It’s been startling—at times dispiriting—to witness the tenor of Pakistani responses to recent BP posts. Not just the jingoism, but the denial. A refusal to acknowledge the civilizational reality of India before 1947. It isn’t just ahistorical—it’s tragicomic. And it reveals a deeper pathology: the English-speaking Pakistani elite is afflicted with Post-Colonial Derangement Syndrome. Omar has long argued this. I’ve become a convert over the past decade.

I love Pakistan. But that love doesn’t require denying India. I can honour my father and mother without disfiguring one to exalt the other. Civilizations are not exclusive claims—they are overlapping inheritances. Nationalism demands we choose. Patriotism allows us to belong. One blinds. The other binds.

Pakistan’s identity hinges on rupture. It claims to be not Hind, not Bharat—something purer, separate, superior. And yet, its elites remain obsessed with India. At least the Koreas and Vietnams acknowledge their shared past. Even China and Taiwan did—until foreign interference fractured that memory. But here? Not even a name is spared. There is no sign of “India” in the very land that birthed the name. If India truly didn’t exist in the Pakistani imagination, why the resentment? Why the rivalry? The schizophrenia is telling: deny the mother, envy the sibling.

Take Kashmir. If this is a political conflict—not religious—why were the victims in Pahalgam targeted as adult Hindu men? That wasn’t strategic. It was sectarian. Either the attackers acted from religious hatred, or the political cause they serve is entangled with it. You cannot claim secular nationalism while endorsing ideological murder. Continue reading The Arrogance That Binds: Post-Colonial Delusions in the English speaking Pakistani Mind

In an unexpected way, this war has revived Brown Pundits. A site that had drifted into silence is now surging with life again—threads are active, arguments are sharp, and the intellectual pulse has returned. Conflict, for all its tragedy, has a way of clarifying identities and sharpening thought. It’s given many of us the urgency—and the material—to write. I’ll be resuming active moderation and will be onboarding new moderators and authors shortly. But one key requirement for any new authors & moderators (we are only 6 right now), beyond what is stated: you must be active. Lurking is fine, but contribution is what keeps this platform alive.

Three comments caught my attention, each illuminating a deeper tension at the heart of South Asia. But all point to the same truth: the deeper our wars go, the more we are forced to ask, what are we really fighting for? Continue reading Why Pakistanis Should Say Jai Hind: Civilizational Fractures in a Post-Nation South Asia

Ngl Kabir’s comments about the “Muslim Valley” kind of triggered me. It really does solidify Pakistan as a second class state for everyone who is not a Muslim (and that’s at least 5% of the population).

I find that majoritarianism unhealthy so I’m going to stick this picture of the above; Modi, for all his flaws, has presided over a shining decade for India, where it is recognised as an ascendant superpower while Pakistan is firmly a Chinese satellite.

Comment Policy Update (May 11, 2025)

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(Thanks to Nivedita for flagging the issue—otherwise, I wouldn’t have noticed Xperia’s comment got filtered.)

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Not out of weakness, but calculation. It’s waiting for the international community to bribe it into silence. One advantage of being quasi-democratic (like Russia or China) is the ability to sideline public opinion. Pakistan can afford to wait. India, by contrast, appears to be following an Israel-style doctrine. But Pakistan is more Prussia than Palestine and Modi feels much weaker from this episode (he promised a safe Kashmir).

Competing regional giants and nuclear powers, India and China are widely seen as long-term strategic rivals, sharing a 3,800 km (2,400 mile) Himalayan border that has been disputed since the 1950s and sparked a brief war in 1962. The most recent standoff began in 2020 and thawed only in October 2023, when both sides agreed to a formal patrolling agreement, placing limits on forward deployment and coordinated disengagement. Even between nuclear-armed antagonists, restraint is possible when war threatens mutual prosperity.

Likewise, Putin’s behavior post-Maidan in 2014 was not immediate escalation. Instead, Crimea was seized swiftly, but Russia spent eight years supporting separatists and waging hybrid war in Donbas before launching a full-scale invasion in 2022. It was restraint with intent, waiting for the West to appear divided or distracted.

It’s strange that every time the region stabilizes, something reignites tension. Why would China, India, or Pakistan want instability when wealth and growth depend on peace? Yet here we are.

The BJP base craves nothing short of Pakistan’s annihilation. That’s a fantasy; militarily, diplomatically, and strategically. Why shouldn’t India fully cooperate in an international investigation to determine who was behind the Pahalgam attack? The refusal suggests this moment is being used as a casus belli; leveraging the incident to project force in a world increasingly shaped by Trumpian-Putinesque instincts.

Even the postponement of the IPL was an indirect consequence of what Pakistan could do. This is not a toothless state. Pakistan is David with a nuke or more accurately, an incidental Prussia, hyper-militarized but calculating. The public isn’t rising up against its military; if anything, this round has shown that Pakistan can restrain itself without looking weak.

In fact, Pakistan has consistently been the more restrained nuclear power. Israel has spent two years trying to flatten Gaza with limited success. The U.S. stayed in Afghanistan and Iraq far too long, trapped by asymmetric warfare. These are textbook examples of tactical response leading to strategic drift.

Modi should study those cases. Retaliation may thrill headlines. But strategy lies in staying still until the storm passes and only then, deciding if and how to move.

On Pakistan’s second birth, India’s rising nationalism, and the politics of martyrdom

There’s a strange irony in history: the founder of Pakistan and the “strongest” Prime Minister of India may ultimately be remembered for the same thing—giving Pakistan life.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah birthed the state. Narendra Modi may have revived its soul. Because nothing steels a national identity like resistance. And nothing immortalizes a cause like martyrdom.

Blood in Pahalgam, Resolve in Islamabad

When civilians—children—are killed, as in the recent attacks in Pahalgam & Bahawalpur, the horror doesn’t demoralize. It clarifies. It creates martyrs. And martyrdom sanctifies. Pakistan, often in search of a purpose, just received one. What makes this even more striking is the dynamic behind it. Modi may need Pakistan—not as a partner, but as a perpetual foil. A pressure point. A mirror. A justification.Every strong nationalism needs its adversary:

• Israel has Hamas.
• The U.S. had the USSR.
• India, increasingly, needs Pakistan.

Nationhood hardens in opposition. This is what the “failed” projects of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia lacked: no existential other. No enemy, no glue. Even the most successful Willensnation—Switzerland, a country built by choice, not ethnicity—engaged in intense nation-building during the 1960s. Its wealth today isn’t just neutrality—it’s the compound interest of skipping two world wars. But in today’s world, Dubai may inherit Switzerland’s darker mantle—as the future capital of hot money and global shadow finance. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Canada’s national identity has paradoxically strengthened in Trump’s wake—a quiet rebellion through civility, as if to say: we are what he is not.

The Strategic Misstep?

Operation Sindoor. Suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty. Visa blocks. High Commission closures. Are these pressure points—or accelerants? The danger is that such moves only validate Pakistan’s siege narrative. And that narrative fuels its resilience. You can’t bomb a martyr complex. You can only confirm it. Continue reading Quaid, Modi, and the Operation Sindoor