On the latest episode of Scroll Adda, Sajjad Kargili–one of Ladakh’s most popular leaders and a part of the delegation that is negotiating with the Modi government–speaks to Shoaib Daniyal to explain why Ladakhis are so angry with Delhi. Sajjad speaks about the “colonial treatement” that Ladakh is receiving from Delhi.
Sajjad notes that Muslims are 46% of Ladakh’s population while Buddhists are 40%. Muslims are concentrated in Kargil district while Buddhists are concentrated in Leh district.
The November circular was emailed earlier to all various stakeholders of BP. This will be sticky for a short period as unfortunately publishing all the drafts has pushed the current posts much further down.
You may also use this thread as an unmoderated Open Threads. Topics of interest include JD Vance’s comments, the stabbing in the UK by asylum seekers (presumably), and any other interest. I would suggest everyone engage with the email, after the jump; if you have been emailed it privately, I do expect private replies as well.
Since Partition is a popular topic here on BP, I am posting this review from my Substack. Amar Sohal’s book is important because it focuses on three Muslim politicians who did not support the Muslim League’s vision: Maulana Azad, Sheikh Abdullah and Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Thus, the book foregrounds a vision that is an alternative from those of Indian and Pakistani nationalisms.
Historians of the politics leading up to the Partition of British India usually focus on the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. To an extent, this is understandable–along with the colonial power, the Congress and League were largely responsible for the decision to partition British India into the sovereign nation-states of India and Pakistan. This historiography is largely focused on judging which of these two parties was most responsible for the lack of compromise that led to the ethnic cleansing of August 1947 and to decades of antagonism between (the now nuclear armed) states of India and Pakistan. Ayesha Jalal’s The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan can be considered a representative work of this school of historiography.
Amar Sohal’s book The Muslim Secular: Parity and the Politics of India’s Partition attempts a very different task. Based on his DPhil thesis at Oxford, the book examines three comparatively lesser-known thinker-politicians of late colonial British India: Maulana Azad, Sheikh Abdullah, and Abdul Ghaffar Khan. While unequivocally Muslim, all three of these figures aligned their politics with the Indian National Congress’s vision of a united India. As Sohal writes in his “Introduction”:
My endeavour, then, is to escape, as far as possible, from the long shadow cast on modern Indian history writing by Britain’s dramatic withdrawal and the minutiae of the Partition negotiations. Rather than rehash that familiar tale, I want to contribute instead to the burgeoning field of Indian and global political thought by unearthing a forgotten argument for integrationist nationalism and shared sovereignty. And this is significant because ideas (and not only transitory interests) mould the narrative of history, and ultimately survive it to speak to the epochs that follow. The subjects of my investigation were some of India’s foremost politicians…. So like other intellectual historians of India and the Global South that have engaged with this anti-colonial moment, here my task is ‘to reconstruct these “politicians” as thinkers and their words as concepts that were central to the making of political thought’. (Sohal 2-3)
Sharing this review of Dr. Anjum Altaf’s book Social and Political Concerns in Pakistan and India: Critical Conversations for College Students. The book is a collection of essays originally published as blog posts on The South Asian Idea. The mission of the blog was:
The South Asian Idea is a resource for learning, not a source of expert opinion. The posts on the blog are intended as starting points for classroom discussions and the position at the end of the discussion could be completely at odds with the starting point. Thus the blog simulates a learning process and does not offer a final product. The reader is invited to join the process to help improve our understanding of important contemporary issues.
The heyday of the blog was from around 2008- 2018. It hosts hundreds of essays about issues relevant to South Asians–many of them about Partition, Hindutva, Pakistan etc. At a time when Indians and Pakistanis are barely able to interact in a civilized manner (as we have seen on this blog), it is a record of an earlier time when the hope for better relations still seemed possible. It is also an example of the work that goes into running and moderating a blog aimed at teaching people how to argue well about humanities subjects.
Here are an excerpt from the review in DAWN:
All in all, Altaf’s tome deserves praise for courageously, convincingly and argumentatively questioning the dictatorship of mainstream discourses. Fanaticism has reduced the Indian Subcontinent to an Absurdistan. Altaf’s book shows that a patient argumentation in the tradition of Enlightenment is the only way to reverse the course.
Here’s a link to the post mentioned in the review (entitled “The Road to Partition”)
Currently, the book is only available in Pakistan. However, it is available on Kindle for those in India.
In the spirit of a palate cleanser, I am sharing this musical performance. I was featured on Khaliq Chishti’s podcast (he runs a recording studio in Lahore). I performed Raga Rageshri and a Dadra in Raga Desh (“Cha Rahee Kali Ghata” which was originally sung by Begum Akhtar). Tabla is by Iftikhar Joseph.
I also want to use this opportunity to respond a bit to the recent post that argued that India and Pakistan are only linked by violence. I am a singer of Hindustani classical music and an ethnomusicologist. Hindustani classical music is obviously part of the shared Indo-Islamic culture that links North India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Eight decades of separation, wars and political tensions have not managed to completely destroy this common culture. This very fact goes to disprove the argument that the ONLY link between India and Pakistan is violence.
Indians are fond of Pakistani dramas. Fawad Khan is very popular in India. A new season of Pakistan Idol has recently started airing (Fawad is one of the judges along with Rahat Fateh Ali Khan) and I dare say Indians would be watching on YouTube. I have seen comments on Insta from Indians expressing their appreciation for Pakistani music. Pakistanis obviously watch Indian Idol.
My book–A New Explanation for the Decline of Hindustani Music in Pakistan (Aks Publications Lahore 2024)–was recently profiled on Scroll.in. Do read it if you are interested. Currently, the book is only available in Pakistan but we are working on publishing an Indian edition soon. One of the side effects of the bad relations between India and Pakistan is that books cannot travel across the border.
The silence on BP these past few days feels deliberate; a kind of Saffron Strike. If so, let it be known: this space was never meant to cater to ideological comfort.
It seems uncommonly quiet; I think I have been misunderstood. I do not care about the traffic and commentary of BP as much as I care about the integrity of the space.
For instance when I felt that Kabir had done wrong; interdiction was the answer. When I realised the narrative was being twisted so that I became his moderator (Kabir generally knows my red lines) then I realised I was wrong. Kabir’s recent postings and commentary have been very high-signal. Continue reading Saffron Strike
We had a quiet Diwali dinner with some South Asian literati here in Cambridge, Mass. No fireworks, but some useful clarity especially about the need for a unified South Asian voice, and where Brown Pundits fits in.
Threads, Fire, and a New Warrior Class
Kabir remains catnip for the Commentariat or as I’ll now call them, the Saffroniate (Brahmins or Brahminised). They pretend otherwise, but the numbers don’t lie. The threads light up when he’s around and yes, I’m aware of the layered joke: threads mean something else too, especially to our youngest Pundits-in-training. Continue reading Fire and the Saffroniate
