Brown Pundits exists to test ideas against evidence. That is not happening consistently. Four contributors have split into two camps. Threads are filling with video links and recycled assertions. Serious readers are leaving. This post explains what changes and why.
Effective immediately, all four authors have been moved to commentator status until each individually promises they can maintain the same standard in comments as in posts; high signal, evidence-based, no exceptions.
On genocide specifically
The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group in whole or in part. Intent is the operative legal threshold. It distinguishes genocide from massacre, ethnic cleansing, and war crime, which are each separately defined under international humanitarian law.
East Pakistan 1971 remains genuinely contested by serious scholars. The Bangladeshi government’s official figure is three million dead. Rounaq Jahan, one of Bangladesh’s foremost political scientists, documents systematic targeting of Hindus, Awami League supporters, and Bengali intellectuals from March 1971 onward. Gary Bass in The Blood Telegram draws on declassified US State Department cables, including Consul General Archer Blood’s April 1971 dissent memo signed by twenty officials, which described “selective genocide.” Sarmila Bose in Dead Reckoning argues the death toll and targeting evidence have been systematically overstated, putting Bengali militant killings of Bihari civilians into the same frame. The International Crimes Tribunal Bangladesh, established 2010, has issued genocide findings, though its proceedings have drawn criticism from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for due process shortcomings. This is not a settled question. It is an open scholarly debate with primary sources, body count disputes, and competing legal interpretations. That is exactly the kind of debate this blog should host. What it cannot host is one contributor simply declaring the definition closed because their nationality demands it.
The same rigour applies elsewhere. The ICJ in January 2024 issued provisional measures in South Africa v. Israel, finding plausible grounds under the Genocide Convention sufficient to order Israel to take measures to prevent genocidal acts. That is not a genocide finding. It is a threshold ruling that the case may proceed. The distinction matters and should be maintained in any serious discussion.
On Hindu-Muslim violence in India, the data exists and should be used. The Sachar Committee Report of 2006 documented Muslim underrepresentation across Indian public institutions: 2.5 percent of the Indian Administrative Service, 4 percent of the army, Muslim literacy and income figures consistently below national averages despite OBC and minority scheme provisions. The NCRB communal violence data shows 857 communal incidents recorded in 2017, dropping to 378 in 2022, though methodology and classification disputes make year-on-year comparison unreliable. Gujarat 2002 produced approximately 1,000 to 2,000 deaths by most independent estimates, with the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team in 2012 convicting 24 individuals including a former minister. These are the materials for argument. Not slogans.
On the blog’s condition
Comment sections that lose signal lose contributors. This is not conjecture. The original blogosphere collapse between 2008 and 2013 was driven substantially by comment quality deterioration as platforms scaled and moderation failed to keep pace, documented in detail by researchers including Yochai Benkler in The Wealth of Networks and subsequent work on online deliberation. Brown Pundits is small enough that the damage from a handful of bad-faith contributors is disproportionate. Four commentators generating circular, reinforcing exchanges crowd out the uncertain and curious reader who has no appetite for a pre-formed argument.
What changes
Posts require argument, not links. Comments on contested historical subjects require engagement with sources. Authorship here carries responsibility in comments as well as posts. Material that asserts without reasoning will be removed. This applies symmetrically: the same standard governs commentary on Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Israel regardless of which contributor is writing.
I have tried to make my own biases visible. I will continue to do so. Good faith is not weakness and moderation is not indifference. But a blog without standards is not a blog. It is a feed.