Today will be a bit busy so I haven’t had time to attend to BP (running on 4-5hours sleep).
Talk about whatever you like; I’ll make this thread sticky a while. A good & engaged commentariat is the lifeblood of a platform.
I’m working on something that will be a bit interesting (my newsletter meets my work) but let’s hear from you w.r.t the wacky and the wonderful.
Iâve been following the usual commentary, the BP quadrant: Indosauras, Nivedita, Kabir. And I read Kabirâs offhand remark that the Ramayana âdidnât resonateâ the way the Iliad or Odyssey did. That casual dismissal is telling.
The Ramayana is not just literature, Â it is scripture, memory, and civilization encoded in verse. It has shaped the moral and cultural landscape of over a billion people for millennia. To compare it, then downplay it and to do so so glibly reveals less about the text and more about oneâs own civilizational estrangement.
Letâs be honest: that kind of language would never be used for the Quran or Islamic texts. And the fact that it is used for Hindu epics by brown intellectuals raised in the shadows of colonial categories says everything about how deeply colonized the Pakistani mind remains. Pakistan is, in truth, an Urdufied Punjab insufficiently imagined, a fragment that lost its civilizational compass in the act of imagining itself apart. The fact that the Ramayan being Pakistani heritage is such a novelty speaks volumes.
Today I sat at Stratford Westfield, eating Dubai Hot Chocolate ice cream, and the man next to me clearly Pakistani asked me, in Urdu, âif I was in the queue?â His wife spoke Punjabi-inflected Urdu. It struck me how London has become the real unifying Punjab. Ten percent of Britain is now Desi. And outside of the subcontinent, the fractures of 1947 heal in ways that remain impossible back home.
We speak of South Asia. But the term is bureaucratic; no one identifies with it. India is real. Bharat is civilizational. Aryavarta stretches from the Hindu Kush to the Indian Ocean â just as France is the Hexagon, Bharat is the Triangle. Partition clipped its wings, but its soul remains intact.
And look at the reality today: Indian Muslims are thriving in the mainstream. The title song of the upcoming film Sarai â written, composed, and directed by three Muslims: Ishaq, Fahim, and Arsalan. The leading lyricist is Javed Akhtar. This is a country that refused bitterness. A country whose largest minority chose Partition, and yet was never cast out, a unique precedent and testament the pluralism of Dharma.
Bharat needs no validation. It doesnât need the approval of its neighbours or the heirs of partitioned imagination. It only needs to walk â and it is flying. Toward its own authenticity, on its own terms. And the world is watching.
Extremely surprised to see this bit of news.
views ?
This Pakistani theatre group brought Ram and Sita to the stage. ‘It’s our Ramayana too’
When producer Namit Malhotra began explaining the Ramayana to Hans Zimmer, the legendary composer cut him off:
âYou donât have to explain it to me. Something that has lasted thousands of years clearly has meaning. Letâs just do our best. Itâs beyond us.â
Malhotra took this as reverence. In fact, it was erasure.
No serious Western artist would score The Ten Commandments or Schindlerâs List without knowing the story. Imagine a composer saying, âDonât explain the Illiad to me, itâs beyond me.â Theyâd be fired. But when it comes to Indian epics? The bar is subterranean. Thatâs not reverence.
Thatâs: Iâm Western, Iâm famous, Iâm here for the cheque; not the history. The tragedy isnât Zimmerâs line. Itâs Malhotraâs awe. A Westerner shrugs off our most sacred text, and we call it wisdom. Thatâs not cultural pride. Thatâs civilizational confusion. Itâs a pattern. Many elite Indians are fluent in the language of Islamic grievance; but tone-deaf to Western condescension.
Divide and rule still works:
Hindus thank the British for âfreeingâ them from Muslim rule
Muslims thank the British for âprotectingâ them from Hindu majoritarianism
Meanwhile, the West shrugs at our stories and we applaud.
Shravan Monday at the New England Temple
Continue reading Hans Zimmer and the Polite Dismissal of the Ramayana
On July 14, I wrote about Taâarof ; the millennia-old Persian art of flattery, refusal, and ritualised courtesy. Itâs often misunderstood in the West as âsaying no three times,â but itâs really about emotional high-context negotiation, reading the room before the room speaks.
The next day, on July 15, Sharghzadeh posted a powerful video, calling it Iranian Diaspora Fatigue. A searing takedown of the Iranian Diaspora’s toxic racial insecurities, internalised Islamophobia, misogyny masked as modernity, and cultural denialism. Heâs mostly right.
What he calls fatigue, Iâd call poisoned flattery turned inward. Because Tehranglos are no longer performing Taâarof to honour guests or elders. They’re doing it to whiteness itself. Hoping if they refuse our own identity long enough, maybe the West will say: âYes, come in.â
Thatâs not assimilation. Thatâs exhaustion. And the worst part? Even the racism feels borrowed; against Arabs, against Afghans, against Iranians back home. Itâs not even Iranian. This isnât just about cringe TikToks or awkward panel guests. Itâs about who gets to narrate Persian culture. And what gets flattened when tradition becomes product. I was stunned when Zachary Newman â one of the most prominent Persian-Jewish American chefs â endorsed Netanyahuâs strikes on Iran. That moment crystallised something.
Sharghzadeh and I are saying the same thing: Persian culture is being gentrified by its own children. What survives isnât tradition. Itâs content. Itâs vibes. If Iran is an unreadable poem, diaspora is turning it into a slogan. If Iran is lived, diaspora is increasingly just captioned. And they wonder why they’re tired. Is the Persian diaspora preserving a culture, or just performing it for the algorithm?
UP’s very long shadow:
As I board my flight back to the UK after a brief but productive trip, I find myself reflecting on a language that continues to haunt and inspire me: Urdu.
It is a tongue caught between paradoxes. The language of courtesans and qawwals, of sacred supplication and sly seduction. It carries within it the scent of jasmine and blood, of Delhiâs dusk and Lahoreâs lingering grief.
The Beloved Guardian of the Bahaâi Faith once noted that while most Bahaâi texts should be translated from English, Urdu alone is trusted for direct translation from Persian and Arabic. That proximity, that spiritual siblinghood with Persian, the language of kings, and Arabic, the language of God, renders Urdu magical.
Sanskrit, of course, is the language of gods, but Urdu, its stepdaughter of sorts, captures the longing of poet to partisan.
Thereâs a reason the BahĂĄâĂ prayer I share below is so piercing in Urdu. So here, before I cross back into another timezone, I offer this prayerâwithout commentary, without translation. Just Urdu, as it was meant to be heard.
And I wonder: perhaps this is what Pakistan truly isâa project in transcending the local. Not rooted in soil, but in sentiment. A place where Punjabis, Pathans, and Muhajirs are asked to shed skin and commune in Urdu. Where Pakistaniyat, for all its fractures, has succeeded in producing a common idiom: of piety, pride, and pain. Continue reading Pakistaniat & Urdu from Qasim to Quaid
Because Tarof isnât about numerical formulae. Itâs not just âno means yes after the third try.â Itâs not a knock-knock joke.
Onunchi, Taâarof, and High-Context Societies
Read More Here
In the aftermath of the extremely tragic plane crash in Ahmedabad (the photo features the late Ali family, may they rest in the Highest Heaven), one tiny detail stood out; not the cause of the disaster (still contested), but who was being heard. Many of the victimsâ families interviewed by the BBC were of Muslim origin (it was also during the Eid Holiday break). And while that may seem incidental, it reveals a subtle, recurring pattern in Indiaâs public discourse.
Three threads emerge:
Continue reading Visibility, Voice, and the Indian Muslim Dilemma
Kabir:I will remind you of the Sachar Committee Report which stated that the condition of Indian Muslims was worse than that of Dalits. This was a report commissioned by the Congress government not by Pakistanis. India has never had a Muslim Prime Minister. I would be willing to bet that this is not going to happen in my lifetime. The Muslim League succeeded in getting the Muslim majority provinces a country of our own. This is a huge achievement.
Partition was sold as deliverance. In hindsight, it may have been the most sophisticated act of self-disinheritance in modern Muslim history. A century ago, Muslims on the subcontinent were a political force â deeply embedded, numerically significant, and intellectually diverse. Today, they are divided, disenfranchised, and disoriented. Three nations. No unity. No power. No clear path forward. Letâs take stock:
1. Divided into Three
Pakistan. Bangladesh. India. Three fractured expressions of one civilizational legacy â none of which fully represents or protects the totality of South Asia’s Muslims.
2. No Electorate Leverage
In India, Muslims lost their negotiating bloc overnight. From being a decisive vote in undivided India, they became a permanent minority â politically cautious, rhetorically silenced, and often viewed with suspicion. In Pakistan, Muslim identity became so hegemonic it erased internal plurality. In Bangladesh, it became suspect altogether.
3. Psychological Cleft
Two-thirds of Muslims had to unlearn India. Partition forced them to disown their history. The other third had to choose between being Muslim or becoming more Indian. This psychic wound â of being here, but not quite belonging â has never healed.
4. Urdu: From Bridge to Burden
Urdu, once the cultural glue of the Muslim elite, is now:
A shared language was replaced by suspicion and statecraft.
5. Islam as a Spent Force
Partition Islam was meant to be political. It became performative. There is no robust Muslim political expression in the subcontinent today â only tokenism, sectarianism, or silence. It resembles post-revolution Iran: Islam was not discredited by the West, but by what its stewards did in its name. Partition didnât solve the âMuslim Question.â It just made it unspeakable â in three different politicised idioms.
In a recent video, a young Punjabi woman, likely Sikh, candidly shares her discomfort upon returning to India after living in Canada (this kind of echoes the Aussie influencer’s comments on chronic Indian inequality). The noise, the pollution, the density. Her frustration is raw, familiar, and deeply sincere.
But beneath her words lies something larger: the aesthetic asymmetry that defines the postcolonial condition. Wide roads, clean air, manicured parks; these are not just amenities. In the global South, they become symbols of escape, status, and salvation. And so, millions migrate. Or aspire to. Not just for jobs, but for dignity. For air that doesnât burn. For order that doesnât humiliate. For a feeling of being seen.
And when they do, when they arrive in Canada, the UK, Australia, something subtle happens: they become grateful. Not just for opportunity, but for escape. For the fact that the West âworks.â That gratitude then curdles into deference.
They begin to believe that the world outside the West is meant to be chaotic, dirty, loud. That governance is a Western gift. That clean streets and quiet parks are civilizational rather than institutional. This is the gratitude trap; the soft power of asphalt, symmetry, and silence.
And itâs why postcolonial recovery is so difficult. Not because the global South lacks culture or potential, but because its own elites, shaped by extraction, not architecture, rarely build for elegance. Rarely build for pride. Rarely build for joy. What the West exported was not just railways or rule of law. It exported a built environment that still shames us. And until that is understood, until we take seriously the spatial dignity of our cities and the material form of our futures, the colonial spell will remain unbroken.
