Society, caste and identity

Caste, ethnicity, gender, family and community.

A world built on Slavery

A comment, with a Juan Cole link, that Haiti spent most of its budget until 1940 compensating slave-owners for its emancipation, and a reader’s question on the one-drop rule and…

Brown Pundits Archive28 February 20140 comments
The victims of partition(s)

A report that gunmen killed four people in Karachi, including Shia scholar Allama Taqi Hadi Naqvi, with the poster’s reflection that minorities and majorities keep being redefined until each person…

Brown Pundits Archive27 February 20140 comments
Don’t cry for me, Parsi

An older article on how the shrinking Parsi community, now under 70,000 and concentrated in Mumbai, has started a vulture programme to restore the birds on which its funerary Towers…

Brown Pundits Archive24 February 20141 comment
Why the elite in the Rest yearn for the West

Drawing on his travels, the author argues that elites in the developing world yearn for the West not for wealth but for self-actualisation and individuality, which collectivist societies in the…

Brown Pundits Archive17 February 20143 comments
Where is My Family In the Media?

Responding to a New York Times op-ed on interracial families on television, the author notes that nearly every example it cites is black-white, and argues that Census figures show most…

Brown Pundits Archive9 February 20140 comments
Pakistan's dichotomy

A short comment disagreeing with a piece on the joint family, which the poster calls an efficient way of living, while agreeing that Pakistanis are conflicted.

Brown Pundits Archive8 February 20140 comments
Another reason to hate Putin; fewer abortions?

The poster notes that Russian abortions fell from 2.5 per live birth in the 1990s to 0.42 after Putin took power, and wonders whether the West resents Russia’s resurgence or…

Brown Pundits Archive8 February 20141 comment
Mathew Martoma = “Triple Package” + Sociopathy

A comment on convicted trader Mathew Martoma’s fraud, arguing that pressure-driven Asian immigrant cultures may encourage corner-cutting to reach Harvard, alongside the danger of the clever but amoral.

Brown Pundits Archive7 February 20142 comments
the state of Sindh

A tweeted observation from Sindh that the poster found a boy and his friends working in fields who knew no one who had been to school.

Brown Pundits Archive3 February 20140 comments
Can inter-sect marriages save Pakistani society?

An extract on a young Pakistani woman, with a Shia father and Sunni mother, who refuses to choose a sect, asking whether inter-sect marriages could help heal sectarian divides.

Brown Pundits Archive1 February 20141 comment