What Is Brown Pundits For?

Brown Pundits has always been an open tent—not a monolith, not a movement, and certainly not a megaphone. A forum. A space where ideas, arguments, and identities from across the Brown world are aired, examined, and sometimes clashed over—with the hope that we all leave a little sharper than we arrived. But with that openness comes tension. How do we balance quality and quantity? Principle and pluralism? Coherence and contradiction?

It’s something I’ve reflected on often in other matters of my life (like party-planning for instance). When I’m in the UK, time is tight. When I’m in the US, there’s more room for Brown Pundits. In that ebb, others—like Kabir—have stepped in, contributing with energy and range. And I’m grateful.

Some of Kabir’s posts may align politically with The Wire. That’s fine. Other Pundits lean toward a down-low Hindu Right. Also fine. This was never a place for orthodoxy. We aren’t here to gatekeep belief—we’re here to grow through encounter. The real question isn’t what side are you on? It’s why are you here?

If you’re here to dunk, to declare, to dominate—maybe this isn’t the right space. But if you’re here to engage, to learn, to argue in good faith—welcome. As authors, we don’t always agree. We shouldn’t. But how we disagree matters. To that end, I’d like to lay out four standing principles—not as commandments, but as shared norms that keep our house in order:

1. Authors should never void each other’s comment threads. Once you publish, you’re part of the discussion.

2. Authors should not deprecate each other’s views within another author’s thread. If disagreement rises to the level of rebuttal, start a new post.

3. If things reach a deadlock, I’m available. Reach out directly—I’m happy to mediate when needed, quietly and constructively.

4. If you’re linking to an external article, keep your post tight. Reserve long-form writing for original thought. This helps strike a balance between fresh analysis and curated signal—ensuring the blog remains both timely and thoughtful.

We’re not always going to be on the same page. But we should at least be reading from the same book: one that values respect, curiosity, and freedom of thought. Let a thousand flowers bloom—but let them bloom with some sunlight and sense.

Addendum: On Labels, Learning, and Letting Go

Let’s also leave the labels behind. Calling someone a Hindu fascist or an Islamist doesn’t clarify—it caricatures. Most of us don’t fit the labels we’re given. And even if we did, what’s the use of flattening one another into hashtags?

Let’s be honest: our opinions aren’t fully ours. They’re shaped—by birthplace, reading lists, life experiences, family stories, and online algorithms. Yes, we each have core convictions that matter deeply. But most things lie along a spectrum. And most truths are complicated.

Offline, one can afford to be more dogmatic. You curate your space, your people, your inputs. But online, we step into a much larger world. One we don’t control. And that’s the point. We’re not here to impose our reality on others—we’re here to reckon with the larger one. We are not the giants who shape the world—that’s for the Modis and Trumps and Gandhis. We are the ones who try to understand the world they leave behind.

Let Brown Pundits remain that space. A frontier, as Xperia put it. One where disagreement is not a crisis but a condition of thinking. Where inspiration can come from a headline, a historical echo, or a quiet comment from S. Barker or Nivedita or Brown or Dove. It only takes 10 or 15 thoughtful voices to keep the dialectic alive. Let this be a place not of consensus, but of rigor. Not of purity, but of perspective. So thank you—for showing up, for writing, for arguing, and above all, for caring. As always, let me know your thoughts.