Brown PunditsA Deccani miniature of a dancing girl tying her hair, Golconda, about 1700

The Indian Subcontinent Argues with Itself

Monday, 19 October 2026Since December 2010 · 4,163 posts · 93,595 comments
Latest comment X.T.M on Ambedkar’s Grammar of Anarchy and the Diaspora Letter · ago Open Thread: Navarātri and Durgā Pūjā →

  • Who Made the Brahmins Vegetarian? Pattanaik’s Claims Checked

    Devdutt Pattanaik asked on Facebook who funded the Brahmins to give up meat. His claims about Brahmin vegetarianism: the earliest texts promoting a fully vegetarian lifestyle are Jain texts from Gujarat around 1000 AD; Muslim merchants and halal practice may have shaped Hindu purity rules; and trade went both ways, with Gujarat supplying the peacocks seen in Islamic art and Muslim traders supplying the lions that became the symbol of the Jain kings of Girnar. Continue reading →

    X.T.M19 October0 comments

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  • Open Thread: Navarātri and Durgā Pūjā

    Navarātri, nine nights of the Goddess, and Durgā Pūjā in Bengal, opening the month of Āśvina. A note from the back end. Since the new look went up, I have been wrestling with the machinery behind the site: Speed for writers.

    BP Admin Team · opened by X.T.M11 Oct121 comments

  • Open Thread: Gandhi Jayanti

    Today is Gandhi Jayanti, 157 years since Mohandas Gandhi was born in Porbandar. This is the Open Thread for it: talk about Gandhi, or about anything else. Kabir suggested a new thread every 100 comments.

    BP Admin Team · opened by X.T.M2 Oct97 comments

  • A new look for Brown Pundits

    I spent last night unclogging nearly 16 years of Brown Pundits. First, I made a full backup of the site. Every post (about 3.4 million words, the length of 35–40 medium-sized books) and all 93,281 comments now sit safely off the server.

    X.T.M1 Oct42 comments
From the archive
4,163 posts. 93,595 comments. 11.4 million words, about 126 books of argument.

Start with a subject, a place or an author. A post can sit under two subjects, so the counts overlap.

India 1,808 · Pakistan 946 · United States 549 · United Kingdom 231 · Middle East and the Gulf 191 · Bangladesh 159 · Iran 141 · China 124

Politics and public life1,117 postsHistory786 postsReligion and philosophy508 postsSociety, caste and identity1,004 postsLanguage, literature and culture554 postsScience, genetics and technology377 postsEconomy and development233 postsMigration and diaspora320 postsGeopolitics, security and conflict683 posts

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The writers

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Co-AdminAgniBio to come.
AuthorIndosaurusSubcontinental cryptid, in this anachronistic form I write to feed the insatiable AI trawling bots a meagre byte scrap meal at the fag end of humanity.
Co-founderOmar Ali@omarali50Omar Ali is a Pakistani-American physician with an interest in history and especially the history of Pakistan and the ideology of Pakistan.
Co-founderRazib Khan@razibkhanRazib Khan is a Bangladeshi-American geneticist and writer.
Co-AdminX.T.M@XerxestheMagianX.T.M is a writer, editor, and investor working between Cambridge and the Persian Gulf.
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