caste – Brown Pundits

Nehru, Privilege, and the Missed Settlement of 1947

Kabir’s defence of Nehru as the moral compass of the Indian republic reveals something deeper than nostalgia for secularism. It exposes how much of India’s founding moment was shaped by a single man whose class background insulated him from the material and psychological stakes of Partition; stakes that Gandhi, Jinnah, Bose, Ambedkar, and even Savarkar understood far more viscerally.

Nehru was unique among the major players of his era. He was the only one born into national leadership, the only one who inherited a political position, and the only one whose life had been marked not by struggle but by access. While others were shaped by jail, exile, poverty, or ideological intensity, Nehru was shaped by privilege, and privilege has its own blind spots.

This matters because 1947 was not a moment for abstract idealism. It was a moment for negotiation between communities whose elites no longer trusted one another. On that task, Nehru was the least prepared of the principal actors.

I. Nehru’s Privilege Was a Constraint, Not a Qualification

Continue reading Nehru, Privilege, and the Missed Settlement of 1947

The Unfinished Contract II: Citizenship, Partition, and the Questions Liberalism Won’t Ask

A far-right senator, Pauline Hansen, recently walked into the Australian Senate wearing a burqa. Muslim MPs (one of whom wearing a hijab) angrily called it racist, bigoted, Islamophobic. They were right. But they also dodged the underlying question: What does citizenship mean when communities fracture along religious lines?

The same evasion dominates debates about Indian Muslims after 1947. One camp says: “They stayed, they’re citizens, case closed.” The other mutters about loyalty tests and fifth columns. Both positions are intellectually lazy. Neither grapples with what Partition actually did to the social contract.

This isn’t about defending bigotry. It’s about refusing to let bigots monopolize legitimate questions.

I. The Contract That Never Closed Continue reading The Unfinished Contract II: Citizenship, Partition, and the Questions Liberalism Won’t Ask

The Partition of Elites: India, Pakistan, and the Unfinished Trauma of 1947

I was speaking recently with a cousin who grew up in India. Their family has been Bahá’í for generations, but their older relatives once lived as Sunni merchants in Old Delhi. When they visited their grandparents as a child, they noticed something striking: in many lanes of Old Delhi, long after Independence, the sentiment was not Indian nationalism but Pakistan-leaning nostalgia. This was not hidden. It was ambient.

That single observation exposes something almost no one in Indian liberal discourse wants to say aloud: post-Partition India inherited a large Muslim population whose political loyalties were, at best, ambivalent. That is not a moral judgement. It is a historical one.

And once you notice this, a second truth becomes obvious: Kabir’s secularist vision of an emotionally unified India makes sense only in a world where 1947 never happened.

Continue reading The Partition of Elites: India, Pakistan, and the Unfinished Trauma of 1947

Why Bihar Is More Than Its Stereotypes with Sagar

A calm and clear conversation with Sagar, senior staff writer at The Caravan. We speak about why Bihar is more than a broken state, how caste politics really works on the ground, and how election season gets distorted by the memification of leaders who should not be elevated in the first place. He explains the gap between lived reality and the stories told by mainstream media, the truth behind the jungle raj label, and why Bihar has been misread for so long. Tune in for a grounded look at a state that carries more history, complexity, and dignity than the usual headlines allow.

Ants Among Elephants: A Portrait of Untouchability in India

Since we are discussing caste, this post from my Substack seems relevant. This review was originally published on “The South Asian Idea” in January 2018.

One of the frequent topics of debate among those interested in South Asia is the caste system and whether it is unique to Hinduism or features in other South Asian religions as well. Hindu society has traditionally been divided into four castes (or varnas): Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (rulers, administrators and warriors), Vaishyas (merchants and tradesmen), and Shudras (artisans, farmers and laboring classes). A fifth group consists of those who do not fit into this hierarchy at all and are considered “untouchable”. What separates caste from other systems of social stratification are the aspects of purity and ascribed status. Upper-castes consider lower castes to be “impure” and have rigid rules about the kind of social interaction they can have with them. For example, upper castes will not accept food from those of a lower caste, while lower castes will accept food from those above them. Caste status is also ascribed at birth and has nothing to do with an individual’s achievements. A Brahmin peasant remains a Brahmin while an “untouchable” engineer is still an “untouchable”. This system persists in India today, though the government does provide affirmative action in order to uplift members of “backward” castes.

Coming from a Pakistani background, I was not familiar with the operation of the caste system in daily life. Though Pakistan is a highly socially stratified society, this system has no religious sanction. In Islam, all believers are considered equal in the eyes of Allah. Unlike in India, where until recently, “untouchables” could not go into several temples, all social classes pray together in the same mosques. This fact is highlighted in one of the famous couplets from Allama Iqbal’s poem “Shikwa” (the complaint) which states: “Ek hi saf mein khare ho gaye Mahmood-o-Ayaz/ Na koi banda raha aur na koi banda nawaz” (Mahmood the king and slave Ayaz, in line as equals stood arrayed/ The lord was no more lord to slave: while both to the One Master prayed). At least in religious terms, one Muslim is not better than any other, no matter what his social status. Of course, this does not mean that social stratification ceases to exist. To this day, rich Pakistani families have separate utensils in their homes which are to be used by the servants. Punjabi Christians who engage in janitorial work are still known as “chuhras”, a derogatory reference to their pre-conversion caste status as “untouchables”. However, unlike the Hindu caste system, social class in Pakistan is not based on ascribed status. If someone from a low socio-economic background attains an education and a well-paying job, he or she will no longer be treated as belonging to their previous socioeconomic group. This is a major difference from India, where one’s caste remains salient, no matter one’s economic status.

A first hand account of caste in India is given in Sujatha Gidla’s recent book “Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India”. Gidla was born into an “untouchable” family in the southern Indian state of Andra Pradesh. Through the story of her ancestors, she presents a portrait of India from the end of British rule to the 1990s. It is particularly interesting to note that while her family is Christian (a religion in which there is technically no caste), they are still considered “untouchable” in Hindu society. Gidla writes: “Christians, untouchables—it came to the same thing. All Christians in India were untouchables, as far as I knew (though only a small minority of all untouchables are Christian.) I knew no Christian who did not turn servile in the presence of a Hindu. I knew no Hindu who did not look right through a Christian man standing in front of him as if he did not exist. I accepted this. No questions asked” (Gidla 5). Caste is so pervasive in India that it applies even to those groups whose religions formally believe in equality. Continue reading Ants Among Elephants: A Portrait of Untouchability in India

What Is Not India Is Pakistan

As Dave mentioned, there is a lively WhatsApp group of BP authors and editors, and it inevitably shapes the comment ecosystem. But one comment on the blog stood out:

“The very foundation of Pakistan is an anti-position. What is not India is Pakistan. So isn’t it obvious?”

It’s an extraordinarily crisp description of Pakistani identity-building. What is not India is Pakistan. That is not a slur; it is, in many ways, a psychologically accurate frame for how the state narrates itself.

What I increasingly find misplaced on this blog is the recurring assumption that Pakistanis are somehow “Indians-in-waiting,” or that Punjab is “West Punjab,” Pakistan “Northwest India,” or Bangladesh “East Bengal.” These are irredentist projections that simply do not match lived identities. This is not “North Korea” or “East Germany,” where both sides continue to imagine themselves as fragments of one common nation.

Yes, Pakistan consumes Bollywood and Hindi music, which themselves derive from Mughal and Indo-Persian syncretic traditions. Yes, Pakistan is culturally embedded in the greater Indo-Islamic civilizational sphere. But emotionally, Pakistan has severed itself from the Indian Subcontinent as a cohesive landscape. It has constructed a hybrid identity; part Turko-Persian, part Islamic internationalist, part anti-India.

I don’t personally agree with this move, and my own trajectory has been toward a strong Hinducised, Dharmic identification. But my view is irrelevant here. What matters is that Pakistani identity is defined negatively; as the commentator put it, “What is not India is Pakistan.”

Whether that is healthy or sustainable is another matter. But identities can persist in unhealthy configurations for a very long time; the stock market can be irrational longer than your liquidity can survive.

Why we must talk about caste

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

Caste, Civilisation, and the Courage to Own It

Kabir suggested that I apologise but for what, exactly? Why should Saffroniate be considered offensive? Own it. I don’t see anything inherently wrong with the idea of Akhand Bharat; the concept of a broader Dharmic civilisation makes eminent sense to me.

Likewise, I don’t understand why questioning caste identities provokes such sensitivity. Again, own it because the more caste is repressed, the more likely it is to resurface.

At heart, I’m a reformist, not a revolutionary. I believe in improving and refining what exists, not erasing it. Cultural features should only be abolished when they are truly harmful or deleterious, not simply because they make us uncomfortable.

Saffron Strike

The silence on BP these past few days feels deliberate; a kind of Saffron Strike. If so, let it be known: this space was never meant to cater to ideological comfort.

It seems uncommonly quiet; I think I have been misunderstood. I do not care about the traffic and commentary of BP as much as I care about the integrity of the space.

For instance when I felt that Kabir had done wrong; interdiction was the answer. When I realised the narrative was being twisted so that I became his moderator (Kabir generally knows my red lines) then I realised I was wrong. Kabir’s recent postings and commentary have been very high-signal. Continue reading Saffron Strike

Pakistan’s Inner Logic

On Nivedita & Archer’s joint request (Mamnoon/Tashakor/Merci for the kind words); I’m going to expand on my comment:

“Kabir is definitely right. Ethnicity in Pakistan is complex; there are three tiers of society. The English speaking elite (Imran is part of that so is Kabir), who are “Pakistanis” and ethnicity isn’t really reflected on…”

This comment, which the BP archives have tons of similar posts on (BP was venerable even in 2014), sketches the bones of Pakistan’s sociological map. But what lies beneath the skin?

Pakistan is feudal; India is not.

That one statement alone explains much. Landholding elites dominate politics, rural economies still function on patronage, and class mobility is rare. Caste, though “denied,” is real and sharper, in some ways, than it could ever be in India (the reservation system does not really exist in Pakistan except for religious minorities but not for socio-economic castes). Pakistanis can sniff out class in one another with a dexterity that’s probably only matched in the United Kingdom, which is the home of class stratification (I remember reading Dorian Gray in Karachi in the early millennium and shocked how similar late Victorian early Edwardian England was).

The postcolonial state froze itself in amber. There has never been a serious leftist rupture, excepting 1971’s successful Bengali revolution. Even Imran Khan, who styled himself a reformist, is a product of elite schools, Aitchison College, Oxford, and aristocratic lineage. His “Islamic socialism” was only ever viable because Pakistanis still believe in myths of the benevolent landlord.

And yet, Pakistanis sometimes seem happier than their Indian counterparts, even if not remotely successful. Why? Continue reading Pakistan’s Inner Logic