BrownCast – Brown Pundits

🇮🇳Op Sindoor: A Podcast on Pahalgam, Pakistan, and the Limits of Peace

June 10, 2025June 10, 2025X.T.MGeopolitics, History, India, Pakistan, Podcast, PoliticsBalakot, BrownCast, Civ-mil tensions, Geopolitics, Geopolitics & Security, history, History & Memory, India, India-Pakistan conflict, Indo-Pak Relations, Indus Waters Treaty, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Media & Narrative, Modi foreign policy, Nawaz Sharif, Pahalgam, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pathankot attack, Podcast, Politics, Pulwama, South Asia, Surgical strikes, Terrorism & Militancy, Terrorism in Kashmir, TRF Kashmir101 Comments

I’ve just listened to the first half-hour of Op Sindoor, the latest Brown Pundits Browncast featuring Amey, Poulasta, and Omar. The full episode runs over 90 minutes; I’ll be reflecting on the rest in due course. For now, some thoughts on the opening segment, which focuses on the recent terror attack in Pahalgam and its aftermath.

🧨 The Attack Itself: Pahalgam as a National Trauma

The episode begins by recounting the massacre in Pahalgam, Kashmir—a tourist meadow turned execution ground. Twenty-six people, most of them honeymooning Hindus, were murdered after being identified through religious markers: circumcision, Kalma recitations, names. The hosts don’t shy away from calling it what it is: a targeted Islamist attack. The group responsible, the TRF (The Resistance Front), is introduced as a Lashkar-e-Taiba cutout, designed to launder Pakistan-backed militancy through a local Kashmiri lens.

There is a palpable sense of cumulative fatigue in how the Indian speakers describe it—not as an aberration, but as part of a 30-year continuum of such violence. The emotional register is high, but justified. The use of plain terms like terrorists over euphemisms such as militants or gunmen reflects a long-standing frustration with how such attacks are framed in international discourse.

🤝 Modi, Nawaz, and the Civ-Mil Waltz Continue reading 🇮🇳Op Sindoor: A Podcast on Pahalgam, Pakistan, and the Limits of Peace

Belated Podcast: Operation Sindoor (and Bunyan al Marsoos)

June 9, 2025June 9, 2025Omar AliGeopolitics, History, India, Military History, Pakistan, Podcast, PoliticsAmey, BrownCast, Geopolitics, Historical Misunderstandings, history, India, India–Pakistan Relations, Indo-pak conflict, Military history, Omar Ali, Operation Bunyan Al Marsoos, Operation Sindoor, Pakistan, Partition, Podcast, Podcasts, Politics, Poulasta, South Asia, Subcontinental Politics3 Comments

Another Browncast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe to one of the links above!

In this episode Amey hosts myself (omar) and Poulasta (our resident Bengali expert) to talk about the recent India-Pakistan kerfuffle. Amey was ready for war, but we found common ground 😉 (as usual with India and Pakistan, a lot of the discussion is about partition and related misunderstandings)

Browncast on Bangladesh, 2023

November 22, 2023November 22, 2023Razib KhanPodcastBrownCast1 Comment

Amey, Karol and me review what’s going on in Bangladesh right now.

– Elections in 2025, but an Awami League one party state emerging
– Lack of integration and interaction between West Bengal and Bangladesh
– Geopolitical orientation toward Southeast Asia
– China’s soft power spreading through videos of Chinese women speaking Bangla

Browncast: Professor C Christine Fair on Lashkar, Khalistan, Palestine, etc

October 21, 2023October 21, 2023Omar AliPodcast, UncategorizedBrownCast, Christine Fair, jihad, Khalistan, Laskhar Tayyaba2 Comments

Another Browncast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, Apple, Spotify (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe to one of the links above!

In this episode Mukunda and I talk to Professor Christine Fair, Professor in the Security Studies Program within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. We talked about her upcoming book “Literature of the Lashkar e Tayyaba” , jihadist propaganda in general, and whatever else comes up. We also touch on Khalistan and Canada and even spend a few minutes on the Israel-Palestine conflict to round things off.

C. Christine Fair

Browncast: Dr Seema Anand, author of “The arts of seduction”

April 19, 2021Omar AliPodcastBrownCast, Dr Seema Anand, Kama Sutra

Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe to one of the links above!

Details

In this episode Mukunda and guest-host Shahada talk to Dr Seema Anand. Dr Anand according to her Times of India intro is “a London-based mythologist and a practising storyteller. She lectures on the Kama Sutra and Eastern erotology”.

Check it out.

Browncast Episode 66, ancient India and DNA with Vagheesh Narasimhan

September 11, 2019September 12, 2019Razib KhanPodcastBrownCast, Podcast59 Comments

Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe at one of the links above.

You can also support the podcast as a patron. The primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone else. I am toying with the idea of doing a patron Youtube Livestream chat, if people are interested, in the next few weeks.

Would appreciate more positive reviews!

This show is an interview with Vagheesh Narasimhan. The two papers are freely available at his website. Many of the papers mentioned are at the Reich lab website (free). We do mention a Southeast Asia ancient DNA paper that is from the Willerslev group.

I do recommend The Horse The Wheel and Language. It’s a little out of date but take it seriously, not literally.

Kushal Mehra’s interview with Niraj Rai worth a listen.

An article on the reception to the research within India.

Questions for Vagheesh

September 9, 2019September 9, 2019Razib KhanPodcastBrownCast61 Comments

In ~48 hours I will be recording a podcast with Vagheesh Narasimhan, first author of The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia, and the second author of An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers. We’ll have lots to talk about but open to taking questions from readers as well.

As per usual I’ll be posting it for patrons first.

(I’m also recording a podcast with ex-academic Justin Murphy)

Notes on Brown Pundits “BrownCast”

January 26, 2019January 26, 2019Razib KhanPodcastBrownCast1 Comment

I’ll be interviewing my friend Josiah Neeley tomorrow about politics and policy in Trump’s America. Since this is Brown Pundits my outline has a lot of brown-themed questions, but we’ll range. If you are reading this before ~2 PM PDT feel free to drop-in questions. Josiah’s podcast, Urbane Cowboys, has had several brown people on. Of these, three are Bengali American. Myself, Reihan Salam, and Avik Roy.

On Sunday I’ll be talking to Carl Zha, who produces the popular CLASH! podcast. Feel free to suggest questions for Carl.

To paid-up patrons: I am posting the podcasts ahead of time on the patron page. These two podcasts won’t drop until February, so if you want to hear them earlier, you know how. I’ve already posted Zach’s podcast on Indian numismatics. That will probably drop tomorrow or Sunday, when Zach writes up some show-notes and pushes it live.