History
Posts whose main purpose is to explain the past.
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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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FlyDie, Volume Two
Nineteen more FlyDie comments across six threads: the three pillars of caste, what the Mughals took from the land, how the Rig Veda got written, Kerala’s three-cornered trade, and Bollywood…
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Pakistan Punches Above Its Weight. Blame Aligarh.
X.T.M asks how Pakistan produces so much culture for its income, crediting Lucknow and Aligarh rather than Bollywood. In his account the Urdu-speaking salariat carried that culture west in 1947,…
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In Remembrance of Shaheed Lt. Ashfaqus Samad, Bir Uttam (My Cousin Nishat Bhai):
A tribute, headed “by Shawkat”, to Lt. Ashfaqus Samad, a Dhaka University student who became one of the first guerrillas in Dhaka and was killed in action in the 1971…
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How Pakistan Became South Asia’s Reference Muslims
X.T.M argues that Partition cut one Muslim political world into three, and that Pakistan, having taken Urdu, now supplies the default picture of a South Asian Muslim. He calls this…
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FlyDie on South India
X.T.M reposts FlyDie’s comments on South India. FlyDie argues that Tamil Nadu’s elite traces to Telugu country through the Vijayanagara Nayaks, that pre-colonial empires ran on a shared elite culture,…
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South India funds India?
X.T.M comments on a chart suggesting the southern states and the old Punjab subsidise the rest of India, links the south’s position to Partition’s contest over rich regions, and compares…
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Did the British Divide India?
Omar Ali argues that Pakistan was ultimately the Muslim League’s creation, but that some British rulers promoted it for their own ends: divide and rule, the Congress stance in 1939,…
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The Failure of Pakistani Alliances & The Instability of the Middle East
0M-3 examines why alliances involving Pakistan, CENTO, SEATO and the recent Saudi Arabia and Turkey pacts, have failed, arguing that regional infighting and diverging interests, not colonial-drawn borders, are the…
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For Gandhiji
Indosaurus, once unconvinced of Gandhi’s importance, defends him against attacks from the liberal left, which Indosaurus argues lack context, and links a longer Substack defence of his most contested behaviour…
