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FlyDie on South India
X.T.M reposts FlyDie’s comments on South India. FlyDie argues that Tamil Nadu’s elite traces to Telugu country through the Vijayanagara Nayaks, that pre-colonial empires ran on a shared elite culture,…
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Are All Postcolonial Nations Brahmanical Constructs?
X.T.M asks whether postcolonial states are Brahmanical constructs, arguing that every successor elite preserves the borders it inherits. He draws on caste mobility, Sanskritisation and Radcliffe’s line, and notes the…
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Open thread: Open Season
Open Thread “Open Season”, 29 August 2026. Admin sets up a weekly, unmoderated thread for arguments, and asks whether pointless debate serves any purpose, from relitigating the Two-Nation Theory to…
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Happy Rakhi – what is a race?
X.T.M notes that the comment thread has turned to race and genetics, and says he may expand on how class, colour, creed, caste, genetics and community overlap.
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Open Thread: Nepal Floods + 20 months since Assad
Open Thread, 27 August 2026. X.T.M opens by suggesting that Middle Eastern hybrid regimes balance the great powers nimbly, while democracies such as Israel and India pursue grander foreign policies,…
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“Tamil” CMs
X.T.M, drawing on a News18 blog, notes that many Madras chief ministers were of Telugu descent, from Subbarayalu Reddiar onwards, and sees Tamil Nadu’s “distinct” identity as compatible with a…
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Why Can’t South Asia Move On?
Why does South Asia litigate 2,000-year-old events as though they happened yesterday? Because almost nothing is lost between generations. The cure is neither the past nor the future. It is…
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3 Graphs of Karnataka
X.T.M observes from three graphs of Karnataka that many South Indian Muslims seem to be “Urdufying”, and wonders whether East Bengal might have followed a linguistic path to Urdu and…
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Thoughts That Shape Power
In a guest essay shared by Omar Ali, Varun argues that universities and think tanks train a country’s elite, and that lax standards and borrowed Western and Soviet theories, plus…
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South India funds India?
X.T.M comments on a chart suggesting the southern states and the old Punjab subsidise the rest of India, links the south’s position to Partition’s contest over rich regions, and compares…
The Indian Subcontinent Argues with Itself
Sunday, 8 November 2026Since December 2010 · 4,170 posts · 93,919 comments
