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.
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.
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.
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In this episode we talk to Mohammed Zeeshan, who is a foreign affairs analyst and columnist. He has written for The Diplomat, The National Interest, Swarajya and DailyO, among others and is a founder of the Freedom gazette. We talk about the current anti-CAA protests, the current and future prospects of Indian Muslims and how they perceive the BJP.
