Cultural Decline – Brown Pundits

Last week, there was a lot of discussion about Basant and its place in Pakistani culture. In that context, I’m sharing this essay I wrote while I was preparing for my panel at the Faiz festival last weekend. The panel was entitled “Faiz and the Cultural Policy of Pakistan”. My co-panelists were Asad Gilani— presently serving as Secretary National Heritage and Culture Division– and Mahtab Akbar Rashdi-– a former actress, bureaucrat, and parliamentarian.

I spoke at the 10th Faiz Festival held in Lahore last weekend (February 14-15) as part of a panel titled “Faiz and the Cultural Policy of Pakistan”. I was invited to be a part of this panel primarily because of my book A New Explanation for the Decline of Hindustani Music in Pakistan (Aks Publications 2024).1 Though my book–a republication of my M.Mus thesis in Ethnomusicology– focuses narrowly on Hindustani music, I did discuss the Faiz Cultural Report of 1968, particularly in the context of arguments that Hindustani music declined in Pakistan because it did not accord with the national identity of the newly formed Pakistani state.

I thought I’d briefly share some of my thoughts here since others might find them interesting.

What is the Faiz Report? Continue reading Some Thoughts on Pakistani Culture

Public debates on Indian Muslims often make one basic mistake: they collapse all minorities into a single category and then declare that “everyone is thriving because a few individuals have done well”. This flattens history, erases structure, and turns civilisational questions into census arithmetic.

1. Minorities Are Not Interchangeable

Jains, Sikhs, and Buddhists offer no meaningful analogy to Indian Muslims.

Jains were never politically central to the subcontinent.
Sikhs built a regional power, not a pan-subcontinental order.
Buddhists have been demographically marginal for a thousand years.

Indian Muslims were different. For centuries they formed the civilisational elite of North India; shaping courts, languages, music, etiquette, food, architecture, and the ways Indian states understood power. Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Hyderabad were not enclaves. They were the centre of the political and aesthetic world of the Indo-Gangetic plain. A fall from centrality is not comparable to never having been central at all.

2. Individual Success Is Not Structural Health Continue reading Who can speak for the “Muslim minority” of India?