We need to have a honest discussion about censorship on BP. We have a contributing author who demands and exercises the right to “ban” other contributing authors from commenting on ‘his’ threads. This, while continuing to spout distinctly one-eyed perspectives and cherry-picked regurgitated content.
Do we want BP to be a space with ‘dueling’ threads, or actual discourse? If Indians and Pakistanis can’t even manage a written conversation on a blog post via comments, without arbitrary petty ‘bans’ justified in the name of “I simply don’t like you” – this is the sort of thing that ends up having a disproportionate impact on the nature of what this space is.
Tag: Identity and culture
A Minute of Silence for the Schoolgirls of Minab | Chehelom, 9 April 2026
If you would like to receive an invite to the Minab Zoom Memorial; please email the Brown Pundits email address on the left. Thank you.
The Chehelom, چهلم, is the Persian tradition of gathering on the fortieth day after a death to pray, remember, and bear witness. It predates Islam and runs through every strand of Iranian culture. We mark it here not as a political act but as a human one. Set your alarm. One minute. That is all we ask. XTM
At 10:45am on 28 February 2026, 165 human beings, most of them schoolgirls aged 7–12 from the Bandari and Afro-Iranian communities of southern Iran, were killed in the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab.
9 April is their Chehelom; the Persian fortieth-day memorial.
Wherever you are in the world, please set an alarm for 10:45am Tehran time on Thursday 9 April and take one minute of silence.
For the girls of Minab. For every innocent life lost in this war. No hierarchy of grief; Jewish or Arab, Muslim or Persian, American or migrant.
We are all One.
🕰 Tehran 10:45 · London 08:15 · New York 03:15 · LA 00:15 · Sydney 17:15
Share as far as you can. 🕊 Continue reading A Minute of Silence for the Schoolgirls of Minab | Chehelom, 9 April 2026
Open Thread + A Note on Standards
Brown Pundits has always been a forum for the kind of thinking that most outlets are too timid or too tribal to publish. We intend to keep it that way. But that standard cuts both ways, and we are raising it.
Effective immediately, the moderation policy is zero tolerance.
This is not a crackdown on opinion. We welcome disagreement; sharp, even uncomfortable disagreement. What we will no longer tolerate is noise dressed up as insight.
What does noise look like? You know it when you read it. It is the rattling of nuclear talking points that have not been updated since 1998. It is the reduction of a civilisation of 220 million people, or of a billion-and-a-half, to a single variable: the Crescent, or the Saffron. It is venom without weight, and venting without argument.
Pakistan is complex. India is complex. Every human society is, at its foundation, irreducibly complex.
Any comment that treats either as otherwise will be moderated; sometimes publicly, sometimes silently. We apply the sniff test: does it smell right, given the context? Given how tight our Editorship and Commentariat is, we will be judicious, as we have always been; for instance the Precedent post on the controversial Dhuruandar sequel remains Gaurav Lele’s.
This applies to both sides of every line we cover; geographical, civilisational, sectarian, or political.
We are not asking for bookishness. We are not asking for academic caution or diplomatic hedging. We are asking for the one thing that separates a pundit from a troll: considered thought. If you are going to cast aspersions, earn them. Make the case. Bring the weight. If you cannot, do not post.
We have a large and growing commentariat. That is something to be proud of. It is also a responsibility; to each other, and to the readers who come here because they expect better than what they can find elsewhere.
We expect better. We will enforce it.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
— The Editors, Brown Pundits Continue reading Open Thread + A Note on Standards
Open Thread
Formerly Brown asked me to post this:
1. Six Ukrainians and one US citizen have been arrested by india while crossing over from Myanmar. Apparently they were helping to create trouble in Myanmar, an eventually trying for a Christian state there. Sheikh hasina had sounded about US interests in such a venture.
2. Tamilnadu elections might be closer than expected. Side show: seeman’s Tamil party is attracting Brahmins!! who are opposed to Dravidians.
3. LDF might pop UDF once again in Kerala. Ironically both fronts are accusing each other of being B team of BJP, who have 1 seat currently!!!
4. Indian lokasabha is to add 215 more seats reserved exclusively for women by the 2029 polls. Modi has changed india for ever.
India Won the World Cup. Now the Hard Part.
Another version of this article has now appeared at BRAHM.
India won the T20WC yesterday becoming the first team to
Win it thrice | Win it at home | Win it back to back |
Won 3 ICC trophies back to back to back. I always knew this day was coming.
The Golden Age is not arriving. It has arrived.
Badshah’s structural point is right as far as it goes. A country of 1.4 billion people that loves one sport above all others was never going to stay second once the money came. The BCCI’s TV deal money, the IPL pipeline, the depth of the talent pool no. Bangladesh, Pakistan, the West Indies may genuinely no longer able to compete at the same level. Nothing can deny India, that is Bharat, waking up to her Destiny as a Global hegemon (InshAllah this prefaces greatness in others spheres of National Excellence).
But I want to push back gently on the linear framing. More wealth, more wealth, more wealth; therefore dominance. The model minority version of sport & geopolitics. It’s not wrong, but it’s incomplete.
War is what is in your belly
My Urdu teacher told me something interesting: war isn’t just about your technology. It’s what you have inside your heart. Sports exists, in part, as simulated war. And what makes sport compelling, what makes it actually compelling, not just statistically interesting, is that once the conflict starts, you genuinely don’t know what will happen.
Who is David? Who is Goliath?
Continue reading India Won the World Cup. Now the Hard Part.
India wins the T20 World Cup – The Golden Age is here and it’s permanent
India won the T20WC yesterday becoming the first team to
- Win it thrice
- Win it at home
- Win it back to back
- Win 3 ICC trophies back to back to back
I always knew this day was coming.
India is a cricket mad country of 1.4 billion+. That means India should have dominated all of cricket. Issue was India was a dirt poor country with most of the population barely surviving.
After the economic reforms, as India kept getting richer bit by bit, the team also kept improving bit by bit.
So I always knew this inflection point would come eventually.
But it is still surreal to watch it live.
Countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, SL, WI etc are no longer able to compete against India.
SENA maybe can give competition for a decade due to being rich countries.
But in 10-15 year’s time India will basically be what USA is to basketball.
The Cantonment and the Clean Street: Why Pakistan’s Punjab Looks More Ordered Than India’s
A dispatch from a quieter Brown Pundits
The Observation
My Urdu teacher said something that lodged itself in my brain. India is vastly richer than Pakistan; and yet Pakistan’s Punjab, in his experience, feels cleaner. More ordered. Less like South Asia. I pushed back. Then I stopped.
The Numbers
In 2024, India’s GDP per capita was $2,695 against Pakistan’s $1,479; roughly 1.8 times higher on a nominal basis, and India’s total economy at $3.9 trillion is approximately ten times Pakistan’s $372 billion. Until 2008, Pakistan was actually richer per person; India led that measure for only 14 of the 60 years after independence. The divergence is real but recent and accelerating.
The sanitation data cuts against the perception: 81% of Indians have access to basic sanitation versus 72% of Pakistanis (WHO/UNICEF, 2024). On paper, India leads. So the paradox isn’t statistical. It is visual. The question isn’t who has more toilets. It is why certain Pakistani streets feel more governed.
The Answer: 41 Cantonments Continue reading The Cantonment and the Clean Street: Why Pakistan’s Punjab Looks More Ordered Than India’s
According to BAFTA, ‘Free Palestine’ is the slur. Not the N-word.
The Man, Not the Scandal
John Davidson has Tourette’s. He did not mean it. His tics are involuntary — the condition is neurological, not moral. The audience was warned before the ceremony began. Davidson left the room when he realised what was happening. He has spent his life teaching the public what Tourette’s actually is. None of what happened Sunday night was his fault.
Now the second thing. The BBC broadcast it anyway.
The Edit Suite Had Two Hours Continue reading According to BAFTA, ‘Free Palestine’ is the slur. Not the N-word.
What Tehran and Harvard Have in Common; And Why Trump Is Letting Both Burn
BRAHM Newsletter is back after a hiatus, and the first piece connects three things that don’t usually appear in the same sentence: the Lion and Sun flag flying on Tehran campuses this week, Lisa Randall on Epstein’s jet, and Trump’s noose-without-tightening strategy on Iran.
The argument is simple. Both the Iranian clerical class and the American academic establishment ran the same transaction; moral authority traded quietly for proximity to power. When that transaction becomes visible, as it has in both cases, the institution doesn’t recover quickly. Trump, whatever one thinks of him, has understood this about Iran in a way his predecessors didn’t. He is letting the regime exhaust itself.
BP readers will recognise the geopolitical thread. The BRAHM audience is wider and less South-Asia-focused. While written for them, the analysis however will be familiar here.
Brown Pundits Is Not a Cesspit. Keep It That Way.
Brown Pundits exists to test ideas against evidence. That is not happening consistently. Four contributors have split into two camps. Threads are filling with video links and recycled assertions. Serious readers are leaving. This post explains what changes and why.
Effective immediately, all four authors have been moved to commentator status until each individually promises they can maintain the same standard in comments as in posts; high signal, evidence-based, no exceptions.
On genocide specifically Continue reading Brown Pundits Is Not a Cesspit. Keep It That Way.