Society, caste and identity
Caste, ethnicity, gender, family and community.
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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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Why Hasn’t Pakistan Collapsed Yet?
X.T.M argues Pakistan has held together because it anchors a self-image drawn from the Lucknow-Delhi Indo-Muslim tradition, and that ownership of that legacy follows continuity among people, not territory, census…
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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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Spiritual mothers of South Asia
The author traces the maternal figures in the national songs and anthems of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka back to Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s 1882 novel Anandamath, arguing that Bharat Mata,…
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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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The Weight of Memory: A Sri Lankan Reminder
Sbarrkum recounts what Sri Lanka’s civil war cost his own family and neighbours, including killed cousins, arrests and mobs. He asks that the conflict not be invoked lightly or abstractly…
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BP may have just jumped the shark
X.T.M mocks a claim that a Brahmin calling someone sub-human is casteist, arguing that an insult is an insult and that caste-specific moral disclaimers amount to moral policing.
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Multi Racial Multi Cultural Family in Ceylon
Sbarrkum recounts his mother’s multiracial family in Galle, mixing Sinhalese, Irish, Jaffna Tamil and Barbadian ancestry, and argues that children of mixed marriages belong to no single community and so…
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Why we must talk about caste
X.T.M argues that a caste jibe set off a reader boycott on BP, and that controversial voices are what keep the comment threads alive. He concludes caste is the deep…
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Islam the Religion of Peace part ii
Short post reproducing a news report of a rail worker seriously injured while shielding passengers from a knife attacker on a Doncaster to London train, with a line noting the…
