Running a platform is not the same as winning an argument. It is about tone, trajectory, and whether the conversation rises or sinks. I edit out BB’s comments not because I fear disagreement, and not because I am fragile about India or Pakistan. I edit them because they are crude. Crudeness is not courage.
Between Critique and Provocation
There is a difference between sharp critique and coarse provocation. Kabir and I disagree deeply about India. He defends the fake term “South Asia” as necessary. It’s a neocolonialist invention designed to dissolve the world’s oldest and most prominent civilisation (the Indian Subcontinent) into a compass direction. We argue. We contest premises. We clash over legitimacy, sovereignty, and naming. But the disagreement is structured. It is intelligible. It is civil. It forces clarity.
BB’s interventions, by contrast, tend to flatten everything into sneer and insinuation. That degrades the space. A forum that tolerates permanent coarseness slowly becomes defined by it. Readers do not return for noise. They return for thought. There are, to be fair, strong exceptions; for instance when he analysed the cricketing economy to illustrate how much weaker the Pakistani consumer-tax base is compared to its Indian counterpart.
Japan & Germany wake up
The world is changing fast. Germany is rearming. Japan is debating immigration and identity in ways unthinkable a decade ago. Former defeated powers are recalibrating. The global order is shifting from American unipolarity to something colder and more transactional. In such a moment, analysis must be disciplined.
Sinopac is real
Pakistan is not optimising itself. That is obvious. Its institutions are uneven. Its economy is fragile. But it is functional. It survives shocks that would break smaller states. Sinopac alignment is not a fantasy; it is structural. China will not permit state collapse on its western corridor. The catastrophe of 1971 was exceptional: civil war, Indian intervention, and a superpower moment that does not replicate easily. History rhymes, but it does not photocopy.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, only one UN-recognized state has actually broken apart: Sudan in 2011. State dissolution is the exception, not the rule.
The World can change in a blink of an eye
To analyse such matters requires sobriety. It requires recognising that post-war Germany and Japan were once broken states and are now pivot points in a new balance. It requires admitting that India’s civilisational coherence predates 1947 while also acknowledging that Pakistan’s sovereignty is not negated by that fact.
Brown Pundits must remain a place where difficult claims are made carefully and precisely. Where India can be defended without derision. Where Pakistan can be criticised without mockery. It requires resisting the temptation to reduce everything to insult.
apart from sudan, indonesia was broken, now ukraine, in future russian speaking enclaves of maldova, georgia etc. armenia was broken.,,,,,
Sudan broke because it was an artificial colonial weld with no cohesive centre and decades of internal war. Indonesia nearly broke, but the core Javanese state held and re-consolidated. Ukraine is under external invasion, not spontaneously dissolving. Moldova and Georgia face frozen conflicts precisely because Russia intervenes. Armenia was broken by war, not internal incoherence alone..
the pattern is not “multiethnic states collapse.” the pattern is weak institutions plus violent external pressure. states survive when they retain a functioning centre, fiscal capacity, and a security guarantor. they break when those fail simultaneously.
Indonesia did break. East Timor is now an independent country.
Didn’t Yugoslavia break up post the fall of the USSR?
But your larger point is well taken. State dissolution is the exception not the norm. The entire international system is based on the territorial integrity of nation-states.
South Sudan is the only state break up this century. These are very rare events since it requires State validation.
Most states are anyway multi-ethnic entities so recognising a breakaway states invariably invites scrutiny.
Thank you.
I am not really bothered by people disagreeing with me. This forum is dominated by Indian nationalists. Obviously, their premises are different from those of a Pakistani nationalist. That’s fine.
But fantasies about the breakup of Pakistan are extremely triggering. As I’m sure fantasies of the breakup of India are for Indian nationalists. I will clarify that Kashmir is a Disputed Territory. I’ve never fantasized about the breakup of any part of “India Proper”.
It’s also important to note that Pakistan actually did break in 1971–in large part due to India’s intervention. The Republic of India has not suffered a loss of territorial integrity since its creation in 1947.
The territorial integrity of Pakistan is a red line for me as is equating the Pakistan Army with Nazis.
Anything else is fine.
I don’t think BP is dominated by anyone; it’s also that you are intent to pushing back on every opinion.
There are far more Indian nationalists on this forum than Pakistani nationalists.
I wrote a few months back about BP being a “soft Hindutva” platform. I’m not going to rehash that here.
I have to push back when Pakistan is attacked. Also when I’m attacked personally. And I have experienced vile homophobia, transphobia, and Islamophobia here. I don’t think there is another single person who is bullied quite as much as I have been. And I have learned in my life not to concede any ground to bullies.
I don’t really care that much about people’s opinions on non Pakistan related topics.