Partition and independence
The end of empire, 1947 and its aftermath.
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The Unfinished Contract II: Citizenship, Partition, and the Questions Liberalism Won’t Ask
X.T.M argues that Partition left India with an unresolved social contract: citizenship for Muslims who stayed was declared, never constituted, and secularism became a way to avoid the question. He…
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The Partition of Elites: India, Pakistan, and the Unfinished Trauma of 1947
X.T.M argues that India’s central trauma is Partition rather than diversity, framing it as a failure of two elites to share power. He says most Muslims stayed after the League’s…
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Partition Never Ended: We Just Stopped Talking About It
X.T.M argues that the India–Pakistan conflict is also civilisational: each side knows little of the other, with Bollywood and state narratives supplying caricatures, while real conversations across the border turn…
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Was Partition Good for Muslims?
X.T.M argues that Partition, sold as deliverance, was a sophisticated act of self-disinheritance for South Asian Muslims, leaving them divided across three states, without electoral leverage, with a psychological cleft,…
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Borders, Blind Spots, and the Mirror Game of South Asia
X.T.M sets out rival Pakistani and Indian arguments over Junagadh, Hyderabad and Kashmir in 1947 and Balochistan later, concluding both sides are mirrors, demanding flexibility for themselves and finality for…
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Did the Muslim League and RSS Want the Same Thing?
X.T.M asks whether the Muslim League’s demand for a Muslim-majority Pakistan differs in kind from the RSS wanting a Hindu-majority India, arguing both rejected a shared national project and that…
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Resistance, Realignment, and the Roads Not Taken
In reflections drawn from comment threads, X.T.M calls Gaza a genocide, sees a possible Muslim-world reversal of fortunes in Azerbaijan, Iran, the Houthis and Saudi Arabia, and asks what resistance…
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Belated Podcast: Operation Sindoor (and Bunyan al Marsoos)
Amey hosts Omar Ali and Poulasta on the recent India–Pakistan conflict and Operation Sindoor. Omar says much of the discussion circles back to Partition and related misunderstandings, and that the…
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Denial Isn’t Just a River in Egypt—It’s a Dammed Indus Too
X.T.M rejects a commenter’s claim that caste does not exist in Pakistan, citing biradari, zaat and ashraf–ajlaf hierarchies, and argues that saying Hindus ‘left’ in 1947 erases a violent dislocation.
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India’s Demographic Nervous System: Partition, Federalism, and the Fear of Muslim Majority Provinces
The author suggests that post-Partition India’s large states were calibrated to avoid creating new Muslim-majority provinces, and links that anxiety to Kashmir’s special status and the origins of its insurgency,…
