Tag: Blogging

3,920 | Building out the Archive

X.T.M · February 20, 2026 · No comments

A small administrative note that matters more than it sounds. Brown Pundits now has 3,920 posts. Every single one is categorised. There are no uncategorised posts left. The entire archive is structured.

That is not glamorous work. It does not trend. It does not go viral. But it is the difference between a website and a timeline. Writing is not just producing new content. It is tending an intellectual garden. Adding categories, refining tags, standardising slugs, back-tagging fifteen years of material; this is not clerical labour. It is editorial discipline. It forces you to reread your own history. It reveals patterns. It exposes gaps. It shows where the site has been narrow and where it has been expansive.

Substack has made everyone an author. It has not made everyone an editor. Most platforms reward velocity and outrage. The incentive is to post faster and louder than the next person. Community becomes an audience. Conversation becomes branding. Writers become marketers. We are structured differently.

Different Eras of the Internet Continue reading 3,920 | Building out the Archive

The Demise of Brown Pundits Is Much Exaggerated

X.T.M · January 10, 2026 · No comments

Every few months someone asks whether Brown Pundits is “dying.” I understand the instinct. The internet is littered with abandoned blogs. Attention is fickle. Writers drift. The centre does not hold. And yet, when I actually look at the numbers, the mood often turns out to be wrong.

We had a real dip. In September and October we were running at roughly 55–65k monthly readers. Then we fell hard, to around 33k. This month, we have bounced back to roughly 53k. That is a 60% jump on the trough. A lot of it is mobile. A lot of it is casual readership rather than the old-school desktop cohort. But it is still real people arriving, reading, and sharing.

The geographical pattern is also telling. India and the United States remain the main pillars, as you would expect. But Bangladesh has surged in a way we did not anticipate. That matters because it suggests we are not only a niche diaspora salon. We are also being read inside the region, by people who do not need South Asia explained to them. Continue reading The Demise of Brown Pundits Is Much Exaggerated

Why we must talk about caste

X.T.M · November 14, 2025 · 11 comments

Every few months (years?), Brown Pundits goes through its own small earthquake. A post lands wrong, a comment thread ignites, and the whole Commentariat erupts.

The latest rupture began with a mild jibe on caste. I pointed out, in passing, that caste shapes political instincts far more than many admit. The backlash was instant. A section of the readers declared a quiet boycott. The threads went cold. No one wanted to break ranks. The more one claims to have transcended caste, the clearer its caste blind-spots become. Silence itself becomes a shibboleth.

And when the silence hit, the blog froze. Continue reading Why we must talk about caste

Co-Founders Confer

X.T.M · November 2, 2025 · 10 comments

I sent this email to the CoFounders of the Blog (Omar | Razib) and tomorrow I will send through the Monthly Author Report.

Continue reading Co-Founders Confer

Note to Authors

X.T.M · October 17, 2025 · 2 comments

Most of our active Commentariat are Authors as well, and that overlap is exactly what makes this space work.

Please don’t worry about the length of your posts or whether you’re mainly sharing links. All I ask is that you include a line or two of context or commentary, however brief, when you do. It helps the discussion move forward and gives readers an entry point. I’ve been seeing some excellent conversations in the Open Threads, but many of you still seem hesitant to post directly. Don’t be!

It genuinely helps me when Authors share what they can, when they can. I’ll edit or follow up if something needs adjusting, but as you all know, I’m very much in favour of a broad church; no pun intended, considering my last piece was on the Church.

BP’s new home

Brown Pundits Archive · January 29, 2014 · 7 comments

So it seems that we are exiled from our old home where more than 3yrs of memories (and arguments, discussions, opinions) reside.

I of course have always been more comfortable with blogger than Word after all my first blog has always managed to eke out a home here.

I’ve never known whether BP still has a space despite an exploding twitter conversation on the Sub-continent. Are we marked out for extinction or does there exist a hazy middle ground between snap 140 character opinions and prestige journalism.

I guess it’s up to us to find out. Welcome back world..

Brown Pundits