Essay and commentary
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The Crescent and the Trident clash over their women
X.T.M argues that the Crescent’s seclusion and the Trident’s ‘protection’ of women are unequal in statute, citing Pakistan’s Hudood Ordinances, but equivalent in structure, as the bahu-beti bachao slogan and…
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Pakistan & India as Imperial Nation States
X.T.M reports a conference claim that India and Pakistan are post-imperial states smothering small nations, does not adopt that frame, and argues that ethnicity resurges in Pakistan because Islam has…
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Reading Dawn in Delhi.
X.T.M reports Beena Sarwar’s talk at Mela Nordic’s Stockholm Partition event, tracing the end of Aman ki Asha to Sapan, a volunteer network with a minimum common agenda that bans…
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The Meltwater Carries No Passport
X.T.M reports Anuradha Bhasin’s talk at Mela Nordic’s Stockholm Partition event, which proposed cross-border newsrooms, a shared archive and arts as empathy, and weighs it against earlier attempts such as…
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Geography is Power
A reply to X.T.M’s post, this essay argues from realism that geography has shaped South Asian states’ trajectories, citing Mackinder and Spykman, Pakistan’s Cold War and GWOT frontier role, and…
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Geography Is Not Power
India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty believing the upstream power holds the tap. It does not. From the Indus to the Nile, the country at the top of the river…
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Who did the Brits conquer India from?
Did the British take India from the Muslims or from the Hindus? The question cannot be answered, because it was never true. The empire they inherited had already fallen apart,…
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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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Indus Water Treaty: What lies in the future?
The author sets out the main disputes over the Indus Waters Treaty now held in abeyance: dispute-resolution forums, water distribution and dam design. Argues Pakistan’s deeper problem is population growth,…
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The joy of watching Vaibhav Sooryavanshi
Bombay Badshah celebrates the batting of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi: his record-breaking Under-19 World Cup final 175, the IPL century for Rajasthan Royals at 14 and his call-up to India’s tours as…
