Nehru – Brown Pundits

Why India’s National Calendar Needs Urgent Correction

India’s national holidays should reflect its civilisation. They do not. Five Abrahamic festivals sit at the centre of the calendar, while most indigenous ones sit on an “optional” list. This is a distortion, not pluralism.

National holidays are public signals. They show what a country holds to be central. When non-indigenous festivals are guaranteed space and indigenous ones are not, the state sends a clear message: it is unsure of its own foundations.

This was a mistake made at independence. India had full freedom to shape its symbols. Instead of anchoring the calendar in its own tradition, the new state tried to avoid offence. That caution hardened into policy, even though no society builds confidence by sidelining itself. Continue reading Why India’s National Calendar Needs Urgent Correction

Nehru, Privilege, and the Missed Settlement of 1947

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

Caste and the Structure of Discourse

I’ve come to realise that it’s often more productive to write full posts than to engage in fragmented comment threads. The richness of thought requires a form that can hold tension, contradiction, and nuance but comments, by design, resist that.

The Upper-Caste Template of South Asian Dharmic Discourse

Take, for example, sbarrkum, who shares personal reflections and images from his life on the common board. While one might raise questions about permissions or boundaries, it’s also important to respect dialectical differences in how people choose to engage. There’s no single valid mode of expression.

That brings me to a broader reflection: how the very structure of discourse in Dharmic South Asia has long been shaped by upper-caste templates; especially under Western influence. Over two centuries, upper castes have Brahmanised, Saffronised, Persianised, and then Westernised themselves, adopting and enforcing norms of discourse, authority, and ‘rationality.’

Why Intermarriage Doesn’t Erase Hierarchy Continue reading Caste and the Structure of Discourse