X.T.M – Page 15 – Brown Pundits

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:

Continue reading What Is Brown Pundits For?

Did the Muslim League and RSS Want the Same Thing?

Let’s just ask it plainly: if the Muslim League got what it wanted—a Muslim-majority Pakistan—then what, exactly, is the problem with the RSS wanting a Hindu-majority India? This isn’t a provocation. It’s a genuine question.

The Muslim League, by the end, wasn’t fighting for shared rule. It wanted partition. It wanted sovereignty. It wanted to exit the Hindu-majority consensus that the Congress represented. And it succeeded—through law, politics, and eventually blood.

The RSS, for its part, never pretended to want pluralism. It’s been consistent for nearly a century: it wants India to have a Hindu character, spine, and center. If the League could ask for a state that reflects Muslim political interests, why is it unthinkable for the RSS to want the same, flipped?

This is where I struggle with a certain kind of liberal-istan logic—found across both India and Pakistan. You’ll hear:

“India must stay secular! Modi is destroying Nehru’s dream!”

But what was Q.E.A-Jinnah’s dream? Was Pakistan built as a pluralist utopia? Or was it built—openly, unapologetically—as a Muslim homeland?

If Pakistan’s existence is predicated on Muslim majoritarianism, then India’s tilt toward Hindu majoritarianism isn’t an anomaly. It’s symmetry. Maybe even inevitability.

So either we all agree that majoritarianism won in the subcontinent—and everyone adjusts accordingly. Or we all agree that the Congress secular ideal was the better one—and try, equally, to hold both India and Pakistan to it.

But it can’t be:

Muslim nationalism is liberation
Hindu nationalism is fascism

That math doesn’t work. And yes, the Muslim League had more polish. Jinnah smoked, drank, defended pork eaters in court. The RSS wore khaki and read Manu Smriti. But don’t be fooled by aesthetics. At the core, both movements rejected the idea of a shared national project. They just took different exits off the same imperial highway.

So pick one: Either Nehru and Gandhi were right—and so was Maulana Azad. Or everyone else was right—and we all now live in our chosen majorities. But don’t demand secularism from Delhi while praying for Muslim unity in Lahore. That’s not secularism. That’s selective memory.

Resistance, Realignment, and the Roads Not Taken

First, a brief acknowledgment: Kabir remains one of the pillars of this blog. His consistency, depth, and willingness to engage with the hardest questions are invaluable. I don’t always agree with him—but the conversation would be much poorer without his voice. The post is a series of reflections—stitched together from the comment threads.

I. Gaza: Beyond the Pale of Language

The death of a 19-year-old TikToker, Medo Halimy, in South Gaza this week caught my eye—not because it was the most horrific (foetuses are sliced in two in Gaza as Dr. Feroze Sidwa* attests). But because having seen his video, it just made the death so immediate (yes that is a cognitive bias).

At this point, to debate whether what is happening is a genocide feels grotesque. It clearly is. The scale, the intent, the targeting of civilians and children—it’s all there. The legal frame collapses under the moral weight. We are witnessing something darker than war: ethnocultural suffocation & demographic extinction, broadcast live and met with diplomatic shrugs. But the world is watching inspired by the very brave Bob Vylan duo (UK punk-rap duo opposing imperialism, recently denied US visas):

Something stirs and pricks beneath the rubble.

II. The Huma Moment: A Civilizational Reversal? Continue reading Resistance, Realignment, and the Roads Not Taken

The Mughals Were Not an Indian Dynasty — They Were a Dynasty in India

The Mughals were not an Indian dynasty in the civilizational sense. They were a dynasty in India — rooted in the Persianate ecumene that stretched from Anatolia to Bengal, but distinct from the indigenous Indic civilizational framework.

Richard Eaton’s India in the Persianate Age captures this well. The Mughal elite, like other Turko-Mongol polities across the Islamic world, operated through a tri-layered framework: Arabic religion, Persianate high culture, and Turko-Mongolian kingship. This pattern held from Egypt to Samarkand — and India was no exception.

But here’s the distinction: while in places like Iran, Central Asia, and even parts of Anatolia, the ruling elite and the subject populations often shared linguistic, religious, or cultural proximity, in India the Mughal court sat atop a society whose foundational worldview — Dharma, Sanskritic cosmology, ritual plurality — was wholly different.

Yes, the Mughals were cosmopolitan. Yes, Akbar attempted synthesis. But at their core, the Mughal dynasty retained its sense of separateness — not just politically, but civilizationally. Persian remained the language of court and culture, their aesthetics leaned West, and their ethos remained imperially aloof. Their legitimacy was not drawn from Indian sacred geography but from Turanic, Persian, and Islamic claims of kingship.

Contrast this with the Suri dynasty, which, despite being devoutly Muslim, left a remarkably grounded imprint. Sher Shah Suri ruled in Hindavi. His administrative and infrastructural legacy felt local, even national. In some ways, paradoxically, he felt more Indian than the Mughals did.

This isn’t about Islam being foreign to India. Islam has deep roots in the subcontinent — from Kerala to Bengal to Kashmir. It has been deeply indigenized across regions. But when Islam arrives twinned with Persianate high culture, it becomes something else: a hybrid elite formation, distinct both from Sanskritic Hinduism and from vernacular Islam.

The British Raj, too, was alien — but ironically, its later administrators localized many elements of their rule. The Mughals, by contrast, represented a more refined foreignness: imperial, hybrid, and between worlds.

It’s telling that the most influential women of the Mughal court—Noor Jahan, Mumtaz Mahal, and Hamida Banu Begum—were all of Persian origin. They wielded real power: issuing firmans, shaping court politics, commissioning architecture. In contrast, the Hindu-indigenous consorts—Jodha Bai, Anarkali, even Aurangzeb’s Hindu Rajput lover—were celebrated in romance, not governance. They were symbols, not strategists. Influence, in the Mughal world, came not with local integration but with Persian pedigree. That, in itself, says a great deal.

So no — the Mughals were not an Indian dynasty. They were a dynasty in India. That distinction matters.

Zohran Mamdani and the Question of Civilizational Belonging

Kabir:

I would question how one defines “Indian” culture vs “Hindu” culture (this is a real question, I’m not being snarky). Zohran speaks Urdu/Hindi, wears shalwar kameez and uses Bollywood references in his campaign. So clearly, he has no issues with Indian culture. He’s not a Hindu so he doesn’t go to temples etc. I’m not sure exactly what you expect him to do?

While Zohran Mamdani expresses outward familiarity with “Indian” culture — speaking Hindi/Urdu, referencing Bollywood, wearing traditional attire — these are surface markers. They do not, on their own, constitute rootedness in Indian civilizational identity. Indian culture, especially post-Partition, is not simply a composite of languages and aesthetics. It is anchored in Dharma — a diffuse but pervasive civilisational ethos shaped over millennia by Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jain worldviews.

Despite being born to a Hindu mother, Zohran’s public identity is strongly framed within a Muslim, Middle Eastern, and postcolonial activist context. His political and cultural instincts appear more aligned with pan-Islamic and Western progressive causes than with any articulation of Indian philosophical or spiritual heritage. His Syrian Muslim spouse, activist framing, and lack of visible engagement with Indic traditions contribute to this perception.

This is not a religious critique but a civilizational one. Just as Israel defines its national identity through a broadly Jewish character — irrespective of belief — India’s cultural self-understanding is inseparable from its Hindu roots. To be Indian, in this view, is not to perform cultural familiarity but to resonate with the metaphysical and historical rhythms of the civilization.

By that measure, Zohran — despite South Asian ancestry — does not code as civilizationally Indian, but rather as an American progressive of South Asian Muslim extraction. The distinction is subtle but important.

What Was the Point of Israel’s Iran Strike?

The Limits of Provocation

At some point, the world will have to ask: what exactly was Israel hoping to achieve?

In the days following the dramatic escalation between Tel Aviv and Tehran, we are left not with clarity but with a deepening sense of confusion. If the intention was to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program, there is little to show for it—centrifuges still spin, scientists remain in place, and the infrastructure of Iran’s deterrent capability stands unshaken. If the aim was to trigger chaos within the Iranian regime, then that too has failed—Tehran did not descend into disarray; it retaliated, measured and intact. And if the goal was symbolic, to remind the world of Israel’s reach and resolve, then the moment has already passed, clouded by questions of proportionality, legality, and consequence.

For all the fire and fury, the strike landed with the strategic weight of a gesture. Continue reading What Was the Point of Israel’s Iran Strike?

Genocide by any other name

“My nerves are shattered,” says Noura, a 26-year-old Palestinian woman, explaining that she has been “left with nothing”.

After years of IVF treatment, she became pregnant in July 2023. “I was overjoyed,” she remembers, describing the moment she saw the positive pregnancy test.

She and her husband Mohamed decided to store two more embryos at Al-Basma Fertility Centre in Gaza City, which had helped them conceive, in the hope of having more children in the future.

“I thought my dream had finally come true,” she says. “But the day the Israelis came in, something in me said it was all over.”

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’s cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Since then at least 54,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Like thousands of Gazans, Noura and Mohamed had to repeatedly flee, and were unable to get the food, vitamins and medication she needed for a healthy pregnancy.

Hopes of parenthood crushed after IVF embryos destroyed in Israel’s Gaza offensive

The West’s War of Decline

Dear friends,

I just wanted to share a thought that’s been on my mind lately. Yes, Trump has attacked Iran — but Iran hasn’t responded in any major way. That in itself is telling. It seems less a climax than a provocation, more bait than strategy. In truth, this might be part of a larger Western pattern: in its long twilight, the West no longer seeks peace but relevance — and sometimes, relevance requires war.

I recently heard a wild claim: that Norway was positioning a remote island of 150 people to tempt a Russian invasion, hoping to activate NATO’s mutual defence clause. Whether true or not, it captures something of the moment — the performative anxiety of a declining order, looking for conflict to reaffirm its own centrality.

As Amar writes, “It is heart-wrenching to see Iran being bombed by two nuclear states, while it remains a signatory to the NPT and compliant with IAEA inspections.” He recalls living in Tehran in 1980, a schoolboy witnessing warplanes above Mehrabad and the skies of Tehran blazing with anti-aircraft fire. That memory isn’t abstract — it’s personal, etched in smoke. His excellent comment is after the jump: Continue reading The West’s War of Decline

🕊️ On Iran, Israel, and the Right to Self-Defense

Why loving Israel, believing in peace, and opposing regimes means defending Iran’s right not to be bombed.

Dear Friends,

I don’t usually write about politics. And when I do, I try to centre peace — not provocation.

Anyone who knows me knows I have always believed in the dignity of Israel, the rights of Palestinians, and the intertwined destinies of both peoples. I love Israel. I love Iran. I believe in Palestine. I believe in peace. And I believe that each nation — each people — has a right to their own story, their own future, and yes, their own defense.

Which is why I write today, with care and some sorrow, in response to the recent Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Let me be clear: I oppose the Iranian regime. Vehemently. I stand with the brave women and men who chanted “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi” — women, life, freedom. But I cannot condone this unprovoked assault.

Read the rest at this link and please subscribe to my newsletter.

🧠 Inside the Mind of Trump: Empire, Restraint, and the Hemispheric Gamble

As an aside the latest FP’s post “India’s Great-Power Delusions” will make an interesting future post

Ten years ago, Donald Trump descended a golden escalator and upended American politics. He entered the White House not as a politician, but as a brand. Today, as the world stands at multiple geopolitical flashpoints—Israel–Iran, India–Pakistan, China–Taiwan—the question is not just what will Trump do, but what kind of world does Trump want to preside over?

Comeback King or New Emperor?

The interlude of Biden’s presidency—whether viewed as rightful or rigged—has only intensified Trump’s mythos. He is no longer just the comeback kid; he is the comeback king in a time when cries of “no king” echo through a fractured republic. A decade on from his initial successful run, he should be an elder statesman but in fact he’s just getting started with another 3 years to go. It’s unparalleled influence in the American Republic since FDR who managed to dominate the 30’s through to the mid 40’s; Trump will be the dominant force in US politics from mid teens through to at least 2029. Continue reading 🧠 Inside the Mind of Trump: Empire, Restraint, and the Hemispheric Gamble