The Courtesy Guidance & the Two Factions (Majority vs. Minority)

• BP’s two Factions in light of its “Bharat” underpinning?
• What defines the “Majority”?
• What does Courtesy Mean in an online forum?

The majority, described

Now that we are Brown, that is Bharat, Pundits, all of us who are the majority share things in common. Five come to mind, and they should be front and centre:

1. Hindu by birth or Hindu by marriage (broadly Upper Caste social milieu).
2. India’s borders can never be reduced. Some, myself included, are very much in the Akhand Bharat camp; I see Iran to Indonesia as one vast Indic, Hindu Continental sphere.
3. Hinduism was oppressed under the Anglo-Islamicate legacy, which has been a mixed blessing at best (that is a most charitable view). The LeLi Brahmin view that we should have been grateful to be chattel under Despots, who professed Islam, is odd.
4. Dharma has space for all, and that more Hinduism does not mean less secularism; as well as an inclination for more Hindu-Indic symbology in the national discourse.
5. Broadly supportive of the current government of India and sceptical towards RaGa.
6. Partition was a mistake and the two-nation theory was not a good idea. Pakistan has not succeeded.

That defines the majority to a very strong extent, and the minority is defined by being against these positions, in whatever combination. We have such a strong majority that all of us agree with it, including the full admin team.

It just so happens that even if I’m not Hindu by birth, I’m definitely Hindu by marriage. My entire social reality, where I engage with Brown people, is Hindu, so I have become an acculturated Hindu. A fortnight ago I said the divide here was ideological, not sectarian; the last week taught me the map is older than the ideology. It’s not Saffron or Crescent, left liberals or right wing. It is the majority versus the minority, and in a weird way we are converging towards what is modern-day India, and really mapping that.

The minority

Right now there are roughly three minority commentators on this blog. Of the ten or fifteen commentators I know, the only genuine middle-ground individual in the entire scenario is girmit. So the question that is really happening now within Brown Pundits is this: do we give the minority more latitude, or do we shut them down? The Courtesy Guidance exists to answer that. Latitude, out of courtesy. It doesn’t mean that when the minority engages in provocative behaviour, that should be allowed. Neither side can provoke or trigger a war. That’s about it.

Two-nation theory

We are not here to litigate two-nation theory. I’m almost inclined to ban casual discussions of it, because we’ve evolved. Unless it’s an intelligent discussion, I don’t see where the signal comes from in endlessly litigating TNT.

The Guidance

Dharma must always have space for dissent.

So even if Kabir is saying something outlandish or outrageous (and he does troll the space from time to time), it is still his right to say it. If it is triggering, email it in and we will take a look. Not everything has to be a takedown. The point of this blog is not to trigger every minority commentator until they are gaslit and hounded out of the discourse.

And when somebody doesn’t want to talk to someone, courtesy demands, as part of a community, that you respect that wish. Kabir doesn’t want to engage with X, Y or Z: then X, Y and Z should respect that, as much as they can, voluntarily, out of courtesy. That’s how we would all engage with each other in real life.

The Ceasefire Precedent stays lapsed. The Courtesy Guidance is in effect. If courtesy fails, the Ceasefire comes back, and what is voluntary today becomes compulsory.

The Cerulean

BP is the “cerulean” of Indic discourse, what is discussed today filters downstream into X, social media and mainstream media (eventually).