Courtesan Culture

Kabir · May 7, 2026 · 26 comments

There has been some discussion of courtesan culture on X.T.M’s recent thread.

While BB is probably trolling, I am using the opportunity to provide links to some pieces that I have written discussing courtesan culture.   These pieces can be read by anyone who is interested in an informed discussion of the topic.

I will briefly quote from my essay Thumri and Social Change (originally written as part of my Masters coursework):

Thumri was traditionally associated with tawayafs, a Persian word which appears in Hindi/Urdu around the middle of the 19th century. Although currently associated with prostitution, the word originally denoted high class courtesans who were highly-skilled singers and dancers trained in the arts of poetry and conversation. Aristocrats would send their sons to tawayafs to be trained in manners and etiquette (Du Perron 2007: 1-2). Prior to colonial rule, courtesans were associated with royal courts. With the decline of these courts, courtesans increasingly began to entertain in their own private salons. They were often wealthy and, because of their unmarried status, were able to move around freely (2). Thumri was one of the principal genres of courtesan performance. The texts often express female desire, usually in the form of love-in-separation (viraha). The heroine either curses the day her lover left her or pleads with him not to abandon her. These themes made thumri ideal for courtesan performance as the performer could act out the anguish and desire experienced by the song’s heroine (3).

Asides from the above piece, some further relevant links are:

Review: Siren Song: Understanding Pakistan Through Its Women Singers by Fawzia Afzal-Khan 

Review: Umrao Jan Ada by Mirza Ruswa (translated by Khushwant Singh and M.A. Husaini) 

Review: Tawaifnama by Saba Dewan 

 

 

The Black Album: Between Liberalism and Fundamentalism

Kabir · May 7, 2026 · No comments

In the context of the recent debate about feminism and liberalism in Pakistan, I am taking the liberty of excerpting from an essay I wrote about Hanif Kureishi’s novel The Black Album.  This novel remains relevant many years after it was initially published.

Living in Pakistan post September 11th, it is impossible to get away from debates about the increasing “Talibanization” of society. The comment sections of online English-language newspapers are filled with what passes for discussion among those who advocate for the secularization of society and those who advocate for a return to “Islamic values”. This “discussion” usually consists of nothing more than one side calling the other “liberal fascists” and the other side responding by calling their opponents “Taliban apologists”. The same “discussions” occur on social media such as Facebook. Pakistani novelists too have attempted to tackle the issue of Pakistan’s involvement in the US-led “global war on terror” and the increasing religiosity of urban middle-class “educated” youth. For example, this theme forms much of the narrative of Mohsin Hamid’s 2007 bestseller The Reluctant Fundamentalist, recently made into a film. However, in my opinion, the best novel to examine the dialectic between liberalism and fundamentalism and the struggle in one man’s soul between these two polar opposites, was actually written long before 9/11. This novel, published in 1995, is Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album.

And:

As a novel of ideas, The Black Album is a fascinating study of the struggle in one British Pakistani young man’s heart between loyalty to his “culture” (as defined by Islam) versus loyalty to the ideals of his adopted homeland. Though much of the novel is specifically about the Rushdie affair, the debates about free expression and whether it should be limited or not—and if so, how much—are still current around the world. The book burning protest against The Satanic Verses can be compared to the violent protests against the recent YouTube film Innocence of Muslims and the riots that occurred on “Love the Prophet (PBUH) Day” in Pakistan on September 21st 2012. It is the strength of Literature that it enables us to see events, through the experiences and dilemmas of individuals, in a way that journalism or current affairs pieces don’t allow us to. No recent novel about fundamentalism has been able to capture the struggle that takes place in the hearts and minds of many Muslim adolescents as effectively as Kureishi was able to do in The Black Album.

The whole essay can be read here 

 

 

the Shah and the Saint

X.T.M · May 5, 2026 · 5 comments

A month ago the Shah wrote to the Saint:

Naah it is a good film… I will make you say Bharat Mata ki Jai by infiltrating into Pakistan and pointing a gun at your head.

The threat to Kabir, however jocularly framed, is the trigger. BB has a habit of strict adherence to the Letter of the Law while frantically attempting to violate its Spirit, and BP’s continued tolerance is contingent on Kabir’s goodwill. If Kabir lodges a reasonable complaint, the sanction escalates.

The next rung is a 40-comment fine and a one-week revocation of authorial and commentator privileges. This applies to BB under any handle or avatar as a lasting Precedent.

We are not heavy-handed and Authorial Autonomy deeply matters to us, but the issue is what the transgression actually was. We want genuine contrition, not a mea culpa followed by the old tricks in slightly more sophisticated form.

The “Prakrisation” of Hindi

X.T.M · May 5, 2026 · No comments

FlyeDie, presumably not one of BB’s handles, has left an excellent high-signal comment on the Hindification of East India. It posits Prakrit as a Latin analogue that spurred the development of the various Indic languages, and reads modern Hindi as walking the same path.

A wider blog admin note. We have been encouraging the Saint and the Shah to litigate their ongoing duel through the mechanism of high-signal posts, and this is the spirit in which we offer FlyeDie’s theory.

As an aside, there is also a very good comment by Calvin on the segregated political nature of the Indian Muslim community, which we may return to separately.

Brown Pundits exists to advance the bounds of niche knowledge on the Subcontinent. Our specific role is to stimulate excellent conversations, or guftugū as nos ancêtres les Mughalois would have punned it, and the comment below is one such endeavour, the more valuable because so much of our past has been lost or distorted. We reproduce it unedited.

Okay, I think I am going on a weird comment streak and losing my mind. So, I have a weird tin foil theory; it is going to be long, and it is going to sound like bullshit, but please bear with me. Here is my tin foil hat theory: Hindi is the Prakrit of the modern age, and it is destined to follow the same path as Prakrit. To explain what I am trying to say, I am going to talk about my favorite book about Prakrit: “Language of the Snakes Prakrit, Sanskrit, and the Language Order of Premodern India” by Andrew Olett.

Continue reading The “Prakrisation” of Hindi

You cannot be a leftist if you support fundamentally illiberal positions

Bombay Badshah · May 5, 2026 · No comments

There is a lot of recurring debate in the comments repeatedly about who is a leftist, especially pertaining to subcontinental politics.

Rather than aim this post at a specific country or an individual, I would like to give some general thoughts regarding this.

Firstly, what is a leftist? This is the Wikipedia definition.

Left-wing politics or leftism is the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole

So you can say that democracy is a very leftist idea as it achieves a semblance of “social equality”. No matter how rich or poor you are, no matter your gender/race/caste/creed, you get one vote which counts the same as everyone else’s.

Similarly equal rights for all is also a very leftist idea as it aims for “social equality”. Of course, in real life it is not so clear cut because certain groups do have advantages over other groups due to historical reasons. But having equal rights “on paper” is at least a start towards leftist utopia. If you don’t have that at all, then equality is a non starter.

Continue reading You cannot be a leftist if you support fundamentally illiberal positions

What Being a “Center-Left” Pakistani Means to Me

Kabir · May 5, 2026 · No comments

Since my center-left credentials are frequently questioned on BP, I am sharing this post here.  Perhaps  it can stand as a precedent post so that this debate can be put to rest once and for all.

I have been repeatedly accused on BP of not actually being “Center-Left”. A commenter has said “Pakistani liberal is an oxymoron”. I have been called an “Islamist” and “Islamofascist”. While it doesn’t particularly make a difference to my life what some random people (whom I am unlikely to ever meet in reality) think of me, I would like to take this opportunity to define what precisely being center-left means to me. I do not attempt to speak for other Pakistanis–though I believe there is a significant proportion of the population who share some of my beliefs– but only to describe my own personal background and ideology. This exercise will also hopefully help me to examine some of my own assumptions.

As I have previously mentioned in some comments, I come from a family that believes in Nehruvian Secularism and in the “idea of India”. This ideological influence comes primarily through my father. My paternal grandmother was from Agra and came to Pakistan only after her marriage to my grandfather (who was from Peshawar). My grandfather was an official in the Pakistan Railways and prior to the 1965 war, my father and his siblings used to travel by train to Agra every year to see their maternal grandparents and relatives. The war unfortunately put an end to that. While I never had an in-depth discussion with my grandmother about what exactly Pakistan meant to her, my father has told me that she was deeply saddened by the fact that she was separated from her parents and one of her brothers. Such tragedies were common in many Pakistani and Indian Muslim families. I was lucky enough to be able to visit India as a child and spend time in my dadi’s ancestral home. There are pictures of me in front of the Taj.

On my mother’s side, my maternal grandfather was born in Amritsar (though he was ethnically Kashmiri). In 1947, he was living in Sialkot and married to my nani (who was from West Punjab). However, his relatives came to Sialkot as refugees from Amritsar. For decades, they continued to carry the keys to their houses in Amritsar. In fact, when my mother spent time in Indian Punjab in the 1990s (while doing some international development work) people there were surprised to learn that she could describe Amritsar neighborhoods in great detail without ever having been there before.

It is also important to note that though I was born in Pakistan, I spent most of my formative years growing up in the United States. My parents had many Indian friends. Also, my entire family was deeply involved with Hindustani classical music and this naturally tends to be an Indian diaspora activity. My ustad was Bangladeshi-American but very few of his students were Muslim. While I was learning to sing khayal, I also learned bhajans and shabads in various ragas. Continue reading What Being a “Center-Left” Pakistani Means to Me

The god of small comments

X.T.M · May 4, 2026 · 13 comments

Fly Die:

Actually, it’s a lot more complicated than that in Kerala. Christians are deeply divided into multiple sectarian groups that started with schism in the Pre-colonial period and increased greatly moving into the colonial period. Historically, the original pre-colonial Christian communities that existed in the state were heavily interrelated with Levantine Christian groups such as the Assyrians, and mainly centered their religious activity around their center of operation in Iraq specifically. 

After the initial migration to India happened around the same time as the Gondhpharid Kardamaka dynasty ruling over Gujarat, as seen in the traditional literature, there were a few other waves. In one of these migrations, a set of Jewish-Christians from southern Mesopotamia led by Thomas of Cana, who settled and gradually developed into the modern sub-Nazarene group called the “Knanaya”. These new groups of Christians conflicted with the old Christians, leading to the North-South Divide between the old and new groups. Eventually, more divisions kept on happening as theological disagreements continued over time. 

Continue reading The god of small comments

The Shijrah and the Y-Chromosome

X.T.M · May 4, 2026 · 27 comments

A sequel to “Arab Fathers are not fabrications (entirely)“

The previous post answered BB. The comment thread produced an objection from Q, who concedes the cultural point and grants that Sayyid status mattered, then argues that Y-DNA is unreliable because Central Asian Sufism accepted matrilineal Sayyid descent and that South Asian Sayyids are 95 per cent autosomally local in any case. BB and Q essentially reach the same conclusion by different routes.

The mother’s status

Hinduism and Christianity both carry the mother’s status as load-bearing. Varna purity is bilineal, and the maternal line is policed: pratiloma unions, where a lower-status man fathers a child on a higher-status woman, are catastrophic in Manusmriti. The Christian veneration on the Virgin runs the same logic by inversion. A story of “foreign father, local mother” collapses status in both systems, so it gets erased. Brahmin origin narratives almost never claim foreign paternity.

Islam does not police the maternal line the same way. The line is the father’s, and a slave concubine’s son inherits paternal status undiluted. The eleventh Imam was the son of a Nubian concubine. The Abbasid caliphs from the mid-period onward were almost all sons of Turkic, Greek, Berber, or Slavic mothers. Classical fiqh weighs maternal lineage in kafa’ah and in some legitimacy disputes, but that is stratification, not pollution metaphysics.

The same asymmetry produced two radically different slavery histories. In the Atlantic system, partus sequitur ventrem fixed the child to the mother’s status; the descendants of African slaves remained enslaved and congealed into a marked descendant class. In the Islamic system, the child of an African concubine inherited his father’s status as a free Muslim; the descendants assimilated into the general population over generations. The genetics ratify the divergence: Sub-Saharan ancestry is diffused across Arabian, Iranian, and Turkish populations rather than concentrated in a separated descendant community.

Hence the asymmetric record. Mappilas, the Hadhrami diaspora, the Swahili coast all preserve foreign paternal lineage, and the Y-DNA converges with the claim. Arab nasab tradition demands at least ten generations of fathers in living recall.

Shia and Sunni Sayyids

Continue reading The Shijrah and the Y-Chromosome

South Asian Symphony Orchestra

Kabir · May 3, 2026 · 2 comments

I learned about the South Asian Symphony Orchestra today–an organization which I had been previously unaware of.  I thought I’d share it here since it is a rare example of positivity in the region.

The organization’s website explains the aim of the organization as follows:

The aim of the South Asian Symphony Foundation (SASF) is to promote greater cultural integration for the cause of peace in our region of South Asia, through the medium of music and the creation of a South Asian Symphony Orchestra. The inspiration has come from Ambassador Nirupama Menon Rao’s years in diplomacy and what she saw as a felt need for providing a platform to promote more dialogue, cultural synergy, and friendly understanding among the youth of the eight countries in South Asia, including India.

The website goes on to answer the question of “Why South Asia?”:

Why South Asia, you may ask. South Asia has often been defined as just India and Pakistan, but the history of the region is much more nuanced and incredibly vibrant. South Asia extends from Afghanistan, through Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bhutan, through India, Sri Lanka, and to the Maldives. Nationalism has trumped regionalism in this space. We would like our Orchestra to point the way to recognition of the fact that South Asia is in many ways an integer, bound more together by our commonalities than our differences. To quote the famous words of Ambassador Vijayalakshmi Pandit, before the United Nations, “Let us sweat in peace, not bleed in war”.

I do find it kind of ironic that the music that is being used to promote peace is Western classical music rather than the systems of classical music indigenous to South Asia–such as Hindustani or Carnatic classical music.

I will end this post by linking to a piece I had written called “In Defense of ‘South Asia'” (which was earlier published on BP).

 

 

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