Author: X.T.M

Open Thread: BP Survey

June 1, 2026 80 Comments filed under Open Thread, Precedent, X.T.M

Our 2026 reader survey is open until 7 June – anonymous, roughly five minutes. Please take a moment.

Update – from the thread: More reading reccys. Furqan flagged Dr Naazir Mahmood’s The assassination that changed India, along with his own book review on Duniya Digital and a related op-ed, Stupidity or strategy, on the political economy of the subcontinent’s borrowed democratic forms. Kabir marked the passing of playback singer Suman Kalyanpur with two recordings: an unreleased Pakeeza song, introduced by Meena Kumari, and a Rafi duet. And from our own pages, the latest BRAHM newsletter: The Sky Above São Paulo.

Update, 1 June 2026 – links from the thread: The Peshawar Review has a new issue out, including Professor Harbans Mukhia’s reminiscences of Kirori Mal College (College Days) and Shan-e-Ahmed reading an Urdu transcreation of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (Prufrock in Pakistan). On the Tata Sons listing question, Agni flagged a cluster of commentary: the Indian Express “to list or not to list” column, The New Indian Express on the boardroom fight, Soonawala on why an IPO may not appeal to investors, and Business Standard on the 12 June board meeting. Survey responses are at 18 and counting; please add yours if you haven’t.

Editor’s note, 1 June: This Survey thread will sit on the front page through the week, until Sunday the 7th June, while we are travelling Eastbound, so we have made it an Open Thread. What strikes us, watching the comment threads, is that for all the constant bickering, BP is a community, and a recognisably Desi one.

It has the hue of a Hindu joint family (to be of the Indian subcontinent is, almost by definition, to have Hindu ancestors; “Hindu” is simply what the Persians called the people beyond the Indus) that has built a wall down the middle of the house and still cannot get over each other. The wall is real. So is the fact that nobody moves out.

Original Post: Every few years BP runs a reader survey. Razib began the tradition in 2019, and the responses then told us things the comments alone never could.

Seven years on, with a substantially different commentariat, we are running the 2026 edition. The prompt to revive it came from Kabir, whose recent post on what BP is and is not raised exactly the kind of question a survey can help answer, and we are grateful for it.

Nineteen questions, anonymous, roughly five minutes. The core spine is demographic in Razib’s tradition: age, sex, country, mother tongue, ethnic background, religion, caste, education, political ideology, and views on Hindu and Pakistani nationalism. A few behavioural questions follow on how often you visit, how long you have been reading, how you first found BP, and which topics you would like to see more of, with optional fields at the end for handle, newsletter signup, and anything else you would like the editors to know.

Please take the time to fill in this survey. Thank you for your engagement.

The Pakistani Voice That Isn’t in the Room

May 31, 2026 145 Comments filed under Precedent, X.T.M

BB made a very sharp observation, and we want to put it on the record as a note rather than a finished argument, because it deserves more elaboration than we can give it today.

Who carries the Green Passport

Look at who carries the Pakistani case at BP. Kabir holds a foreign passport. Q and EK write from the diaspora. Every voice that argues the Pakistani perspective here argues it from somewhere else. Not one of them speaks from inside the country: resident, middle or upper-middle class, holding a green passport with everything the green passport actually costs at the visa counter, at the airport, in what can and cannot be said at home. India, by contrast, is argued for in large part by Indians who live in India (BB is one such example). So the table is lopsided in a particular way. One side is represented by people inside the country it speaks for; the other, almost entirely by people outside it.

No photo description available.
The Great Cleft

Diasporas are powerful but deadly

Continue reading The Pakistani Voice That Isn’t in the Room

Bin Qasim’s Thousand-Year Wound

May 29, 2026 291 Comments filed under Precedent, X.T.M

There is one fault line under everything that happens here, and it is old. Pakistan stands, whether it wishes to or not, as the proxy for the Muslims of the subcontinent, and India as the proxy for its non-Muslims. This is not a quarrel of the last election or the last war. It is a wound more than a thousand years old, set running when Muhammad bin Qasim landed in Sindh in 711, and it has been arguing with itself in the subcontinental subconscious ever since. Every thread on this site is a small, late episode of that argument.

There is a scene in The Devil Wears Prada, the cerulean one, where a colour chosen by Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) at the summit of fashion is followed down the seasons, runway to department store to clearance bin, until Andy (Anne Hathaway), who fishes it out is sure her choice owed nothing to any of it.

Anne Hathaway referencing the ICONIC cerulean sweater scene for her first day filming The Devil Wears Prada 2 💙 Andy is back! , #AnneHathaway #TheDevilWearsPrada #TheDevilWearsPrada2 #AndySachs ...

The subcontinent’s argument works the same way. Bin Qasim’s landing in 711 was a decision taken at the top of history, and it has filtered down through thirteen centuries of conquest, doctrine and memory into a comment thread, where two strangers swapping insults are certain the quarrel is about this week. It is not. It was chosen for them a thousand years ago, and they are wearing it without knowing the name of the colour.

What is new is that the argument is going quiet, and quiet is worse than loud. The subcontinent is partitioning itself a second time, in the mind. Indians increasingly talk only to Indians, Pakistanis only to Pakistanis, each inside a feed built to agree with them. The 1947 line cut the map; the algorithm is cutting the conversation. Against that, the value of Brown Pundits is simple and almost embarrassing to state. It is one of the few open places left where the two sides still argue with each other in public and mean it. That is worth defending even when the argument is ugly, because the alternative is not a calmer argument. It is no argument, and two rooms that never open the door.

Is BP sui generis on the Internet?

Continue reading Bin Qasim’s Thousand-Year Wound

The Crescent has a sharp edge

May 26, 2026 6 Comments filed under Precedent, X.T.M

Context in BP is cumulative, mes amis.

As we know, certain members of the Crescentiate remain emotionally invested in Pakistan, and certain members of the Saffroniate respond by undermining Pakistan. Neither tendency is a criticism in itself, we try to keep as few Shibboleths as possible in BP.

As an aside the Crescentiate are “Zionesque” (or perhaps more appropriate Jinnahesque) in the sense of preferring Pakistan to Islam.

What is a criticism is repeatedly reaching across that line, eliciting the predictable reaction, and then presenting oneself as the neutral party once it arrives. This is a small community with a very long memory. The personality maps build over time, and we remember who did what first.

The Crescentiate, with whom Sbarrkum is aligned, correctly called Iran the victor in this year’s confrontation with the United States and Israel, a reading the Saffroniate has refused to grant. We deeply dislike the regime but acknowledge that its valiant defence of the homeland may augur new glimmerings for the Ummah (we are who we imagine ourselves to be hence why psych warfare is so dangerous).

Getting Indian Classical Music Wrong

For instance, to tell our resident ethnomusicologist, an academic at Pakistan’s top university (Ivy+ crawls with LUMS researchers), that his field is entirely Hindu is ahistorical. Lest we be accused of green-washing, we prefer the Indian Continent be called Jambudvīpa.

Let's dive into the forgotten map of the ancients - Jambudvipa as described in our Puranas & Itihasas. This isn't just geography, it's cosmic cartography: mapping realms of humans, Devas, Nagas, Gandharvas

But we are also appreciative of historical truth: all major khayal gharanas have Muslim founders, converts or otherwise. Islam has long since moved past the mawali stage.

Imam Bukhari, compiler of Sahih al-Bukhari and the most authoritative hadith scholar in Sunni Islam, had a great-grandfather who was a Zoroastrian convert and mawla of the Banu Ju’fa.

So when someone is triggered, we will look to understand whether the trigger is justified, and what “triggered” the trigger, before acting.

Parliament at her Best:

Remember this is Parliament. And in Parliament, the curious thing is that members of opposing benches are often more cordial with one another than they are with members of their own party. The hostility you see across the aisle is theatre. The knife-work happens at home.

We moderate by nunchi, not by formula, encouraging congeniality both within and across the benches.

Mocking Modi Is the Only Nationalism Left-Liberals Know

May 26, 2026 34 Comments filed under X.T.M

A Trump-coded American (a mix of JD & Rubio) imposes tariffs, restricts H-1B work, threatens war, calls India a “hell-hole.” Modi, eyes lowered, hands folded, writes a cheque for five hundred billion dollars. The signature reads penpencildraw, a left-liberal account. The Instagram account is run by urban anti-Modi liberals who, on most other days, want a poorer, slower, more Nehruvian India.

Continue reading Mocking Modi Is the Only Nationalism Left-Liberals Know

Nehru Lost India, Not Jinnah

May 25, 2026 162 Comments filed under Popular, Precedent, X.T.M

We write this from the chair of those who have just declined, again, to partition their own blog. The exercise concentrates the mind. Brown Pundits has a Saffroniate. It has a Crescentiate. It has an awkward intermediate seat between Viceroy and Prime Minister. We have chosen, repeatedly, to hold the centre.

We have observed that Nehru did not.

1. The Men.

Jinnah was self-made. He was technically brilliant. He was legalistic to the point of pedantry, which is the only kind of legalism that ever wins a constitutional argument. Nehru rode on his father’s coattails, on Gandhi’s affection, on the Mountbattens’ hospitality.

The asymmetry was decisive. One man knew the document. The other man trusted the room.

2. The Cabinet Mission Plan.

The Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 already confederated India. Grouping A, Grouping B, Grouping C. The Centre held defence, foreign affairs, communications. Everything else devolved. This was workable. The League accepted it provisionally as the best available route to parity. Nehru wobbled, then in his July Bombay press conference reserved the Congress right to revise the groupings once seated in power. The League withdrew within weeks. The edifice collapsed.

The question the Saffroniate refuses to ask is the simple one. Why was it harder to confederate on linguistic lines than on religious lines? The States Reorganisation that the Republic executed in 1956 was already latent in 1946. Madras Presidency was a Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada tinderbox. Bengal was Bengal. The Indus was the Indus. The Hindi belt was the Hindi belt.

Four groupings could have been negotiated. Continue reading Nehru Lost India, Not Jinnah

Open Thread: Mother Indus is on Fire

May 24, 2026 139 Comments filed under Open Thread, Popular, X.T.M

The Commentariat on the “Long Night” has been busy. The Saffroniate counts Hindu babies, the Crescentiate counts Muslim babies, both sides argue with conviction over a future neither seems to have read the Weather Report for.

A heatwave advisory graphic maps much of Pakistan’s plains into extreme-risk zones for the final week of May 2026. Jacobabad, Multan, Bahawalpur, Sukkur, D.G. Khan and Sargodha sit in an extreme zone marked 47 to 50°C. Lahore, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and Islamabad sit in a high zone at 42 to 45°C. Karachi, sea-cooled, stays at a relatively merciful 35 to 38.

The Indus does not read Radcliffe. The Punjab that cooks at 45°C on the Lahore side is the same alluvial plain that sears the Amritsar side. The Thar runs through both Sindh and Rajasthan. The Gangetic plain inherits the same dome of heat a fortnight later. The cradle of Desidom that the Commentariat are fighting over, will soon turn into a Heat Dome. Conversations on who fills it faster, who outbreeds whom, ultimately elide that Radcliffe drew a paper line. The thermometer does not pause at Wagah.

What It's Like Living in One of the Hottest Cities on Earth—Where It May Soon Be Uninhabitable

Continue reading Open Thread: Mother Indus is on Fire

The Diaspora Saved The Mullahs. Pahlavi Helped.

May 23, 2026 4 Comments filed under BrownCast, X.T.M

Farhad’s thesis, delivered without prompting:

during the Woman Life Freedom protests, the Islamic Republic appeared more vulnerable than at any point in a generation. Women had started it, men had joined, opposition-minded Iranians inside the country felt the floor shifting. Then Pahlavi stepped forward, declared himself the advocate of Iranians, launched his petition, and pulled the diaspora’s attention outward at the exact moment Iranians on the ground needed it inward. He picked the wrong time. He saved the IRGC.

The Royal positioned as the alternative to the regime is the man Farhad blames for keeping the regime alive.

We are not endorsing this view. We are reporting that an Iranian who follows the country obsessively, who rallies behind Pahlavi today as the best of bad options, still holds him responsible for a historic missed moment. That is a serious accusation from a sympathetic source.

The Court In Exile

Continue reading The Diaspora Saved The Mullahs. Pahlavi Helped.

The Long Dark Night for India’s Muslims

May 23, 2026 73 Comments filed under Comment as Canon, Popular, Precedent, X.T.M

Our own Hindufication

We write this not as outsiders pretending to diagnose India, but as people who have undergone a gentler version of the same process. Over fifteen years of family and work on the subcontinent, our own Islamicate inheritance has been quietly sifted. The Persianate was retained. The Arabic was allowed to fall away. The qawwali, the food, the manners, the ghazal, the Mughal grammar of taste. All survived. The devotional Islamicate self did not. We arrived as something close to a Anglo-Islamicate hybrid. We are leaving, slowly, as a Hindu-Persianate one. We did not plan this. We watched it happen to ourselves.

The Persian survives. The Arabic does not. The poetry survives. The prayer does not. This is the formula. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

We made this passage with privilege, with distance, with choice, and with somewhere else to be if we changed our minds. The Indian Muslim, the one with no other passport and no other country, is being asked to make the same passage on terms set by people who never had to make it themselves. That asymmetry is this post.

The morning song

The news this week was Memo No. 470-ME, dated 19 May 2026, signed by the Director of Madrasah Education, Government of West Bengal. The order makes the singing of Vande Mataram mandatory at morning assembly in every state-recognised madrasa: government, aided, unaided, all of them. Immediate effect. Approval of competent authority.

Note the date. Suvendu Adhikari was sworn in as the first BJP Chief Minister of West Bengal on 9 May, ten days earlier, on a 207-seat mandate that ended Mamata Banerjee’s fifteen-year run. The order is ten days into the new government. Of all the actions available to a freshly-installed state administration, this is the gesture chosen. The first major item on the agenda was the Muslim schoolchild’s morning. The signal is the signal.

The Pakistani faction of our commentariat is aghast, and not unreasonably. The song is a hymn to the Great goddess Durga, drawn from a novel that called for war on Muslims, and forcing a Muslim child to recite it is a small humiliation that announces a large arrangement. One of our Pakistani commenters compared it to forcing a vegetarian Hindu to eat beef. The comparison overstates and understates at the same time. It overstates because nobody is forcing food into anyone’s mouth. It understates because food is forgotten by the afternoon, and a song sung daily for ten years writes itself into the spine.

The row is the symptom. The disease is older. Bengal is the latest frontier, not the first.

The Persianate without the Muslim

Continue reading The Long Dark Night for India’s Muslims

Brown Pundits