Category: Popular

Southasia Is One Word

X.T.M ¡ May 21, 2025 ¡ 104 comments

Reflections on Pervez Hoodbhoy at MIT

Zachary L. ZavidĂŠ | Brown Pundits | May 2025

Pervez Hoodbhoy needs no introduction. As one of Pakistan’s leading physicists and public intellectuals, he has long stood at the uneasy crossroads of science, nationalism, and conscience. He spoke this week at MIT’s Graduate Tower — the final stop on a grueling five-city U.S. tour, a new city every two days — in support of The Black Hole Initiative, a cultural and intellectual space he’s building in Pakistan. Despite its ominous name, the initiative is a wormhole, not a void: a cross-disciplinary bridge connecting physics, literature, art, and civic life.

What followed was less a lecture, more an exposition — sober, lucid, and grounded in decades of hard-won clarity.

The Logic of Annihilation

Dr. Hoodbhoy walked us through Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine: under long-standing military assumptions, if the north–south arterial route is severed, a tactical nuclear strike becomes viable. But the calculus is disturbingly abstract. Hiroshima’s 20-kiloton bomb killed 200,000. India and Pakistan each possess an estimated 200 warheads. One general once told him that, by crude arithmetic — obscene as it sounds — “only” 80 million would die in the event of a full exchange. Continue reading Southasia Is One Word

“What You Hate is What You Love” — Reflections on the Indo-Pak Obsession

X.T.M ¡ May 20, 2025 ¡ 60 comments

I hadn’t expected my open thread to ignite such a volume of comments. But it’s confirmed something I’ve long suspected: many Indians claim Pakistan is not their rival—but their reactions say otherwise.

Let me be clear: I deeply love India. I venerate her civilizational breadth. But the passion with which some Indian respondents—particularly North Indian Hindus and sections of the South Indian Brahmin class—engage with Pakistan is disproportionate. China, despite being a far more formidable geopolitical competitor, rarely evokes this level of visceral response.

Why? Because Pakistan is the sibling to Bharat. It’s the mirror. And rivalry with a sibling is always more intimate, more consuming. Continue reading “What You Hate is What You Love” — Reflections on the Indo-Pak Obsession

China: The Unseen Winner of the Indo-Pak Skirmish?

X.T.M ¡ May 11, 2025 ¡ 102 comments

Now that comments are back—let’s look at this dispassionately. Set aside emotion and accept a simple civilizational fact: South Asia should be plural, civil, and syncretic. Its unity lies in its AASI roots and Sanskritic inheritance, whether acknowledged or not. Otherwise who were the winners, losers and in-betweeners of this senseless conflict?

Prefacing the below with Xperia’s comment in the interests of neutrality and impartiality:

There is however a ton of evidence that Pakistani airfields were put out of operation, at least one hanger hit killing personnel inside. Runways blown up. C130 in flames.
This was was not a dogfight, it was a drone and missile war. The Indian defence was layered and effective. All airports operational and runways intact.
Op sec was also much better on the Indian side, you don’t have any pictures of army personnel firing missiles and jumping around next to locals.
Don’t worry so much about the stock prices. The Chinese market is propaganda in itself.

https://x.com/ConflictMoniter has good OSINT in case you want to take a look.
https://x.com/MenchOsint is more neutral and unbiased.

That said, the data circulating on Telegram suggests a major strategic recalibration is underway.

Without speculating on war origins, the result is seismic: India just suffered its worst aerial defeat. Five high-end aircraft—3 Rafales, 1 MiG-29, 1 Su-30—and 1 Israeli Heron drone were downed. None returned. This is more than battlefield loss. It’s a realignment.

1. Chinese Systems, Pakistani Trigger

For the first time, Pakistan deployed Chinese-made HQ-9B, LY-80, HQ-16 air defenses and J-10C, JF-17 fighters in live combat. All Indian aircraft were neutralized. Not a single Chinese platform was hit.

This wasn’t just retaliation. It was a demonstration. Rafales—France’s pride—were shot down for the first time in history. With zero Pakistani losses, China’s weapons just outperformed Western tech on a global stage.

2. Markets Reacted
• Dassault Aviation (Rafale): ↓ 1.6%
• Chengdu Aircraft Corp (J-10C): ↑ 18%

A $25M Chinese jet took out over $100M in Western tech. That resets the cost-benefit of warfare. Permanently.

3. Strategic Ripples
• Pakistan’s dependence on China is now military, not just economic.
• Chinese systems will gain traction in the Middle East, especially with Egypt.
• India’s strategic posture faces urgent questions—its French, Russian, Israeli kit just got field-tested—and failed.

Quaid, Modi, and the Operation Sindoor

X.T.M ¡ May 5, 2025 ¡ 75 comments

On Pakistan’s second birth, India’s rising nationalism, and the politics of martyrdom

There’s a strange irony in history: the founder of Pakistan and the “strongest” Prime Minister of India may ultimately be remembered for the same thing—giving Pakistan life.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah birthed the state. Narendra Modi may have revived its soul. Because nothing steels a national identity like resistance. And nothing immortalizes a cause like martyrdom.

Blood in Pahalgam, Resolve in Islamabad

When civilians—children—are killed, as in the recent attacks in Pahalgam & Bahawalpur, the horror doesn’t demoralize. It clarifies. It creates martyrs. And martyrdom sanctifies. Pakistan, often in search of a purpose, just received one. What makes this even more striking is the dynamic behind it. Modi may need Pakistan—not as a partner, but as a perpetual foil. A pressure point. A mirror. A justification.Every strong nationalism needs its adversary:

  • Israel has Hamas.
  • The U.S. had the USSR.
  • India, increasingly, needs Pakistan.

Nationhood hardens in opposition. This is what the “failed” projects of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia lacked: no existential other. No enemy, no glue. Even the most successful Willensnation—Switzerland, a country built by choice, not ethnicity—engaged in intense nation-building during the 1960s. Its wealth today isn’t just neutrality—it’s the compound interest of skipping two world wars. But in today’s world, Dubai may inherit Switzerland’s darker mantle—as the future capital of hot money and global shadow finance. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Canada’s national identity has paradoxically strengthened in Trump’s wake—a quiet rebellion through civility, as if to say: we are what he is not.

The Strategic Misstep?

Operation Sindoor. Suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty. Visa blocks. High Commission closures. Are these pressure points—or accelerants? The danger is that such moves only validate Pakistan’s siege narrative. And that narrative fuels its resilience. You can’t bomb a martyr complex. You can only confirm it. Continue reading Quaid, Modi, and the Operation Sindoor

India and Pakistan, Back to the Future..

Omar Ali ¡ April 23, 2025 ¡ 145 comments

A group of terrorists attacked tourists in a remote meadow in Kashmir, identified those who were non-Muslim, and shot them dead (they also shot dead a Muslim tour guide who tried to oppose them). The horrendous and barbaric attack has led to a predictable outburst of harsh anti-Pakistan (and in many cases, anti-Muslim) outrage in India and the govt has already announced some steps against Pakistan and is presumably planning to undertake some more in the coming days.

Meanwhile, Pakistan (and individual patriotic Pakistanis) have taken to social media and traditional media to paint this as a “false flag attack” (i.e. carried out or planned by the Indian authorities themselves, presumably to allow them to retaliate against Pakistan; why?) or at least as India being “too quick to accuse Pakistan” (ie “we did not do it, and they are accusing us without proof”). This is all as expected in the usual India vs Pakistan show, but it is important to keep in mind that the situation has supposedly changed a little since 2019. Before that date there were many terrorist attacks in Kashmir and every major event would be followed by tit for tat exchanges along the line of control, but with both sides respecting “red lines”. Then in 2019 there was a large attack in Pulwama that was followed by an Indian retaliatory attack on a militant camp in Balakot in Pakistan proper (which crossed the previous red line of what retaliation was permissible). Since then there had been relative peace in kashmir and many commentators felt that the balakot bombing had established a new “red line”, that India will respond to any major attack in this or similar manner, so Pakistan has dialed down the terrorism it previously promoted in Kashmir. But if that is the case, then this attack obviously crosses that threshold and will lead to response. Irrespective of who is at fault and who did what, this was the supposed line and it has been crossed, so what next? 

As usual, i dont know. But lets list the questions and possible answers.

  1. IF this was indeed planned by Pakistan, then the question is “why”? Why now?

Possible answers and objections: Continue reading India and Pakistan, Back to the Future..

Open Thread – 04/14/2023 – Brown Pundits

Razib Khan ¡ April 14, 2023 ¡ 88 comments

Since Pandits and Kamboj always ask me if it’s true if they’re Iranian, Iran through the ages: civilization’s eternal crossroads and Pre-Persian Iran: from the invention of agriculture to the Aryan onslaught. Part 3 and 4 will land next week.

I have a post (right now at 5,500 words) that I’m working on relating to caste, the CISCO case, and the US, for my Substack. I want it to be my “last word” on the topic…but basically, the issue here is that Leftist-prog types who believe in the total malleability of culture somehow also believe that Indian Americans are moving their society in toto to the US without modification. This is obviously false. You can speculate why this is happening, but it’s just a fact.

Also, Saagar Enjeti is asked about his caste on Red Scare. It’s kind of a joke, as the hosts are pro-Indian (especially Dasha). I am hopefully going to on Red Scare in the next six months to talk about genetics (last time I was in New York Anna K. was out of town).

Open Thread, 2/17/2023, Brown Pundits

Razib Khan ¡ February 17, 2023 ¡ 213 comments

Nimrata Nikki Haley is running for President of the United States of American.

1) She’s a donor-class wet dream and a throwback to the pre-Trump Republican party. I don’t think this is going to work, but who knows?

2) It’s America, you do what you want, but not going to lie; Bobby Jindal was always a bit too unctuous in his urge to emphasize his American bonafides. Haley’s biography strikes me as more natural and relatable.

3) I think she may be tapped for VP on identity politics grounds by the Republican party. Interesting VP debate with Kamala Devi Harris.

Brown Pundits