Open Threads
The house threads, one for each major festival of the subcontinent. Talk about anything; no thread ever closes.
Most popular · Most commented · Most recent
- 1Open Thread: Gandhi Jayanti
2 Oct 2026 · opened by X.T.M · 42 comments
The Open Thread for Gandhi Jayanti, and a new rhythm: from now on a fresh Open Thread opens on each major festival of the subcontinent, 18 a year.
- 2Open Thread: What’s new?
24 Sep 2026 · opened by Agni · 80 comments
Open Thread, 24 September 2026. Agni opens with the Tata Sons and Tata Trusts dispute, the IIT Bombay student death and its politics, the US–Iran conflict and Indian energy, Trump and Xi, AI, and how Hindu Americans fare in a more xenophobic United States.
- 3Open Thread – 08/11/2023 – Brown Pundits
11 Aug 2023 · opened by Razib Khan · 57 comments
Most of India is below replacement TFR.
- 4Tired closing comments on the “Aryan” debate
29 Jan 2022 · opened by Nachiketa · 44 comments
Before taking a break from the topic, Nachiketa summarises his position on the Aryan debate: he holds ancient genetics to be the strongest method and doubts that primary languages spread without mass movements of people, so he favours migration over the Out of India view.
- 5About Brahmin Privilege: Education, Brits and Chitpavans
17 Sep 2020 · opened by Nachiketa · 22 comments
Nachiketa argues that crude comparisons of Brahmin privilege with white slave-owning ignore the concrete, caste-correlated privileges of wealth, education, connections and urban background, and examines educational attainment as an inherited historic advantage, using Chitpavans under British rule.
- 6Open Thread – 01/23/2020
23 Jan 2021 · opened by Razib Khan · 196 comments
Open thread, 23 January 2021: the poster says his Stark Truth About the Aryans piece is doing well, and updates that part 2 is out.
- 7South Asian Genetics Open Thread
4 Sep 2019 · opened by Razib Khan · 164 comments
South Asian genetics open thread, updated with the Rakhigarhi Harappan genome paper and the Formation of Human Populations in South and Central Asia paper, with the headline findings of each.
- 8Open Thread: Zardari in (self-imposed exile). New Provinces to be made
5 Sep 2026 · opened by X.T.M · 161 comments
Open Thread. X.T.M opens with a rumour that Zardari is in self-imposed exile, with Bilawal’s reported marriage as cover, and notes that Pakistan is apparently to hold a referendum on new provinces regardless.
- 9Open Thread – 10/03/2020
3 Oct 2020 · opened by Razib Khan · 155 comments
Open thread of 3 October 2020, opening with a question about why India's COVID-19 deaths and cases are plateauing, and whether recovery in major population centres explains it despite local outbreaks.
- 10Open thread: Geopolitics and any other interesting news
16 Sep 2026 · opened by Agni · 154 comments
Open Thread on geopolitics and other news, 16 September 2026. It opens with gold prices, market trends and SIPs, whether AI will kill humanity within a decade, and an India–Pakistan naval collision in the Arabian Sea.
- 11From OIT to AIT
14 Oct 2020 · opened by Nachiketa · 124 comments
The author traces his move from supporting the Out of India theory to the Aryan migration view, citing recent genetic evidence, and sets out his reasons after a long conversation with Kushal Mehra on archaeology and the Rigveda that did not fully convince him.
- 12Critical Caste Theory: A Dubious Discourse
4 Apr 2023 · opened by The Emissary · 32 comments
An essay arguing that 'Critical Caste Theory', borrowed from Critical Race Theory, seeks to break the BJP's caste coalition and attack 'Brahminism', which it sees as a term for Hinduism, and that caste is not race.
- 13The India They Saw: When Socrates Met the Sindhu
23 Nov 2023 · opened by The Emissary · 1 comment
An essay on how the ancient Greeks saw India, from Herodotus to Megasthenes and Alexander's campaign, as a legendary but unified land, and on what fragments of Megasthenes' Indica and later writers such as Arrian preserve.
- 14Browncast: Vishal Ganesan; The Hindu Case Against Hinduism?
3 Feb 2025 · opened by Omar Ali · 0 comments
Hosts Amey and Dr Omar Ali talk with lawyer Vishal Ganesan about his essay on Frontier Dharma and what being Hindu means in the diaspora. He argues that mainstream media and academic portrayals of Hindus are distorted by a lens from 18th and 19th-century missionary narratives.
- 15Open Thread – Brown Pundits – 7/11/2020
11 Jul 2020 · opened by Razib Khan · 479 comments
Open thread of 11 July 2020: the usual, with a request to reduce the vitriol and thanks for readers' links.
- 16
- 17Open Thread – Brown Pundits – 7/18/2020
18 Jul 2020 · opened by Razib Khan · 263 comments
Open thread of 18 July 2020. The host notes his chapter in Which of Us are Aryans?, warns that rude comments will be deleted, and says the site's servers are straining under heavy comment traffic.
- 18Open Thread – 09/17/2021
17 Sep 2021 · opened by Razib Khan · 230 comments
Open thread, 17 September 2021. Razib Khan says he will write a free Substack piece on caste as a reference, because the claim that the British invented caste is spreading.
- 19Open Thread – Brown Pundits
16 May 2020 · opened by Razib Khan · 207 comments
Please put comments here that won't fit elsewhere.
- 20Regency, Not Rupture in Pakistan (Open Thread)
6 Aug 2026 · opened by X.T.M · 113 comments
Open thread: X.T.M reads interior minister Mohsin Naqvi's claim that Pakistan's governance system has collapsed as a sign the army needs no coup, arguing that the Twenty-Seventh Amendment already makes its supremacy constitutional: regency, not rupture.
- 21Open Thread – 11/20/2020
21 Nov 2020 · opened by Razib Khan · 96 comments
Open thread, 21 November 2020: the poster mentions an AMA on IndiaSpeaks, his new Substack, and his children learning about Diwali this week.
- 22Bengal and Dharma: A Recipe for Revival
11 Feb 2021 · opened by samyakdixit · 52 comments
Reposted from the author's Medium page, this essay argues that Dharmic civilisation has lost ground over centuries, including Punjab, Sindh and Bengal, and that reviving Bengal means going back to primary sources and local histories rather than accepted textbook narratives.
- 23H1B Open Thread
20 Sep 2025 · opened by X.T.M · 45 comments
Open thread on H-1B visas; the author sees the Persian Gulf states emerging as a conduit between capital, labour and technology while the West raises walls.
- 24The Self-Hating Prophecy of Indian Elites
11 Dec 2020 · opened by The Emissary · 36 comments
The author argues that India's post-independence elites live out a self-hating prophecy, seeking Western approval while denouncing local traditions as primitive, in contrast with confident ancient elites, and that this preserves feudal and colonial power structures through law and economics.
- 25Oh to be a Gaud Saraswat Brahmin
22 Jan 2018 · opened by X.T.M · 21 comments
A Konkani Gaud Saraswat Brahmin writer notes, via Ajit Pai, what he sees as a compulsive urge among Indians to name-drop a high caste, and recalls the origin legends of his own community.
- 26The Changing Demographics of Undivided India (1900–2025)
25 Sep 2025 · opened by X.T.M · 18 comments
The author charts Muslims' share of undivided India's population, from about 20% in 1900 to roughly 33% in 2025. He credits higher fertility and partition migration, and argues falling fertility, driven by mobile phones, means convergence.
- 27Open Thread – 6/1/2024 – Brown Pundits
1 Jun 2024 · opened by Razib Khan · 5 comments
What's going on?
- 28
- 29Blasphemy and its discontents..
13 May 2014 · opened by Brown Pundits Archive · 0 comments
Open thread opening with news items on blasphemy accusations in Pakistan, including a doctor shot dead after a remark to a pharmaceutical representative and a Multan University lecturer targeted by a pamphlet, with the poster's sardonic account of how militant networks were built.
- 30Open Thread – 10/24/2020 – Brown Pundits
24 Oct 2020 · opened by Razib Khan · 503 comments
Open thread, 24 October 2020: notes on a podcast with Fred Martin on the killing of Samuel Paty, Islam and Islamism in France and France-US differences on race, plus the poster's view on Suhag Shukla's pushback on caste among Indian Americans.
Page 1 of 11Next →