X.T.M
X.T.M is a writer, editor, and investor working between Cambridge and the Persian Gulf. He is a co-founder of Brown Pundits, Senior Partner at BRAHM Collection, a platform for Indian handmade art and heritage, and Principal at Raef Capital.
He writes longform essays on civilisation and power, with a focus on the Persianate and South Asian worlds, and has shaped Brown Pundits since its early years. His work explores the intersection of history, identity, and state formation, particularly the unresolved cultural consequences of Partition.
His interests include Bahá’í philosophy, Iranian and Mughal history, and the long arc of civilisational continuity across Eurasia.
He writes under the X.T.M byline and can be found on X at @XerxestheMagian.
Most popular · Most recent
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Why Pakistanis Should Say Jai Hind: Civilizational Fractures in a Post-Nation South Asia
X.T.M argues that Pakistan cannot opt out of Hind, its mother civilisation, even if it rejects Bharat the state, so saluting Jai Hind can be a civilisational gesture, and he…
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Hollywood’s rising South Asian Starlet
A short note on Jameela Jamil’s rise in Hollywood, adding that casteism affects far more people than Islamist terror and that readers who demand evidence when he attacks caste show…
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Beware of Hinditvas
Zach defends his earlier criticism of Hindi as an artificial language, dubbing his critics ‘Hinditvas’, and says liberal Pakistanis are equally hypocritical about Islam. He blames both Nehru and Jinnah-style…
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Mocking Modi Is the Only Nationalism Left-Liberals Know
X.T.M reads an anti-Modi cartoon on US tariffs as showing that India’s liberal critics now accept it belongs at the great-power table, and argues they offer no alternative to Modi’s…
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Why Pakistani Liberals Remain a Colonised Intellectual Class
X.T.M argues that a dispute over a factual correction showed how Pakistani liberals defer to credentials such as an Oxford degree, a habit he traces to colonisation, and calls on…
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India’s Demographic Nervous System: Partition, Federalism, and the Fear of Muslim Majority Provinces
The author suggests that post-Partition India’s large states were calibrated to avoid creating new Muslim-majority provinces, and links that anxiety to Kashmir’s special status and the origins of its insurgency,…
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South Indian Languages podcast
Zack hopes to record a podcast on South Indian languages this weekend at a guest commentator’s request, to correct the North India bias in the discourse, and asks readers for…
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Indian liberals make for excellent company
After a talk at the Cambridge South Asian Forum, the author, a Pakistani, finds postmodern Indian liberal arts students charming and close to his own views, but wonders whether such…
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South Asia becoming more like the Middle East (in different ways)
A news extract on the Indian government telling the Supreme Court that adultery must stay punishable to protect marriage; X.T.M adds a Channel 4 link on Pakistan and laments its…
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Xi, Putin and Pezeshkian Walk Into Delhi
X.T.M reads the BRICS summit in Delhi, with Xi, Putin and Pezeshkian present during a US blockade of Iran, as the West’s non-Western partners rerouting around it. He sees BRICS…
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India vs. Pakistan in one graph
X.T.M argues that GDP per capita, not total GDP, is the right India–Pakistan comparison. India overtook Pakistan after 2009, he says, because Pakistan’s higher fertility grew its population faster, while…
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The Hormuz Ultimatum: Wealth Doesn’t Win Wars
X.T.M disputes the view that military power follows GDP. He argues that the richer US-Israeli side is losing the economic war over Hormuz, and that Iran’s culture of honourable death…
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Podcast Updates
The author plans three monthly podcasts on Indian linguistics, politics and history, defines ‘India’ as the region from the Hindu Kush to the Indian Ocean, announces an episode on whether…
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Irano-Scythian Origins of the Pallavas
Zack shares articles on the claimed Persian or Parthian origins of the Pallavas, which he read while visiting Mahabalipuram, cautioning that one of them is jingoistic, and says a planned…
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Why is the New York Times so Jealous of India?
A short reaction to a New York Times line on India’s lower wage rates, set against the royal wedding, which the author calls subtle racism towards a country that has…
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LV on Indira
X.T.M, after a Vidhi-prompted video of Indira Gandhi, calls her India’s best prime minister, credits her grit with breaking East Pakistan from Pakistan in 1971, and contrasts her charisma, intellect…
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Two Colonisations, One Border: What the Data Actually Says About Bengal’s Post-1971 Demographic Story
X.T.M argues census data tell two stories of demographic change in eastern India: Bengali Hindus settled Tripura with state sanction, while Muslim growth in Assam and Bengal border districts is…
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Zahak versus Husayni
X.T.M reads Reza Pahlavi’s statement on Khamenei’s death through the Shahnameh’s Zahhak against the Husayni archetype. He weighs contested data on Iranian religiosity and asks who Iran is, with the…
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Live Blogging: Documenting post-war ethno-religious violence in Sri Lanka
Live notes on Dr Farzana Haniffa’s lecture on post-war ethno-religious violence in Sri Lanka, covering the 1958 and 1983 anti-Tamil violence, Muslim concentration in the East, anti-Halal campaigns and the…
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Pakistan of the Provinces
A short note on Bilawal Bhutto’s iftar, reading it as dynastic provincial parties pitting themselves against the military-backed Imran Khan, and observing that Baloch and Pashtun parties stayed away while…
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Babri Masjid & our shared Macaulay Caste
Zach shares Rajmohan Gandhi’s proposed four-step settlement over the Babri Masjid, in which both sides and the state acknowledge past wrongs, a Ram temple rises and a new mosque is…
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“Islamic Chains”
Prompted by Atif Mian’s removal from an advisory council, the author argues Pakistani Muslim liberals tolerate injustice yet bristle at any criticism of Islam, citing izzat and weak outrage over…
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Why I don’t eat Pork
Prompted by a video asking why secular Muslims avoid pork, X.T.M calls pork the ultimate shibboleth, compares religious red lines such as alcohol for Bahá’ís and beef for Hindus, and…
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BJPization of Dalits
X.T.M, with a deliberately provocative title, reads the Karnataka result as Dalit voters moving behind the BJP, and speculates that Hindutva, if it ended caste hierarchy, might be welcome, while…
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The Ilhan Omar of Brown Pundits
The author likens the commenter Kabir to Ilhan Omar: often right but polarising, and good for traffic. He argues principle needs pragmatism, that nonviolent resistance outlasts shrillness, and that the…
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Pakistan’s Extraordinary Diplomacy
X.T.M argues that Pakistan, though feudal, fragile and low in human development, has shown near-perfect tactical diplomacy since the Pahalgam conflict. He rejects the US–Mexico analogy for India–Pakistan, doubts a…
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The Aryan Cleft: Pakistan as the Cradle and Cusp of Indo-Iranian Civilisation
X.T.M argues that Pakistan sits at the hinge of the Indo-Iranian world, where Iranian and Indo-Aryan languages and Bronze Age migrations meet, and that British canal colonies abruptly turned a…
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Genocide by any other name
A news report, reproduced without a named source, on a Palestinian woman whose stored IVF embryos were destroyed at a Gaza City fertility centre during Israel’s military campaign, with casualty…
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Keep your biases in check
Announcing moderation of India-Pakistan flame wars, the author argues that neither side is morally perfect: India annexed Muslim-majority Kashmir despite Hyderabad and Junagadh precedents, and that, per Ayesha Jalal, Jinnah…
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Islam encourages rage-
Reacting to a video of a drink thrown at Tommy Robinson, the author argues that violent rage is a feature of the Ummah, says Muslim men are unused to challenge…
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Shame on Pakistan- 10years on from 26.11; In Memoriam.
Ten years after the Mumbai attacks of 26 November 2008: a memorial note, with Kasab’s own account of what he was told jihad meant.
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Only in the Land of the Pure
The author argues that Indian families may disown children for marrying outside caste and religion but would not announce it in a newspaper, whereas in Pakistan the shame falls on…
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Nipple & Button – the decline & fall of the American Empire
Starting from Trump’s gaffe over Nepal and Bhutan, the author argues his Turkey tariffs hasten the end of a unipolar world, pushing Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, Russia and China into a…
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Iranian and Indian Fields Medallist; Mr. Birkar and Mr. Venkatesh
Celebrating Fields Medallists Caucher Birkar and Akshay Venkatesh, the author claims Birkar as the second Iranian winner in a row after Mirzakhani, calls him British Iranian, and notes Venkatesh is…
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11year old girl gang-raped in Chennai-
X.T.M reacts to a report of an 11-year-old girl repeatedly gang-raped in a Chennai complex, arguing India should adopt summary public execution where evidence is on hand.
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Islamicate Civilisation is a Supreme Culture: But Who Stands to Inherit It?
The post argues that Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal high culture is a supreme achievement, yet Islamicate civilisation has no custodian state among some sixty Muslim-majority countries, unlike the West, China…
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On the Question of Who “Owns” the Indo-Muslim Legacy
X.T.M, prompted by Sophia Khan’s piece on lost Muslim cities, argues Pakistanis with family roots in Delhi and Lucknow may fairly claim the Indo-Muslim legacy, since India itself selectively appropriates…
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Indian Female Academics of the Left
Attending a Cambridge talk on decolonisation, the author observes that Indian women in humanities are at the vanguard of the left, and argues left-liberal Indians have become de-Hindufied in ways…
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A single nation divided by a civilisation
The author argues India and Pakistan are one nation divided into two civilisations, while Iran and Afghanistan are one civilisation divided into two nations, citing Ferdowsi’s ‘Iranianisation’ and the Afghan,…
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Why Climate Change is a cult-
X.T.M criticises a third-party article on monsoons dispersing South Asian pollution as polemical and resting on simulated models, and argues that appeals to expert authority are a fallacy, that natural…
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World War 2’s impact on the racial balance of the world
Prompted by an interview with Akala on his book Natives, X.T.M argues that the Second World War forced the West to share power with non-white peoples, that the West is…
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Why Colonialism is always wrong..
Arguing colonialism is always wrong, the author lists drawbacks of British rule in South Asia, including English displacing a native literary lingua franca as the high culture and the long…
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Would a Dalit Jinnah have gotten Dalitstan?
Asks whether Jinnah was simply the right man who happened to be Muslim, or whether the community would always have produced a saviour, and adds a reader comment likening Dalits…
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Short Note on “outsiders”
Replying to a commenter, the author says he proposed that Persian gradually replace English, not Urdu, in Pakistan, arguing English is the language of elite power and that decolonisation must…
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Sting of a WASP
The author, who says he stands with Dalits, argues that Western vilification of India’s upper castes is unhelpful, that those castes are shrinking through migration, intermarriage and low fertility as…
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Some Random Rants
Four short rants: tiredness with racism witch hunts, white liberals fighting among themselves over Apu, a suspicion that they prime model minorities to complain, and the author’s growing use of…
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Seven Beauties of Sindh
The poster, who jokes that his role at BP is agent provocateur, shares the latest episode of the Turanameh, the marriage of Prince Dastan, and explains that the title plays…
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Pakistan General Elections 2018 – The Silver Linings:
Reproduces a friend’s Facebook list of silver linings from Pakistan’s 2018 election, including a Shia candidate’s inclusive campaign, the first Hindu elected to a general seat, PTM leaders winning seats…
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Katrina Kaif is definitely half-Indian
X.T.M posts a comparison of Katrina Kaif and her fully English half-sister, remarking that the sister would not fit Bollywood’s ‘Desi ideal’ and that Katrina’s looks carry a degree of…
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Happy Cheti Chand
X.T.M shares a family WhatsApp forward for Cheti Chand listing wealthy Sindhi billionaires, executives and film figures, with his own doubt that the income-tax claim is accurate.
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“Tamil” CMs
X.T.M, drawing on a News18 blog, notes that many Madras chief ministers were of Telugu descent, from Subbarayalu Reddiar onwards, and sees Tamil Nadu’s “distinct” identity as compatible with a…
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A Pakistani Wedding That Refused Not to Be Indian
X.T.M reads the wedding of Nawaz Sharif’s grandson, with Indian designers and Indic styling, as evidence of Indic soft power. He argues that Pakistani weddings show continuity of a subcontinental…
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Why does India need so much Coloniser Validation?
A short post asking why India needs so much ‘coloniser validation’, noting the Incredible India adverts feature foreigners rediscovering India while Tibet drew 30 million visitors in nine months, which…
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How Buddhism spread in Asia and lessons for the Modern World
Starting from a map of Buddhism’s spread, the author calls it India’s best demonstration of soft power, then speculates on why the Hindi belt produces religions, and argues India would…
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What would Braj Pradesh look like?
In 1961 ten mother tongues were grouped under Hindi. In 1971 the grouping widened to forty-eight, and Hindi’s share of India rose from 30 to 37 per cent in a…
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The Shijrah and the Y-Chromosome
A sequel arguing that BB and Qureshi reach the same wrong conclusion on Sayyid ancestry by different routes. The post contends that Y-chromosome evidence retains paternal descent that autosomal arithmetic…
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On Breakup Fantasies and Basic Geopolitical Decency
X.T.M distinguishes criticising a state from fantasising about its breakup. He argues that states fracture when weak institutions meet sustained external pressure, cites 1971 and the Arab Spring, and says…
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Germany Is Rearming. Japan Is Shifting. And Desis Are Arguing Like Teenagers.
X.T.M defends editing crude comments, saying BP should allow sharp critique without sneering. He argues that Pakistan is fragile but not collapsing, since China will not let it fail, that…
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Hans Zimmer and the Polite Dismissal of the Ramayana
X.T.M argues that Hans Zimmer’s polite refusal to hear the Ramayana explained was a dismissal, not reverence, and that Indian awe at it shows civilisational confusion; he adds a reflection…
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Why Pakistan Is a Colonial Project & India a Civilizational One
X.T.M argues that Pakistan is a colonial continuation built by divide and rule, that India is a civilisational project, that the term ‘South Asia’ reflects a London-drawn map, and that…
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Dark Skin & Getting Married | Stand Up Comedy by Saikiran
Praising comic Saikiran’s stand-up on dark skin and marriage as a challenge to ‘Casteocracy’, the author sees a turn towards cultural authenticity in Modi’s India, though the comic must still…
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What’s wrong with fetishisizing white men?
Replying to a commenter’s warning that Desi men could be pushed out of the marriage market as East Asian men were, the author welcomes more Pakistani, Muslim and Baha’i women…
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A Golden Land of Fire
A short post calling an image of the #MeToo movement powerful, and arguing that India’s reckoning shows how advanced it is regionally and vindicates its liberal democratic tradition.
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Saturday South Asian Questions
Two questions: whether there is a distinct Deccan culture between north and south India, and whether India needs more states, followed by the author’s dislike of Gandhinagar, a new Gujarat…
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The ineffectual British Monarchy and why one shouldn’t Diss Chris
A self-described High Tory defends Christopher Columbus against a comedian’s mocking video, criticises Cambridge students’ vote on honouring war veterans, and argues the Queen squandered the goodwill her father earned…
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Urdu as an intra-provincial link language
Picking up a reader’s point that Urdu binds ethnically diverse provinces, the author notes three Pakistani provinces have large linguistic minorities, discusses Pashtun expansion, the origin of the word vatan…
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Brown Missionaries and the Anglospheric Hegemony
Prompted by brown missionaries in Cambridge, X.T.M argues that religions grow tied to empire and race, and speculates that historians will call 1837 to 2016 an era of Anglospheric hegemony,…
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Revolution in the Bronx – the Browning of America
X.T.M welcomes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s primary win as an advance for ‘brown’ people. He argues Anglo discourse is binary, that Asians in British finance thin out at senior levels, and that…
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Why is white such a problematic term
Following Ta-Nehisi Coates, argues ‘white’ is as loaded as the n-word, since Europeans needed new racial categories only after 1492 and the New World slave trade, when ‘Turk’ and ‘Christian’…
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The Simpsonisation of South Asia
Open thread sharing a video the authors find interesting as an example of how ‘propaganda’ is evolving, while stating it does not reflect their views.
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The 1000 Years Frame Erases 80% of India
Two of girmit’s sharpest comment-thread interventions: why the further application of the Two Nation Theory finds no liberal takers in India, and why the maximalist “1000 years of Islamic supremacy”…
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India Has Sacred Land. Pakistan Has Sacred Purpose. The Comment Section Needs Neither.
X.T.M asks commenters to respect the rules, invites a fair-minded volunteer moderator and explains why BB was given authorship. He adds that India has sacred geography while Pakistan was founded…
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Pakistan, 1971, and the Misuse of the Holocaust Analogy
X.T.M answers a claim that the Pakistan army committed genocide comparable to Nazi crimes. He accepts the 1971 violence but argues that genocide is a legal category not settled by…
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Why Balochistan Is Not Kashmir
X.T.M argues Balochistan should not be equated with Kashmir, which is an internationally anchored dispute through UN resolutions, treaties and wars, while Balochistan is legally an internal matter, though he…
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Was Kabir Right?
A week after barring Kabir, the author asks whether Kabir was right about Brown Pundits: the commentariat has gone quiet since. He is undecided on lifting the interdiction and floats…
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Syriac Echoes: From the Mountains of Lebanon to the Coasts of Kerala
The author traces shared Syriac Christian roots between Lebanon’s Maronites and Kerala’s Saint Thomas Christians, arguing both belong to one ancient liturgical world, and notes that Lebanon’s Maronites, Sunnis, Shiʿites…
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🕊️ On Iran, Israel, and the Right to Self-Defense
The author opposes the Iranian regime but argues that Iran has a right not to be bombed, and condemns Israel’s strikes on its nuclear facilities. The post is a teaser…
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The Elder Race and the English-Speaking Heat
Writing from Dublin, X.T.M contrasts calm continental Europe with an English-speaking world he sees as politically ‘on fire’, and argues that the declining WASP ‘elder race’ still sets the terms…
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South India Makes British India Hindu?
The author argues that had South India separated in 1947, the rest of British India would today be a Muslim-majority bloc, citing population figures, and suggests the South’s inclusion kept…
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Norouz or Nowhere: The Identity Pakistan Can’t Claim
X.T.M asks why Pakistanis who claim a Persianate high culture ignore Norouz, noting that Aurangzeb abolished it, and argues that Pakistan’s post-colonial elite curates rupture rather than heritage, even though…
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The Rise of the Quarter-breeds in Bollywood
After seeing Kabir Singh, the author remarks on a trend of Bollywood starlets with a hidden European maternal grandparent, arguing that Indian beauty standards of sharp features and fair skin…
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The Colored Actors Hiding in the Favourite-
After seeing The Favourite, the author reflects on how hard acting careers are, drawing on Sir Nigel Hawthorne’s autobiography. He considers how quickly language on race, gender and sexual orientation…
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The Hindu Rashtra that never was-
A Shashi Tharoor tweet, posted without comment, saying he is stunned by almost every aspect of a High Court judgement.
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Why China will be the Greatest Power in Asia-
Using the Dolce & Gabbana Shanghai row, in which China turned racist adverts into a lesson in national honour, the author argues for Chinese primacy in Asia, then turns to…
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Three Graces of Islam
A two-line post calling Persian, Arabic and Urdu God’s new favourites and pointing to the pre-Islamic goddesses al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat named in Qur’an 53:19-20.
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Comment of the Day
X.T.M promotes a comment arguing that the Pakistan movement involved more than Jinnah, citing the clerics Shabbir Ahmad Usmani and Husain Ahmad Madani, and that the central dispute was minority…
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The Price of India’s Soul?
X.T.M examines the Great Nicobar port and township project, arguing from reported Finance Ministry records that its strategic rationale was added after the fact, and asks whether the port is…
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Empire of Incorporation versus Empire of Extraction
X.T.M distinguishes empires of incorporation, such as the Chinese, Ottoman and Mughal, from commercial empires of extraction such as the French, English and Dutch, citing the contrast between Mughal-era scarcity…
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The Hindification of Muslim Culture
X.T.M argues that India is seeing a slow Hindification of Muslim cultural inheritances, from khayal and Bollywood to cuisine, as Muslim political power recedes. He calls it succession rather than…
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Come Fly with me to Far Bombay
Writing from Bombay, X.T.M ranges across commentariat debates, praises Sher Shah Suri over the Mughals, comments on Hindutva and liberal intelligentsia, argues renaming Indian cities cost brand value, and sees…
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From Sintashta to Samarkand
Live notes from Professor Richard Foltz’s Cambridge lecture on Sintashta and Samarkand. They record his claims that Sintashta remains underlie Vedic ritual, that Indo-Iranians called themselves Arya, and that Bactria-Margiana…
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Greater (South) India
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The Crime of being a Muslim
X.T.M cites a report that a Sikh police officer saved a Muslim man from a mob for standing near a temple with a Hindu girl, with student Umar Khalid’s tribute…
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Red Lines on BP
X.T.M states his preferred motto for BP, ‘Nothing is Sacred’, says personal abuse is below the line, and distinguishes Islamophobia from criticising Islam or his own Bahá’í faith.
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The Chess Masters Who Weren’t
X.T.M argues that the leaders cast as grand strategists, from Trump and Modi to Netanyahu, Milei and Orbán, are losing pieces. Op Sindoor, Hormuz, Lebanon and Hungary all cut against…
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What Was the Point of Israel’s Iran Strike?
X.T.M argues that Israel’s strike on Iran achieved little strategically, that Trump unexpectedly acted as a brake and brokered a ceasefire, and that MAGA fatigue with foreign wars exposes a…
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Hindu Wife killed by ex for marrying Muslim man
A short comment on the crossbow killing of a mother of five, a Hindu woman who converted to Islam to marry, with the author noting the ‘Muslim’ angle would have…
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Iran Pakistan border
Shares a Turkish-language video contrasting the Pakistani and Iranian sides of the Balochistan border, with the poster’s caveat that it is hard to translate, plus links to Drew Binsky’s Iran…
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Croatia..
X.T.M, writing after a week away at a machine-learning conference, says Croatia’s World Cup run shows a cohesive nation, that Pakistan must avoid Yugoslavia’s fate, and that he is impressed…
