The traditional Mercator worldview slices our imagination. It distorts the unity of the Indo-Iranian zone; a civilizational belt that has resisted rupture, even across millennia of empire, religion, and state.
And yet, if you look again, linguistically, genetically, geographically, the facts are harder to ignore. Pakistan sits at the inflection point. Continue reading The Aryan Cleft: Pakistan as the Cradle and Cusp of Indo-Iranian Civilisation
This is a genocide every which way but I would be interested to hear the views of the commentariat.
I am very pro Zionist for what it’s worth.
I’ll explained my thoughts later on in a proper post, but I am interested to see RW Indians reflect on Gaza.
I lost an entire post earlier, but perhaps it’s for the best. I’ve had the time now to clarify my thoughts and this is better to make clear the new policy of just junking comments that don’t “smell right.”
What prompted me to write again was a small but telling excerpt from a recent Dawn article. It wasn’t just that they misspelled “Brahman”; they wrote “Barhaman,” a word that doesn’t exist in any linguistic tradition. It was also the order in which they listed religions. They wrote:
“…revered for not only the followers of the world’s three major religions — Buddhism, Sikhism and Hinduism…”
Hinduism, the oldest and most foundational of the three, was placed last. This is not trivial. Both Buddhism and Sikhism evolved from Hinduism. Yet in Pakistani discourse, so marked by dislocation and disavowal, Hinduism is routinely treated as a junior or fringe faith. This is what endemic Hinduphobia looks like: not explicit violence, but civilizational misordering, semantic erasure, and the subtle, continuous downgrading of Hindu memory.
It’s barely recognized. And that’s the point. Continue reading The Long Defeat: How Hinduphobia Hollowed Out Pakistan
The Untold Story of E.K. Janaki Ammal
via X
She was born in 1897 in Tellicherry, Kerala, the daughter of a high court sub-judge and one of nineteen children in a large, liberal household called Edam. Her family belonged to the Thiyya community, considered “socially backward” under the Hindu caste system. But within Edam, caste meant little. There was music, a sprawling library, a cultivated garden, and a quiet expectation of excellence.
Her sisters married. She did not. Instead, Janaki Ammal chose plants.
She trained first at Queen Mary’s and Presidency Colleges in Madras, then left colonial India in 1924 on a Barbour Scholarship to the University of Michigan, where she would become the first Indian woman to earn a doctorate in botanical science. She lived in an all-women’s dorm, smuggled a squirrel in her sari for company, and worked under renowned botanist Harley Harris Bartlett.
She returned to India and joined the Sugarcane Breeding Station in Coimbatore, where she changed the course of Indian agriculture. The country’s native sugarcane was hardy but lacked sweetness; imported varieties were sweeter but weak. Janaki crossbred both into something stronger, higher-yielding, and perfectly suited for Indian soil.
The sugar in Indian chai owes its taste to her. Continue reading India’s sugar was bitter, until her first female scientist made it sweet
I was riffling through the comments and my jaw dropped when Kabir claimed Hinduphobia doesn’t exist. It struck me as both historically and emotionally tone-deaf. I didn’t respond at the time, but I’ve been reflecting on it since.
Let me say upfront: Hinduphobia does exist. It may not always manifest in overt violence or systemic persecution (at least not today, and not in most places globally), but it does appear in more insidious, ideological forms; especially in academic and diasporic discourse.
Take, for instance, the backlash against H1B visa recipients. Much of that criticism is coded; targeting upper-caste Indians, especially Hindus, who are the primary beneficiaries of this brain-drain dynamic. It’s not just about class or meritocracy; there’s an unspoken discomfort with their presence and success, often couched in progressive rhetoric.
On the intellectual front, academics like Audrey Truschke and others within the left-liberal Western consensus have regularly challenged or dismissed Hindu identity altogether; reducing it to political nationalism or caste oppression. This refusal to acknowledge Hinduism as a living, plural, and spiritual tradition creates an environment where Hindu self-articulation is delegitimized. That too is a form of Hinduphobia.
Now, is this Hinduphobia the same as the systemic anti-Muslim, anti-Black, or anti-immigrant hatred we see elsewhere? No. Hinduphobia today is more dismissive than violent, more erasure than exclusion, but it is real and it needs to be acknowledged.
Pakistan Was Not Born from Hinduphobia Continue reading Hinduphobia Exists, But Pakistan Was Not Born from It
I. Bombay: Between Beauty and Brutality
I’m writing from Bombay, where the monsoon floods are overwhelming; visually and viscerally. The rain hammers the city with a kind of sublime fury. From certain vantage points, it’s breathtaking. But it’s also undeniably brutal for those without scenic surroundings or structural shelter. It’s a reminder that Indian beauty is often doubled with burden.
II. Burden Burst: The Commentariat Awakens
Lately on Brown Pundits, I’ve noticed a revival. Old voices returning, new ones emerging, and many ideas worth engaging. But some themes have worn thin; for instance I’m in broad agreement with Indosaurus & I don’t want to waste too much breath on Audrey Truschke. And frankly, Aurangzeb is not a hill I want to die on. In fact, perhaps one of the key misreadings by Muslims in the subcontinent was turning every ideological disagreement into a hill to die on. Maybe it began with QeA-Jinnah and the Great Allama but it ossified into a pattern. Everything became a matter of principle, rather than pragmatism.
III. Concession Is Not Compromise
Compromise is seen as weakness, but I’m more interested in the capacity to concede especially when history clearly shows you’re wrong. The Mughals installed a two-tier system, subordinating Hindus and even native Muslims. Contrast that with the Suri dynasty, particularly Sher Shah Suri, who in just two decades built the Grand Trunk Road and reshaped governance without the alienation that marked the Mughals. If Hindutva attacked the Suri legacy, I’d call it pure bigotry. Sher Shah ruled with the land, not over it. Continue reading Come Fly with me to Far Bombay
Life in Chennai has been calm. For breakfast I have rasam. It is a superfood: light, hot, and full of spice. Indian food is the only cuisine where I could be vegetarian. I know Persians who try. I feel sorry for them. No meat, no masala, no spice. There is only so much hummus one can eat.
But calm at the table contrasts with what I read in the news. The Delhi order to remove stray dogs is disturbing. I cannot look at the pictures of the removals.
Across the Trans-Wagah line, another current runs. The Pakistan Cricket Board may change its revenue-sharing with players. A small story, yet it speaks of a larger one: Pakistan may gain small tactical wins by tying its path as the flexible adversary to India. But for the top ten percent of its economy, the block is clear. They cannot flow into India’s success. They remain tied to Western patrons.
Meanwhile, old arguments are stirred again. Audrey Truschke has been active with fresh claims on Aurangzeb. The same week, Kabir wrote that Western philosophy outweighs Dharmic wisdom, and that Greek thought shaped Buddhism (I can’t remember if it was him). I wonder who first wrote this propaganda. It is damaging, and it lingers.
India’s stories stretch from the taste of rasam to the fate of stray dogs, from cricket boards to Aurangzeb’s ghost, from Kabir to the Greeks. Each is part of the same struggle: who owns the narrative of Bharat, and how it is told.
Links:
To the Dutch, a German Shepherd holds more worth: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNYEoQForz2/?igsh=MTVrZW1kZW94NHdieQ==
Serial Killing at a Famous Karnataka Temple: https://youtube.com/shorts/YexL_ASaGqE?si=mQ-Kdj6jSMzNPrAx
Could be Social Media Frenzy: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/dharmasthala-burial-case-political-temperature-soars-as-no-major-recovery-after-digging-17-spots/article69937387.ece
Not one Football: https://youtube.com/shorts/DR8SFCTCaoQ?si=tut2ymQB3EcDHTY6
I only heard about it from Kabir on WhatsApp.
I’m in Chennai at the moment so have been busy selecting art.
I feel like Brown Pundits is the oldest and most active Indo-Pak weblog? Am I wrong?
If China endured a century of humiliation, India has lived through a thousand years of it. Invasions and exploitation left it poor in wealth but rich in culture; intricate, adaptive, and resilient. That depth shows in Desi English, which often favours long, ornate sentences over plain ones.
This habit echoes Persian’s former role in the subcontinent: a prestige language whose mastery signalled rank. Even Ghalib’s vast Persian verse drew less love than his Urdu. In India, Persian was the colonial language of power; today, English plays that part.
In Iran, Persian changes fast. Slang, borrowed terms, and foreign tones reshape it so quickly that many in their forties struggle with teenage speech. My own Persian, kept alive in Kuwait and India, is closer to Shirazi and Tehrani standards than to the language my ancestors spoke. I’m self-conscious with Iranians, but with diaspora Persians, I speak freely; we share a looser, accented form of speech. Continue reading Why Indian English Loves Long Sentences
In the name of Pakistan, which is a beautiful poetic name, “Land of the Pure”, lies the tragedy of pathological purity. It is an addendum to the desire to stay pure. To remain untainted. But purity, when pursued absolutely, becomes brittle.
Madhuri Mahadevi
The Ambanis recently relocated Elephant Madhuri from Kolhapur’s Jain Math to the Vantara rehab centre, citing health concerns. But the move, though framed as rescue, triggered emotional protests, political pushback, and a national debate over animal welfare vs. sacred tradition.
Why did it explode? Because Madhuri wasn’t just a creature in need of savin; she was a living deity to those who loved her. Her departure wasn’t a routine animal welfare decision. It was a rupture in India’s civilizational relationship to the divine in nature. One of the most remarkable aspects of Hinduism is its seamless veneration of the natural world. The river is a mother. The cow, a guardian. The elephant, divine.
Few religions integrate reverence for nature into daily life with such tenderness and theological consistency. This story, of an elephant, a corporate empire, and a temple, speaks to a larger tension in India today: Who gets to define care? And when does “rescue” become removal? Continue reading Madhuri is stronger than the Ambanis
