapse, HDI collapse is staring you in the face, but delusions of ‘superiority’ persist.
Modi is very popular in Kashmir.
Indians are mainly non-vegetarian, including “high caste” Hindus in many regions, mostly outside North India (and even Rajputs/Khatris in North India).
Source: NFHS-5 2019-21
On a serious note, the reason I think most Pakistanis in the diaspora think that Indians are vegetarian are because:
Firstly, they mostly interact with North Indians who have a common language/culture
Secondly, the diaspora from these regions tend to be disproportionately Brahmin/Bania due to their numbers in professional fields(as @X.T.M observed in his hospital post).
You can see in the map itself the areas closest to Pakistan are the most vegetarian states of India.
The entire heavily non-vegetarian East/South have nothing in common with Pakistan – neither language nor culture. So even when they exist in the diaspora, they probably don’t even interact much with Pakistanis.
In my home back in Assam, we eat eggs everyday and meat (chicken/mutton/pork/fish) 5-6 times a week.
In fact, even Brahmins eat meat (barring beef or pork) and I am not talking about liberal modernized people but the traditional population too.
In fact, meat is often found in places which would be unimaginable in North India Hindu households.
When a person dies, Hindu households actually serve fish to people. It is called Matsya Sparsha.
And Hindu temples frequently dole out fish/mutton as prasad to devotees on religious ceremonies. I remember watching goats being beheaded behind the temple as a kid.
In fact in the recent West Bengal elections, TMC fearmongered that the North Indian “banias” would impose vegetarianism on them due to which the local BJP leaders openly consumed meat as a retort.
https://theprint.in/opinion/maach-mutton-for-mission-bengal-what-bjp-tmc-are-cooking-in-new-poll-battleground/2896035/
I assume this divergence from North Indian norms is due to Shakti tradition (our big festivals are Durga Puja/Kali Puja, not Diwali).
Maybe a South Indian (@girmit?) can explain the heavy non-vegetarian culture in the South.
I remember a Malayali friend telling me that in Kerala people will eat beef and then go vote BJP.
All Indians who pretend to be ‘meat eaters’, whenever I ask them to list down what they ate in the entire week, it’s 99% vegetables/grains and the1% meat they talk about is basically an egg.
In contrast, I don’t even remember the last time I ate a meal without meat, unless pizza with vegetable toppings & mushroom count.
Anecdotal experiences in the diaspora does not supersede actual government data.
This is reality. The ”meat eater” Indians mostly would eat egg on Tuesdays and chicken once a month and then you would call them meat eaters and draw some sort of false equivalancy.
Even dirt poor Pakistanis eat more meat, because someone would feed them.
If there was a survey done on ‘vegetarians’ in Pakistan (I know a few), their diet would be similar to the Indian ‘meat eater’.
Again, personal anecdotes and opinions do not supersede data.
India’s per capita meat consumption is 17 kg/year. Pakistan’s is 23 kg/year.
This is not my opinion but UN data.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-type?country=IND~BGD~PAK
Considering 77% of India is non-vegetarian (NFHS-5, shown in the map above) – the meat consumption of an average “non-vegetarian” Indian and a Pakistani are approximately the same.
It is Bangladesh which is the outlier in the subcontinent with nearly 50% higher consumption.
you are putting too much stock in data.
Pakistanis are more vociferous meat eaters than Indian Muslims. presumably Bangladesh is heavy into fish?
as Girmit notes South India and East Indian are probably even more or as, carnivorous as the wings of India but in the core Indo-Gangetic Delta w.r.t to meat Muslims eat more than Hindus, Pakistanis eat more than Indians..
it’s impossible also not to appreciate just how much pressure Indian Muslims will feel to conform, in whatever way, should they wish to break out of the ghetto.
Vegetarianism is a dominant paradigm in contemporary Indian elite culture
I am someone who is from the East of India so obviously I speak from my experience as to how “non-vegetarian” we are. Even the Indo-Gangetic delta becomes meat eating by the time the Ganges reaches Bihar.
The south and east of India have a population more than twice that of Pakistan.
Contemporary “North Indian” elite culture. The BJP has had to change strategy to make gains in the Northeast/East. Even Owaisi mocks them for it.
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/asaduddin-owaisi-beef-cow-slaughter-mummy-up-yummy-northeast-968918-2017-04-01
You worship data even though its clear that data is wrong or incomplete or coming from dodgy sources. The above data is also mostly wrong. Most of the data coming out of Pakistan is not reliable.. half these info graphics floating around are from unnamed Twitter sources. And I only speak for Pakistan because I know. I can only surmise its pretty bad for Bangladesh and India as well.
This is data from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2025).
I explicity provided a link as a source. That link has information on where the data has been procured from as well as links to the data itself (on the United Nations site).
I will provide it again here:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-type?country=IND~BGD~PAK
This is mistake people used to make 20 yeara ago.. and midwits still make it: they over rely on every random statistic they read online without ever questioning how it was calculated and what the methodology is and what are the shortcomings.
The UN data you speak of is just a division of “food avilability” by total population. The “food availability” of meat is simply taken from reported sources.. which if you know anything about Pakistan is completely wrong and understated.
These types of stats remind me when Indians online said that India was one of the lowest countries on rape, because “statistics” pro e it.. while US was the highest. The reality however was obvious to anyone with an eye to the ground.
I think the United Nations is a more reliable source of data than anecdotal experiences in the diaspora.
Extrapolating diaspora habits to the entirety of the Indian population is a bit like using the British Mirpuri diaspora’s behaviour as a placeholder for the entirety of the Pakistani population, both in the homeland and diaspora.
one must also question the data.
this isn’t to say ur data is false; you did make a very good point about low data penetration in Pakistan. We were speaking to our Urdu teacher and he mentioned alot of the kids didn’t have wifi access. and this was in the villages of the south Punjab..
so there is that and we remembered you had posted something to that effect (wifi access much greater in India).
India is extremely unequal (Ambanis and co. are not definitely not good for the economy or society) but it is just getting a whole lot wealthier. a bit like the US, which is very unequal but presumably one would rather be poor in the Global North than middle in the Global South ..
Even anecdotally, I know how non vegetarian East India is (or for that matter the Western coasts where I live now).
Of course it is way more biased towards fish/seafood compared to Pakistanis but that is again a feature of geography.
Yeah, everyone in India is getting wealthy – some are just getting wealthier faster hence the inequality. Both the USA and China have higher Gini coefficients than India.
that’s not an accurate rendering of deep structural inequality
the rich don’t make the rest of us richer fwiw; they hoard the rest of the wealth.
Capitalism as a religion is truly a false god
The rich don’t make us richer.
Economic growth makes us richer. It makes the rich even “more” richer.
you are forwarding the perception aam admi in Pakistan is better-fed than their Indian equivalent because of zakat.
India is RAPIDLY transforming, day on day, year on year.
look at their “Indie” dog campaign. Hindu culture is remarkably malleable
This is the average Indian meal these days
No it isn’t.
That’s not how “averages” work.
Considering the vast majority of India is non-vegetarian, the “average” Indian meal would have chicken/mutton/fish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average
when I talk about India what I really mean most of the time is everything North of Hyderabad. South ‘Indians’ are a completely different nation in my eyes, and this is backed by your topographic image. I personally don’t think those guys are historically ‘Indian’, they are far far away from the River Indus.
So please stop kanging on Keralites eating Beef or Tamils eating chicken.
I have seen Indians up close, whether your average Punjabi, Marathi, Gujrati or Bihari does not eat any meat whatsoever on a daily basis, even if they call themselves a meat eater (unless they are Muslim). Most of their meals are veg/grain mixture and they will eat chicken on the odd occasion once in a while. I know Pakistani vegetarians who eat more meat than these guys.
Most poor people rely on grains in both countries, but even the poor in Pakistan consume a lot of meat. Just this week, I will be donating approximately 80Kgs of meat this week on Eid to my poorer acquinatences. This will not be reported in any statistic.
MashAllah – wonderful news on your generous donation.
Indians are orders of more magnitude diverse, and yet still proudly and firmly ‘Indian’ than most Pakistanis realize. For them ‘diversity’ ends with Sindhi, Baloch, Punjab, Pathan, and then what?
SQ’s extrapolation about India and Indians based on his “personal” experiences with some in the diaspora, is……understandably silly.
The word ‘Indian’ is an English exonym.
When speaking in local langauges, there is no single local term for ‘Indian’ that spans the breadth and width of the country.
Linguistics reveal a lot.
Imagine if a Congolese and a Nigerian and a Somali all call themselves “firmly African” and being ‘proud’ about it despite having no conception or word about it in their own local languages. Their identity is a Roman exonym.
“Grok, explain the word ‘projection’ and its meaning to this Pakistani commenter”.
“India isn’t a real nation” is ………hilariously delusional.
‘India’ is an exonym, no matter how much you pretend. Locals never identified as ‘Indian’ the term for them was meaningless, which is why it was pretty easy for any ”outsider” with a few thousand horses to march in and establish their kingdom here. ‘Indian’ nationalism and nationalist conception only kickstarted in the early 20th century.
Admin Note: Stop
@XTM:
This is anti-Pakistan and “low signal”
Why is this behavior being enabled?
Pakistan is a 1933 invention in Cambridge fwiw
Ofcourse, but the Pakistani invention is indigenous. The Indian identity was formed by foreigners (Brits) not long before that.
Only 3,000 years prior by the Persian (the ethnonym India that is).. seems to have firm antecedents
Isn’t China also a foreign label or Germany?
The Persian ethnonym meant areas in or around Indus (current Pakistan). Very much doubt the Persians knew much about anything more east than that nor did they comprehend the diversity.
The Germans and Chinese speak one language and are one ethnicity. In any case, you would not see Germans or Chinese striving so hard to prove they are one nation to outsiders.. but you see that amongst Indians.. because Indians themselves know they are not one nation and it’s not self apparent to others. Thus the invention of the term ”civilizational state”. Don’t have much similarity? Invent the civilizational concoction.
The fact is that India never had a real centralized empire spanning the entire region until the Mughal empire.. and even that is arguable (because it is truly the British who made India). They never had a name for their country except what outsiders gave them, Hindu was a geographical term not a religion one until the British made it a religion. they don’t even have a proper word for this in local langauge.
Languages reveal a lot, if your mother language doesn’t have a word for something, it really means you never considered that thing very important.
😀
The Hyderabadi Muslim, the Telugu Hindu, the Punjabi OBC Sikh, the Punjabi Jatt Sikh, the Malayali OBC Christian etc etc can do this though.
Where is the Indian?
All of them. Its literally on their shirts.
One more. On their shirts and on displayed on the side as well.
What type of answer is that?
This guy’s shirt says Samsung. Is he Samsung?
You very well know the difference between Drogba representing a club and Indians representing a national team.
Anyways.
What “you” consider Indian does not count.
What next? Runs scored/wickets taken by non North Indian vegetarians vs Pakistan does not count? 😂
South and East India alone has a population more than twice that of Pakistan.
Again, anecdotal experience in the diaspora and interactions with the vegetarian castes. Coastal Marathis are big meat eaters including Konkani Brahmins (I have actually lived in Mumbai). Biharis too are big meat eaters including Maithili Brahmins.
As I have said in another comment, should we extrapolate the misdeeds of the British Mirpuri population to the entirety of the Pakistani population – both in Pakistan and elsewhere?
Pictured:
Telugu Tilak Varma who was Man of the Match in the recent Asia Cup final vs Pakistan. He rescued India from 20-3 and scored 69. By his side is Tamil Varun Chakravarthy who took out the Pakistani openers when they had scored 84 without the loss of a wicket.
Since these are non North Indians, maybe Pakistan can declare victory? Is that why Mohsin Naqvi ran away with the cup? 😂
They are ‘South Asian’ bro.
Yup, and you will still find the rope trick snake charmer around every “average” corner of an average Indian city lol.
All mountain cultures have more mutton/sheep for their meat than beef, simply because cows and buffalos can’t be reared easily in the mountains.
Kashmir, Afghanistan, KP, Baluchistan, Iran, Turkey etc all have main goat/sheep as their preferred meat. The peninsular Arabs also prefer sheep or camel because that’s the only meat they can rear in the desert..
Only in the Indus and Gangetic plains is the cow native and an abundant source of meat.
With the plan to use coal pollution is also going to become worse
given clearance to coal to gas conversion units in a big way.
So more pollution and unhealthy air over Indian cities
More GDP who cares about health (the opposite of China)
Have look at link below. Red is PM2.5 particulates and pretty much over all of Indo Aryan India
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2026/01/21/1900Z/particulates/isobaric/700hPa/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic=-281.50,25.11,2490/loc=79.188,21.278
yes South India has better air.
what is the air like in SL?
what is the air like in SL?
Good except in colombo. See map in link above
China also had horrible air quality. In fact bejing used to close on certain days. I remember meeting a non Chinese engineer in a meeting in Europe saying that for months on end they don’t see sun.
But we need gas, and can’t be under the mercy of some shaik or cowboy.
Yup. These things will correct the same way.
Cjina now has good air quality except in some parts
Exactly.
They didn’t in the late 2000s when they had the same HDI that India has now.
India HDI is now 0.685 130 out of 193 countries
China was 0.586 in 2000
So approx another 25 years for India to get to China HDI
https://countryeconomy.com/hdi/china
China HDI was 0.689 in 2008. I would say by early-mid 2040s.
“Smokers Corner: Rewriting the Pakistan Narrative”
By Nadeem F. Paracha
https://www.dawn.com/news/2002551/smokers-corner-rewriting-the-pakistan-narrative
I feel like the south, central, and west asian obsession with the concept of civilizations needs to be retired. Everybody ends up immigrating to some western country anyways so one could argue only western civilization and various manifestations or versions of it exist but even the concept of western civilization can be disputed as Reza Aslan has recently argued. Paracha shouldn’t worry about Pakistan adopting some “indus theory” or whatever, the entire third world/global south should be focused on catching up to the development levels of America instead engaging in pointless anthropological wars.
I don’t necessarily agree with NFP on everything.
But I do think that an Indus-based nationalism is better than the state-sanctioned propaganda that Pakistan began when Muhammad Bin Qasim entered Sindh.
I would recommend you read Hasan Altaf’s (my brother) essay “Brown as the mouths of rivers”
https://www.india-seminar.com/2012/632/632_hasan_altaf.htm
Of course it’s very much a Pakistani-American perspective.
The only nationalism Pakistan needs is Pakistanism, I’m not a big fan of the Indus nationalists either.
Might check it out.
I think the idea is that is is better to have a nationalism based on geography (which is what “Indus nationalism” basically is) than one based on ideology (Islam).
Personally, I think that would be healthier for the country.
An idea is stronger than land based nationalism. America is very similar to Pakistan in that regard, it is a nation based off an idea – of course that doesn’t mean to ignore the geographical realities and material needs of the people and history. Pakistan was and always has been an idea and we should embrace that, it’s also why Pakistani nationalism is a crazy potent force that no other country in the region has – the words jazba and junoon are associated with Pakistan and that’s why even when at times most Pakistanis feel dejected or frustrated with the country there is a strong sense of patriotism and devotion, it’s a high that most other nations can’t feel due to the way their national mythos was composed.
You forgot josh.
In Pakistan’s case, the alternative to “Indus nationalism” is the TNT or the idea that Pakistan began when MBQ entered Sindh.
I know which idea I prefer. Your mileage may differ.
I believe it is healthier to claim all the history and culture associated with the geographic boundaries of Pakistan.
This is an academic discussion anyway since TNT remains hegemonic and it is what is taught in “Pakistan Studies”.
Indus nationalism is in my opinion pretty contrived. It never existed, and should not be talked about but lots of Sindhis/Punjabis have latched onto it since they are the direct descendants of IVC. The Steppe Aryans appear to have more input in our culture than IVC.
TNT is irrelevant in Pakistan, as I have said before. It’s done and dusted, it was used to create Pakistan and most Pakistanis never cared about it after that and still don’t. However it appears that Indians do care about it very much, especially the Hindutva crowd since TNT also designates them as being ‘one nation’ when in reality they never were.
This is an era of nation states and Pakistan is one such state, it doesn’t need a reason to exist, it’s a country with many nations. Since our neighbours on each side covet our land and our history, we need to protect Pakistan from evil eyes
We can agree to disagree.
The alternative to a nationalism based on geography (“Indus nationalism” for short) is a nationalism based on ideology (TNT). I have said many times that a geographic based nationalism is preferable to an ideological one. I stand by that position.
This remains a live debate in Pakistan. See Umair Javed’s column in today’s DAWN:
https://www.dawn.com/news/2002911/5000-years-of-pakistan
It’s putting a cart before the horse and based on lies. Pakistan was not created on the basis of some Indus nationalism, that is a modern contraption and this debate is also a modern invention. Pakistan was created to safeguard Indo Muslims and primarily Indo-Islamic culture from Hindu enroachment. In that, it has succeeded mostly. Now it does not need a reason of existence just like America or Canada does not need a reason to exist, it simply exists and perpetuates. People just need to accept it rather than inventing false mythologies like our neighbours do. I don’t have a problem with people digging up the past and linking the country to that past, but a lot of these guys get carried away inventing lies. Lies are fine to tell the peasants but educated discussion should not be based on the assumption that those lies are true.
Arieb Azhar has a nice essay in today’s DAWN:
“Soundscape: When Punjab Sang as one”
https://www.dawn.com/news/2002722/soundscape-when-punjab-sang-as-one
https://kashmirtimes.com/in-focus/displaced-kps-lives-in-shabby-camp-colonies-ashes-without-a-river
#Displaced KPs: Lives in Shabby Camp Colonies, Ashes Without a River#
This story is of people from the upper reaches of Sindhu. Makes a sad reading.
Looks like regular weather just before the monsoon rains hit.
We do need more trees in Pakistan however. Imran Khan’s government made a huge effort towards that few years ago but most of those were planted in the north and not in Sindh and South Punjab where they were actually needed the most.
“From Miss Universe to Cannes, Roma Riaz is Unapologetically Herself”
https://images.dawn.com/news/1195338/from-miss-universe-to-cannes-roma-riaz-is-unapologetically-herself
While the Saffron commentators here insist that Indians are fine with meat-eating,
Meanwhile Indians losing their minds completely in the comments section of Umar Akmal sharing an innocent picture on the occasion of Eid.
https://x.com/Umar96Akmal/status/2058906236654104894
Just absolute obsession with whatever we do. Giving internet to Indian masses without a firewall was the worst crime ever committed onto the world
Again “some” Indians on X does not override national data.
Anyways, thanks for reminding me of Umar Akmal. A name I haven’t heard in ages. Guy actually gave me a scare during Mohali. Great arm ball by Harbhajan.
These are not ”some” Indians, look at the quotes, all Indian accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers. They are all crying about it
A guy cannot even post his qurbani cattle online in peace, at the risk of making a billion people cry.
Some Indian accounts on X =/= Entire population of India
And who gives a damn about social media lol. Just turn off notifications/replies.