Launch of the Unruly Bodies Art Exhibition

Tamil, Sanskrit and Hindi.

When I see Hindustani or Desi classical music; I think of Kabir.

As my friend Arjun reminds me; it’s actually Carnatic music and the musician is so so good.

The parent post set out why the house speaks in the plural and why pruning widens the room. This post sets out the harder discipline. A plural voice that cannot bind itself is not a voice. It is a whip. And a forum that cannot bind its Founders is not a forum. It is their salon.

The Crescent anchor.

When Brown Pundits was revived, two commentators returned before anyone else. Kabir was one of them. sbarrkum was the other. That mattered more than any traffic number. A forum lives by the return of people willing to argue in public, under their own names or their settled masks, on a schedule that does not flinch.

Kabir matters for a second reason. The Centre gathers quietly and often overlaps with the Saffron bench in instinct or historical frame. The Crescent bloc on this site is essentially held together by Kabir. Remove him and the others do not regroup under a new flag. They drift.

Without Kabir, Brown Pundits will become a site where Muslims are written about more than they are written by.

That is a failure mode we refuse. A South Asian forum without a sustained Crescent voice is a drawing room pretending to be a commons.

The 1940s in low resolution.

Stakes reduced to pixels and pride. Thankfully Nobody dies here. Which is precisely why the argument is worth preserving, and why the moderator’s hand should be lighter than the arguers sometimes deserve.

A century ago the same arguments produced two states and a million dead. A decade of this blog has produced two states of mind and zero dead. That is progress, even when it does not feel like it.

The value of the difficult voice.

Kabir is not valuable because he agrees with us. He rarely does. He is valuable because he returns, contests, and denies the Saffron bench the luxury of rhetorical walkovers. He is the gadfly this site earned, and the loyal opposition it did not know it needed.

Opposition is not a flaw in a public square. It is a load-bearing wall.

Three rulings.

One. Precedents do not apply to Author Threads. An Author manages their thread in its entirety. Our Precedents bind ours. They do not bind theirs. Admin reserves only the narrow right to intervene on racism, illegality, or conduct beyond common decency, and in egregious cases without notice. Short of that, the Author runs the room.

Two. Authors may set aside BP Precedents on their own posts. We moderate ours by Precedent. They moderate theirs both by choice and conscience. Readers will judge accordingly.

Three. Authors may exclude commenters from an open thread, provided the thread is named accordingly. “Kabir’s Open Thread on Iran.” The naming is the price of exclusion. No ambushes.

The cost to the admin.

Kabir has deleted our comments on his own threads. On the same threads, he has quoted our beta noire (all pun intended) approvingly, the one figure this site has formally placed under Precedent for bad faith.

The Founder goes to Trash. The persona non grata gets citation. Under the rulings above, both are his to make. We wrote the rule that protects them. That is not a flaw in the rule. That is the rule working. Freedom of expression is only real when it hurts the people who wrote it. This one hurts us. It will keep hurting us. Good.

A Founder who cannot be told no on another Author’s thread is not a Founder. He is a rentier landlord collecting rent on an argument he no longer owns.

The Indic centre, and its ceiling.

Our centre of gravity is Indic. Bharat Mata ki Jai (the very same slogan BB threatened Kabir with). We said so in the parent post and we will not pretend otherwise. But a centre heavy enough to hold must be light enough to let a Crescent Author run his own room without looking over his shoulder at us. Otherwise the centre is not a centre.

What Kabir gives us.

He gives us the argument. He gives the Saffron bench an opponent it must answer rather than caricature. He gives the Centre a reminder that neutrality is not absence. He gives readers the oldest democratic pleasure, which is watching strong disagreement conducted in words rather than force.

He gives Brown Pundits the thing that separates a living forum from a fan club. Someone who will not agree, will not leave, and will not be silenced by the people who own the keys.

The long game.

We will keep arguing with Kabir. He will keep deleting us. He will keep quoting people this site has disavowed. The rulings above are how we make all of that sustainable for another decade.

Kabir did not ask for this Precedent. He earned it the hard way.

Capacity for unmoderated commenting has run out. Known authors will be held to a materially higher bar than anonymous readers, because name recognition carries responsibility.

Kabir has set the template. He has moved his argumentation out of comment threads and into original posts (India is Not a “Muslim Power” & Overzealous Pemra), which is exactly the trajectory we want to see from regular contributors.

Direct warning to BB: stop fanning thread fires. The metric this year is not comment density, it is commenter diversity. Low-quality threads drive high-quality voices off the platform, and we have watched it happen in real time. One dominant voice churning out heat costs us three or four signal contributors who quietly stop showing up.

If you have a substantive argument, write a post. If you have a reaction, keep it tight and keep it clean. Threads are not a venue for serial combat.

This applies to everyone, but authors especially. You set the tone whether you mean to or not.

– Moderation, Brown Pundits

Look at what Mohenjo-daro actually gives us: the Pashupati Seal; three-faced, ithyphallic, seated in yogic posture, surrounded by elephant, tiger, buffalo, rhinoceros. Proto-Shiva. The Mother Goddess figurines. Linga and yoni stones. Pipal veneration. The sacred bull. Every single religious thread runs forward into the living Hindu tradition.

Lord Shiva is still being worshipped. The pipal is still sacred. The ritual logic of the Great Bath still lives in the sacred tank. That is not assertion; that is continuity you can touch.

Pakistan is welcome to construct an “Indus National” identity. But that project requires explaining how a civilisation whose core deity was Proto-Shiva bequeaths itself to a state whose foundational theology requires the repudiation of exactly that. Geography is not continuity. Practice is.

India doesn’t claim Harappa because of lines on a map. She claims it because she never stopped. Four thousand years of unbroken thread; from the Pashupati Seal to the nearest functioning Shiva temple. Pure and simple stratigraphy.

Loki is the harbinger of Ragnarök. Even I’m surprised — but perhaps it was inevitable. The Saffronite dialectic on caste had become too self-referential, too performative. The same arguments recycled endlessly, as if volume were a substitute for depth.

Girmit wasn’t speaking on national unity; only perceptions. So any analysis of the structure of society is now to be replaced by moral superiority onto their counterparts. It has become, in short, a perpetual three-minute hate, directed outward at “the Other.” That is not intellectual inquiry; it’s emotional exorcism.

2. The Editorial Shift

So, to reset the balance and an apology, I’ve made Kabir an editor. He now has the rights to create and onboard new authors — part of what I call the Crescentisation of the blog. Think of Brown Pundits as a Saffron-hued Moon, where all Desi identities can find their place. In terms of editorial hierarchy:

• Kabir is answerable only to me. I expect fresh content, unemotional comments (if there is a triggering comment, remove it). If Kabir hyper-posts as he did before as author; I’ll simply remove it without warning.

• Dr. V’s identity (IHS) still takes precedence over mine (BPB); that remains the structure. So I want Kabir to avoid making any Hinduphobic or Indophobic comments (remove them instead).

• There are now three editors, and I expect all to avoid flame wars with each other. If disputes arise between, I’ll mediate fairly between them. But stay in your lanes. I will not look kindly on others intruding on the other’s thread; my threads are free for all and I grant Nivedita & Indosaurus, primus inter pares on them (I rarely read comment threads).

• Editors outrank Authors (whose status is actively reviewed)

This is not about sides — it’s about integrity. If we are to discuss civilization, faith, caste, or identity, then intellectual honesty must be our first sacrament.

3. A Word to the Saffroniate

I was unimpressed by the cheap comment that “BP needs more views.” This space isn’t monetized, and it isn’t a brand campaign. We are not here to please algorithms or echo chambers. We are here to preserve one thing; truth, however uncomfortable.

Caste discrimination is not a talking point; it is structural, perennial, and pervasive. The quieter it gets, the deeper it runs. Hinduism must reckon with that. It can, and should, without fear.

That is the only reason I have let Loki out of Ragnarök and empowered him to act. So that intellectual balance is the fixed principle of Brown Pundits. If Honey | Bombay Badshah or anyone else crosses into personal animus, Kabir can remove his comments. If Qureshi asks, he can be made author, under his old or new handle.

4. On Authorship and Accountability

We currently have 15 registered authors. I have written to each. Only two have replied. Let me be clear: if administrative emails are ignored, authorial privileges will be revoked. This is not punishment; it’s maintenance. Brown Pundits must remain a high volume, high-signal, not high-noise space.

If you wish to participate, answer the call. If not, the gates of Asgard will close quietly behind you.

5. The Principle

I don’t get paid for this. I gain nothing materially. But ideas, honestly handled, are worth defending. We can disagree, even vehemently, but we cannot descend into tribal reflex. If that is what passes for dialectic now, then let Ragnarok burn the old world down. The Golden Age, after all, only begins after Ragnarök is done.

It seems uncommonly quiet; I think I have been misunderstood. I do not care about the traffic and commentary of BP as much as I care about the integrity of the space.

For instance when I felt that Kabir had done wrong; interdiction was the answer. When I realised the narrative was being twisted so that I became his moderator (Kabir generally knows my red lines) then I realised I was wrong. Kabir’s recent postings and commentary have been very high-signal.

We now have a very strong left-liberal coalition at BP (sbarrkum, Kabir, girmit) and a few Pakistaniat voices (Qureshi, Furqan). I find it interesting that the Saffroniate want me to be copacetic when Pakistan is labelled Nazistan (which I am copacetic about) but when I highlight caste origins of the Saffroniate, that is beyond the pale.

I did not simply yield on the interdiction of Kabir because I wanted views; I yielded because I realised the Commentariat/Saffroniate were invested in Kabir being portrayed in a certain light (which to be fair Kabir absolutely did not help himself with).

I will not interdict the Left-Liberals of this blog simply to get the Saffroniate back even if that means we lose all our viewership and commentary base. BP can rebuild and reincarnate as it always has. We work because we span all sides of the divide.

The Iranian.com, which was a very old and popular website for the Iranian diaspora; had a great motto, “Nothing is Sacred.” A flip side to the Guardian’s “comment is free but facts are sacred.” Brown Pundits has always straddled that tension, between radical openness and factual integrity. That’s our sacred ground.

Another Browncast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe to one of the links above!

Episode 17 of the series of Podcasts on the history of Indian sub-continent.

Maneesh speaks to Jay and Omar on the socio-cultural milieu of the Mughals and their decline.

Across the two episodes on Mughals we haven’t talked about the Sikhs and the Rajpoots. We plan to do dedicated episodes on them.

A notable miss across both the episodes is Kabir Das. Perhaps an episode on the great spiritual figures of the millennium some day !

Sources and References:

1. Advanced Study in the History of Medieval India : Volume II by J.L Mehta
2. The History and Culture of the Indian People: Volume 7. The Mughul Empire
3. Akbar and His India by Irfan Habib
4. Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court by Audrey Truschke
5. The life of a text: performing the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulsidas by Philip Lutgendorf
6. Three Bhakti Voices Mirabai, Surdas, and Kabir in their Time and Ours by John Stratton Hawley
7. The Mughals and the Sufis by Muzaffar Alam
8. Did Aurangzeb Ban Music? Questions for the Historiography of His Reign
by Katherine Butler Brown [ARTICLE]
9. The Early Sūr Sāgar and the Growth of the Sūr Tradition
by John Stratton Hawley [ARTICLE]
10. Hidden in Plain View: Brajbhasha Poets at the Mughal Court
by Allison Busch [ARTICLE]
11. The Meeting of Musical Cultures in the 16th-century Court of the Mughal Akbar by Bonnie C. Wade [ARTICLE]

Turin, Pakistan, Tianzhu, Hodu, Aryavarsha, Hindustan, Bharata, Hindus, Aja Nabha Varsha, Jambu Dweepa, Sapta Sindu, the holy land sung of in infinite ways in many tongues cried out for a savior. All seemed lost. But the transcendent remembered Her (obviously female, duh) holy promise:

The transcendent came not alone, but brought Her eternal ever sweet, ever happy, ever loving, ever free, ever stitapragnya (one whose bliss is unaffected and unruffled by all circumstances) companions. And one such companion would soon grace us all.

Zx was in a sorry state. Hopeless despair. He was only 98 percentile with seemingly no prospect of further improvement [translation for non Deshis who don’t understand impossibly high Deshi expectations . . . Zx was a LOSER]. He was compassionate. He was smart. He was potentially wise . . . but it was as if he was waiting for something.

The symphony of symphonies, note of notes,  the pattern that is composed of all patterns was so close and yet so far. Zx’s mentors Báb and Bahá’u’lláh had hinted at a connection between cosmology, fleeting morality, chaos, vastness and patterns (female, male, love, beauty). Some say that when they are in alignment, in tune, in harmony, melody . . . grace comes.

Zx had toiled hard for alignment. But where was the grace? The grace that could save Zx. And transform Zx into a 1 basis point [1/10,000] winner. What could melt the heart of this vicious dangerous ugly beast? What alchemy could transmute ugly into graceful studliness? What light could inspire majesty and wisdom from stubbornness? What could calm and tame this wild tempest of emotion?

And then December 18th, 2016 arrived:

Soulmates . . . two halves of the same soul joining together in life’s journey. Once in a while right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale.

“A lover’s heart is not from fleshly pine. Let love proceed from this or other cause. However well we strive love to portray we blush thereat when love our hearts doth sway”

And then it happened. That which poets, poems, songs, art, mystics, dreamers, lovers, saints and sages touch. The goose bump cold chills up and down the spine and brain. Kabir’s crooked door, so tiny and so everything:

Happiness

The boy had died. And a man was born. Our hero. Our leader of Brown Pundits.

Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai’s seven queens of Sindh were as One. Beauty, light, grace, sweetness, strength and elegance given form.

We celebrate her anniversary of arrival in our Bhu lokha (earth) on this extremely auspicious chaturdashi Kali Puja day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEb20iwYanc

Happy Birthday VL from all of us at Brown Pundit 🙂 Thank you for being the sweetness of Aryavarsha and Sanathana Dharma. Thank you for marrying us with the Ba’hai family–the youngest sister in our Arya family in whom we are most proud. And thank you for saving Zx!

Seven Beauties of Sindh