Brown Pundits

It’s been startling—at times dispiriting—to witness the tenor of Pakistani responses to recent BP posts. Not just the jingoism, but the denial. A refusal to acknowledge the civilizational reality of India before 1947. It isn’t just ahistorical—it’s tragicomic. And it reveals a deeper pathology: the English-speaking Pakistani elite is afflicted with Post-Colonial Derangement Syndrome. Omar has long argued this. I’ve become a convert over the past decade.

I love Pakistan. But that love doesn’t require denying India. I can honour my father and mother without disfiguring one to exalt the other. Civilizations are not exclusive claims—they are overlapping inheritances. Nationalism demands we choose. Patriotism allows us to belong. One blinds. The other binds.

Pakistan’s identity hinges on rupture. It claims to be not Hind, not Bharat—something purer, separate, superior. And yet, its elites remain obsessed with India. At least the Koreas and Vietnams acknowledge their shared past. Even China and Taiwan did—until foreign interference fractured that memory. But here? Not even a name is spared. There is no sign of “India” in the very land that birthed the name. If India truly didn’t exist in the Pakistani imagination, why the resentment? Why the rivalry? The schizophrenia is telling: deny the mother, envy the sibling.

Take Kashmir. If this is a political conflict—not religious—why were the victims in Pahalgam targeted as adult Hindu men? That wasn’t strategic. It was sectarian. Either the attackers acted from religious hatred, or the political cause they serve is entangled with it. You cannot claim secular nationalism while endorsing ideological murder. Continue reading The Arrogance That Binds: Post-Colonial Delusions in the English speaking Pakistani Mind

In an unexpected way, this war has revived Brown Pundits. A site that had drifted into silence is now surging with life again—threads are active, arguments are sharp, and the intellectual pulse has returned. Conflict, for all its tragedy, has a way of clarifying identities and sharpening thought. It’s given many of us the urgency—and the material—to write. I’ll be resuming active moderation and will be onboarding new moderators and authors shortly. But one key requirement for any new authors & moderators (we are only 6 right now), beyond what is stated: you must be active. Lurking is fine, but contribution is what keeps this platform alive.

Three comments caught my attention, each illuminating a deeper tension at the heart of South Asia. But all point to the same truth: the deeper our wars go, the more we are forced to ask, what are we really fighting for? Continue reading Why Pakistanis Should Say Jai Hind: Civilizational Fractures in a Post-Nation South Asia

Ngl Kabir’s comments about the “Muslim Valley” kind of triggered me. It really does solidify Pakistan as a second class state for everyone who is not a Muslim (and that’s at least 5% of the population).

I find that majoritarianism unhealthy so I’m going to stick this picture of the above; Modi, for all his flaws, has presided over a shining decade for India, where it is recognised as an ascendant superpower while Pakistan is firmly a Chinese satellite.

Comment Policy Update (May 11, 2025)

A quick reminder for all:

1. Spam Filter: Comments with 2+ links may go to spam automatically. It’s a default safeguard—not a block.

2. Trusted Commenters: If you’ve commented twice before without issue, you should now post freely. No one is blocked or suspended right now.

3. If Your Comment Disappears: Just post a short note: “My comment went to spam.” I’ll retrieve it manually.

(Thanks to Nivedita for flagging the issue—otherwise, I wouldn’t have noticed Xperia’s comment got filtered.)

4. Moderation Style: I reply to all substantive comments. If a comment crosses a clear line (abuse, trolling, tone violations), I may quietly remove or edit the offending portion.

5. Core Principles: Brown Pundits is a neutral platform. Nothing is sacred. Everything is up for discussion—except jingoism, personal abuse, or low-signal provocation.

Want to help moderate? Drop me a line if you’re interested in mod privileges and willing to uphold these norms. Feedback always welcome.

Not out of weakness, but calculation. It’s waiting for the international community to bribe it into silence. One advantage of being quasi-democratic (like Russia or China) is the ability to sideline public opinion. Pakistan can afford to wait. India, by contrast, appears to be following an Israel-style doctrine. But Pakistan is more Prussia than Palestine and Modi feels much weaker from this episode (he promised a safe Kashmir).

Competing regional giants and nuclear powers, India and China are widely seen as long-term strategic rivals, sharing a 3,800 km (2,400 mile) Himalayan border that has been disputed since the 1950s and sparked a brief war in 1962. The most recent standoff began in 2020 and thawed only in October 2023, when both sides agreed to a formal patrolling agreement, placing limits on forward deployment and coordinated disengagement. Even between nuclear-armed antagonists, restraint is possible when war threatens mutual prosperity.

Likewise, Putin’s behavior post-Maidan in 2014 was not immediate escalation. Instead, Crimea was seized swiftly, but Russia spent eight years supporting separatists and waging hybrid war in Donbas before launching a full-scale invasion in 2022. It was restraint with intent, waiting for the West to appear divided or distracted.

It’s strange that every time the region stabilizes, something reignites tension. Why would China, India, or Pakistan want instability when wealth and growth depend on peace? Yet here we are.

The BJP base craves nothing short of Pakistan’s annihilation. That’s a fantasy; militarily, diplomatically, and strategically. Why shouldn’t India fully cooperate in an international investigation to determine who was behind the Pahalgam attack? The refusal suggests this moment is being used as a casus belli; leveraging the incident to project force in a world increasingly shaped by Trumpian-Putinesque instincts.

Even the postponement of the IPL was an indirect consequence of what Pakistan could do. This is not a toothless state. Pakistan is David with a nuke or more accurately, an incidental Prussia, hyper-militarized but calculating. The public isn’t rising up against its military; if anything, this round has shown that Pakistan can restrain itself without looking weak.

In fact, Pakistan has consistently been the more restrained nuclear power. Israel has spent two years trying to flatten Gaza with limited success. The U.S. stayed in Afghanistan and Iraq far too long, trapped by asymmetric warfare. These are textbook examples of tactical response leading to strategic drift.

Modi should study those cases. Retaliation may thrill headlines. But strategy lies in staying still until the storm passes and only then, deciding if and how to move.

These thoughts emerged as I was replying to the 100+ comments on Omar’s post, India and Pakistan, Back to the Future..

Flight, Fragility, and the First Bollywood Snake

My first memories of Pakistan are tangled with flight and childhood fiction. In 1990, as we escaped Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion, our car crossed into Pakistani Baluchistan carrying five adults and three children. After over a month in Iran (the family gardens of Shiraz are a blurry childhood memory), where we were understandably low-key about being Bahá’ís, I remember yelling out the car window the moment we crossed the border, “I’m Bahá’í! I’m Bahá’í!” My family laughed (I was the youngest and always the most impetuous). The story has been retold so often I don’t know where memory ends and performance begins.

But the innocence of that moment gave way quickly. I remember the poverty at the border: raw, overwhelming on both sides of Baluchistan. And then, in Karachi, came my first exposure to India—through a Bollywood film featuring a dancing girl in a Sari transforming into a snake. That, more than any textbook, was my introduction to Hinduism. Try as it might, Pakistan is the ineffable portal to Hindustan, a mirror that reflects what it cannot contain. These memories—flight, fragility, and fantasy—etched into me the idea that culture moves where politics cannot.

Restraint Is the Strategy: Rethinking Peace in South Asia

South Asia is home to nearly 2 billion people. It’s a region of nuclear states, frozen conflicts, and postcolonial trauma. Yet every time a cross-border terrorist attack kills 20 or 30 civilians, it makes global headlines. That’s not just because of the violence—but because the violence is rare. This isn’t an excuse. It’s a signal: South Asia has already learned restraint. The question is whether it can remember why.

The Bug in the Democratic Mind

After 9/11, the U.S. was angry. George W. Bush gave the people what they wanted: a war. Two, actually. Instead of a tactical mission to dismantle a terrorist network, America destabilized entire regions, wasted trillions, and incubated future threats.

This is the paradox of democracy:

• Populations demand retribution.

• Leaders comply.

• Strategy is hijacked by spectacle.

India must adopt a radically different approach. Treat Pakistan the way South Korea treats North Korea: sidestep, outperform, outgrow. Engagement legitimizes provocation. Retaliation restores parity. Indifference signals dominance. Continue reading Let Pakistan Throw Stones. India Should Build the Skyline.