X.T.M – Page 20 – Brown Pundits

Come Fly with me to Far Bombay

X.T.M · August 19, 2025 · 25 comments

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

Open Thread: Rasam, Stray Dogs, and the Battle Over India’s Story

X.T.M · August 16, 2025 · 84 comments

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

Open Thread- Rahul Gandhi detained?

X.T.M · August 11, 2025 · 34 comments

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?

Why Indian English Loves Long Sentences

X.T.M · August 10, 2025 · 4 comments

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

Madhuri is stronger than the Ambanis

X.T.M · August 8, 2025 · 10 comments

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

Ghosts of 1947

X.T.M · August 6, 2025 · 40 comments

Indian Reunification Association

I’m Sumayya from Pakistan, it’s very nice to meet you all. I need your help, it’s about my Dadi.

I’m attaching a picture of my Dadi a year after Partition. She opened up about Partition 1947. I believe it has been a severe kind of trauma where it took her nearly 70 years to open up completely, and even then she stopped talking after a while. It was a bloody massacre, Kashmir sadly bearing the brunt of it. Her last memories are being deceived to get in a bus which would take them to Pakistan, but then women yelling at the driver that he was taking them somewhere else.

Then men standing outside scaring them with swords, while women ran away from the bus and jumped into a nearby river. My Dadi (fourteen at the time) and her younger sister also ran to jump, but her father held them and said nothing would happen to them, and directed them to hide under a seat. She doesn’t remember much after that, just the fact that she heard her baby sister being taken away, and then herself being dragged out, upon which she tried to clutch onto her mother’s kurta but it tore. At that point, herself and her mother were the last in the bus, everyone else was either killed or taken away.

I am not sure, but she firmly, firmly believes that her sister was the most beautiful of them all and must not have been killed and maybe taken away to get married to someone. During her youth she tried posting about her in newspapers but it never helped. I know it’s probably too late, but maybe if she did get married and had children, she must’ve told her story to her kids, whom I could locate? I’ve registered to many Kashmiri directories and pages, let me know what else I could do to locate her family.

The only information I know is that they lived in Jammu, Kashmir and my Dadi’s name is Mehmooda. Her sister was Kulsoom (Ummul Kulsoom), they had eight more siblings. Their parents were Hakim Din and Amna.This is in no way a religious/political debate. Just want to use the internet to locate my long lost family.

Post Credit: Sumayya T Malick

Continue reading Ghosts of 1947

🧵 Open Thread: Hate Speech, Travel Notes, and Diplomatic Surprises

X.T.M · August 3, 2025 · 34 comments

I just saw a comment that genuinely crossed the line; not just a misstep, but something hateful, dehumanizing, and deeply communal. It invoked Partition violence in a way that glorified massacre. That’s not just a dogwhistle, that’s a foghorn.

As most of you know, I’m a light-touch moderator. I tolerate a lot. I believe in messy dialogue. I’ve been fair on my WhatsApp groups, fair on BP, and generally try to err on the side of letting things play out. But this? This wasn’t a close call. It was a clear failure of moral language.

Even if the commenter didn’t “mean it,” this kind of rhetoric has consequences. When you’re speaking about events like 1947, where entire families were destroyed, you need to speak with care, not contempt. There’s no room for casual violence, coded language, or historical gloating. None. Zero.

Before this commenter contributes further to the blog, he will need to fully retract and apologise for the communal language he used. Criticism is fair game. But hate speech is not. Kabir can be theatrical, yes but he does not traffic in dehumanization. The standards must be consistent, and that comment clearly crossed the line.

Please observe this on the thread. I’m traveling, and this is an open post. I’ll be back with more soon. I’ve written a bit in my newsletter but I will expand on those.

In the meantime:

➡️ Yes, it appears Pakistan is running smart diplomacy — both with Iran and the U.S.

➡️ I don’t have time to share the links (plane about to take off); they’re all Google-able.

➡️ But credit where it’s due. There is no infallibility in foreign affairs. But when someone cannot stand to see Pakistan get anything right, it reveals more about their own biases than about geopolitics.

This isn’t about defending states or “sides”; it’s about defending basic decency in discourse.

🎶 Bravo, Kabir | Artists Across Borders

X.T.M · August 3, 2025 · 9 comments

This Sunday, something quietly powerful is taking place: Indian and Pakistani artists will share a virtual stage, and among them is our very own Kabir Altaf, performing as a Hindustani classical vocalist and ethnomusicologist based in Pakistan.

Kabir shared that Sheema ji personally invited him to sing, and he’s planning to perform the Kabir bhajan already available on Spotify. A simple act but a potent one. Rooted in shared heritage, offered in public.

It’s easy to be cynical about India–Pakistan relations. But these moments matter. When musicians from Sindh and Delhi, translators from Karachi, and filmmakers from Mumbai come together, even on Zoom, they create a space that politics cannot reach. A space where memory, performance, and shared roots do the work diplomacy cannot.

This is the kind of initiative we need more of: not policy, but presence; not diplomacy, but dialogue. These exchanges don’t dilute identity; they deepen it.

Bravo and huzzah to Kabir, and to all involved.

🗓 Event:

Indian–Pakistani Artists in Dialogue

📅 Saturday, 3rd August 2025

⏰ 7:30 PM Pakistan time / 8:00 PM India time

👩‍🎤 Moderator:

Sheema Kermani – Bharatanatyam dancer, theatre personality, Karachi

🎙 Featured Speakers & Performers:

Dr. Syeda Saiyidain Hameed – Writer, former Member of India’s Planning Commission
Dr. Ghazala Irfan – Philosopher and Chair, Department of Humanities, LUMS; affiliated with All Pakistan Music Conference
Anand Patwardhan – Documentary filmmaker, Mumbai
Saleema J. Khawaja – Vocalist of Punjabi Kafi and Guru Nanak verses, Lahore
Neela Bhagwat – Hindustani vocalist (Gwalior Gharana), Mumbai
Azhar Shan – Folk musician from Sindh
Dhruv Sangari – Hindustani classical and Sufi vocalist, Delhi
Zainub J. Khawaja – Musician, member of Harsukhiyaan, Pakistan
Yousuf Saeed – Documentary filmmaker, known for work on classical music in Pakistan, Delhi
Kabir Altaf – Hindustani classical vocalist and ethnomusicologist, Pakistan
Nishtha Jain – Documentary filmmaker, Mumbai
Zahra Sabri – Lecturer and translator, Karachi
Zulaikha Jabeen – Independent scholar, India

🔗 Join via Zoom

Click here to join

Meeting ID: 897 8701 6742

📯 Back at Peak: 22,453 Monthly Readers and Rising

X.T.M · August 2, 2025 · 7 comments

Even the stats now confirm it: we’re back at our highest readership in our ~15 years.

22,453 monthly readers and rising. 100+ comments on most new posts.

No ads. No algorithm. No social media amplification. Just a small, steady core of thinkers, returners, and writers keeping the conversation alive. This isn’t mass media — it’s a deliberately narrow beam.

A place for:

Tight but Broad Church curation
Long-form thinking
Commentary that draws blood when needed but never aims cheap

The current moment feels like a return, not just of older names, but of why BP was built in the first place: a public space for Brown(ish) minds to work through power, faith, identity, language, and sometimes just the week’s news on our own terms.

Related: Brown Pundits, big in India!

Why Pakistan Won’t Go the Way of Iran

X.T.M · August 1, 2025 · 105 comments

I’ve been enjoying the new direction Brown Pundits has taken since the recent shake-up. Posts are now generating 100+ comments, and that kind of engagement creates a virtuous cycle. You want to write more, think more, respond more. I’m leaning into that.

For now, a lot of the content burden rests on me and that’s okay. It’s been encouraging to see older names return: Girmit, for instance. It feels like a slow reconsolidation of the original readership. Letting people return on their own terms.

Meanwhile, BRAHM, my newsletter, has taken on a different role; a home for more composed writing, life pieces, and the slow launchpad for my business. I just posted something there recently, which I’ll link to for now and follow up on soon. But here, on BP, is where I let myself think in public. Where I go long. Where thoughts breathe.

Continue reading Why Pakistan Won’t Go the Way of Iran