Society, caste and identity
Caste, ethnicity, gender, family and community.
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Pakistan & India as Imperial Nation States
X.T.M reports a conference claim that India and Pakistan are post-imperial states smothering small nations, does not adopt that frame, and argues that ethnicity resurges in Pakistan because Islam has…
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Is Kabir Right?
X.T.M tests Kabir’s claim that many Hindu-nationalist readers come to BP to litigate Pakistan and Muslims. The essay argues that blaming outsiders gives India a permanent excuse, since caste, corruption…
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The Patriarchy Survives Everything
Prompted by a heated thread on the Philippine birth rate, X.T.M rejects a commenter’s proposal to restrict women’s education and work as a cure for falling fertility, argues that falling…
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The Philippines Birth Rate Crash
The post reports that the Philippines’ fertility rate fell from 4.1 in 1993 to 1.7 in the 2025 survey, the steepest drop on record, and asks why anyone expected the…
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Hindu-Muslim violence is changing
X.T.M shares Christophe Jaffrelot’s summary of a journal special issue arguing that anti-Muslim violence in India has shifted from riots used to win votes to lynchings and bulldozers under a…
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The Pakistani Voice That Isn’t in the Room
X.T.M relays BB’s observation that Pakistan’s case at BP is argued almost wholly by people abroad, while India is argued by residents. The note argues the case is untested rather…
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The invisibility of caste in Pakistan
Bombay Badshah rebuts Kabir on caste, arguing that Indian commenters have not needed to leave home to be educated as Pakistani ones did, that India outperforms Pakistan, and that caste…
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Caste & British Pakistani Grooming Gangs
A thread on Pakistan and North India, then caste among British Pakistanis, ending with a pointed question linking a Mirpuri-origin community to child sexual abuse cases in Rotherham and Oxford,…
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The Long Dark Night for India’s Muslims
X.T.M reads a Bengal order on Vande Mataram in madrasas as a symptom of India’s Muslims being absorbed into a Hindu-Persianate mainstream. It argues Pakistan and upper-caste liberalism accelerated this,…
