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 does the Liberal Left applaud America haters
X.T.M argues that immigrant Americans who express bile about the United States, such as Qasim Rashid and Hoda Katebi, are ungrateful, distinguishing them from Native and African Americans, and says…
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Are All Postcolonial Nations Brahmanical Constructs?
X.T.M asks whether postcolonial states are Brahmanical constructs, arguing that every successor elite preserves the borders it inherits. He draws on caste mobility, Sanskritisation and Radcliffe’s line, and notes the…
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Bangladesh-India Open Thread
A reproduced news report, source not named, on Bangladesh’s anger at India for letting the ousted Sheikh Hasina address journalists in New Delhi; the post is titled an open thread…
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Two House Precedents
Two house precedents: online-safety reports must now reach the editors by email, and BP restates its aims as density (20 comments per post) and diversity (five voices per thread), with…
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Loki has come to Asgard once again
X.T.M announces that Kabir has been made an editor with rights to onboard new authors, sets expectations for civil comments and no flame wars, and says he will mediate disputes…
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Caste and the Structure of Discourse
The author argues that Dharmic South Asian discourse follows an upper-caste template, and that intermarriage does not erase hierarchy but can co-opt talented outsiders, as Ashkenazi–Sephardic marriage has not removed…
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Did the Muslim League and RSS Want the Same Thing?
X.T.M asks whether the Muslim League’s demand for a Muslim-majority Pakistan differs in kind from the RSS wanting a Hindu-majority India, arguing both rejected a shared national project and that…
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Super30, Casteocracy & Blacked Up Hrithik Roshan
Reviewing the film Super 30, the author finds Hrithik Roshan blacking up to play an OBC emblematic of India’s ‘Casteocracy’, argues that the IIT and IIM system suits upper castes,…
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Launch of my theatre company
The author announces he is a co-founding trustee of a new theatre company open to anyone who self-identifies as a minority.
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Density of Cows Worldwide
Starting from a map of cow density, the author asks how India became vegetarian, prefers Hindu to Muslim dynasties and Ashoka to Akbar, and argues caste, the greatest faultline after…
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Shady Missionaries
A reader’s email, posted without comment, calls the Missionaries of Charity shady, citing a Ranchi baby-selling controversy, and asks for a post on how the Vatican operates in India.
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What does it mean to be “Brown?”
Disliking ‘Brown’ as a New World term, the author prefers ‘desi’, and argues its haziness is its strength: it centres on the Indo-Gangetic plain, fades in Sri Lanka, Nepal and…
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You Cannot Demolish His Mosque and Claim His High Culture
The post argues a civilisation cannot demolish a man’s mosque and claim his high culture too. It says elites on both sides of the 1947 line have done both for…
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The Strait That Broke the World
X.T.M argues that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz after the 28 February US-Israeli strikes on Iran is already a global economic shock. He traces the cascade from oil…
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What Tehran and Harvard Have in Common; And Why Trump Is Letting Both Burn
X.T.M announces the return of the BRAHM newsletter, whose first piece argues Iranian clerics and US academia both traded moral authority for proximity to power, and that Trump is letting…
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Baluchistan
This is a near zero likelihood of happening but never say never.
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The Italian of the East: Is It Language or Music?
X.T.M explains why Telugu was called ‘the Italian of the East’ by Niccolò de’ Conti, citing vowel endings, vowel harmony and verb flexibility, and jokes about Usha Vance and Kamala…
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Tweet of the Day-
Quotes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s tweet telling Donald Trump that history’s largest administration belonged to the Iranians under Cyrus the Great, with the poster’s quip that Cyrus is his ‘grandpappy’.
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A Dalit writes on Oppresive Hindi
An extract from an essay on Hindi, quoting historian Sumit Sarkar that literary Hindi was bound up with Hindu-revivalist movements, and arguing that it carried Brahminical and communal impulses from…
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Are all Arabs “honorary” Muslims?
Starting from whether Pakistanis treat all Arabs as honorary Muslims, the author argues that South Asian identities split along a Hindi-Urdu civilisational fault line, citing the choices made by Bengalis…
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The Harilals of Hong Kong
Praises a video of a Hong Kong business family as the joint family done well, and suggests that diaspora trading families will keep Hinduism alive against assimilation.
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SATYASHRAMA: A CONCEPTION OF DHARMIC POLITICS
A friend’s piece, posted by Zach, proposes ‘Satyashrama’, a dharmic politics built on the Vedic notion of Rta and the individual’s swadharma. The author argues for an economy of social…
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Arundhati Roy on Kashmir; Pakistan is simply another Bantustan
A quick note on Arundhati Roy’s piece arguing that Modi’s Balakot airstrike internationalised the Kashmir dispute, with an excerpt and the poster’s surprise that the Pulwama bomber was a Kashmiri.
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India needs to learn how to deal with Zombistan.
Zach calls Pakistan a zombie nation animated by a virus he identifies with Islam, saying India must cure the virus rather than fight the zombie, and feels absolute separation may…
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Hindu genocide ongoing in Pakistan
Sharing a news report on three Hindu men killed in an Orakzai suicide bombing, the author describes it as ongoing genocide of Hindus in Pakistan, and argues that India must…
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Auld Alliance
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10160999246120324&id=895900323
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Is Tulu Nad a good idea?
Prompted by rising Tulu enrolment since 2010-11, the author asks whether a Tulu Nad centred on Mangalore is a good idea, finding it as valid as Telangana and comparing it…
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Black Pundits
X.T.M speculates what Black, White, Olive or Yellow Pundits would argue about, saying Brown identity is defined by India-Pakistan, Hindu-Muslim and Arya-Dravida debates, and links the blog’s love of minutiae…
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Brown Roundup
A roundup noting a Tripura chief minister’s remark on a foreign woman’s looks, the CBI’s win against Vijay Mallya, and X.T.M’s view that naming Prince Louis after Mountbatten is insensitive…
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Indian Diplomats in Pakistan harassed
X.T.M quotes a report of Indian diplomats being harassed in Islamabad, then reflects on apologising for one’s community’s failings, contrasting Pakistani and Hindu defensiveness and tying right-wing Hindu mobilisation to…
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Do Muslim refugees have a right to Australia?
X.T.M argues Australia is entitled to protect its borders, that Muslim refugees should be hosted by neighbouring countries and the wider Ummah, and that the West should not intervene as…
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Rest in Peace Dina Wadia
Notes the death of Dina Wadia, Jinnah’s daughter, and links her thoughts on her father and on Pakistan.
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The Meltwater Carries No Passport
X.T.M reports Anuradha Bhasin’s talk at Mela Nordic’s Stockholm Partition event, which proposed cross-border newsrooms, a shared archive and arts as empathy, and weighs it against earlier attempts such as…
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Moderation Note: On Gaza, October 7, and the Limits of Tolerance
A moderation note: the founder bars a commenter from becoming an author and removes his past comments, argues another commenter is a Muslim nationalist rather than an Islamist, and says…
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Dead Poets of Pakistan
X.T.M argues that Pakistan’s creative energy lies with a Westernised, English-fluent ‘boundary class’ outside patronage and power, and contrasts India’s confident, 80 per cent one-faith civilisational script with a Persianate…
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23 & Vidhi
X.T.M jokes about marrying a Pakistani, then muses on the ancestry of Sindhi Hindus from Punjabi Khatris who moved down the Indus, and on why Sindhis love Dubai.
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The Grand Punditess of Them All
X.T.M shares Vidhi’s talk on Gaussian processes at the CogX conference, noting she was one of very few women speaking on a technical subject and that British academia is astonishingly…
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Paki Elites & where they live
X.T.M offers an impressionistic guide to where Pakistan’s elites live, placing political and bureaucratic power in Islamabad, the military in Rawalpindi, economic elites in Lahore and the country’s most cosmopolitan,…
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A new look for Brown Pundits
X.T.M reports that Brown Pundits has been backed up, cleared of eight unused plugins and redesigned. The homepage now loads in under two seconds, with live comments beside the newest…
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The Cantonment and the Clean Street: Why Pakistan’s Punjab Looks More Ordered Than India’s
X.T.M asks why Pakistan’s Punjab feels more ordered than richer India. He answers that military cantonments and DHA enclaves are governed outside city control, so the order seen on Lahore’s…
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Interdiction
The founder announces an interdiction on Kabir commenting, citing tone and disrespect rather than his views, after a deletion-rule dispute involving another commenter. It is not permanent, and a return…
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India’s sugar was bitter, until her first female scientist made it sweet
X.T.M retells the story of E.K. Janaki Ammal, born in Kerala in 1897 to a Thiyya family, the first Indian woman with a doctorate in botanical science, who crossbred sugarcane…
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Borders, Blind Spots, and the Mirror Game of South Asia
X.T.M sets out rival Pakistani and Indian arguments over Junagadh, Hyderabad and Kashmir in 1947 and Balochistan later, concluding both sides are mirrors, demanding flexibility for themselves and finality for…
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🧠 Inside the Mind of Trump: Empire, Restraint, and the Hemispheric Gamble
The author asks what kind of world Donald Trump wants to rule, arguing that the MAGA worldview is hemispheric and restrained, and that pushing regime change in Iran would mean…
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Why I write on India’s lack of Asabiyyah
Zach answers a reader’s call to move beyond India-Pakistan and Aryan-Dravidian debates by saying he does not want an ultra-popular blog, locks more content on his private blog, and values…
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Are the AASI black?
X.T.M asks whether the Ancestral South Indians were black, arguing that genetics has been oriented around whiteness and that these ancestors, related to coastal ‘Negrito’ waves, gave South Asians their…
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Pakistan’s Punjab, the Urdu literary hub of Pakistan, is slowly waking up to its lost Punjabi identity
A quoted Scroll article arguing that Pakistan’s Punjab, long an Urdu literary hub, has lost its Punjabi identity as the language was cut off from education, shared by X.T.M without…
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Ranbir as Lord Ram: The Indus Paradox
The man cast as Maryada Purushottam, the ideal Hindu man, the conscience-keeper of a civilisation, descends from Prithviraj Kapoor of Peshawar; a Hindu Pathan (his kinsman Anil Kapoor states on…
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Between Arab Conquest and Persian Conversion: The Sasanian Inheritance
X.T.M uses Hugh Kennedy and Ira Lapidus to argue that conquest and conversion were different processes in Iran, rejecting both the viral claim of mass forced conversion and the opposite…
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India Is No Longer Legible to Pakistani Liberals
X.T.M argues that Pakistani liberals, especially those of Muhajir or North Indian lineage, project a pre-1947 India that no longer exists, using India as a stage for their liberalism while…
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The Earth’s Lost Industrial Heart
If the Earth were one economy, where would its industrial heart be? An argument for the triangle between the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Indo-Gangetic plain.
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A Quick Question- when did Hindus revenge themselves?
The author asks when before 1947 Hindus or Sikhs took revenge on Muslims in mass violence comparable to Direct Action Day, to test whether the Muslim League’s fear of Hindu-majority…
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Misunderstanding Ta’arof
Zach muses on ta’arof, Persian courtesy, and a Jewish American travel vlogger praising Pakistan, then restates his position that he dislikes Islam while loving Pakistanis and Muslims, distinguishing the two.…
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Blame Bengal Famine on anyone but the British
Zach shares a tweet exchange over blame for the Bengal famine, arguing British rule in India was profoundly destructive. He says Indian commentators decrying UP and Bihar backwardness overlook British…
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The Ambanis got it so wrong with their Wedding Celebration.
The author argues that the Ambanis got their wedding celebration wrong, comparing it with the year’s four other Indian celebrity weddings, which he judges more dignified. He sets this against…
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Why is India allowing foreign missionaries?
Asking why India lets foreign missionaries into the Andamans after the reported killing of John Allen Chau, the author argues contact has been dangerous for native peoples and worries about…
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The Axis of Autocrats. China & Saudi; Pakistan’s evergreen friends
Reading Imran Khan’s $6bn Saudi aid as a sign of a Saudi-Pakistan-China axis with Pakistan as lynchpin, the author argues a declining America struggles to project power after its botched…
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Around the Brown World
A roundup of links including Indians rescuing a cow from a flooded river, a call to hang those behind a goat gang-rape in Haryana, a profile of Imran Khan, Pakistani…
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Lazy Sunday – Pakistan has the best looking leader in the world now
A Sunday roundup of links on Imran Khan and Raza Rumi’s new book, with the author’s views on Pakistan’s leader, optics and hijab, a claim that Indira Gandhi was the…
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How English is taking Over
Responding to a Guardian piece on English as the world’s hypercentral language, the author argues English merely reflects Anglo-American supremacy, that China’s rise will not move Chinese speakers to English,…
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The Bollywood caste
X.T.M calls Bollywood a caste of linked acting, industrial and cricketing families, mostly Punjabi and Muslim men, wonders where the Sikh men are, and argues that India’s modernisation, shaped by…
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Should Western authors write on desi topics
X.T.M asks how receptive readers should be to Western authors on the subcontinent, arguing that William Dalrymple became its leading Western historian partly by claiming Indian ancestors, and that white…
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Was there an “Aryan Invasion?”
X.T.M, citing a reader’s comment on semantics, argues recent genetics supports an Indo-European migration rather than an ‘Aryan invasion’, a term he sees as a colonial divide-and-rule device with modern…
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Aziz Ansari
Asks for thoughts on the Aziz Ansari controversy, and whether it has reinforced stereotypes of Brown and perhaps Muslim men in the dating market.
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The Myth of Muslim Fecundity?
Using Ambedkar’s book on Pakistan and 1935 figures for Sindh and Bengal, the author argues non-Muslim population shares have held up despite poorer Muslim minorities, and that the ‘myth of…
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Pan-Sindhi Cross-Border Virality
X.T.M uses a viral Sindhi song to argue that Islam is native to Sindh after 13 centuries. He says Hindus stayed around 30 per cent while Buddhism vanished, because social…
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After the Begums: Bangladesh searches for a new order
X.T.M reposts Irfan Chowdhury’s Sapan News preview of Bangladesh’s 12 February election and referendum on the July Charter, with the Awami League banned and the BNP expected to win. The…
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Iran and Pakistan Are Not the Same Kind of State
X.T.M argues that Iran cannot be analysed like Pakistan because it is a civilisation-state some three thousand years old. He says authority there rests on inherited ideas, from monarchy to…
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Request for Calm and Civility
X.T.M asks commenters for calm and civility after a run of angry replies, urging them to engage ideas rather than identities, and says the Brown Pundits email account has been…
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Why I hate the term Brown
After watching Daughters of Destiny, the author argues ‘Brown’ is an offensive catch-all because it hides differences of shade and caste privilege, urging Dalit South Asians to claim ‘black’ so…
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Pakistani Christian teen ‘raped, forcibly converted to Islam’
An extract from a ucanews.com report in which a 15-year-old Christian girl in Karachi says she was raped, forcibly converted to Islam and married off, with a note that about…
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This is why Pakistan is a shit country-
Prompted by restaurants closed in Lahore during Ramadan, the author calls Pakistan an oppressive society, argues that blaming Zia ul-Haq misses the nature of Pakistan’s Islam, and claims religion there…
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The only time when a Hijab looks good
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxQimXEp7j6/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=x4wdncii2nj7
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Coloniser mansplaining beautiful Indian girl
Zach calls out a man in a Netflix clip as epitomising the ‘coloniser complex’ for talking over a woman who rejected him, and objects that Netflix saw nothing wrong with…
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Karan Johar dons the Pakistan flag..
Remarks on a Pakistani man’s resemblance to Karan Johar and wonders whether the ‘K-Joification’ of India will catch on in Pakistan, preferring that Turanian poetic traditions of same-sex love be…
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Is this even “not wrong?”
X.T.M, back from a break, says he dislikes the anti-Indian tone of a post and comment, that Brown must stand with Brown after colonialism, and asks whether he is overreacting.
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How did I handle casual racism in Los Angeles? Awkwardly
X.T.M shares an extract from comedian Romesh Ranganathan on handling casual racism in Los Angeles, after noting readers would flock to the blog if it covered Shahid Afridi.
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Who Sees? A Caste Audit of an Anonymous Elite Indian Hospital
A surname-level audit of an anonymised elite Indian hospital, and what it tells us about reservation, fellowship capture, and how prestige sub-specialties reproduce themselves outside the reach of the Mandal…
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Bangladesh Election Open Thread
Bangladesh election open thread. The opening comment asks how the vote can be fair with the Awami League banned, compares it to Pakistan’s democracy with Imran Khan jailed, and calls…
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Bollywood, Brahmins, Parsis & WASPs:
X.T.M argues that elites are reproduced by property, institutions and networks rather than blood, so intermarriage is usually a merger, not a threat, citing English aristocrats and American heiresses, Parsis,…
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the highest signal comment of the last 48 hours
Promotes a long-standing commenter’s reply as the best of the last 48 hours: that Pakistani elites misread India by generalising from its north-west, that South Indians care little about Pakistan,…
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The West’s War of Decline
X.T.M argues that the American attack on Iran, met with little response, fits a Western pattern of seeking relevance through war in its twilight, and quotes a commenter on how…
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weight loss 101
The author shares his own weight-loss routine, relying on red meat, salad and front-loaded protein, with a target weight he intends to hold, after a reader suggested he offer advice…
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Questions for Professor Foltz
A call for reader questions to put in writing to Professor Richard Foltz, an Iranic studies specialist, after the author’s live blog of his talk, with early Aryans as the…
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Tweet of the Day
Amused that a white friend cooks Pakistani dishes, the author says they could be called Indo-Mughlai, notes their Turanian influences, and objects to a novelist’s use of ‘desi’ for a…
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The future of Hindi cinema
Using the Dhadak reviews as a prompt, X.T.M sees an ‘Ambanification’, ‘KJoification’ and ‘Modisation’ of Indian national culture, and expects regional films, such as Marathi and Tamil cinema, to supply…
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Important WhatsApp Forward on the State of Pakistani politics
X.T.M says he stands with the Sharifs against the army, then reproduces a WhatsApp forward alleging a plan to install Imran Khan and his allies, with offensive remarks by PTI…
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Economic Modernization in Late British India: Hindu-Muslim Differences
X.T.M relays a paper asking why India’s Muslims are poorer than Hindus, reading it as tracing the gap to Muslim inheritance law and the illiquid waqf, against the Hindu joint…
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Kashmiri man weds Dalit woman
A link to an NDTV story on a Kashmiri man marrying a Dalit woman, with X.T.M’s comment on inter-community marriage trends in India.
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Izzat Maxing
X.T.M answers Q’s claim that India–Pakistan wars will stay short, arguing that allies matter only for the fifth day. He tests this against 1971, Kargil, Operation Sindoor and the Gulf…
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Modi Puts India Firmly in the Israel-US Camp
X.T.M cites journalist Bharat Bhushan’s view in Deccan Herald that Modi’s support for Israel and silence on the US-Israeli strikes on Iran put India firmly in the US-Israeli camp and…
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Pakistan’s dramatic drop in fertility
X.T.M argues that Pakistan’s fertility fall from 3.61 to 3.19 children per woman reflects urbanisation, education, female work and social media rather than ideology or theology. He says religious societies…
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Dhurandhar showcases Bollywood’s New Obsession: The Sexy Pakistani Villain
X.T.M calls Dhurandhar the best mass-market Bollywood film since Animal and argues it reflects Bollywood’s new formula of fetishising Pakistan as the sexy villain, familiar enough to feel intimate and…
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Who can speak for the “Muslim minority” of India?
X.T.M argues Indian Muslims cannot be compared with Jains, Sikhs or Buddhists, since they were once the civilisational elite of North India, and that listing successful individuals does not show…
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L’Opéra, Iran, and the Post-Hindu Condition
Prompted by an interview with an Iranian Bahá’í couple who founded the L’Opéra patisserie in India, the author reflects on the Iranian Revolution and the persecution of Bahá’ís. He asks…
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Threads, Carpets, and PM Modi’s 75th
X.T.M reflects on celebrity birthday messages for Narendra Modi’s 75th, reads the Khans’ contrasting Hindu cultural idioms, and describes his work on Hindu sacred art, carpets and Ardhanarishvara iconography. He…
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Bharat Needs No Validation
X.T.M takes a commenter’s remark that the Ramayana did not resonate as a cue to argue that Bharat is civilisational, that Pakistan is an ‘Urdufied Punjab’ still colonised in mind,…
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Why I find it difficult to debate Hinditvas + liberal Zionists
The author argues that Pakistan and Iran should be judged as Islamic Republics, but India and Israel, which claim to be liberal democracies, must meet those standards. He says Israel’s…
