Open Thread: Pakistan’s Demons are The Daughters of God

Q writes on Pakistani source confirms US, Iran closing in on one-page memo to end war:

  1. Total Pakistani victory. If Pakistan pulls off the mediation, this will its greatest diplomatic victory ever. Lifting of Iranian sanctions will allow cheaper Iranian oil to flow directly to Pakistan, and the oil pipeline can be finally completed. Complete eradication of Indian influence from Iran is now achieved, and this will also eliminate any support to BLA from across the border.

Pakistan post Sindoor is on a winning streak. The mediation is real, the memo is real, and if it holds, the diplomatic ledger for the year goes firmly into Rawalpindi’s column. Iranian oil at the door, IP pipeline thinkable for the first time in fifteen years, BLA lifelines into Sistan throttled, Chabahar quietly demoted. A Victorious month?

But the question is whether she can conquer her demons. And the demons are not in the foreign ministry. They are in the drama studios.

Q again, on Pakistani dramas:

Women low-key love abusive behaviour from attractive men. Pretty much all women fantasy porn is about this. (What they don’t love is abusive aggressive behaviour from ugly or poor men) Since females are the primary target audience of these dramas, they tend to show this because that’s what the market demands. I would not read too much into this. What’s more concering was that foreign funded NGOs were trying implement anti-family messaging in the last 15 years – and that messaging has suddenly dried up after their funding dried up.

Fantasy is not preference. A woman reading a brooding-billionaire romance is not auditioning for one. To collapse the two is to flatten the female imagination into a market signal, which is exactly what the Pakistani dramas do and exactly why they rot the culture that consumes them.

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Founder Sites and Institutional Sites: A Note on Sikh Sacred Geography

This post is to be treated as Precedent on two matters.

First, on moderation

We have been alerted by Hamza that a number of Pakistani commentators on this site have been using anti-Dravidian racialised language against South Indian communities. This will not be tolerated on Brown Pundits.

Any comment that uses racialised language against Dravidian, Tamil, or South Indian communities will be removed, and the offending commenter will have twenty comments removed instantly as an automatic fine. There is no warning phase.

This is personal as well as editorial. DLV’s family was driven out of Sindh by Muhajirs at Partition. It was the Dravidians and the Tamils of Chennai who welcomed them, gave them a second home, and treated them as their own. Any racialised language against those communities on this site will be met with the full weight of the moderation tools available.

To Kabir’s credit, as far as we are aware, he is the only regular Pakistani voice on this blog who has never used racialised language of any kind, even in sharp disagreement. He remains institutional and high-minded even when the argument turns to nuclear rattling. He does not share in the wider Desi pathology with regards to skin colour and race, and that exception is worth naming. It may be the American side of him. Whatever the source, it is the standard this site expects of every commenter, Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, or otherwise.

Second, on substance

The post below establishes a framework for how this site will discuss the sacred geographies of Partition going forward. The recent Kabir-Kishore exchange on Sikh holy places, is the occasion, but the framework is intended to apply across all such disputes: Hindu sites in Pakistan, Muslim sites in India, Sikh sites on both sides of the Wagah, Buddhist sites across the subcontinent. Future BP posts on sacred geography should refer back to the founder-institutional distinction laid out here.


Founder Sites and Institutional Sites: A Note on Sikh Sacred Geography

A recent exchange on this site sets out two claims about Sikh holy places. The first says Sikhs lost most of their sacred sites to Pakistan in 1947. The second calls that claim nonsense. Both are right, and the disagreement turns on a distinction neither has named: founder sites versus institutional sites.

The Pakistan-side Holy Sites

Continue reading Founder Sites and Institutional Sites: A Note on Sikh Sacred Geography

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