Uncategorized – Brown Pundits

Indian RW cheering for Iran

GauravL · March 20, 2026 · No comments

I am adding this post after procrastinating putting it up for days.

Most Indian RWers and even Centrists and LWers are directly or subtly on side of Iran vs Israel/US. One just has to visit timeline of Hindutvavadi influencers like JSai Deepak, Abhijit Iyer, Kushal Mehra.

Even the Right leaning or Centrist media people like Shiv Aroor, Palki Sharma, Arnab are actively cheerleading Iran. Indian government has thus far avoided taking a position pro Iran, but its obvious where Indian interests lie.

Despite Military ties with Israel and India seen as generally pro Israel – the criticism of Israel and Bibi is very common now in Indian SM.

Funny none of the posters here have noticed this !

Pakistan is the Israel of the Subcontinent

X.T.M · March 18, 2026 · 87 comments

A Brown Pundits Precedent Post

I. The Ideology Before the Nation

Pakistan has a birth certificate: a 1933 pamphlet by Choudhry Rahmat Ali. Israel has the Basel Programme of 1897. Both nations emerged not from an ancient territorial consciousness but from an ideological project; one that required, as its sustaining premise, the claim that a religious minority could not coexist within a pluralist polity. This is not a slur; it is the historical record.

What makes both nations structurally similar is that their nationalism is grievance-generative by design. Israel requires the Palestinian question; Pakistan requires Kashmir. Without the wound, the ideology loses its cohering force. This is why, as Kabir inadvertently demonstrates in thread after thread, Kashmir is not merely a territorial dispute for Pakistan; it is an existential necessity. Indian nationalism has no equivalent. India does not need Kashmir to know what it is. Pakistan does.

II. Organic vs. Constructed Nationalism

Omar has made the point that durable nationalism must be organic; rooted in geography, language, ethnicity, or long civilisational memory. Bangladesh is a useful comparison: Bengali Muslim nationalism is at least tethered to a linguistic and territorial reality. The Bengalis of East Pakistan had a mother tongue, a delta, a literary tradition. When Pakistan tried to impose Urdu on them, they revolted; because Bengali identity had roots.

Pakistan’s tragedy is that Urdu itself is borrowed. It is a prestige creole, Persianised, Arabicised North Indian court language, that is the mother tongue of perhaps 7% of Pakistan’s population (the Muhajir elite but Urdu had admittedly very deep roots in Lahore). It was imposed as a national language precisely because it belonged to no one’s soil, and could therefore function as a neutral imperial medium. The irony is that Urdu is a derivative of Persian, and Persian, the language Pakistan’s nationalism effectively displaced, was the actual civilisational glue of the entire region from Kabul to Lucknow. In the Golestan framework, Persian would resume its natural role as the prestige link language. Pakistan’s nationalism requires its absence.

III. A Core-Periphery Imperial Topology Continue reading Pakistan is the Israel of the Subcontinent

Archeological Society of India to work with Indonesia on Prambanan Temple Complex Restoration

RecoveringNewsJunkie · March 17, 2026 · 3 comments

A brief respite from war, death and bombings. Some encouraging news from South East Asia.

I have had the privilege to visit the Angkor Wat Complex in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The ASI has done some decent work there in restoring some of the buildings within. The Prambanan temple complex dates back to the 10th century and after Angkor, its the largest one in SE Asia. I would love to visit someday.

I did visit Bali briefly a couple of decades ago, which was a wonderful rabbithole to fall down into, in terms of Indic influence and syncretic culture in SE Asia. Balinese Hinduism is a fascinating fusion of what we Indians think of as ‘core’ Hinduism, along with local animist influences. What superficially can feel slightly alien and almost jarring – in terms of pooja thalis adorned with whole skinned chickens, is in fact, incredibly typical of how the Dharmic faith has spread all over the Indian sub-continent and beyond, absorbing local totems and figures into its mythology as manifestations and ‘Avtaars’ of its primary dieties.

Has anybody on BP or the commentariat visited Yogyakarta or any other Indonesian sites with Buddhist/Hindu influence?

The ‘Hindutva’ attack protocol

RecoveringNewsJunkie · March 16, 2026 · 23 comments

A tweet reposted by Azad Essa, attacking Priyanka Chopra as “Hindutva-fascist”, asserting that she is somehow ‘uncomfortable’ standing next to Javier Bardem while he delivered remarks in support of Palestine. This, in spite of the fact that Priyanka Chopra has publicly supported Palestine – signing letters demanding ceasefires, tweeting on Rafah and so on.

Azad Essa, is an author that was recently spotlighted on Brown Pundits itself, via his propaganda work on comparing Palestine to the Kashmir valley. This is a particular echo chamber driven by a very explicit agenda, that seeks to weaponize and co-opt the language of the left, in pursuit of demonizing India and Hindus. Facts do not matter, its Priyanka’s ethnicity that matters, and the fact that she dares to be publicly proud of her heritage, her religion and her nationality.

This is but an anecdotal example, but one that quite neatly spotlights the suspect credibility of aspiring ‘academics’ like Mr Essa. The question is how does the ecosystem of academia defend itself against such explicit bad actors that misuse concepts of ‘academic freedom’ and ‘journalism’ to peddle insidious agendas.

GDP of South Asian countries 1 : nominal vs real

Ace of Spades · March 14, 2026 · 7 comments

In March 1776, exactly 250 years ago, Scottish economist Adam Smith published his work The Wealth of Nations, widely considered to be one of the most influential books on political economy. In this book he highlighted the fact that people often confuse the real wealth of a country (the ability to buy goods and services) with its nominal wealth. The idea is still relevant today, so let us have a closer look. If we rank the major South Asian countries by their per capita nominal GDP (size of the total economy in the local currency divided by the price of a dollar), the list goes as follows :

1. SriLanka : USD 4516
2. India : USD 3051
3. Bangladesh : USD 2960
4. Pakistan : USD 1710
5. Nepal : USD 1550
6. Afghanistan : USD 417

Many people assume that these numbers measure how poor or rich a country is. In particular, the average Sri Lankan is 50 percent wealthier than the average Indian, and the average Bangladeshi is 70 percent wealthier than the average Pakistani. This is not really true. The nominal GDP accurately measures the real wealth of a country only in an utopian world where there are no taxes or other barriers on tradable goods, and transportation costs are completely absent. In reality, Americans can not instantly transport themselves to India to get cheap haircuts, and South Asian countries often impose huge taxes on imported goods. So nominal GDP is a flawed yardstick if we want to compare different countries.

Here’s a simple puzzle based on this idea : What steps should the Indian government take if they want to increase the country’s per capita nominal GDP from USD 3000 to USD 6000 within this year?

At first glance, achieving this may seem unattainable, given that India’s economy is currently growing at a rate of 6-7 percent annually. However, once we realize that nominal GDP also depends on trade policies, it is easy to come up with strategies to make this happen. For instance, the Indian government could implement an extra import duty of Rs 45 per dollar on all imported goods while simultaneously offering a Rs 45 per dollar subsidy (through tax incentives, free land, etc.) for all exported products. This will reduce the price of the dollar from Rs 90 to Rs 45 and double India’s nominal GDP. It’s also easy to see that this will have no impact on the real economy. Since the USD isn’t utilized in local transactions, the domestic market will stay the same. The extra tax imposed on imports will be balanced by the decrease in the dollar’s value. Likewise, the lower dollar rate will be offset by subsidies provided in the export sector.

Pray for Peace- Join in

X.T.M · March 12, 2026 · 2 comments

Open Thread –

X.T.M · March 7, 2026 · 50 comments

This war feels fairly choreographed; regime change unlikely but now everyone needs to save face.

Link 1: The Iranian regime account is using the Sun & the Lion Flag.

2026 Iran War and the Gulf

sbarrkum · March 5, 2026 · 30 comments

Header Image: US Bases in Mid East. Iran is the only Sovereign country in the Mid East without US Bases

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography” ― Mark Twain

Why are the Gulf Countries not attacking Iran. Because they are extremely vulnerable
a) Resource and Economic Vulnerability
b) Political, Regimes can be overthrown
c) Targets because they host US Bases.

The US though they have bases in the Gulf, have not come to the aid of Gulf Countries. To the contrary they are evacuating personnel from the Gulf.

Bahrain: Politically Vulnerable: Hosts the biggest US base in the Gulf. It is also has Shia 50% with Sunni regime. The Shia majority have been very restive and any war related turmoil can allow the Shia to overthrow the Sunni Regime. (Shias were previously the majority, being approximately 55% in 1979. However, the increased naturalization of Sunni migrants and persecution of Shia Muslims by the ruling Sunni Al Khalifa family led to an alteration in the demographics.)

Qatar: Has the biggest LNG production and they have shut down production. Why: Cant afford to have drones or missiles or even debris hitting the storage. The whole storage will go up like a Nuclear Bomb
Qatar accounts for 20% of global LNG exports, with 80% of those volumes to Asia.

Saudi Arabia: Like Qatar Saudi Arabia is Resource attack vulnerable. Oil production can go up in flames even though the oil is less volatile. Also with the Gulf or Hormuz shut down oil exports are nearly nill. However, they have pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. So Saudis need to also keep Houthis happy so that the oil that reaches Yanbu and loaded into Tankers is not attacked by Houthis. (Only about 1 million barrells/day to Yanbu, compared to 6.8 miilion Barrells/day thru Gulf Hormuz.
Saudi too has significant Shia population (10-15%) located near the oil fields in the Eastern Province (Najran, and Medina)

UAE/Dubai; Very Economically vulnerable. Falling Debris has closed Dubai Airport, the busiest in the world. Dubai is an Worlds Financial center in the League of Hong Kong, London and New York. 90*% of Dubai are expatriates, some extremely wealthy. Revenues from oil and natural gas account for less than 5% of the Emirate’s revenues. If Iran hits world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa thats the end of Dubais Economic Wonder.

So as you can see the Gulf countries need to play nice with Iran until the wsr End.

How will the War End. (some possibilities)
a) Iran Runs out of Missiles. (also low probability of layers of Iran Leadership Killed)
b) US Missiles are depleted
c) US has an Economic Shock (eg Stocks, DJI falls significantly eg to 40,000. Or US Treasury Bond yields spike to above 5%

When the dust settles regardless of Iran having lost it is going to be new Landscape in the Gulf. The US bases are most likely gone. When personnel are evacuated the looters come in like ants to dead carcass.

Saudi East-West Pipeline can pump oil from the country’s main eastern oilfields to the Red Sea and has capacity to transport around five million bpd if Yanbu has the capacity to load that amount of crude the pipeline can carry onto ships, traders and buyers said. Crude loadings at Yanbu hit a peak of just under 1.5 million bpd in April 2020
https://www.bairdmaritime.com/shipping/tankers/aramco-moves-oil-flows-to-red-sea-as-hormuz-grinds-to-a-halt

What the map below shows is that, due to a peculiar correlation of religious history and anaerobic decomposition of plankton, almost all the Persian Gulfs fossil fuels are located underneath Shiites. This is true even in Sunni Saudi Arabia, where the major oil fields are in the Eastern Province, which has a majority Shiite population.

https://theintercept.com/2016/01/06/one-map-that-explains-the-dangerous-saudi-iranian-conflict/