Religion and philosophy
Doctrine, practice, theology and philosophy.
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Open Thread: Navarātri and Durgā Pūjā
The Open Thread for Navarātri and Durgā Pūjā, with a note on fixing the site’s back end, and why Brown Pundits readers and commenters want such different things.
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Why India will not lose her soul to missionaries
X.T.M argues that India will not lose its Hindu soul to missionaries, because societies are shaped by elites, not headcount, and India’s elite is not converting. He starts from a…
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Quick Review: Shahab Ahmed, What is Islam
Omar Ali reposts an old review of Shahab Ahmed’s What Is Islam?, finding the book unclear about its aim but a good rebuttal to monochrome views of Islam. His verdict…
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The Stans
X.T.M shares a chart from @DailyTurkic of Pew data on adults who pray five times a day in the “Stan” countries. He notes that Persianate Tajikistan and Afghanistan are more…
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Not yet a requiem for the Deities of rural India
Indosaurus argues that folk Hinduism, practised mainly by lower castes and centred on sacrifice and possession, is more exposed than its scriptural form to conversion, Sanskritisation and urbanisation, and fears…
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The Hindufication of the Indian Bahá’í Community
X.T.M notes that a Bahá’í prayer performed in Mumbai for the 2017 bicentenary was in Shuddh Hindi, and wonders whether that translation came from Urdu, Perso-Arabic sources or English, since…
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Poison Trees: Mythological Fiction & Hindu Values – 1: Fixing the Bow
Arkacandra Jayasimha, cross-posting a May 2026 series, answers a Centre for Studies in Hindu Conservatism essay on mythological fiction, arguing in part one that its reading of Marx’s ‘opium of…
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Pakistan, the Successor State to Islamistan
Pakistan is usually read as drifting ever deeper into theocracy. We argue the reverse: its elite has quietly secularised, keeping Islam as the national language while shedding it as the…
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The End of Pre-colonial Modernity and it’s Present Implications
FlyDie argues that Raghunatha Siromani’s logic in the Bengal sultanate marked an early form of modernity in South Asia, and that colonial rule ended this indigenous trajectory with consequences today.…
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The Bahá’í Position on Palestine: A Note for the Record
The author sets out what the Bahá’í position on Palestine is, quoting Shoghi Effendi’s 1947 reply to the UN. The World Centre in Haifa and Akka is there for theological,…
