Are You Sri Lankan?

X.T.M · April 28, 2025 · Comments Off on Are You Sri Lankan?

Notes on Identity, Gharbzadegi, and the Azizam Effect

Yesterday, a Persian friend casually asked me if I was Sri Lankan. I wasn’t offended. Startled, yes — but not offended. I take pride in being Desi. And truthfully, there isn’t a stark difference between many South Asian and Persian phenotypes at the human level. But the interaction stayed with me.

Because while I can understand a Scandinavian confusing Indians and Iranians — my Danish friend, for example, couldn’t reliably tell them apart — it hits differently when Persians, especially non-Muslim, Westernised Persians, make the same mistake.

Immediately, another half-Indian, half-Iranian friend interjected:

“Zach doesn’t look Sri Lankan at all.”

For what it’s worth, when I was in Colombo over New Year’s, I fell in love with Sri Lanka — the island, the people, the everything. Also the phenotype range in Sri Lanka is extensive since there is so Dutch, Portuguese & Moorish ancestry in addition to the native ones. Some Sri Lankans even thought I was Sri Lankan myself. Truly, it is Serendib.

Continue reading Are You Sri Lankan?

The Myth of the British-Made India

X.T.M · April 26, 2025 · 45 comments

Six years ago, I wrote an outraged post on BP when a British historian casually claimed that “the British created India” (we had a very thriving commentariat then); a breathtaking erasure of one of the world’s oldest civilizations.

Today, reading Francis Pike’s piece in The Spectator, I feel the same cold disdain. Pike repeats the same old colonial fantasy: that India was a “patchwork of principalities,” and that Nehru and Gandhi “invented” the myth of Indian unity. Let’s be clear: this is not history. It’s imperial nostalgia dressed up as analysis.

“India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Mahatma Gandhi both propagated the myth that India had always been a unified country.”

“More reflective commentators knew that this was hogwash.”

“It was the British who
 for the first time introduced the rule of law and a democratic form of government.”

This is colonial gaslighting at its most refined. Continue reading The Myth of the British-Made India

Caesar’s Pakistani wife must be above suspicion

X.T.M · April 24, 2025 · 1 comment

May those who lost their lives in the Pahalgam tragedy rest in peace. May the injured find swift healing. And may the perpetrators be brought to justice.

False Flags, Fragile Ideologies, and the Weight of History

I don’t want to take away from Omar’s excellent piece, India and Pakistan: Back to the Future—he nailed it on the trajectory of Pakistan’s self-conception and the road ahead for India.

But what began as a comment evolved into something more. I wanted to briefly address the misinformed murmurings online about the attack on Pahalgam being a false flag.

Caesar’s Wife

There’s an old line: Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. If you want to be taken seriously on the world stage, perception is half the battle. India has a clear civilizational and national narrative. Despite its contradictions, it’s attempting—seriously—to join the ranks of the U.S. and China. And it’s making real progress.

Pakistan, by contrast, seems increasingly defined by what it opposes rather than what it builds. Its civilizational narrative has, over time, narrowed into a single impulse: block India at any cost. There are dozens of Muslim-majority nations. But there is only one India. That asymmetry matters—culturally, strategically, metaphysically.

Zia’s Logic: Annihilation as Strategy

One quote making the rounds—attributed to General Zia-ul-Haq—offers a glimpse into a mindset that’s still disturbingly prevalent: Continue reading Caesar’s Pakistani wife must be above suspicion

India and Pakistan, Back to the Future..

Omar Ali · April 23, 2025 · 145 comments

A group of terrorists attacked tourists in a remote meadow in Kashmir, identified those who were non-Muslim, and shot them dead (they also shot dead a Muslim tour guide who tried to oppose them). The horrendous and barbaric attack has led to a predictable outburst of harsh anti-Pakistan (and in many cases, anti-Muslim) outrage in India and the govt has already announced some steps against Pakistan and is presumably planning to undertake some more in the coming days.

Meanwhile, Pakistan (and individual patriotic Pakistanis) have taken to social media and traditional media to paint this as a “false flag attack” (i.e. carried out or planned by the Indian authorities themselves, presumably to allow them to retaliate against Pakistan; why?) or at least as India being “too quick to accuse Pakistan” (ie “we did not do it, and they are accusing us without proof”). This is all as expected in the usual India vs Pakistan show, but it is important to keep in mind that the situation has supposedly changed a little since 2019. Before that date there were many terrorist attacks in Kashmir and every major event would be followed by tit for tat exchanges along the line of control, but with both sides respecting “red lines”. Then in 2019 there was a large attack in Pulwama that was followed by an Indian retaliatory attack on a militant camp in Balakot in Pakistan proper (which crossed the previous red line of what retaliation was permissible). Since then there had been relative peace in kashmir and many commentators felt that the balakot bombing had established a new “red line”, that India will respond to any major attack in this or similar manner, so Pakistan has dialed down the terrorism it previously promoted in Kashmir. But if that is the case, then this attack obviously crosses that threshold and will lead to response. Irrespective of who is at fault and who did what, this was the supposed line and it has been crossed, so what next? 

As usual, i dont know. But lets list the questions and possible answers.

  1. IF this was indeed planned by Pakistan, then the question is “why”? Why now?

Possible answers and objections: Continue reading India and Pakistan, Back to the Future..

Cheap Catharsis, Expensive History

X.T.M · April 22, 2025 · 2 comments

Sathnam Sanghera recently alluded to a moment from his 2019 Channel 4 documentary The Massacre That Shook the Empire. In it, the great-granddaughter of General Dyer, the man responsible for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, is brought face-to-face with descendants of the victims.

In the clip, Dyer’s descendant calls the massacre victims “looters” and praises her great-grandfather as an “honourable man.” Twitter was predictably outraged. KJo chimed in. Think-pieces bloomed.

But why does her opinion matter?

This wasn’t justice, it was television. And like most televised reckonings with Empire, it was a performance. One more entry in the growing archive of aspirational brown catharsis, where the goal is not transformation but temporary relief; therapy instead of revolution.

Yes, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre was horrifying. No one disputes that. But to repeatedly stage these moments of inherited guilt and symbolic outrage is to substitute emotional spectacle for actual change.

Britain is not closer to redress. The Commonwealth isn’t inching toward reparations. British Asians are not about to own a fairer share of land, institutions, or equity. But we are expected to feel healed by the awkward mutterings of a descendant who’s not even sorry; just embarrassed that another cousin openly defended their ancestor.

This is not about historical accountability. It is about managing the mood of postcolonial subjects. Keep us emotional. Keep us visible. Keep us grateful.

But don’t give us power.

That is the unspoken logic of these curated moments: mourn the wound, not the cause.

And it works — because so many of us still seem to want respect more than justice. To be seen, included, affirmed.

But history will not be rewritten through awkward Channel 4 moments. It will only be reckoned with through real structural change.

Until then, let the Twitter mobs rage. But some of us will remain quietly asking the harder question:

What are we really performing here?

Constitutional Preambles in South Asia

Omar Ali · April 16, 2025 · 9 comments

an old article from our archive that has become hard to find, so reposting.

Most Countries around the world have a single consolidated written document as their Constitution (UK, New Zealand, Israel and Canada being notable exceptions here) and among these, a great many also have a preamble- a brief introductory text, preceding the main body of the written constitution. Preamble is essentially a polemic/set of guiding principles/visionary statement on the part of Constitution makers, before laying the foundation of a State in the main body. While it is of little consequence in day to day workings of a State, a Preamble does give us a fascinating insight into the ideals and cultural-historical myths propagated by a State- the context, the bigger picture, THE purpose behind that particular State’s existence.
Japan’s post-war preamble, for instance, vouches for International Peace and affirms that people of Japan shall never again be visited by horrors of war due to Government actions. French Preamble recalls Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen from 1789 and establishes France as a secular and democratic country. Likewise, North Korean Preamble promises a self-reliant socialist state that has realised the ideas and leadership of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.
And what do South Asian Preambles say? All 7 South Asian Countries
have a written constitution and all, but Maldives, have a preamble. Here’s the list:

Continue reading Constitutional Preambles in South Asia

The Historic Task of the Pakistani Bourgeoisie

Omar Ali · April 16, 2025 · 26 comments

Every few months some Pakistani Nationalist gets upset with me when I say mean things about their beloved TNT (Two Nation Theory), and wants me to tell them what MY alternative is.. At the same time, some Hindutvvadis will jump in with “see, this is what Pakistan is really about, how can we ever have peace”. The latest was over this speech by the Pakistani army chief:

So here goes another attempt at trying to explain myself..

Background:  This is my article on the ideology of Pakistan from 2013. Please do read it if you want to know more about that.. the main point is that Pakistan was insufficiently imagined prior to birth; and that once it came into being, the mythology favored by its establishment proved to be self-destructive;  and that it must be corrected (surreptitiously if need be, openly if possible) in order to permit the emergence of workable solutions to myriad common post-colonial problems. I also argue that Having adopted Islam and irrational denial of our own Indian-ness as core elements of the state, the ‘modern’ factions of the establishment lack the vocabulary to answer the fanatics. This has allowed a relatively small number of Islamist officers to promote wildly dangerous policies (like training half a million armed Islamic fanatics in the 1990s) without saner elements being able to stop them. This unique “own-goal”, unprecedented in the history of modern states, is impossible to understand without reference to the Islamic and irrationally anti-Indian element in the self-image of the Pakistani state.

So what can be done? I believe it is the historic task of the Pakistani bourg to either make Pakistan a more normal country, or to watch it broken up. i.e. the historic task of the Pakistani bourgeoisie today is to defang the two-nation theory (TNT). Pakistani nation state is based on an intellectually limited and dangerously confrontational theory of nationalism. The charter state of the Pakistani bourgeoisie is the Delhi Sultanate.. the state valorizes turkic colonizers and looks down on the local people they colonized, and this conception lacks sufficient connection with either history or geography. Bangladesh opted out of this inadequate theory within 25 years, though its trouble may not be over yet. West Pakistan, now renamed “Pakistan” to obviate the memory of past losses, is now a geographically and economically viable nation state, but the military has failed to update the TNT and in fact, made a rather determined effort to complete the project using “militant proxies” in the 1990s, and if the Pakistani army chief is to be believed, he takes this commitment to TNT seriously even today. But the ideology in question is not compatible with regional peace or global capitalism and needs to be updated and brought in line with current requirements. This is now the great task of our under-prepared bourgeoisie. Continue reading The Historic Task of the Pakistani Bourgeoisie

A Postcard from Princeton

X.T.M · April 14, 2025 · 4 comments

The symmetry, the wealth, and the mirage of American elegance

Dr. V had to give a talk at Princeton, and I tagged along. We expected an elite university (our milieu for the last decade). What we didn’t expect was how stunningly beautiful the town would be.

Everything felt curated: the neoclassical facades, the quiet wealth (it has a Hermes store for Heaven’s sake), the perfectly measured charm of a place that knows exactly what it is.

It made me think of how different America’s internal geography is from the UK or France. In Europe, the capital is the cultural and intellectual heart—London, Paris. In the US, it’s more like Germany or Italy: multiple regional power centers—city-states in all but name.

Living in Princeton, New Jersey | Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

And Princeton is one of them. Unlike either of the Cambridges:

  • Cambridge, Massachusetts is a behemoth, flowing into the urban sprawl of Boston, powered by MIT and Harvard.

  • Cambridge, UK is insular, its 31 colleges often more concerned with their individual legacy than the town around them.

But Princeton, somehow, has achieved a kind of graceful middle ground. It’s not sprawling, but it breathes. It doesn’t dominate, but it defines. Continue reading A Postcard from Princeton

Sizdeh Bedar, Identity Whiplash & the Gandharan Delusion

X.T.M · April 5, 2025 · 8 comments

It’s been a minute—I’ve been quietly recovering from Sizdeh Bedar, the thirteenth day of Norouz when you’re meant to go outside and shake off bad luck. I chose to take it literally: less screen, more sky.

To be fair I did go for two consecutive daily outdoors runs, which I haven’t properly done since the late pandemic but instead of the customary picnic; I went to the Afghan restaurant, Helmand, which was excellent- Afghani cuisine is truly the dark horse of the Indo-Persianate world.

In the meantime, Razib’s dropped two excellent posts—one on Tibetans, the other on Great Men: is Trump the product of his age, or did he make the age what it is? It’s the kind of question that haunts our era, especially as 2024/25 starts to feel historically charged.

Meanwhile, the above is courtesy of Anand on our Global Politics chat & over on Twitter, a post’s been circulating about how South Asians are desperate to leave the desh, but the moment they do—they long for it obsessively.

It’s complicated. I love the homeland (Chennai is my vibe), but I’m 1.5 generation: I migrated at 14, but had spent meaningful time in the West beforehand. So what am I? Not quite immigrant, not quite native. That liminal space is familiar to many of us. It’s a tension you carry everywhere—between passport and memory, practicality and nostalgia.

On cue, our resident Pundit is once again being spammed by Pakistanis “discovering” they are the last Gandharans and telling a Kashmiri Pandit to back to the “Ganges” (the last Kashmiri Pandits who did come from the Ganges founded South Asia’s most prominent and enduring political dynasty so I guess that’s a wish for us to be under good Brahmin rule again).

Now, as a rule, you should never intellectually duel with a thrice-born. It rarely ends well. But here we are: Pakistan, in search of yet another usable identity, this time reaching deep into the vault and pulling out Gandhara. Continue reading Sizdeh Bedar, Identity Whiplash & the Gandharan Delusion

Capsule Review: The Return of Faraz Ali

Omar Ali · April 2, 2025 · Comments Off on Capsule Review: The Return of Faraz Ali

 

Aamina Ahmed is an expatriate Pakistani (born in the UK, currently teaches in the USA) who has written a novel set in the intersection of the Red Light area of Lahore and the rich and powerful of the state, around the time of Yahya Khan’s martial law. The story is well crafted and the book is well written and has a “message” about inequality, oppression, patriarchy and fascism, but unfortunately her lack of direct experience of Pakistan does show. The plot is more or less believable, but the details and dialogues are off. Anyone with some familiarity with the Punjab police and the way people actually talk or react in Lahore will feel that this is a foreigner writing about Pakistan. Certainly there are books written by foreigners that sound and feel very authentic (Memoirs of a geisha comes to mind), but unfortunately this is not one of those books. Part of the problem is not Aaminah Ahmed’s fault, as any writer in English has to deal with the fact that most of the dialog actually happens in Punjabi or Urdu, but her foreign-ness goes a little beyond that.
That said, she has done her research and read everything she could about that era and it shows. Wajid and Ghazi and their adventures fighting the Germans in North Africa are clearly modeled on the experiences of Yahya Khan and Yaqub Khan, who were both German prisoners in WW2. A bengali officer shooting himself in Dhaka in 1971 is a story recorded in several memoirs from that era, and so on.
The book does try a little too hard to play around with the various timelines and while she does bring then together at the end, it can be hard to keep up with who is who. Still, the book is a fun read and the political and ideological slant is liberal and cosmopolitan. Worth a read, but could have been better.

Brown Pundits