Many thanks to Kabir for inspiring this piece.
Toor at the Courtauld
Salman Toor was born in Lahore in 1983 and paints in New York. On Thursday TIME put him on its first TIME100 Art list, and he told the magazine “I straddle two cultures“. On 2 October the Courtauld opens his first solo show in Europe, nineteen paintings made since 2019. He describes the work as queer and immigrant lives, caught between intimacy and exposure, belonging and estrangement. One of the principal pictures, a bar on East 13th Street, revisits Manet’s bar at the Folies-Bergère, which hangs downstairs in the same building.
Two weeks ago his partner’s Pasoori became the first Pakistan-made music video to pass a billion views, and nine-tenths of those views came from outside Pakistan. I wrote about it. Add Toor. Add that Britain’s Muslim public face is Pakistani. How does Pakistan gets so much of so little that in the end it is the hegemon of “Monsoon” (Sub-altern) Islam, when technically it doesn’t even belong in that category. My candidate is the language, and I am not sure it is enough.
The Indus was the corridor, not the capital
Start with the map. Pakistan is the Indus, and the Indus was where everyone arrived. Alexander crossed it. Mahmud of Ghazni crossed it seventeen times. Babur crossed it and kept going, because the prize lay east. Lahore mattered: fourteen years as Akbar’s capital, Jahangir’s tomb, Shah Jahan’s gardens, Aurangzeb’s mosque. But the high culture that made modern Urdu crystallised farther east and later. Mir and Ghalib wrote in Delhi. Lucknow kept the court after Delhi lost it. Sir Syed built the college at Aligarh that manufactured the class in the next section. Lahore joined the Urdu world in earnest when the colonial state put Urdu above Punjabi in the province’s offices and schools, which is the story of the Lahnda post.
In 1947 Pakistan got the corridor and Lahore. Delhi, Lucknow and Aligarh stayed on the other side. On paper that is a house with a doorway with just about one good room.
Alavi’s salariat
The house may have been tiny but the people came in droves. Hamza Alavi, the Karachi sociologist who died in 2003, broke with the idea that religion made Pakistan. The movement was led, he argued, by the “salary-dependent class of Muslim government servants“, whom he called the salariat: Aligarh-educated, Urdu-speaking, raised for the colonial service, and watching its share of posts shrink against an English-educated Hindu middle class. A new state meant new posts, and the salariat stood to gain most from one. Alavi knew the type because he was one: an economics MA from Aligarh, a research officer at the Bank of India in 1945, back in Karachi in 1947 to help set up the new central bank. He also named what the class built once it arrived: the overdeveloped state, a bureaucracy and an army too large for the society beneath them. His own paradox follows. The salariat was the engine of the Pakistan movement, and the provinces that became Pakistan barely had one. The corridor had to import the court.
Count what crossed. Intizar Husain from Dibai went to Lahore. Jaun Elia and Sadequain, both from Amroha (the Amroha Sayyid, my late grandmama’s lineage, has been around for 800years), went to Karachi: one small town gave Pakistan its most quoted poet and its most famous painter.
Josh Malihabadi followed from Malihabad in 1955. Shaukat Siddiqui came from Lucknow and wrote Karachi’s great novel about its own poor. Behind the famous names came the clerks, who staffed the new state’s civil service out of all proportion to their numbers. Karachi tripled between the 1941 and 1951 censuses, and the newcomers were the majority. They were an accomplished lot, and they had just lost everything but the accomplishment. They were also ashraf, the well-born; the pasmanda majority of Indian Muslims stayed where it was, which is a large part of why Indian Islam transformed as well post-Partition.
Israelistan
Israel in 1948 and Pakistan in 1947 are the two states of that decade built by ingathering. Most of the people who came were not an elite; they were peasants, artisans, shopkeepers and the urban poor. But each migration carried a professional class at its head, pulled out of the cities where it had been a minority and dropped on a strip of land it had to turn into a country. Both had a catastrophe at the founding, and both then bloomed. Hebrew went from liturgy to a living literature in a generation.
Urdu, a court language with no country, got one, and with it a state broadcaster, a film industry, a national curriculum and an army of clerks who wrote their memos in it. Catastrophe does not produce culture. Concentration does. It made neither culture from nothing; it gave two old cultures new institutions and something to prove. Put a displaced elite in one city with nothing to do but rebuild its standing and you get Tel Aviv, and you get Karachi.
Bombay kept Urdu alive
The twist came from my Urdu teacher on Saturday morning. “Urdu got its progress from Bollywood,” he said. “A great deal of progress. I will give you proof.” The proof is due next lesson. Here is mine in advance.
The dialogue of Hindi cinema was written in Urdu, and much of it in the Urdu script. Rajinder Singh Bedi wrote his scripts in Urdu, as did a number of the leading screenwriters of his day. Inder Raj Anand, who wrote Raj Kapoor’s films from Aag to Sangam, was an Urdu writer working in Urdu. Akhtar ul Iman, the poet, wrote the script of Daag. A linguist at Qatar University notes that early filmmakers policed Urdu phonetics, the sounds for which Devanagari has no letters. India took Urdu out of its schools and kept it on its screens.
My teacher’s peak is the 1990s, and he loves the 1990s. Purists will say the 1960s. He is right for his generation, because the 1990s were when Pakistan watched Bollywood in bulk, on pirated tape and dish antennas, while Indian films stayed banned from its cinemas. Sunny Deol’s courtroom speech in Damini, “tarikh par tarikh”, is an Urdu set piece that crossed the border on cassette.
For fifty years the transmitter of Urdu stood in Bombay, not Karachi. The language Pakistan took as its own was mass-produced by the country it left. Bombay has not switched the transmitter off. Hindi cinema still speaks Hindustani, because its audience does. What it stopped doing, from about 2000, was treating Urdu as the prestige register behind the sound. The qaaf went, then the poets, and one Indian writer blames the language’s association with Pakistan. Pakistan took the frequency. Coke Studio Pakistan is now where the Urdu-and-Punjabi hit gets made, and a billion views of Pasoori, nine-tenths of them abroad, is proof in the pudding.
Straddling
So: Urdu, the salariat, or the trauma? The language is a prestige tongue with a film archive attached, and a Pakistani can walk into any room from Dubai to Delhi with it. The salariat gave the country a founding elite whose whole identity was accomplishment. The trauma concentrated that elite in two cities and gave it something to prove. I cannot rank them, and Toor is the reason I no longer need to.
He is not Muhajir. He was born in Lahore, which was never the salariat’s city, and he paints in New York, which is nobody’s. The Muhajir share of Karachi has been falling for forty years, and the culture has not fallen with it. The court that came west in 1947 became Pakistani property: Lahore learned it, then the rest of the country, and now a Lahori paints men who belong nowhere for a museum in London. Pakistan’s advantage is that a minority’s high culture became a majority’s, and the majority kept it after the minority thinned out. The corridor learned the court well enough to do without the courtiers. Toor told TIME he straddles two cultures. So does his country, and it has learned to do it without the people who taught it.
Bollywood was racist and exclusionary. Basically, it was run by Feudals who thought dark skinned Hindus were lesser human beings. They knew nothing of India and their definition of refined culture was what they saw within their own urdu speaking echo chambers. These people had more in common with the fair skinned obsesses feudal racists across the border.
I am glad such people are left with such little relevance today. This language, its refined pan spitting culture and legacy should be taken forward by the feudals across the border.
I don’t think that fully encompasses the entirety of the older culture. Firstly, associating paan with elite culture is kinda funny since it started as a thing that subaltern among dark-skinned people during the classical days. Mind you, Paan eating has always been around, but it gained popularity in daily use and religious rituals due to the Tantra movement of the 8th-12th century, which was led by subaltern and marginalized groups until it was co-opted by elite classes. Paan had a lot of fascinating aspects in Tantra, including the bit where pan being chewed and spit out was compared to menstrual blood coming out of the Vulva. The fact that paan requires white lime paste put on it before being placed has its fun connotations. Even then, paan is seen as a lower-class thing today and associated with lower-class people, in contrast to the more fancy western cigarette.
Either way, a point you should keep in mind about Hindi cinema (really most forms of cinema in India) is the fact that Indo-Islamic doesn’t actually shape it extensively. The Indo-Islamic tradition produced many things, from clothing, food, languages, literature, and so on, but theatre was not one of them. The theatrical tradition in India originates from the traditional Sanskrit theatre of the classical period, vernacular theatre (like Tamasha or Yakshagana) of the Medieval period, and colonial-era European-adjacent theatre (like Parsi theatre). Bollywood to this very day still adheres to the traditional Sanskrit form of plot structure as opposed to more Western forms (including the ones that appear in Islamic literature) that stem from the Greco-Roman tradition.
Western plot structure follows a simple path: initiating action, rising tension, Climax, declining action, followed by the end. East asian structure goes like: initiating action, rising tension, looping plot, declining action, followed by the end. The Sanskrit one goes like: initiating action, rising tension, Climax, tragic middle (complete fall in tension), rising action, followed by the end. Bollywood mostly follows this Sanskrit one to a T, including the dumb rules of the Natya Shastra, and even dance numbers (even item numbers, to an extent) come from it. Essentially, Hindi cinema (really most film industries) is basically Sanskrit theatre spoken in vernacular, made using European film techniques, and put in Indo-Persian garb. The Indo-Persian was an aesthetic choice, similar to vernacular cultures, which was made to present a certain image, but one that can be shed like old clothing if it is no longer necessary.
Now, Bollywood’s modern problems stem from two issues. Firstly, the industry inherited all of the tropes and structures from the older sanskritic/vernacular tradition, but the underlying theoretical reasons for why they work aren’t well understood by the industry. A lot of the original structure relied heavily on traditional aesthetic theory like Rasa, bhuktivada, Dyani, Alamkara, etc., which are not properly taught today or understood outside of academic circles. Most Bollywood writers are often taught Western film theory, while working with a non-Western tradition that doesn’t abide by the same principles. For example, Indian theatrical tradition didn’t abide by Aristotelian unities, and it often favored space over time in representation. This creates a clash in filmmaking and often produces bland products, as it fails to meet both Western and non-Western expectations. Even then, Indian aesthetics (just like Indian philosophy in general) is poorly understood by the general public, much less elites, and it is not studied at all or pushed into simply being about spirituality, which opens a whole can of worms about how to study it without offending people.
The second major issue always stems from the fact that Bollywood doesn’t have a core region like Tamil or Telugu Cinema. The Hindi belt is wide, diverse, and ethnolinguistically pluralistic in nature, which means that trying to appeal to a wider audience with divergent values requires you to use generic tropes and focus on things on a surface level. Inevitably, this will result in many films being shallow, thereby losing audience interest. At the same time, if they try to appeal to a specific topic (for example, talking about poverty in Bihar), it might push away audiences that don’t have an interest in the topic. Even your point that they don’t depict the “true” version of India calls into question: which “India” would that be? Bihar is different from Rajasthan; Nagaland isn’t like Haryana. It isn’t easy to build a consistent vision.
At the same time, I am not denying their issues with elitism and stereotyping, but that applies to most industries in India today. Fundamentally, Bollywood needs to return more closely to its roots in classical aesthetics and study the underlying theory here. From my personal observation, filmmakers who learn their craft through practical experience on the job or have experience in traditional art forms like classical dance and theatre tend to understand the theory better since they absorb it through practice. Furthermore, I think it would have been better for India to develop or expand mutiple regional film industries like the Bhojpuri or Marathi ones, then have an overarching industry to incorporate different artists/writers from the varying regional industries to produce multilingual films with a more pluralistic cast. This might resolve the second issue, while increased funding for Indian philosophy departments, specifically aesthetics and film studies, could fix the first issue. Maybe add an emphasis on inclusivity as well, on top of that, to account for caste, religion, ethnic, and tribal representation issues.
what an excellent comment
If you see older Hindi movies, the title card had Urdu in it.
Is it the same now??
I don’t think so..
The themes coming about from the Comment threads and Urdu class are leaving me to ponder on why isn’t the Indian Muslim thriving..
They were a phenomenon a generation ago in virtually all spheres of Indian life, but they’re definitely in some sort of retreat.
The ascendancy of “the Pakistani” in Muslim space is very very palpable.
An example; Pakistan could conceivably play all sides of the Ummah (Iran, Saudi, Turkey) and the Great Powers (China, US) but India, that is Bharat, is pivoting away from Muslim space (its closest allies in the region are the UAE & Israel)..
It’s just an observation; India’s huge Muslim population isn’t giving her the cachet anymore in diplomatic circles (the huge support for Iran among Indian Muslims didn’t really translate the same way it definitely impacted Pakistani policy.
Just spitting thoughts, may write another post soon..
This is an excellent comment. This point is well worth fleshing out. Why is the indian muslim in some sort of a retreat? It calls for self-reflection, not some sort of reflex response where “others” are blamed..
Regarding the ascendancy of the pakistani muslim and they playing all sides…well, it will be a fun watch 🙂
There was a phase where the Indian Muslim middle class was harmonious with Hindus, and they were going up.
The issues started when they fell in love with jihad, and their physical appearance changed (long beards, folded pants, skull cap always). Added to this was the waves of attacks on Hindus and the Muslim liberal or otherwise was not to be seen. The Hindu liberal defended them. This was not sustainable.
The opinion arround the world about Islam changed and similarly in India.
Idk what world you’ve been living in man but the Indian Muslim is at its most harmonious in its current state. I remember how bad it used to be 10-20 years ago. There were clear no go zones in my city. There were almost rioting attempts during Ganpati festivals. A few people were lynched every year during festivals. In comparison now the police knows how to prioritize areas making them safe during festivals. The Muslims are forced inside mosques when doing namaz and festival processions are no longer pelted with stones. You were simply inundated with propaganda to the point you were unable to discern the true state of reality, now that the rose tinted glasses are off you feel as though the past was some kind of ideal state.
I was talking about the middle class.
Have you considered the possibility that maybe the old middle class simply grew over time to include a newer collection of people? The middle class you are referencing was an insignificant minority of the broader muslim population, and they were probably descended from, or directly a part of, the old Westernized elite. I mean, Indian muslims have the highest rate of urbanization in contrast to every other group.
The physical appearance you are talking about represents what the non-middle class wore back then as well; it’s just that now they have simply moved into the urban middle class. Keep in mind, the muslims in the olden days may have worn traditional-looking things like ghoonghats, but they were still veils, and all they did was replace them with a different version. The appearance changed, but the behaviour and people are still the same. None of this even includes the fact that the same applies to Hindus and every other group who migrate to urban regions as well.
Above all else, appearance doesn’t automatically mean people are inherently pious or more religious, since displaying religiosity isn’t the same as belief. For example, a Pew survey from 2021 said that only 67% of muslims have restrictions on meat consumption (which includes pork, beef, etc.), while a whopping 30% didn’t follow any restrictions (which would include things like Halal foods). On the Hindu side, only about 44% practiced vegetarianism, meaning the rest would consume meat. If appearance dictates belief, then these numbers clearly would have been different. Ironically, Jains are probably the most devout out of all the groups since they follow their practices to a T according to the surveys.
None of this includes the fact that the traditional clergy/maulavi have gradually faded from positions of political leadership. Most of the Indian Muslims who are politically active today are primarily young individuals, often from non-religious backgrounds. Hell, only 4.19% of Indians speak Urdu as a mother tongue, and that rises to 5.18% if you include those who speak it as a second or third language. Muslims make up 14% of the country, which doesn’t align with people’s assumptions about Muslims and Urdu. None of this includes the fact that Muslims speak hybrid forms of their language.
Mind you, Indian muslims can and have been dicks a lot of the time, but they are assholes because they are indian rather than their religion being the cause. Religion is like clothes you wear; sometimes it looks good, and other times it looks bad, since how you carry yourself affects how you appear. It is not clothes (religion) that make a person, but the human (religious follower) underneath that clothing brings out its beauty, or its ugliness.
Most of this (from my observations) is driven by a simpler factor; urbanization has led to the decline in traditional caste identity and a shift to more systematic caste discrimination. As caste communities that bound different religious groups together (since caste trumped religion in the olden days) started fraying across all backgrounds in Urban spaces, many people turned to religious institutions and communities to fill in the gap. This shift is what caused every group of people (including Hindus and Muslims) to become more religious (in appearance) over the years.
Hell, the rise of the BJP can be attributed to its expanding influence over private temples in North India, which saw more disillusioned urbanites turning to these institutions to fill their specific community needs. This didn’t happen in the state-controlled temples of the South, but that’s a discussion for another time.
in India, presumably, virtually all meat is halal and beef & pork outside of Goa & the South is rather rare?
so it’s a default mode?
The survey options included: “Vegetarian” (44% of Hindus, 8% of muslims, also 92% of Jains and 59% of Sikhs), “Abstain from eating meat on certain days and from eating certain meats” (29% of Hindus, 39% of Muslims), “Only abstaining from eating meat on certain days” (6% of Hindus, 7% of Muslims), “Only abstain from eating certain meats” (4% of Hindus, 14% of Muslims), and lastly “No restriction on meat” (16% of Hindus, 32% of Muslims).
32% of Indian muslims said they don’t have any restrictions on meat, which would include things like Pork that isn’t exactly Halal by traditional religious standards, but beef might fall into that. The only other group that comes even close to this amount is Christians with 33%. The fact that “Only abstain from eating certain meats” is 14% is strangely not higher either, since that would make sense; most (both cultural or pious) muslims don’t eat pork, but a whole third went with no restriction instead.
It is not clothes (religion) that make a person, but the human (religious follower) underneath that clothing brings out its beauty, or its ugliness.
isn’t the point of religion to transform the human within?
People follow the religion that they do since it appeals to a preexisting sentimentality that was already within themselves. Roman became disillusioned with their pantheon and desired a more moral all loving diety in contrast to their morally grey polytheistic gods. Neoplatonic-adjacent Christianity provided that wish and eventually grew to eclipse the Greco-Roman religion.
The later development of the Christian religion in some essence represents the gradual evolution of the Roman (and the broader European) people’s desires and beliefs. Religion merely reveals what was already there and leads that to its natural conclusion. Eventually, people move on to the next religion or idea when the old one reaches its final limit. Animism made way for polytheism, which made way for different forms of monotheism (or monotheistic polyformism in Hinduism’s case) and so on.
I don’t know – while I can see man transforming religion, I do believe in the Divine Spark.
Religion are also product of human societies and reflect the biases of the society making then at the time and place they are made
While some do get a transformation, for most it is a partial transformation where some things change while many others remain the same.
Few random points :
1) muslims were always a non agricultural community, consisting of mainly tradesmen and urban.
Even in a rural setting they would not be agriculturists. A few chaudarys and zamindars in North india and elsewhere are an exception. Hence urbanisation may not have had a great impact on the non elite muslim population in terms of their thinking.
But as these sections joined the middle class, they brought their practices and attitudes.
2) deoband led Wahhabi movements, jobs in Arabian peninsula, global events had a real impact on the middle class Muslims.
3) regarding dress, I forgot about the evolution of the Muslim female dressing.
The head to toe all covering burkha, worn over a Saree is almost gone. The obnoxious nikab had made a presence and thankfully is gone. We now see a tightly wrapped scarf acting as an Iranian style hijab. If course Iran has “progressed ” further!!!.
The more in orthodox wear in addition, cooling glass and gloves, and of course socks and shoes.
I mean, most of your points have massive caveats. Muslims in South Asia have traditionally been urban since the historical dynamic stated that the elite muslims ruled in the city and the elite Hindus ruled in the countryside. However, a point to keep in mind is that urbanites abandoned the land to go to Pakistan and caused the majority of the cities to decline in population. Indian muslims were mostly non-elite (especially in the North), coming from less Urban and more Rural settings.
There is a clear reason why Indian muslims stayed behind, since they often had stronger connections to the local communities in the rural regions. Muslims are more common in Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, the Deccan, and Kerala. Except for the Deccan, the remaining regions were heavily agrarian in olden days, and some even remain agrarian today.
I mean, this can even explain the massive fertility difference between Hindu and Muslim groups in the early period, as well as the massive decline in fertility in more recent times for muslims. The historical fertility rate often compared both rural and urban Hindus as a single category against a primarily rural and somewhat urban Muslim population.
The increased urbanization of Muslims, in contrast to the lower increase among Hindus, caused Muslims to enter cities and be affected by economic pressures that reduced fertility rates, unlike the Hindu population that urbanized at a slower pace. This generally tracks with minority groups in most countries, including African Americans in the US, since these groups often migrate to urban centres as they tend to be safer and easier to manage during periods of racial or Religious rioting and political polarization. Over time, the Urbanization rate will increase.
What I am saying wouldn’t even be a stretch since the Pew Research “Sidebar article: demographic profiles” literally says that only 41% of muslim households are in urban city centres, in contrast to 32% of Hindu households. Mind you, that number was in 2021, after urbanization was rising among muslims, which would probably get higher with time as polarization increased after 2021. Even with such rates, only 41% was urban, while the remaining 59% was rural in character.
In terms of clothing, I mean the saree is generally going out of daily use among women as it is being replaced by other clothing; even then, the Saree’s present form comes from the colonial era. My own Christian grandmother historically wore traditional clothing associated with our community well into her 30s and only started adopting sarees much later. She was born in 1947. All of which ignores the fact that our community also used to veil women in the pre-colonial period until it gradually faded out over time.
Also, I think you don’t understand how the purdah system has worked in India for a long time. My grandmother was born into a relatively conservative family that put deep restrictions on women’s freedom for a long time. Women were never allowed to leave the house on their own, couldn’t sit on the veranda for the public to see, and were often expected to remain in the kitchen while guests came to visit. My own grandmother sits in this very way behind a reed mat whenever she sits on the veranda. People even straight up believed that a woman was a slut if she rode a bicycle, since it was unwomanly, in addition to having a male escort if they wanted to leave the house. These things clearly would apply to Muslims (and even Hindus back then) just as much.
Over time, people became less stringent as women were able to leave their households without male restrictions and had more freedom. This applied to every community, including muslims. The only difference between muslims and the other groups was that they were slower to change. From how I see it, muslim conservatives understood that they could restrict women like in the old days, but they didn’t want to liberalize since it reduced their power (like what happened with the other communities’ conservatives).
So, they created things like the Hijab or burka, etc to act as a compromise; you can go outside without a male escort, but you have to cover yourself. In this way, the women get a degree of freedom, thereby reducing the desire to rebel, while conservatives get to retain their authority over women. Fundamentally, women have become freer, but not to the same extent as other communities. Mind you, I should point out here that the older urban muslim wouldn’t have the same restrictions since they would have come from more liberal backgrounds to begin with. The difference right now would be that the conservative women that was previously restricted in their homes under purdah are now leaving their houses since they only need to wear this clothing if they want to step out. So, it seems like the number of people wearing it increased, when in reality the women previously bound in homes have started to step out.
In more recent times, things like the Hijab have, ironically enough, been used to represent female agency and Muslim identity to a strong point. The increased political polarization has made many muslims feel marginalized and insecure in their identity; hence, they wish to express that identity publicly and choose to wear these things more often. Also, the hijab has kinda became a form of commercialized clothing in many places, so people wear it a lot more often as well.
Mind you, I don’t really care or particularly like any of this practice since I see this as pandering to conservatives, so they can provide some concessions to women. Most of these women are definitely facing a degree of pressure within their communities, like how things were in the olden days for all women. I say this since my own grandmothers and mother went through the same thing, including the excessive pressure from their family. It even made it more stupid, considering the riots and systemic discrimination people face today, which means wearing a literal glowing beacon of your identity makes you an easy target. I remember reading a study that showed that women who wore religious articles were often more likely to face violence and discrimination, in contrast to those who don’t wear such things, who in turn face discrimination from within their community for wearing such clothing.
There is even a layer of elitism here since purdah was something that landlords and elite people practiced more extensively since it was kinda expensive and was made for unemployed privileged people. A burka or Hijab is objectively a hindrance for women working hard labour (or doing informal labor as part of the working class) in warm and humid climates that can trigger things like heatstroke. This clothing is more suited for indoor jobs or housewives, which is becoming an even more privileged thing in this society. A sizeable section of muslims are financially insecure and would require more active participation from women to make ends meet, that too working in lower-paying jobs like hard labour, housemaid, food delivery driver, etc., where facing communal exploitation is more common and being religiously clad makes you an even more of a target.
Ironically, the excessive decision to outright ban or control this clothing gave it validation and shifted it from a conservative compromise into a symbol of resistance. Frankly, if people just pointed out the flaws and didn’t excessively try to control it, then it would have simply faded with time (like it is now happening in North African countries like Tunisia) as people became more educated, since, in some sense, this was always kinda a fad on one hand and a stepping stone to further female emancipation, as previously restricted women would be able to leave their home.
Lastly, the Deobandis have always been a major thing in India since as far back as the colonial era and have always strengthened their control of the indian muslim community. So, that isn’t exactly something new. The main reason why they even wield such power stemmed from the fact that progressives mostly ran off to Pakistan, while the few that remained behind were marginalized. The Deoband and other conservatives remained as the main leaders since they opposed the partition, which weakened the Indian muslims and made them feel like they were abandoned by the progressives that ran off to Pakistan.
Also, borrowing shit from the Middle East isn’t anything new, because Persia comes from Iran, and most Indian sultans had a Persian fetish. This is a continuation of tradition rather than something new; every community is borrowing influences from the outside as well, including ethno-religious nationalism, homophobia, and so on, in addition to other more positive elements. Even then, who knows how long this bullshit will last until everyone gets the next pointless thing to rave over.
To bring it back to my basic point: Indian muslim as the same assholes as every other community. They go through the same things that everyone goes through in the rest of society and aren’t some unique people.
Except that the UAE has a close defence partnership with Bharat. And the Saudis have invested billions upon billions in India, and continue to do so.
Both regimes IIRC have chosen to personally honor Modi with meaningless ‘state awards’ – I don’t think they have anything beyond symobolic value. But XTM, you repeatedly get seduced into extrapolating way too far without basis on seemingly grand theories.
I’ll try to share my thoughts on the following post.
Not every Pakistani who has talent can somehow be dismissed as a curiosity..
His work is genuinely good.. it’s not just the LGBT+ angle..
Great post.
Another Pakistani-American artist worth celebrating is Komail Aijazuddin (who incidentally was at Aitchison with Ali and Salman).
https://www.komailaijazuddin.com/2020
I reviewed his recent memoir “Manboobs” on my Substack.
Man, Pasoori is being milked like a pedigree Holstein by XTM 😀
I did reflect on that. but I will expand on that
hopefully he is contrite and can save his comments.
Pasoori went viral more in India than in Pakistan, and probably because of Delhiite Punjabis.
It has catchy tune and good lyrics but just don’t see how this is the epitome of Pakistani or even Punjabi culture. Perhaps its an improvment over the Punjabi hip hop gangsta slop that is being produced by Indians and Canadians and passed off as Punjabi culture.
It’s got a very good video ..
Its a good song, and a good video and had its ‘moment’. Reading anything more than this into it is….a choice.
Pasoori is relevant because Salmoon Toor and Ali Sethi are partners. so when a couple are able to have huge milestones within days/weeks of each other it’s obviously of some interest. that’s what BP is ultimately about.
not everything is a conspiracy, mon ami..
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdQhiDLiMIB/?stkn=cDd2azNqb2pjamY4
Such a mediocre song. Punjabis everywhere ( especially those in our punjab ) really need to get a job and do something useful in life.
https://x.com/ashking009/status/2101638313371476456
I think this video on X deserves a BP post.
very nice video..
I’m now creating a backlog of posts haha (also I tend to slow post production if I don’t see enough popular posts, >50) emerging
Babur’s descendants are in the Indian Subcontinent not Central Asia (I’ll expand on this)..
Pedantic analysis on Babur’s descendants aside, the core question of this video stands.
That the Pakistani military chooses to maintain unsustainable levels of hostility towards the Indian state is undeniable. What’s harder to fathom is why such a policy is so readily embraced by so many apologists and exploited, even when it is abundantly clear to anybody literate that this is a self-goal of non-trivial proportions.
” ‘Brown men are fearless, funny and sexy’: Salman Toor on clubbing, queerness and New York’s Muslim moment”
By Malik Meer
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/sep/21/salman-toor-artist-interview-clubbing-queerness-new-york-muslim-moment
“Celebrating 100 Years of Pakistan’s Queen of Melody, Noor Jehan, With 5 Classic Songs”
https://images.dawn.com/news/1195886/celebrating-100-years-of-pakistans-queen-of-melody-noor-jehan-with-5-classic-songs
According to Wikipedia, from 1945 to 1947, Noor Jehan was one of the biggest film actresses in the Indian film industry.
I have also come across the argument that it was her departure for Pakistan in 1947 that subsequently created the space for Lata Mangeshkar.
interesting
Also the bass voice of these singers was associated with nauch houses, and hence was considered vulgar. So a more pious sounding, albeit bit shrill voice got wider acceptance in India.
Asha bhonsle’s voice was sort of counter to latha’s.
Yes, Noor Jehan and Shamshad Begum’s voices were associated with tawaifs and hence “Muslimness”.
I’ve written about this:
https://kabiraltaf.substack.com/p/the-construction-of-femininity-in
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