As Dave mentioned, there is a lively WhatsApp group of BP authors and editors, and it inevitably shapes the comment ecosystem. But one comment on the blog stood out:
“The very foundation of Pakistan is an anti-position. What is not India is Pakistan. So isn’t it obvious?”
It’s an extraordinarily crisp description of Pakistani identity-building. What is not India is Pakistan. That is not a slur; it is, in many ways, a psychologically accurate frame for how the state narrates itself.
What I increasingly find misplaced on this blog is the recurring assumption that Pakistanis are somehow “Indians-in-waiting,” or that Punjab is “West Punjab,” Pakistan “Northwest India,” or Bangladesh “East Bengal.” These are irredentist projections that simply do not match lived identities. This is not “North Korea” or “East Germany,” where both sides continue to imagine themselves as fragments of one common nation.
Yes, Pakistan consumes Bollywood and Hindi music, which themselves derive from Mughal and Indo-Persian syncretic traditions. Yes, Pakistan is culturally embedded in the greater Indo-Islamic civilizational sphere. But emotionally, Pakistan has severed itself from the Indian Subcontinent as a cohesive landscape. It has constructed a hybrid identity; part Turko-Persian, part Islamic internationalist, part anti-India.
I don’t personally agree with this move, and my own trajectory has been toward a strong Hinducised, Dharmic identification. But my view is irrelevant here. What matters is that Pakistani identity is defined negatively; as the commentator put it, “What is not India is Pakistan.”
Whether that is healthy or sustainable is another matter. But identities can persist in unhealthy configurations for a very long time; the stock market can be irrational longer than your liquidity can survive.
Anon · November 2, 2025 · Comments Off on What’s in a name? That which we call a Swastika, isn’t exactly a symbol of hate
Disclaimer: As this post deals with an academic discussion on the Swastika symbol, I have included various images containing Swastika below. If you are repulsed by the symbol or do not like to look at it, please consider yourself warned. Also, for the same reason, this post is NSFW.
Growing up in India, I had developed this habit of drawing symbols of auspiciousness and good luck on my exam answer sheets. I have no recollection of who taught me to do that or when I started doing it but I can clearly remember even during my bachelor studies, I would collect the answer sheet from the invigilator and immediately proceed to draw an ‘ॐ’ (Om), a ‘श्री’ (Shree) and a ‘卐’ (Swastika, albeit with 4 dots in the middle as one would draw in India) at the top of the first sheet of the answer paper. This rather innocent practice wasn’t unique to me. Apparently many other students used to do this until the universities started cracking down on this ‘malpractice’ for ‘displaying symbols of faith on answer sheets’ and ’emotionally appealing to the evaluators’. In a religiously polarized India of the 2010’s, I don’t expect any less ham-handed response from our University VCs. But, personally, what prompted me to stop this practice was my move to Germany for my master’s.
In the first few weeks of the semester, all international students took part in an orientation program at the university. One of the most shocking things I learnt that day was that any public display of Swastika was BANNED in Germany. I was not ignorant of Germany’s sordid past. Watching ‘Schindler’s list’ beamed onto the wall of a dark classroom with my fellow drama club members in high school is one of the most vivid memories I have. I was just 15 then and the movie shocked me to my core. It was one of those instances of loss of innocence in my life when cruelty, inhumanity, Germany, Hitler, Jews and hate took on a whole other meaning in my psyche. In spite of that, discovering Swastika, an omnipresent sign in India that I had grown up seeing everywhere and that which is considered good and auspicious by everyone around me, could be a banned symbol of hate in the country I had just moved to, was another instance of loss of innocence.
Just like me, many Indians who have moved to the west have discovered this in their own way. The subreddit r/AITA (no connection with raitas 😛 ) has quite a few posts from hindus who have been mistaken for a white-supremacist (Oh! The irony!) for displaying Swastikas as a pendant gifted by grandmother, in the form of a rangoli/kolam in their frontyard, a tattoo on the arm they got while in India, having portraits of hindu gods at home, etc. All these instances happened in the US. From my personal experience, I have found the germans to have better awareness about Swastika; it’s use as the Nazi party symbol, a hate symbol of neo-Nazis and also as the auspicious symbol for many asian religions and cultures. This is because of two reasons:
1. The curriculum at schools explore all aspects of Germany’s sordid past with a level of frankness that I can only describe as ‘very German’. The curriculum makes the differentiation between the two symbols very clear as you can see from this children’s website that takes them on a german historical journey of the last 100 years.
2. The germans use two different words for this symbol. The symbol of hate used by Hitler and the neo-Nazis is called ‘Hakenkreuz’ while the auspicious symbol of the orient is called ‘Swastika’. Just the existence of two different words makes it easy to differentiate the meaning of the two symbols.
Funnily enough, even though I lived in Germany for 5+ years, I was not aware of the existence of ‘Hakenkreuz’. I only came to know about it in the past year or so through twitter! It was probably through a thread by True Indology (lost when his account was suspended) that I became aware of the german word ‘Hakenkreuz’ that when translated to english means hooked cross and not Swastika. The problem lies with the current mistranslation of Hakenkreuz in English.
Google translate translates Swastika as Hekenkreuz in German. Notice the possible translations of the word – das Hakenkreuz and die Swastika. Also notice the definition of Swastika in english. It only defines the Hakenkreuz, the symbol used by Hitler.
Instead of translating into hooked cross, it is translated as Swastika, which is clearly wrong. So, why IS it mistranslated to Swastika? Who first translated Hakenkreuz to English as Swastika and how did that translation stick? More importantly, did Hitler adopt the eastern symbol Swastika as the anti-semitic symbol of his political party or did the inspiration come from elsewhere? These were some of the questions that recently led me to write a thread on twitter (you could also read it on the thread reader app here). I will summarize my findings below.
Colonialism and imperialism in the 18th and 19th century CE brought about a great deal of interest in the eastern cultures by the west which gave rise to the field of oriental studies and orientalism. All things east were considered exotic and the ‘popular’ phenomenon of cultural appropriation led to the adoption of various eastern symbols in the west. One among those was the Swastika. It shot up in popularity among the western academicians in the 1880’s and pretty soon entered the pop culture scene as a symbol of good luck, akin to today’s good luck charms like Maneki-neko (Japanese beckoning cat), Chinese fortune cookies or the Irish shamrock.
A report by Thomas Wilson titled ‘THE SWASTIKA, The earliest known symbol, and its migrations; with observations on the migration of certain industries in prehistoric times” for the US National museums in 1894 wonderfully compiled the then existing knowledge of Swastika. It is meticulous and very clearly written with almost no bias from Mr. Wilson. This also happens to be the first recorded instance where an English speaker tried to compile all the crooked cross like symbols and used the umbrella term of Swastika in English. Until then, the word Swastika did not exist in any english dictionary or encyclopedia. He writes in the preface:
An English gentleman, versed in prehistoric archæology, visited me in the summer of 1894, and during our conversation asked if we had the Swastika in America. I answered, “Yes,” and showed him two or three specimens of it. He demanded if we had any literature on the subject. I cited him De Mortillet, De Morgan, and Zmigrodzki, and he said, “No, I mean English or American.” I began a search which proved almost futile, as even the word Swastika did not appear in such works as Worcester’s or Webster’s dictionaries, the Encyclopædic Dictionary, the Encyclopædia Britannica, Johnson’s Universal Cyclopædia, the People’s Cyclopædia, nor Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, his Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, or his Classical Dictionary. I also searched, with the same results, Mollett’s Dictionary of Art and Archæology, Fairholt’s Dictionary of Terms in Art, “L’Art Gothique,” by Gonza, Perrot and Chipiez’s extensive histories of Art in Egypt, in Chaldea and Assyria, and in Phenicia; also “The Cross, Ancient and Modern,” by W. W. Blake, “The History of the Cross,” by John Ashton; and a reprint of a Dutch work by Wildener. In the American Encyclopædia the description is erroneous, while all the Century Dictionary says is, “Same as fylfot,” and “Compare Crux Ansata and Gammadion.” I thereupon concluded that this would be a good subject for presentation to the Smithsonian Institution for “diffusion of knowledge among men.”
In this report, Wilson examined different forms of crosses that had been found all around the world and concluded that Swastika is the most ancient one of them all.
Different cross-like symbols examined by Thomas Wilson in THE SWASTIKA
He complied various definitions of Swastika as recorded by different researchers and it was commonly understood to mean ‘good being’ or ‘good fortune’ in Sanskrit. The symbology was interpreted by different academicians differently. Although mostly everyone agreed that it is an auspicious symbol for the hindus and buddhists, there was no consensus on how to interpret the symbology. He writes,
Many theories have been presented concerning the symbolism of the Swastika, its relation to ancient deities and its representation of certain qualities. In the estimation of certain writers it has been respectively the emblem of Zeus, of Baal, of the sun, of the sun-god, of the sun-chariot of Agni the fire-god, of Indra the rain-god, of the sky, the sky-god, and finally the deity of all deities, the great God, the Maker and Ruler of the Universe. It has also been held to symbolize light or the god of light, of the forked lightning, and of water. It is believed by some to have been the oldest Aryan symbol. In the estimation of others it represents Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, Creator, Preserver, Destroyer. It appears in the footprints of Buddha, engraved upon the solid rock on the mountains of India. It stood for the Jupiter Tonans and Pluvius of the Latins, and the Thor of the Scandinavians. In the latter case it has been considered—erroneously, however—a variety of the Thor hammer. In the opinion of at least one author it had an intimate relation to the Lotus sign of Egypt and Persia. Some authors have attributed a phallic meaning to it. Others have recognized it as representing the generative principle of mankind, making it the symbol of the female. Its appearance on the person of certain goddesses, Artemis, Hera, Demeter, Astarte, and the Chaldean Nana, the leaden goddess from Hissarlik, has caused it to be claimed as a sign of fecundity.
Until then, Swastika, as a symbol was known by different names in different languages because the symbol existed almost everywhere in the world, in Asia, Europe, northern Africa and the Americas. Also in Great Britain. So, what did the English call the symbol? Fylfot. Wilson writes,
In Great Britain the common name given to the Swastika, from Anglo-Saxon times by those who apparently had no knowledge whence it came, or that it came from any other than their own country, was Fylfot, said to have been derived from the Anglo-Saxon fower fot, meaning four-footed, or many-footed.
So, there existed a word for the 卐(crooked cross) symbol in english but only for the 卐 found in and around great britain. Instead of using this word for all crooked crosses in English, Mr. Wilson instead chose to use the word Swastika since he found it to be the most ancient of them all. This was a ham-fisted move because the Indic name swastika corresponded to the 卐 that symbolized auspiciousness which the other crooked crosses did not. Even Wilson admits that by quoting a letter by the famous Indologist Prof. Max Müller,
I do not like the use of the word svastika outside of India. It is a word of Indian origin and has its history and definite meaning in India. * * * The occurrence of such crosses in different parts of the world may or may not point to a common origin, but if they are once called Svastika the vulgus profanum will at once jump to the conclusion that they all come from India, and it will take some time to weed out such prejudice.
So, in 1894, the word Swastika was proposed by Mr. Wilson to denote all crooked crosses in english language and we see that the practice stuck since the use of the word in english language increased since then. So, is this when the German word ‘Hakenkreuz’ started being called as Swastika? Interestingly, no! In fact, the report mentions finding variants of swastika in Germany but mentions no name in German. ‘Hakenkreuz’ was barely used until then and was relegated to 19th century vocabulary books like the Bailey-Fahrenkrüger’s Wörterbuch der englischen Sprache and the Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm (yes, they are the Brothers Grimm of Grimm’s fairy tales). So, to answer one of the questions posed above, ‘Hakenkreuz’ wasn’t actually translated into English. By the time germans started using Hakenkreuz as the word for the infamous anti-semitic symbol, the English speaking world had already picked up on the word Swastika and called any crooked cross symbol as such.
So, when and why did the Nazis adopt the Hakenkreuz as their anti-semitic symbol? The reason goes all the way back to Troy, the location of the fabled trojan war (it’s an interesting story, you can read a detailed article here). When a german businessman and amateur archeologist Heinrich Schliemann found the remains of the mythical city of Troy in modern day Turkey in 1871, along with the ruins, he found the 卐 symbol on everything – pieces of pottery, ruins of buildings, marble carvings, etc. Being an amateur archaeologist he did not understand the significance of his find. So, he consulted his orientalist friends – Max Mueller(yes, the same guy who didn’t want to call ‘Swastika’ found outside India as Swastika) and Émile-Louis Burnouf, a leading expert of Sanskrit. Fun fact: Bernouf was also an anti-semite and a propounder of Aryan master race.
Burnouf made a bunch of dubious claims (debunked by Wilson in his monumental report on Swastika) which was covered in Schliemann’s book ‘Troy and its remains‘ and concluded that Suastika (that was the spelling he went with) is an essential symbol of the Aryan race. The popularization of this flawed idea led to its appropriation as the symbol by the German ‘Völkisch‘ national movement gaining steam at the juncture of 19th and 20th century. It was a nationalistic movement which propounded that Germans belong to the Aryan ‘master race’ and hence need to dominate the world. Poetically, the year Burnouf breathed his last, 1907, was also the year when the Swastika was first used as a symbol of Aryan dominance by a secret society called ‘Order of the New Templars’ (Ordo Novi Templi, or ONT) in Austria by Lanz von Liebenfels, an Austrian racialist. So, in early 20th century, as most of the west started embracing Swastika as a ‘cool’ motif, it was also being appropriated secretly by an anti-semitic and racist underground movement becoming a symbol of racial supremacy for various organizations until it was mainstreamed by Hitler in the Nazi flag in 1920.
Flag of the ‘Order of the new Templars’. This was the first instance of Swastika used as a symbol of Aryan dominance in 1907.
What inspired Hitler to choose this symbol for his political party? Was it just the connection to Aryan race or did the inspiration come from elsewhere? The anti-semitism displayed by the Nazis did not arise from a vacuum. Anti-semitism or anti-Judaism has existed in Europe since pre-Christian times but morphed into ‘religious anti-semitism’ due to the early christian belief that jews were collectively responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. This sentiment and the associated conflict intensified after Christianity spread as a state religion in Europe. However, the pseudo-scientific racial theories that became widespread in 19th century Europe threw up an additional strain of ‘racial anti-semitism’ where the basis of discrimination and persecution was the ‘scientific evidence’ that jews belongs to a separate lower ‘non-Aryan’ race. The combination of these two strains of anti-semitism, one historic and one modern, manifested politically in the form of Hitler’s Nazi party.
Professor William Brustein’s book, Roots of hate delves deep into pre-Holocaust anti-semitism in Europe
Adolf Hitler was a complicated man to understand. Forests have been felled to publish books speculating his inspirations and motives. Most scholars however agree that although Hitler distanced himself away from Christianity in his later years, he leaned heavily towards christianity in his early years. His catholic upbringing, his admiration for
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.
no one is born a Bahá’í; even those who are “Bahá’ízadeh” (those born to Bahá’í homes) must first affirm their belief at fifteen and confirm it at 21
Dawn Posting
Most of my writing these days happens either at the dead of night, bleeding into the Dawn. This is when the world is quiet enough to hear one’s thoughts.
I’ve asked the Editors to lean into their moderation. But I’ve also emphasized that a copy of the moderated comments should be preserved in their original form; so that, if there’s an appeal or a misreading, I can assess it personally. My instinct has always been to under-moderate. I would rather allow something unpleasant to be said than suppress something vital.
That said, miscommunication is inevitable in a forum like ours. I recently had my own moment of misunderstanding with Indosaurus. But in many ways, that’s exactly what makes Brown Pundits an exciting space. We are not a hive mind. We’re a broad church; Anglican in temperament, not Catholic in control. Communion, not command.
Kabir’s Muslim nationalism cosplaying as liberalism is vexatious (it would be excellent if he just disclosed his priors), but I give the admin full authority to handle that directly.
My immediate concern is with BB-HS. I have barred him from becoming an author and have removed his last twenty comments. Despite his earlier misrepresentation about being “half-Muslim,” I allowed him to return under a new handle, tabula rasa. His output, however, is increasingly defined by “fantasies” about what a model minority should be; deracinated and devoid of meaningful character.
BB’s Response (after I had deleted his past 20 comments)
“Why though? The only animus I have is with Kabir because he represents a demographic I loathe – The soft Islamist | The ‘liberal’ English-speaking version who whitewashes his more hardcore cousins’ atrocities. Actual people have died due to Islamists which Kabir downplays (Pahalgam, October 7th). Some ribbing online is nothing in comparison. And I haven’t even said anything insulting.”
My Response
Kabir is not an Islamist. He is a Muslim nationalist—since Pakistan itself is sine qua non Muslim nationalism (the idea that Indian Muslims were entitled to their own nation). Just as every Israeli is, by definition, a Zionist/Jewish nationalist, even if individuals disagree with its implications, Kabir represents that current.
What stands out is that BB mentions only Pahalgam and October 7—both undeniably tragic events, and I say this as someone who is not Muslim—while omitting the ongoing genocide in Gaza.It is akin to referencing 9/11, a devastating moment in history, without also acknowledging the destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq and the millions of lives lost in their aftermath.
Unlike Kabir, vexatious, but rarely personal, BB makes his attacks direct. He is not Kabir’s friend indulging in ribbing; he is simply “Honey” under another guise.
What sets him apart is an openly hierarchical stance: non-Muslim lives ranked above Muslim ones, echoing the very post-colonial divide-and-rule strategies we are meant to reject.
Kabir manipulates through weaponised victimhood; BB chooses blunt hostility, lacing personal abuse into his commentary. I have permanently removed Honey’s comments for that reason, vulgarity leaves no space for debate and I treat BB and Honey as a single entity.
Beneath the very different styles of BB-HS & Kabir lies the same contempt: the belief that the only acceptable minority is one hollowed out, compliant, and dead on the inside.
Moderation Philosophy
As a Founder, my job is to ensure Brown Pundits does not become an echo chamber. I have repeatedly critiqued Kabir’s contradictions, but once I accepted him as a Muslim nationalist cosplaying liberalism, I could also accept his place in the debate. We have multiple Hindu nationalists here, and when Kabir is challenged\moderated, the balance tends to restore itself. The ecosystem can correct for his presence.
Finally, let me stress: the comment boards are not the only heart of this site. Too often they descend into noise. If regular commentators want to influence debate constructively, they should apply to become Authors; where they can speak directly to our 2,000+ daily readers, not just the dozen or so regular commentariat.
Brown Pundits is rapidly emerging as the most interesting Indo-Pak cross-channel precisely because it is not an echo chamber. We literally upset everyone and that is a great thing because it means we are covering new difficult terrain. My moderation began with strict principles, but like everyone else, I have a life, job, and family. That means I must also be pragmatic.
🕌 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
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.
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?
S. Qureshi: “Muslims 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.”
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 — encompassing Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the northern Hindi belt — would today constitute a Muslim-majority civilizational bloc. This isn’t conjecture. It’s arithmetic.
On this tragic day 34 years ago, Rajiv Gandhi was brutally assassinated in Chennai. It would be timely and worthwhile to respectfully reflect on his legacy — the good, the controversial, and the unresolved.
Pervez Hoodbhoy needs no introduction. As one of Pakistan’s leading physicists and public intellectuals, he has long stood at the uneasy crossroads of science, nationalism, and conscience. He spoke this week at MIT’s Graduate Tower — the final stop on a grueling five-city U.S. tour, a new city every two days — in support of The Black Hole Initiative, a cultural and intellectual space he’s building in Pakistan. Despite its ominous name, the initiative is a wormhole, not a void: a cross-disciplinary bridge connecting physics, literature, art, and civic life.
What followed was less a lecture, more an exposition — sober, lucid, and grounded in decades of hard-won clarity.
The Logic of Annihilation
Dr. Hoodbhoy walked us through Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine: under long-standing military assumptions, if the north–south arterial route is severed, a tactical nuclear strike becomes viable. But the calculus is disturbingly abstract. Hiroshima’s 20-kiloton bomb killed 200,000. India and Pakistan each possess an estimated 200 warheads. One general once told him that, by crude arithmetic — obscene as it sounds — “only” 80 million would die in the event of a full exchange. Continue reading Southasia Is One Word
