Brown, that is Bharat, Pundits

The Constitution of Brown Pundits

see: Bharat Needs No Validation

Ever since Brown Pundits was resurrected over the last two years, one thing has been missing: a written constitution. We never had one (fifteen years as the British of the blogosphere, running on an unwritten constitution).

The landscape has changed since the founding. The diaspora is not so interesting anymore. Pakistan and the other regions are not so interesting anymore. Modi came to power, and the economic divergence between India and her neighbours is now just immense; she is one of the largest economies in the world. A blog that does not register that is not describing the “Hindu Continent“, it is describing 2011.

Alias

I am not officially changing the name from Brown Pundits. But BP also stands, very much, for Bharat Pundits. We are not trying to make claims of equality. The focus of this house is India, that is Bharat, and how she claims her destiny in the world, with a nod to our origins, which were diasporic and Indo-Islamicate. Bharat Pundits began as a reframe in a wry comment reply to Kabir earlier afternoon. It has evolved into a Precedent.

“Writing”

0M-3 made a deliberately Islamophobic comment (now deleted) claiming the pages of the Holy Quran were copied (or something to that effect). That is just a trashy comment, and it is palpably untrue. The quality of Arabic verse set a standard that helped carry Arabic into the top five languages on earth. The Holy Quran needs deep study, and I dislike uninformed comments on any subject, particularly those that are sensitive or complex.

The point is that theology is complex. Under no circumstances are we going to have simplified, random flame threads on complex subjects. This is not a throttling of free speech. Free speech is also intelligent.

For instance girmit’s comment on the Wodeyars set the high watermark in the 200+ comments (more than half deleted) that happened over the last 24-36 hours.

Equity, not equality

Brown Pundits doesn’t need to be fair. It doesn’t need to be equal. It needs to have equity. That is the difference. Bharat is an equitable notion, since Dharma, as Agni points out, has space and capacity for all.

Here is what equity means in practice. Even if we tilt Saffron; it doesn’t mean we don’t respect interrogation. Q’s comment to 0M’s post was excellent and I agree with most of it; Pakistan, to her credit, is an extremely deft diplomatic and strategic player. The visit to Israel precisely prior to the failed Iran war isn’t a masterstroke per se.

Pakistan

Alas however Pakistan is a third-rate peripheral power. Maybe in some years it plays itself up to second-rate, because as a purely strategic, diplomatic and military actor Pakistan has always been formidable.

I do have much sympathy with 0M’s view that the British envisaged Pakistan for exactly what it became: not the shaheen Allama promised, but a cheel on India’s shoulder, circling, harrying, snatching what it can, never stooping like a falcon.

I hate to say this, because there is so much capacity in that valley. It is one of the richest in the world. Punjab is exceptionally rich. The northern areas are very beautiful. Karachi could have been the Singapore of the Arabian Sea. Balochistan has the minerals, the Frontier has the ruggedness of its terrain, and Peshawar to Kabul was once an axis of its own. The tragedy of the cheel is that it has falcon country and flies it like a scavenger.

En Fin

However the blog has shifted over fifteen years. Pakistan has dipped in significance while India has soared in the sun. Even with mistakes made by India; its fundamental rise and promise seems assured, notwithstanding any unforeseen disasters (even the CJP is careful not to stoke chaos).

I can understand that for Kabir, who has been with us for at least a decade, that shift is real, and it is hard. Blogs can do that since we are not bound to a written constitution like India is to her secularism.