A few updates from this week:
Sri Lanka is facing severe flooding. Sbarkkum reports major damage to rail and road networks, with Dutch support expected for reconstruction.
Sana Aiyarās āWorld at MITā video touches on her life and work
Sam Dalrymple has a clip on Lahore and Delhiāanother reminder of how closely the two cities mirror each other despite partition.
Pakistanās minority rights bill is worth watching. Continue reading Open Thread: From Floods to LaBal
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
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
Happy Birthday Pradhan Mantri:
I watched several videos ā four or five, maybe more ā 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 ā adorned with Rakhis on his wrist, even a Bindi. Heās 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 ā he remarked that the recipient was āoutrunning young people like me.ā 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
Iāve been fairly busy the past few days, mostly focused on BRAHM Collections;Ā writing about carpets, curating Trimurti sculptures, and exploring Ardhanarishvara iconography. Itās 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, Iāve 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). Itās all a bit scattered, but the writing has become its own brown paper trail.
On the Commentariat (and Why Iām Stepping Back)
I still follow the commentariat but Iām slowly easing off. Thereās a rhythm to it, sure, but too often it turns into exhaustion. Iāve removed all of Honey Singhās abusive posts. Abuse is now a hard red line for me, but beyond that, Iām stepping back from constant moderation or sparring. Continue reading Threads, Carpets, and PM Modi’s 75th
š Reflections on Kabir, Afridi, and the Compact of Coexistence
The recent incident involving KabirĀ / 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 (ā2,000 daily visitorsāāthank 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.
Letās 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.
š§ Kabirās Point: Brotherhood, Boundaries, and the Big Choice
Kabir made an astute, if difficult, observation: that he views Indian Muslims as ābrothersā, 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. Itās 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 thereās that infamous Shahid Afridi clip, the one where he smashed his television after watching an Aarti, being performed. To many of us, that wasnāt 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?
š© The Compact of Indian Minorities: Understand It or Leave It
Iāve updated this post (Brown Pundits is not an echo chamber) after realising something important.
What began as a spirited disagreement veered into something darker. It turns out that bombay_badshah, a voice I initially assumed to be new, may not be who he claims to be (I had a hunch but so did Kabir, that BB was HS reincarnated). The posting style, the fixations, the timing; all too familiar. My suspicion is that BB may be a derivative or proxy of HS, previously banned. If true, this was not a genuine disagreement; it was entrapment, bait-and-switch.
In that light, I owe Kabir an apology. He was provoked in bad faith by someone who may be operating behind a mask. And that matters, because here on Brown Pundits, identity isnāt incidental; it shapes perspective, and we respect that. We excavate worldviews, not just opinions.
While I cannot definitively prove that BB is HS, the circumstantial evidence is strong. I will allow BB to remain but if the commentary returns obsessively to Kabir or Pakistan, I will intervene. Everyone is welcome to engage on substance. But this space will not be hijacked.
The original post remains below the jump, unedited but its context has now changed.
Iāve been following the usual commentary, the BP quadrant: Indosauras, Nivedita, Kabir. And I read Kabirās offhand remark that the Ramayana ādidnāt resonateā the way the Iliad or Odyssey did. That casual dismissal is telling.
The Ramayana is not just literature, Ā it is scripture, memory, and civilization encoded in verse. It has shaped the moral and cultural landscape of over a billion people for millennia. To compare it, then downplay it and to do so so glibly reveals less about the text and more about oneās own civilizational estrangement.
Letās be honest: that kind of language would never be used for the Quran or Islamic texts. And the fact that it is used for Hindu epics by brown intellectuals raised in the shadows of colonial categories says everything about how deeply colonized the Pakistani mind remains. Pakistan is, in truth, an Urdufied Punjab insufficiently imagined, a fragment that lost its civilizational compass in the act of imagining itself apart. The fact that the Ramayan being Pakistani heritage is such a novelty speaks volumes.
Today I sat at Stratford Westfield, eating Dubai Hot Chocolate ice cream, and the man next to me clearly Pakistani asked me, in Urdu, āif I was in the queue?ā His wife spoke Punjabi-inflected Urdu. It struck me how London has become the real unifying Punjab. Ten percent of Britain is now Desi. And outside of the subcontinent, the fractures of 1947 heal in ways that remain impossible back home.
We speak of South Asia. But the term is bureaucratic; no one identifies with it. India is real. Bharat is civilizational. Aryavarta stretches from the Hindu Kush to the Indian Ocean ā just as France is the Hexagon, Bharat is the Triangle. Partition clipped its wings, but its soul remains intact.
And look at the reality today: Indian Muslims are thriving in the mainstream. The title song of the upcoming film Sarai ā written, composed, and directed by three Muslims: Ishaq, Fahim, and Arsalan. The leading lyricist is Javed Akhtar. This is a country that refused bitterness. A country whose largest minority chose Partition, and yet was never cast out, a unique precedent and testament the pluralism of Dharma.
Bharat needs no validation. It doesnāt need the approval of its neighbours or the heirs of partitioned imagination. It only needs to walk ā and it is flying. Toward its own authenticity, on its own terms. And the world is watching.
In the aftermath of the extremely tragic plane crash in Ahmedabad (the photo features the late Ali family, may they rest in the Highest Heaven), one tiny detail stood out; not the cause of the disaster (still contested), but who was being heard. Many of the victimsā families interviewed by the BBC were of Muslim origin (it was also during the Eid Holiday break). And while that may seem incidental, it reveals a subtle, recurring pattern in Indiaās public discourse.
Three threads emerge:
Continue reading Visibility, Voice, and the Indian Muslim Dilemma
On Faizan Zaki, Spelling Bees, and Civilizational Osmosis
Another year, another Spelling Bee crown for an Indian American. But this one, the 100th Scripps tournament, Ā is different.
Faizan Zakiāyoung, brilliant, and by name Muslimājust became the latest in a long line of Indian-origin champions of Americaās most idiosyncratic intellectual ritual. Faizan is the 32nd Indian American to wināmeaning theyāve claimed 32 out of the last 40 Spelling Bees. But he is very likely the first MuslimĀ American to do so.
Which raises an old but essential question: Continue reading Is It Indian Culture or Hindu (Brahmin) Culture that creates excellence?
TNT Saved Hinduism; Dravidia preserved Aryavarta?
S. Qureshi: āMuslims are today a majority of the population >50% of North British India. If peninsular south was made into its own country in 1947, India would be a Muslim majority country today. Many Muslims actually wanted South India to be a separate country and North India (including Pakistan/Bengal) to be one unit. To say that Indian Muslims who lived in the historical centre of Muslim power for centuries would just get up and leave for Pakistan is just farcical and delusional. These types of ideas were only proposed by extreme right-wing Hindu organizations after partition, and these ideas seem to become mainstream today with BJP. Historical reality, like always, is very different.ā
The demographic map of the subcontinent tells a startling story. If South India had formed a separate state in 1947, the rest of British India ā encompassing Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the northern Hindi belt ā would today constitute a Muslim-majority civilizational bloc. This isnāt conjecture. Itās arithmetic.
The Numbers That Reorder the Narrative
Hereās what the Indo-Gangetic arc looks like today (please fact check me): Continue reading South India Makes British India Hindu?
