The heirs of Jinnah are not liberal Pakistani nationalists or English-speaking Karachi elites.
His true heirs are:
This is not provocation. It is structural observation.
I. Jinnah Created a Logic That Outlived His Liberal Aesthetics Continue reading Why Zia, Munir, Ayub, and Even Modi, Are Jinnah’s Children
Red Fort Attack and Aftermath: Initial Thoughts by Manav S.
Last evening’s devastating car-explosion near the Red Fort in Delhi is not only a cruel assault on innocent lives but an assault on the very symbolism of our nation. According to early reports, a vehicle detonated close to the busy metro zone at the historic Red Fort complex, killing at least eight people and injuring more than twenty.  The government has invoked anti-terror legislation and launched a full probe under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). 
First, we must recognise the human tragedy behind the headlines. Lives shattered, families devastated, fear spreading in a city already grappling with chronic insecurity. For those of us of South Asian heritage who carry memories of communal strife, of migration and displacement, this attack touches a deeper chord of vulnerability and of collective memory. Hospitals have reported frantic cries, missing persons, relatives screaming for loved ones. 
Second, the choice of location amplifies the message. The Red Fort is not just another landmark: it is an emblem of India’s sovereignty, its layered history, its identity. To strike here is to strike at the heart of public confidence and to send a message of audacious defiance. As scholars writing on “brown diasporic publics” know, our public spaces carry meaning not just for those inside India, but for those of us abroad who anchor our identity in ‘homeland’ narratives. This attack disrupts that anchor.
Third, we must resist both fear and simplistic narratives. The invocation of terror laws suggests the state is treating this as a planned act of violence, not an accident.  But let us guard against quick binaries: Us vs Them, Hindus vs Muslims, India vs Outsiders. In a plural society like ours, sweeping communal attributions too often deepen fault-lines rather than heal them. Our commentary must demand both justice and wisdom: meticulous investigation, transparent process, and safeguarding civil rights in the process.
Fourth, what does this mean for our shared public culture? For someone born in Punjab and now living across borders, the explosion challenges our sense of movement, of belonging, of normalcy. We think of carrying family across continents, of re-configuring identity in Washington–DC and Delhi , how do such apparently random acts of terror recalibrate the psychic cost of migration and the distance between home and homeland? The answer is: they make the cost higher, the emotional freight heavier.
Finally, the path forward must hold three imperatives: one, empathy – for all victims, irrespective of religion, class or residence; two, accountability – for whoever plotted, financed or enabled this attack; and three, renewal – of the public realm, the shouting panic, the fear-laden sighs, with something stronger: resilient civic culture, public institutions we trust, cross-community solidarity.
As a brown pundit, I urge our readership to see beyond the flashes of violence, beyond the political spin, and to ask the deeper questions: What kind of society are we building? What kind of public spaces do we imagine, and what cost are we willing to pay for them? For if we shrug now, the symbolic scar will grow — far after the immediate blast damage is repaired.
In that moment of stillness after the blast, we owe to our fellow citizens not just sorrow, but vigilant hope.
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.
There are actual leftists and other folks who don’t regurgitate PakMil propaganda – of this I’m aware. But even amongst those, illiteracy on India is rife. I laugh with bemusement at the number of times self-appointed Pakistani intellechawals sagely nod their heads and compare Zia-Era Pakistan to present-day Hindootva. I ‘get’ that such comparisons soothes Pakistani insecurities vis-a-vis its larger, democratic neighbor, but it really destroys their credibility.
Kabir removed three of Dave’s comments, and while I felt it was over-moderation, I’ve kept my promise not to interfere unnecessarily in his threads.
The excerpt above, though, is interesting — the comparison between Zia’s Pakistan and Modi’s India. What’s striking about both is the twin emphasis on capitalism and cultural conservatism: the promise of economic growth wrapped in moral revival. It raises a deeper question — whether right-wing politics are, paradoxically, the only antidote societies find to extreme inequality.
Class, even more than caste or creed, is the fundamental distinction in any society. The bottom half ultimately has more in common with each other than with the top half. Yet society endures only when that bottom half is so compromised that it cannot mount effective resistance. When the Establishment promise uplift but depend on the passivity of the lower half, then the “distribution of prosperity”, twinned with ideology, itself becomes the subtlest form of control.
When Bahá’u’lláh wrote that every word of the Qur’ān bears meaning and intention, he was reminding us that revelation, properly read, resists reduction. Scripture, like language itself, is alive; it breathes, it hesitates, it renews. Yet somewhere between the living word and the legislated code, the hijab became a symbol, of modesty, of defiance, of cultural siege, of theological purity, until its nuance was lost to politics.
My friend is in Kashan, a city of gardens and scholars, and perhaps among the most traditional pockets of Iran. She forgot her hijab back in her home city and now cannot step out of her hotel. The irony is sharp: the veil that once signified spiritual privacy has become an enclosure of space. Kashan’s cobbled lanes whisper poetry, but they also enforce silence.
Meanwhile, the liberal axis of Iran, Shiraz, Tehran, Gilan, Mazandaran, Semnan, walks the tightrope between revelation and rebellion. The North dresses as Europe, the Centre prays as Qom. Mahsa Amini’s martyrdom was Kurdish, and therefore doubly liminal: ethnically marginal, religiously symbolic (the Kurds are very secular as a rule of thumb; more Zoroastrian than the Persians). Her death reopened a question the Qur’ān itself leaves open — what, after all, does ḥijāb mean?
1. The Qur’ānic Vocabulary of Modesty Continue reading Hijab: Between Revelation and Regulation
I was speaking with Dr. Lalchand about a number of things, from Anant Ambani’s wildlife project to the recent caste discourse on Brown Pundits. Both, strangely enough, converge around the theme of scrutiny; of who gets to build, who gets to critique, and who sets the rules of engagement.
Let’s start with Vantara. Anant Ambani’s wildlife refuge is coming under sustained criticism. But I ask: why shouldn’t Bharat, arguably the only major civilisation that views animals as divinely inspired, have a world-class zoo or rescue center? If done with sensitivity and vision, this could be a profound expression of India’s Hindu civilisational ethos.
Vantara houses over 200 elephants, 50 bears, 160 tigers, 200 lions, 250 leopards, and 900 crocodiles; albeit imported from across the world into the baking flatlands beside an oil refinery. The scale is staggering. Yes, there are questions: about captive animal welfare, about the case of Pratima the elephant, about transparency. But we should also be able to think of Indian megafauna conservation at global scale especially in a nation where sacred animals are part of dharmic memory.
America had its Gilded Age. The robber barons left behind libraries, parks, and museums. Can’t India do the same? Or do we reflexively dismiss anything built by wealth as vanity? Can there not be a deeper Dharma behind patronage?
And that brings me yet again to caste, controversy, and the structure of Brown Pundits. Continue reading Vantara, Caste, and the Fragile Commons
Last night Dr. Lalchand & I watched Homebound, India’s submission to the Oscars, at Apple Cinemas in Cambridge, Mass. This sad film follows a Dalit (Chandan Kumar) and a Muslim (Mohammed Shoaib Ali) struggling against the odds during the pandemic, their solidarity fictionalized as a fragile bridge across India’s deepest divides.
On the surface, it is a familiar story: the disenfranchised facing systemic barriers. But what struck me was how privilege itself performed disenfranchisement. Ishaan Khatter, brother to Shahid Kapoor, plays the marginalized Muslim. Janhvi Kapoor, descended from Bollywood royalty, embodies a Dalit woman. Vishal Jethwa, a bright-eyed Gujarati, portrays the Bhojpuri Dalit lead. This is not unique to India; Hollywood, too, casts elites as workers. Yet it raises the question: when poverty is performed rather than lived, is it “Dalit-washing”?
Poverty, Emotion, and Representation
Watching the film, I reflected on poverty’s emotional landscape. For elites, emotions can be expansive, indulgent, aestheticized into art. For the working poor, emotions are often constrained by survival — narrowed into necessity. Homebound tried to humanize its characters, but I wondered whether it romanticized what in practice is a relentless narrowing of possibility.
The West rewards this narrative. Parasite in Korea, Iranian cinema, Slumdog Millionaire — poverty & Global South tribulations as spectacle becomes “poverty porn.” The Guardian gave Homebound four stars. Great art often tilts melancholic, yes, but here the melancholia is curated for Western consumption.
Identity, Vectors, and Islamicate Selfhood
More unexpectedly, the film stirred something personal. I realized how much I have vacated my own Islamic identity. It was not traumatic. As a Bahá’í with Persian cultural roots, I found overlap — even comfort — in Hindu traditions. Dalits, in their rapid Hinduization, represent one vector of assimilation; Muslims and scheduled-caste Muslims, often in tension, another. Homebound imagines solidarity, but in life these vectors pull unequally. Continue reading Homebound with Ishaan Khatter
🔗 Links shared from the comments
Indian rupee slides to all-time low on US visa hike & subdued foreign flows: Visa fee hikes and US tariffs are compounding pressures on the rupee, with concerns about equity flows into India’s IT sector.
Why the Pakistan–Saudi Arabia defence pact is unsettling India: Riyadh’s commitment to treat aggression against Pakistan as aggression against itself is seen as a direct security challenge to India.
Doug Macgregor thread on the Saudi–Pakistan Strategic Mutual Defense Pact: Macgregor outlines how Saudi–Pakistani defense ties, backed by China and linked to Iran, could reshape the balance of power in Asia.
World Bank warns of Pakistan’s failing growth model: The World Bank says Pakistan’s growth model no longer supports poverty reduction, with income gains stalling and poverty at an eight-year high.
Rail-based Agni Prime missile test-fired: India successfully tested a rail-mounted Agni Prime ICBM, underscoring advances in indigenous missile technology and delivery systems.
💬 Keep the links and thoughts coming — BP works best when the Commentariat bring their own sources into the mix.
