X.T.M – Brown Pundits

Iran and Pakistan Are Not the Same Kind of State

X.T.M · January 29, 2026 · 5 comments

Iran cannot be analysed using the same political categories as Pakistan or most modern states. The difference is not whether a regime is monarchical, clerical, or military. It is the age of the civilisation being governed. Pakistan is a young state. Its borders, institutions, and political language were assembled in the twentieth century. In such states, power fills a vacuum directly.

Power in Young States, Authority in Old Ones

A military dictatorship governs by force, hierarchy, and command. Its legitimacy is procedural and immediate: order, security, survival. This form works where political memory is thin and inherited meaning is limited. Pakistan’s army did not overthrow an old order. It stepped into an empty one. Iran is structured differently. It is a civilisational state that has existed in recognisable form for roughly three thousand years. Power there has never been exercised through force alone. Authority has always been tied to ideas that predate any single regime.

Monarchy as Civilisation, Not Administration Continue reading Iran and Pakistan Are Not the Same Kind of State

Listening to Iran

X.T.M · January 27, 2026 · 5 comments

I was not reading reports. I was speaking to Iran. After weeks of silence, the internet briefly opened. Voices percolated through. What they described was not protest energy. It was systemic strain.

The figures circulating privately are severe. Tens of thousands dead, according to some accounts. Whether the numbers are precise is less important than where the pressure is concentrated. This is not confined to Tehran or large cities. It is acute in smaller towns and provincial centres.

The big urban areas remain relatively stable. It often is. But towns in the North and across the interior are absorbing the worst of the economic collapse. Inflation there is not political language. It is daily arithmetic.

This marks a shift. The Islamic Republic rested on a broad social base: provincial populations, lower-income groups, and religious constituencies. That base is now under strain. Discontent is no longer segmented. It is shared. Continue reading Listening to Iran

Tamil Islam Is Not a North Indian Story

X.T.M · January 27, 2026 · 2 comments

Sbarr sent a simple reel: a female Tamil Muslim politiciann in Ranipet, near Vellore, waving an LTTE flag during an election campaign. What followed was not simple at all. The reaction treated the image as an ideological provocation rather than a local political act. Why is a Muslim woman waving a Tamil separatist symbol? What does this say about loyalty, religion, or the nation?

Islam in South India did not arrive through conquest. It arrived through trade. Arab merchants settled along the Malabar and Coromandel coasts centuries before the Delhi Sultanate existed. They married locally, learned the language, adopted food, dress, and social habits, and became Tamil, Malayali, or Konkani Muslims. Religion changed. Civilisation did not.

This is why South Indian Islam does not behave like a foreign layer imposed on a hostile society. It is woven into the local fabric. Tamil Muslims are Tamil first in language, culture, and political instinct. Their solidarities are shaped by region before theology. This is not syncretism as rebellion. It is indigeneity as habit.

Tamil identity in Tamil Nadu routinely transcends religion. I was reminded of this years ago in Chennai, asking my dentist, who was Christian,about her name. Like many South Indian Christians, it was a mix of Hindu and Christian forms. I asked whether they were also Tamil. She looked at me as if the question made no sense. Of course she was Tamil, “very Tamil.”

That response explains more than a thousand editorials.

In Tamil Nadu, religion is real but it is not totalising. Tamilness is older, deeper, and more organising. This applies to Hindus, Christians, and Muslims alike. Political expression follows that logic. A Tamil Muslim expressing Tamil nationalist sentiment is not a contradiction. It is normal.

This is what happens when South India is constantly interpreted through North Indian assumptions. Islam is assumed to be oppositional. Symbols are assumed to be exclusive. Politics is assumed to be communal by default. None of this holds in the Tamil world.

Tamil lands occupy a distinct face of Indian civilisation. Fully part of India, yet unmistakably their own. Deeply Indian, yet not reducible to Gangetic history or North Indian templates. This is not fragmentation. It is civilisational strength.

India has always had multiple faces. The Tamil one is maritime, linguistic, ancient, and self-assured. It absorbed religions without surrendering itself to them. That is why its Muslims do not behave like guests. They behave like natives.

The reel was never the problem. The inability to see India’s southernmost face was.

Borderline Bloodpressure

X.T.M · January 26, 2026 · 11 comments

I am forty-one. Five foot ten. Around ninety kilos. My blood pressure is borderline high. My resting heart rate is higher than it should be. A nosebleed and a sustained pulse over 100 were enough to tell me something was off.

Ordinarily, I do my health checks in India each January. Apart from high cholesterol, things usually come back fine. During the pandemic I was very fit. Even as recently as October, I was training regularly and moving well. This is not a story of collapse. It is a story of drift.

My baseline habits are solid. I do not drink. I do not smoke. I eat cleanly and avoid excess sugar and carbohydrates. I carry weight well, but weight is still weight. At forty-one, the body compensates more slowly. Margins narrow.

Borderline Is a Signal

Continue reading Borderline Bloodpressure

F*ck Your Algorithm, My People Are Still Colonised

X.T.M · January 22, 2026 · No comments

I was not browsing an archive or reading a colonial memoir. I was looking at an AI summary produced by Google’s Gemini system. What stopped me cold was not the history. It was the voice.

Islam was described as an “obstacle to civilisation.” French colonialism was reframed as a “civilising mission.” Muslim societies appeared as a “pervasive influence” to be managed. Colonial domination was softened into administration. Dispossession was translated into balance. This is not neutral language. It is the vocabulary of empire.

“French colonial rule in West Africa encountered and managed large Muslim populations, initially viewing Islam with suspicion as an obstacle to civilization but later adapting policies as Muslim subjects proved loyal, though often facing discriminatory practices like denial of citizenship or repression of movements, leading to complex relationships, resistance, and the emergence of distinct Islamic spheres within the colonies. France, becoming a significant “Muslim power,” struggled with balancing its civilizing mission against Islam’s pervasive influence in regions like French West Africa (AOF) and Algeria, impacting local society and sparking ongoing debates about identity and governance.”

Islam is fundamental to West Africa

Continue reading F*ck Your Algorithm, My People Are Still Colonised

Pakistan, the deciding hinge between the West & CRINK

X.T.M · January 22, 2026 · 9 comments

Pakistan does not announce itself as a great power. That is precisely why it works.

Prussia, built on Position, not Pretension

In a world that is reorganising around blocs, chokepoints, and undersea cables, Pakistan has emerged as one of the most dextrous middle powers on the planet. Not because it dominates geography, but because it understands it. Not because it leads alliances, but because it survives them. Most states are trapped by their alignments. Pakistan is not. It sits at the hinge of the Eurasian landmass: between the Gulf and Central Asia, between China and the Muslim world, between the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East. This position is dangerous for weak states. For competent ones, it is leverage. Pakistan has learned how to convert constraint into flexibility.

Dexterity & Diplomacy as Strategy Continue reading Pakistan, the deciding hinge between the West & CRINK

Lord Zoroaster’s Fire Still Burns

X.T.M · January 21, 2026 · 13 comments

In the 1920s, Soviet Azerbaijan produced a remarkable satirical magazine called Molla Nasreddin. It mocked clerics, superstition, empire, and authority with a sharpness that would soon be extinguished by Stalinist conformity. One cartoon from that period shows two figures standing side by side: Lord Zoroaster in red, radiant and amused; Prophet Muhammad in green, solemn and slightly defensive. Below them, a crowd leaps over a fire.

Lord Zoroaster turns and says: “You claimed to bring them a new religion, but they still jump over my fire.”

The joke is simple. The implication is not. It is a jab at how ancient Persian customs; Nowruz, fire-jumping, seasonal rites, survived Islamic conversion not as relics, but as living practice. Islam arrived. The civilisation did not leave. The fire stayed lit.

Iran Is Not a Regime Problem Continue reading Lord Zoroaster’s Fire Still Burns

A Pakistani Wedding That Refused Not to Be Indian

X.T.M · January 20, 2026 · 40 comments

There is a tweet circulating of Nawaz Sharif’s grandson’s wedding. It is meant to be ordinary; the bride wore Indian designers, Sabyasachi and Tarun Tahiliani. Instead, it is revealing, the extent of Indic soft power. The colours are unmistakably Indian: red, gold, marigold. The symmetry is ritualistic rather than theological. The staging is ceremonial, not Quranic. The aesthetics are not Arab, Persian, or Turkic. They are Hindu-Indian; not in belief, but in form.

This is not a criticism. It is an observation. For seventy-five years, Pakistan has insisted that it is not India. That it broke away not only as a state but as a civilisation. That Islam did not merely replace Hinduism but erased it. Yet when Pakistan’s most powerful family marries its children, what appears is not a purified Islamic aesthetic but a recognisably Indic one.

Civilisation does not obey ideology.

Islam in Jambudvīpa did not enter an empty space. It arrived in a world already shaped by colour, hierarchy, procession, music, and spectacle. It adapted to that world. It did not abolish ceremony; it repurposed it. Nikah replaced vivah, but the social grammar remained. Weddings stayed long, public, ornate, and familial. They did not become austere. They became Muslim in name and Indian in structure.

Continue reading A Pakistani Wedding That Refused Not to Be Indian

How will the Iranian Regime Survive? By Becoming Persian & Crowning a Pahlavi Queen

X.T.M · January 18, 2026 · 6 comments

Iran After Ideology

The Iranian Revolution survived because it fused two forces that had long resisted foreign domination: Shi‘i Islam and Persian historical memory. It endures today because it still commands the machinery of the state. But endurance is not the same as viability. The revolution has reached a point where its original ideological heft, once an asset, has become its primary liability.

The Iranian Revolution must become Iranian. Not rhetorically, but structurally. Islam can no longer function as an export ideology or as a permanent mobilisation doctrine. It must become a civilisational substrate: Islam with Persian characteristics, not Persian life bent permanently around Islamic revolution. The clerical class has to accept a hard truth that other revolutionary elites eventually learn; that ideology is a ladder, not a house. Nuclear ambition, permanent resistance, and theological maximalism were once instruments of leverage. Today they are liabilities. Iran is not losing legitimacy because it is insufficiently Islamic; it is losing legitimacy because it insists on remaining revolutionary long after the revolution has exhausted its social utility.

The English Example Continue reading How will the Iranian Regime Survive? By Becoming Persian & Crowning a Pahlavi Queen

India’s Eastern Face: Where Civilisation Dissolves Instead of Ending

X.T.M · January 15, 2026 · 9 comments

Hard Edges and Soft Ones

India is unusual among civilisations in that most of its edges are real. They can be pointed to on a map and felt underfoot. The northwest is closed by the Hindu Kush, a wall that both protected and punctured India through invasion. The north is sealed by the Himalayas, which turned the subcontinent inward for millennia. The south ends cleanly in the Indian Ocean, a hard geographic edge that also became India’s great outward highway. These are faces with sharp contours.

India is bounded in the northwest by mountains, in the north by ice, in the south by water, and in the east by diffusion.

The east is different. It does not end. It thins.

A Boundary That Does Not Behave Like One

Geographically, there is a boundary. The Indo-Burman ranges run from Arunachal through Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, and down into Burma. They are real mountains, thick with forest, rain, and disease. But they are not high enough, cold enough, or empty enough to function like the Himalayas. They slow movement without stopping it. They divide ecologies more than peoples.

This matters because civilisation follows ecology before it follows flags.

Where India Becomes Something Else, Gradually

Continue reading India’s Eastern Face: Where Civilisation Dissolves Instead of Ending