identity politics – Brown Pundits

India-Pakistan: A link sustained only through violence

October 22, 2025November 2, 2025ArcherBrown Pundits, India, Kashmir, Pakistan, Partition, Postcolonialism & the Global SouthAsim Munir, B.R. Ambedkar, Brown Pundits, Commentary, Democracy, economy, failed state, Gandhi, Geopolitics, Hindu-Muslim relations, Hussain Haqqani, identity politics, India, Indian army, Indian Muslims, Indo-Pak Relations, Islam, Jinnah, Kashmir, M.S. Gill, military, modernization, Mosharraf Zaidi, Najam Sethi, Nationalism, NUST, Operation Sindoor, opinion, Pahalgam attack, Pakistan, Pakistani Army, Pakistani elites, Partition of India, Sahir Shamshad Mirza, secularism, Shah Faesal, South Asia, terrorism55 Comments

In the spirit of all the Indo-Pak back and forth that happens on BP, here is one more perspective. This is strictly my view. Naturally there are several layers to the Indo-Pak relationship that cannot be captured in one article and I am certainly no expert on this subject. With these caveats, here goes.

1. Religion

The first, obvious dynamic that plays out between India and Pakistan is religion. The Muslims case for the creation of Pakistan was based on two points:

(a) Some Muslims wanted a ethnically homogeneous state because they believed Muslims themselves constitute a separate nation and desired to have their national home

(b) Because some Muslims claimed experience showed that Hindus want to use their majority to treat Muslims as second class citizens in an alien state.

(Ref: Pakistan or the partition of India by B.R.Ambedkar – Both Jinnah and Gandhi considered this book to be the authority on the subject)

Those who chose India completely rejected these notions then, and do so even today. That DOES NOT mean Indians reject the reality of the Pakistani state. If anything, its the exact opposite. Only fools would want partition to ever be undone.

Why is this relevant today? Well, listen to Asim Munir:

Continue reading India-Pakistan: A link sustained only through violence

Fire and the Saffroniate

October 22, 2025October 22, 2025X.T.MAdmin, Authors, Brown Pundits, Kabir, X.T.MAdmin Strategy, Author Engagement, Blog Management, Blogging Strategy, Brown Pundits, Civil Disagreement, Comment Threads, commentariat, Community Building, Digital Dialogue, forum culture, identity politics, India, InshAllah, interdiction, Internet Culture, Kabir, Longform Blogging, Moderation policy, Online Community, Online Firestorms, Pakistan, Post Cadence, Sbarrkum, South Asian Discourse, South Asian Intellectuals22 Comments

We had a quiet Diwali dinner with some South Asian literati here in Cambridge, Mass. No fireworks, but some useful clarity especially about the need for a unified South Asian voice, and where Brown Pundits fits in.

Threads, Fire, and a New Warrior Class

Kabir remains catnip for the Commentariat or as I’ll now call them, the Saffroniate (Brahmins or Brahminised). They pretend otherwise, but the numbers don’t lie. The threads light up when he’s around and yes, I’m aware of the layered joke: threads mean something else too, especially to our youngest Pundits-in-training. Continue reading Fire and the Saffroniate

Pakistan’s Inner Logic

October 11, 2025October 11, 2025X.T.MBrown Pundits, Caste, Civilisation, Colonialism, Economics, Gender, India, Indian Subcontinent, Pakistan, Partition, Postcolonialism & the Global South, X.T.MAitchison College, Baloch identity, Bangladesh, caste, Christians in Pakistan, class structure, elite schooling, Ethnicity, feudalism, Hinduphobia, identity politics, Imran Khan, invented nations, Islam, Israel comparison, Kabir, language politics, Modernity, Nationalism, Pakistan, Pakistan history, Pakistani modernisation, Pakistani psyche, post-1971 Pakistan, Postcolonial State, regional languages, Religion, rural Pakistan, Sindhi nationalism, Social Media, South Asia, TNT ideology, Urdu speakers24 Comments

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

Caste in America

October 9, 2025October 10, 2025X.T.MBrown Pundits, Caste, Civilisation, Culture, Diaspora, Hinduism, History, India, Indian Subcontinent, Mughals, Music, Partition, Postcolonialism & the Global South, Politics, Society, X.T.MAmir Khusrao, Bharat Mata, Bhatkhande, Biryani, Brahmin culture, Brahminism, Brown Pundits, civilizational debate, cultural erasure, Dalit rights, Hindu genocide, Hindu-Muslim synthesis, Hinduism, Hindustani Classical Music, identity politics, India activism, Indian diaspora politics, Indian left, Indo-Aryan, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Islamic culture, Kabir comment, Kashmir Pandits, Kathak, Mughal India, Persian civilization, Sadarang, South Asian high culture, Taj Mahal, Urdu culture, Vedic continuity37 Comments

I’ve found myself drifting further left than I expected this year. Much of that is circumstantial, being involved in local activism in the United States naturally places one within progressive coalitions. Yet even in this frame, my ideological compass is firmly rooted in some admiration for Brahminical continuity and Bharat Mata as civilizational anchor.

At times I speculate on where Bharat truly ends. Is it the Hindu Kush? The Iranian plateau? The Persian world has always seemed to me about 20–30% Indianise; its mythology, musicality, and memory bear the imprint of the Indo-Aryan stream more than the Indo-European one, no matter how insistently modern Iranians lean toward a Westward identification.

This brings me to a provocative thesis I’ve often floated: that Brahmins are the civilisational custodians of the Indian subcontinent, and that their displacement often signals a broader cultural erasure. The tragedy of the Kashmiri Panditsis not merely a community’s trauma, but a warning. Without Brahminical continuity, Vedic frameworks falter. Hinduism in Pakistan and Bangladesh remains vulnerable precisely because it lacks the embedded authority and supervisory function of Brahmin elites to anchor Vedic traditions and calibrate resistance to incessant Islamisation. Continue reading Caste in America

Threads, Carpets, and PM Modi’s 75th

September 17, 2025September 17, 2025X.T.MBrown Pundits, Civilisation, Colonialism, India, Pakistan, Palestine, Gaza & Israel, Partition, Postcolonialism & the Global South, X.T.MAfghanistan, American foreign policy, Ardhanarishvara, art and politics, blog commentary, BRAHM Collection, Brown Pundits, brown world politics, carpets, China rise, commentariat, cultural critique, cultural legitimacy, diaspora commentary, digital moderation, elite vs average, failed states, Gaza, GCC, geopolitical realism, Hindu-Muslim relations, Honey Singh, identity politics, India, Indian Muslims, Indo-Persian culture, Iraq War, Islamic populism, Kabir, Middle East politics, Multipolar World, Muslim identity, non-Muslims in Pakistan, online discourse, Pakistan, Pakistan adaptation, Persian nostalgia, Persianate world, pluralism, political exhaustion, post-9/11, soft power, soft state, South Asia, Termodity, Trimurti, Trinity, US Hegemony16 Comments

Happy Birthday Pradhan Mantri:

I watched several videos — four or five, maybe more — of public figures sending their wishes. Among them: Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Benjamin Netanyahu, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Mohammed Siraj, and Mukesh Ambani.

Mukesh Ambani, of course, remains closely aligned with the establishment, and Aamir Khan seemed to lean heavily into his Hindu heritage — adorned with Rakhis on his wrist, even a Bindi. He’s presenting himself now in a distinctly Hindu cultural idiom, though he comes from a very prominent Indian Muslim family.

By contrast, Shah Rukh Khan stood out. His message was subtly sardonic — he remarked that the recipient was “outrunning young people like me.” It was light, but just subversive enough to feel intentional. Interestingly, both Shah Rukh and Aamir spoke in shuddh Hindi, which added a certain performative weight to their gestures.

Hindu Art

I’ve been fairly busy the past few days, mostly focused on BRAHM Collections; writing about carpets, curating Trimurti sculptures, and exploring Ardhanarishvara iconography. It’s been a deep dive into the civilizational grammar of India and by extension, the porous boundary between sacred art and civil religion.

In the background, I’ve also been chipping away at longer-form reflections; trying to crack the formula for my newsletter (believe it or not the readership is neck to neck with BP but different demographics). It’s all a bit scattered, but the writing has become its own brown paper trail.

On the Commentariat (and Why I’m Stepping Back)

I still follow the commentariat but I’m slowly easing off. There’s a rhythm to it, sure, but too often it turns into exhaustion. I’ve removed all of Honey Singh’s abusive posts. Abuse is now a hard red line for me, but beyond that, I’m stepping back from constant moderation or sparring. Continue reading Threads, Carpets, and PM Modi’s 75th

The Honey Trap of the Ummah:

September 15, 2025September 15, 2025X.T.MBrown Pundits, Geopolitics, Hinduism, India, Iran, Islam & the Middle East, Pakistan, X.T.MAarti, Aarti controversy, Aurangzeb, Baby Honey Singh, Biryani politics, blog catalyst, blog discourse, blog wars, blogosphere, Brown blog wars, brown commentary, Brown Pundits, Buddhists, civilizational identity, civilizational politics, commentariat, CPI mutiny, cricket and politics, cultural adaptation, cultural brotherhood, cultural Hinduism, cultural honesty, cultural nationalism, de-Islamization, digital brown spaces, double standards, George Orwell, Hindu India, Hindu-Muslim compact, Hindu-Muslim relations, Hinduism, Hinduization, Hindutva, Honey trap metaphor., identity choice, identity politics, ideological betrayal, ideological clarity, ideological discourse, ideological realignment, India, India-Pakistan debate, India–Pakistan Relations, Indian cricket, Indian minority compact, Indian Muslims, Indian nationalism, Indian secularism, integration, Islam, Jains, Kabir, Kashmir, Liberalism, Modi, Modi era, moral coexistence, Mughals, Muslim exceptionalism, Muslim hypocrisy, Muslim identity, Muslim liberalism, Muslim minority, Nationalism, non-Muslim Pakistanis, Orwellian writing, Pakistan, Pakistani Hindus, Pakistani Muslims, pan-Islamism, Parsis, Partition, pluralism, post-Islam, post-Islamic identity, post-Islamism, post-partition identity, religious coexistence, religious minorities, saffronisation, saffronization, second-class citizen, secularism, Shahid Afridi, Shahid Afridi controversy, Shahid Afridi TV smash, Sikhs, Sindhi Hindus, Sindhis, South Asia, South Asian diaspora, South Asian identity, South Asian politics, Twitter Islam, Ummah122 Comments

🕌 Reflections on Kabir, Afridi, and the Compact of Coexistence

The recent incident involving Kabir / Bombay Badshah / Honey Singh, and the orchestrated drama around his entrapment has, quite unexpectedly, become a catalyst for deeper discussion on Brown Pundits. While none have chosen to focus on analytics (“2,000 daily visitors”—thank you very much:-), the real story lies in how this drama has exposed, yet again, the deep ideological fissures within South Asian identity; especially in the India-Pakistan-Muslim triad.

Let’s begin by being honest: Brown Pundits, for all its digressions into Sri Lanka, Nepal, or Bangladesh, is still primarily a blog about India and Pakistan, and more crucially, about Indian and Pakistani Muslims. This is a feature, not a bug. The origins of the blog lie in the Sepia Mutiny, a scattered band of intellectually independent thinkers questioning dogma from every direction (which started in 2004 and if we are a “daughter blog” that we means have 20+yrs of intellectual antecedents on the Brownet), and it has now matured into one of the few platforms willing to wrestle with the ideological ambiguities at the heart of the subcontinent.

🧕 Kabir’s Point: Brotherhood, Boundaries, and the Big Choice

Kabir made an astute, if difficult, observation: that he views Indian Muslims as “brothers”, but does not feel the same about Pakistani non-Muslims.

This sounds contradictory until one understands the emotional exhaustion of watching Muslims oscillate between claiming ummah-hood when convenient, and weaponizing liberal values when needed. It’s a cognitive dissonance that creates what I can only call the moral coexistence trap: the idea that Muslims, especially in India, demand maximum accommodation, of their food (their nauseating right to murder Gau Mata on Bharat’s sacred soil itself), Faith, festivals, and foreign affiliations, while rarely extending the same pluralistic courtesy in return.

And then there’s that infamous Shahid Afridi clip, the one where he smashed his television after watching an Aarti, being performed. To many of us, that wasn’t just a cringe-inducing moment of bigotry; it begged a real question: Why do Indian cricketers continue to shake hands with Hinduphobes Hindu-hating men like Afridi and his ilk (the Pakistan cricket team)? At what point does tolerance become indulgence?

🚩 The Compact of Indian Minorities: Understand It or Leave It

Continue reading The Honey Trap of the Ummah:

📊 Brown Pundits Hits 63,094 Visits in August (+156% Surge)

September 14, 2025September 15, 2025X.T.MBrown Pundits, Indian Subcontinent, X.T.Margument culture, beef controversy, blog growth, brahmanism, Brown Pundits, Buddhism in India, comment section drama, cricket rivalry, cultural erasure, diaspora discourse, digital media, Hindu Muslim discourse, identity politics, India vs Pakistan, internet engagement, Islamic conquest, Malayalam cinema, Mohammed Shami, Nationalism, online communities, online debate, Open threads, Ramzan, religious history, South Asia, South Indian traditions, subcontinental history, tamasha politics, truth seeking, web analytics, X discourse67 Comments

That’s more than 2,000 visitors a day. What’s driving it?

✅ Open Threads

✅ Honest takes

✅ And yes — argumentation.

But arguments only work if they spark thought, not just heat. Take Kabir; he’s a regular, and I’ve given him free rein. But his tendency to argue without reflection rubs people the wrong way. He blames his relative unpopularity on identity, but it’s more about tone than religion; highhandedness vs humility.

In my own recent disagreement: I paused, thought, reflected deeply. That’s the spirit of BP; a messy, open-minded search for truth.

🎭 Meanwhile, the real tamasha isn’t cricket 🏏 (India did trounce Pakistan) — it’s on X, and on the BP comment section.

X 🧵:

Mohammed Shami’s viral Ramzan juice reel — “His religion lets him put his nation first”
Indian media ad for INDvPAK — lynching for selling beef.
A Malayalam film scene: Hindu girl eating beef — what are South Indian Hindu traditions on beef?
Tallest structures in the subcontinent through the ages.

The stupas raises a deeper question:

How central was Buddhism to the Indian subcontinent — and how total was its erasure? In the heartlands, Brahmanism absorbed and displaced it; in the frontier zones, Islam swept away what remained. What we see today are ruins — but once, this was the dominant civilizational framework of the region.

Was its disappearance a slow assimilation, or a deliberate effacement?

The Pakistani Inferiority Complex

September 13, 2025X.T.MBrown Pundits, India, Iran, Islam & the Middle East, Pakistan, Partition, Postcolonialism & the Global South, X.T.MBharat, Brown Pundits, Civilizational Borders, Cultural Geography, Dharma, Dubai, HDI, identity politics, India, Indic civilization, Iran, Islamic Republics, Karachi, Lahore, Muslim identity, Partition, postcolonialism, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Tags: Pakistan, Thailand, Ummah136 Comments

These excellent tweets exhibit a painful pattern that many of us see but few want to name.

Pakistanis, particularly its establishment and elite classes, exhibit a deep inferiority complex towards white (light) Muslims; Arabs, Turks, Persians, and Afghans. These groups are valorized, romanticized, and used as benchmarks for identity and belonging. Meanwhile, other Asian groups, especially within South Asia and Southeast Asia, are seen as lesser. This manifests not only in foreign policy but in pop culture, education, and internalized social hierarchies.

This is why, even if Partition had to happen (and it was undeniably disastrous), Pakistan still could have been something else. It could’ve been a GCC meets Pahlavi Iran construct—a sleek, semi-modernist, high-income Asian Muslim republic with cultural gravitas and economic depth.

Instead, as others have rightly pointed out, Pakistan today has one of the lowest HDIs in its region. Karachi didn’t become Dubai. Lahore didn’t become Paris. Islamabad remains a ghost town of beautiful boulevards and hollow institutions. The promise wasn’t just broken; it was never even understood.

In some ways, Pakistan inherited the worst of both its imagined lineages: neither the intellectual cosmopolitanism of Persianate high culture, nor the industrious civic ambition of Indian civilizational continuity.

This is why tweets like those from @MrFreeFighter land so hard. They expose the psychic dissonance at the heart of the Pakistani state’s anxieties; its hatred of Pashtuns, its paranoia about “Afghanism,” and its inability to deal with its own peripheral ethnic groups as anything but threats.

Meanwhile, Indian Muslims like bombaybadshah, though deeply patriotic to India, often voice critiques of Pakistan with a clarity born of disappointment. They represent what Pakistan could have cultivated: a civic Islam, grounded in identity but untethered to ethnic obsession.

The final irony? South East Asia, Thailand, Cambodia, even Bali, retains more civilizational Dharma than most of Pakistan. Religion is irrespective of that elusive civilisational quality of Dharma, thus the true borders of Bharat lie eastward, not northwest.

Pakistan is not the enemy of India. It is the shattered mirror. And what it reflects, feudalism, insecurity, bigotry, and colonial hangover, is what the entire subcontinent must transcend. Again anyone who reads this can see I’m not saying this from a place of hate but love.

Hinduphobia Exists, But Pakistan Was Not Born from It

August 21, 2025August 21, 2025X.T.MAncient India, BRAHM, Brown Pundits, Hinduism, India, Partition, Postcolonialism & the Global South, X.T.MANI ASI, Anti-Semitism, Aryan Migration, Audrey Truschke, Brahminism, civilizational state, H1B Visa, Hindu Diaspora, Hindu identity, Hindu pluralism, Hindu-Muslim relations, Hinduphobia, Iconoclasm, identity politics, India Politics, Israel-Palestine, Pakistan, Partition, postcolonialism, South Asia99 Comments

I was riffling through the comments and my jaw dropped when Kabir claimed Hinduphobia doesn’t exist. It struck me as both historically and emotionally tone-deaf. I didn’t respond at the time, but I’ve been reflecting on it since.

Let me say upfront: Hinduphobia does exist. It may not always manifest in overt violence or systemic persecution (at least not today, and not in most places globally), but it does appear in more insidious, ideological forms; especially in academic and diasporic discourse.

Take, for instance, the backlash against H1B visa recipients. Much of that criticism is coded; targeting upper-caste Indians, especially Hindus, who are the primary beneficiaries of this brain-drain dynamic. It’s not just about class or meritocracy; there’s an unspoken discomfort with their presence and success, often couched in progressive rhetoric.

On the intellectual front, academics like Audrey Truschke and others within the left-liberal Western consensus have regularly challenged or dismissed Hindu identity altogether; reducing it to political nationalism or caste oppression. This refusal to acknowledge Hinduism as a living, plural, and spiritual tradition creates an environment where Hindu self-articulation is delegitimized. That too is a form of Hinduphobia.

Now, is this Hinduphobia the same as the systemic anti-Muslim, anti-Black, or anti-immigrant hatred we see elsewhere? No. Hinduphobia today is more dismissive than violent, more erasure than exclusion, but it is real and it needs to be acknowledged.

Pakistan Was Not Born from Hinduphobia Continue reading Hinduphobia Exists, But Pakistan Was Not Born from It

Open Thread: From Flattery to Fatigue — What the Iranian Diaspora Can’t Admit

July 16, 2025July 18, 2025X.T.MCulture, History, Iran, Islam & the Middle East, Language, X.T.Manti-Afghan sentiment, anti-Arab racism, Brown Pundits, Cultural Assimilation, cultural erasure, diaspora fatigue, gentrification, high-context culture, identity politics, Iranian diaspora, Islamophobia, Middle Eastern diaspora, Persian culture, Persian identity, postcolonial trauma, racial performance, Sharghzadeh, Ta’arof, Tehrangeles, Whiteness33 Comments

On July 14, I wrote about Ta’arof ; the millennia-old Persian art of flattery, refusal, and ritualised courtesy. It’s often misunderstood in the West as “saying no three times,” but it’s really about emotional high-context negotiation, reading the room before the room speaks.

The next day, on July 15, Sharghzadeh posted a powerful video, calling it Iranian Diaspora Fatigue. A searing takedown of the Iranian Diaspora’s toxic racial insecurities, internalised Islamophobia, misogyny masked as modernity, and cultural denialism. He’s mostly right.

What he calls fatigue, I’d call poisoned flattery turned inward. Because Tehranglos are no longer performing Ta’arof to honour guests or elders. They’re doing it to whiteness itself. Hoping if they refuse our own identity long enough, maybe the West will say: “Yes, come in.”

That’s not assimilation. That’s exhaustion. And the worst part? Even the racism feels borrowed; against Arabs, against Afghans, against Iranians back home. It’s not even Iranian. This isn’t just about cringe TikToks or awkward panel guests. It’s about who gets to narrate Persian culture. And what gets flattened when tradition becomes product. I was stunned when Zachary Newman — one of the most prominent Persian-Jewish American chefs — endorsed Netanyahu’s strikes on Iran. That moment crystallised something.

Sharghzadeh and I are saying the same thing: Persian culture is being gentrified by its own children. What survives isn’t tradition. It’s content. It’s vibes. If Iran is an unreadable poem, diaspora is turning it into a slogan. If Iran is lived, diaspora is increasingly just captioned. And they wonder why they’re tired. Is the Persian diaspora preserving a culture, or just performing it for the algorithm?