Politics – Brown Pundits

Zohran Mamdani open thread

November 5, 2025November 5, 2025X.T.MPolitics, United States32 Comments

busy day today but I feel Z’s victory is kind of a big (huge) deal. even more than Sadiq’s.. dump ur links about it in the thread

Zohran gets his own Urdu pop song

Open Thread

November 4, 2025November 4, 2025X.T.MAdmin, Brown Pundits, Colonialism, Geopolitics, Indian Subcontinent, X.T.MBrown Pundits, future, Multipolar World, postcolonial, reflection57 Comments

The boycott has made Brown Pundits quieter, almost peaceful. I don’t mind it. Every few years the site reaches this point; it grows, gains noise, and starts to feel less like a hobby and more like an obligation. Then it falls back to something smaller and saner.

I’ve also realised that the Indo-Pak frame doesn’t really fit my life anymore. It was useful once because that’s where the conversation was; it gave the blog an audience. But most of that talk is stale now; the same arguments, just louder.

What interests me instead are the wider patterns: how post-colonial societies move in a world that is no longer unipolar. The Gulf’s rise, Africa’s experiments, China’s reach, India’s own breadth. How old hierarchies break down, and new ones form.

I don’t like following the news. So perhaps BP will drift in that direction. Fewer posts, less noise, more reflection. A space for thinking about what comes after the post-colonial age, when the world starts to finally balance itself again.

The growing Pakistan-Afghan Conflict. What next?

November 3, 2025November 3, 2025RecoveringNewsJunkieGeopolitics, UncategorizedAfghanistan, PakistanLeave a comment

Most of us keeping up with news from the sub-continent are aware by now of the recent escalation in the long-simmering friction between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The historical ‘divide’ regarding the Durand Line is something that never really went away as much as the Pakistani state attempted to pretend that its a fait accompli. And now with the Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan managing to to challenge the Pakistani state’s writ, and inflicting ever increasing costs on PakMil, the threats to punish Afghanistan further are flowing thick and fast from Islamabad.

Pakistan, obviously enjoys a military supremacy over Afghanistan in multiple orders of magnitude. But as we have seen in Ukraine, or even in Afghanistan over the last few decades, the underdog can inflict some serious costs. And keep it going.

Question is, where does Pakistan go from here? With the growing reported rapprochement between the Taliban and New Delhi, there’s every chance that the Afghan air defenses may be quickly ramped up from non-existent, to at least some level of deterrent. Rumors are rife on the internet about Indian supply planes landing at Bagram. And simply bombing Afghan border posts has diminishing returns. The Taliban do not appear to be in any conciliatory mood.

In many ways, this has many parallels to India’s experience with Pakistan backed jihadi groups in the 30+ years starting from the late 1980s. Its almost impossible to deter and defend against insurgency in mountainous terrain. Especially when the insurgents find succor in the local populace.

So, what next for “Khyber Pakhtunkhwa” and Pakistan? How realistic is the possibility that the Pakistani military will be able to succeed “this time” when it has already ‘failed’ a few times post-9/11, and had to make repeated ‘peace’ deals with the TTP or its predecessors in the past?

The shooting war seems to have gone a bit quiet for now, but the war of words is quickly escalating. It seems like the Taliban are being ‘good students’ of the ISI and have adopted the tactic of releasing catchy music videos to make propaganda points.

Afghanistan’s powerful and truthful song about
ghadar and dalal army of . 🔥 pic.twitter.com/CLyFAnA17z

—
Fazal Afghan (@fhzadran) November
1, 2025

Jasmine’s journey: From the fields of Madurai to French luxury perfume

November 2, 2025November 2, 2025VivekAncient India, Culture, Economics, History, India, Religionagriculture, Tamil NaduLeave a comment

Seethapuram is a small, squalid village home largely to Telugu-speaking Naickers, at the foot of the Western Ghats, some 50km northwest of Madurai. Overnight showers, unseasonal in late March, make it hard to see puddles from open sewers in the darkness of 3am. The village is not just stirring; its people are out and about. Chinnaraman, 54, and his wife Murugayi, 48, are both dressed in sky-blue full-sleeved shirts. She wears hers over a sari, and he adds a grey flannel jacket on top. They are ready to leave for their farm, a ten-minute ride over undulating terrain on a grunting 100cc bike. Continue reading Jasmine’s journey: From the fields of Madurai to French luxury perfume

The Earth’s Lost Industrial Heart

November 2, 2025X.T.MAlternative, Civilisation, Geopolitics, History, India, Iran, Islam & the Middle East, X.T.MAfro-Arabian-Indus Triangle, Colonialism, decolonisation, economic history, Empire, energy, geography, Geopolitics, global economy, Global South, global trade, historical geography, Indian Ocean, industrialisation, Infrastructure, manufacturing, Middle East, postcolonialism, Suez Canal, trade routes, world history19 Comments

After our discussion on industrialisation in India, I began to wonder: if the Earth were one country, one government, one infrastructure grid, one economy, where would its industrial heart lie?

Geographically, the answer is obvious. The natural centre of the world, for energy, labour, and trade routes, isn’t London, New York, or Beijing. It’s the triangle between the Persian Gulf, the Indo-Gangetic plain, and the Red Sea.

Deserts rich in hydrocarbons. River basins dense with labour, water, and grain. Seas that touch every continent. If the world were united, this belt, Arabia to India to the Nile, would be the Ruhr, the Great Lakes, and the Pearl River Delta combined.

The Natural Order of Geography

Before empire, this region was the planet’s connective tissue. Spices, silk, horses, and steel moved from India to Arabia to Africa. Energy, grain, and knowledge flowed through the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf like the arteries of the Earth. It was not the “Middle East”; it was Middle Earth. Continue reading The Earth’s Lost Industrial Heart

Ladakh: From Promise to Protest

October 10, 2025October 10, 2025X.T.MCivilisation, Geopolitics, Indian Subcontinent, Iran, Islam & the Middle East, Kashmir, Partition, Postcolonialism & the Global South, Politics, X.T.MArticle 370, BJP, civil rights, environmental protection, India-China border, Indian Constitution, Kargil, Ladakh, Leh, mining, Modi government, NSA, protests, Sixth Schedule, Sonam Wangchuk, UT governance1 Comment

A Factual Account of Recent Developments

Overview:
The region of Ladakh has seen a sharp escalation in political tension and civil unrest over the past 10 days. On September 24, 2025, four civilians were killed in Leh in police firing following public protests. This marks a significant turn in the trajectory of Ladakh’s relationship with the Union government of India, which had previously promised administrative empowerment and constitutional safeguards following the region’s bifurcation from Jammu & Kashmir in 2019.

Timeline of Key Events: Continue reading Ladakh: From Promise to Protest

Caste in America

October 9, 2025October 10, 2025X.T.MBrown Pundits, Caste, Civilisation, Culture, Diaspora, Hinduism, History, India, Indian Subcontinent, Mughals, Music, Partition, Postcolonialism & the Global South, Politics, Society, X.T.MAmir Khusrao, Bharat Mata, Bhatkhande, Biryani, Brahmin culture, Brahminism, Brown Pundits, civilizational debate, cultural erasure, Dalit rights, Hindu genocide, Hindu-Muslim synthesis, Hinduism, Hindustani Classical Music, identity politics, India activism, Indian diaspora politics, Indian left, Indo-Aryan, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Islamic culture, Kabir comment, Kashmir Pandits, Kathak, Mughal India, Persian civilization, Sadarang, South Asian high culture, Taj Mahal, Urdu culture, Vedic continuity37 Comments

I’ve found myself drifting further left than I expected this year. Much of that is circumstantial, being involved in local activism in the United States naturally places one within progressive coalitions. Yet even in this frame, my ideological compass is firmly rooted in some admiration for Brahminical continuity and Bharat Mata as civilizational anchor.

At times I speculate on where Bharat truly ends. Is it the Hindu Kush? The Iranian plateau? The Persian world has always seemed to me about 20–30% Indianise; its mythology, musicality, and memory bear the imprint of the Indo-Aryan stream more than the Indo-European one, no matter how insistently modern Iranians lean toward a Westward identification.

This brings me to a provocative thesis I’ve often floated: that Brahmins are the civilisational custodians of the Indian subcontinent, and that their displacement often signals a broader cultural erasure. The tragedy of the Kashmiri Panditsis not merely a community’s trauma, but a warning. Without Brahminical continuity, Vedic frameworks falter. Hinduism in Pakistan and Bangladesh remains vulnerable precisely because it lacks the embedded authority and supervisory function of Brahmin elites to anchor Vedic traditions and calibrate resistance to incessant Islamisation. Continue reading Caste in America

Pahalgam and Aftermath

October 8, 2025October 10, 2025Omar AliBrown Pundits, Geopolitics, India, Indian Subcontinent, Kashmir, Pakistan, Partition, Postcolonialism & the Global South, Religion, War & Military History, X.T.MAmerican foreign policy, Brown Pundits, ceasefire negotiations, China factor, Donald Trump, Drone warfare, geopolitical calculus, IAF blunder, India–Pakistan Relations, Indian Air Force, Indian military strategy, Indo-pak conflict, Jaffer Express hijacking, Kashmir Conflict, Middle East peace deal, missile exchanges, Nobel Prize diplomacy, nuclear deterrence, Operation Sindoor, PAF response, Pahalgam, Pahalgam attack, Pakistan Air Force, Pakistan terrorism, Pakistani intelligence, Rafale losses, South Asia geopolitics, TNT, Trump diplomacy, U.S. mediation, U.S.-India relations, U.S.-Pakistan relations, war escalation10 Comments

Someone on Twitter asked me for my opinion on Pahalgam and its aftermath now that several months have passed. I wrote up a quick reply, which I am posting here. I realize I am not writing much on this blog these days, but life has been busy and I barely keep up with Twitter and reading books, this blog gets pushed down.. But lets see if this sparks some discussion. Continue reading Pahalgam and Aftermath

Caste and the Structure of Discourse

October 1, 2025October 1, 2025X.T.MBahá’í, Brown Pundits, Caste, Civilisation, Culture, Geopolitics, Hinduism, History, India, Indian Subcontinent, Language, Partition, Postcolonialism & the Global South, Politics, Race, Religion, X.T.MAshkenazi, Brahminism, Brown Pundits, caste, Commentary, discourse, elite adaptation, Hinduism, Identity, intermarriage, Modi, Nehru, Politics, Privilege, race and caste, social hierarchy, Sociology, South Asia, structural critique, upper caste, WASP23 Comments

I’ve come to realise that it’s often more productive to write full posts than to engage in fragmented comment threads. The richness of thought requires a form that can hold tension, contradiction, and nuance but comments, by design, resist that.

The Upper-Caste Template of South Asian Dharmic Discourse

Take, for example, sbarrkum, who shares personal reflections and images from his life on the common board. While one might raise questions about permissions or boundaries, it’s also important to respect dialectical differences in how people choose to engage. There’s no single valid mode of expression.

That brings me to a broader reflection: how the very structure of discourse in Dharmic South Asia has long been shaped by upper-caste templates; especially under Western influence. Over two centuries, upper castes have Brahmanised, Saffronised, Persianised, and then Westernised themselves, adopting and enforcing norms of discourse, authority, and ‘rationality.’

Why Intermarriage Doesn’t Erase Hierarchy Continue reading Caste and the Structure of Discourse