Tag: Pakistan

Review: The Carpet Weaver by Nemat Sadat

June 13, 2026 31 Comments filed under Kabir

Since it is Pride month, I am sharing an excerpt from my review here.  This novel is about Afghanistan by an Afghan writer, so it hopefully adds to the conversation on that topic as well. In general, I think there needs to be more discussion on BP about non-normative sexualities. 

The Carpet Weaver, Nemat Sadat’s debut novel, is the story of a young Afghan man coming to terms with his sexuality amid a backdrop of civil war and political unrest in 1970s and ‘80s Afghanistan.As one of the few South Asian novels featuring homosexuality as a central theme, it is an important book. However, the plot could fairly be called cliched. Certainly, readers of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner would find much that is familiar in this novel.

The rest of the review can be found on Substack.  Also see my review of Khaled Alesmael’s novel Selamlik.

 

 

The Patriarchy Survives Everything

June 13, 2026 27 Comments filed under X.T.M

The day before yesterday, we published a general interest piece on the Philippine birth rate. Within a day it had drawn over a hundred comments and stopped being about the Philippines at all. It became, in turn, a debate on female autonomy, a referendum on Islam, a quarrel about civility, and a meditation on why human beings have stopped reproducing themselves. This is what Brown Pundits does that almost no other space on the internet can do, and it is worth pausing to say why, and to say plainly where we stand.

The diagnosis and the cure

Qureishi proposed, with complete seriousness, that the only solution to collapsing birth rates is to restrict female access to contraception, higher education, employment, and political representation. We disagree with every word of that cure. Restricting half of humanity from education and public life is functional enslavement, whatever euphemism of “policy” it travels under, and we said so in the thread.

The ecumene does not breed any longer

But we will not pretend the diagnosis is wrong merely because the doctor is. Birth rates are plunging everywhere, faster than any demographer predicted, and the $300 billion South Korea spent on subsidies did not move the needle. Q is right that this is not a money problem. He is wrong about what kind of problem it is.

The fashionable answer is that women got free and chose otherwise. Our answer is the opposite: everyone got less free, and women are simply the first to act on it. People are voting with their wombs. They are refusing to manufacture children for a world whose only offer is endless consumption, a working (waged?) life that begins at twenty-five and ends at sixty-five, and a retirement of warehoused loneliness. Marx called the failure to see one’s own condition false consciousness. The modern consumer is the Ye Olde Peasant with better teeth and a credit card, and somewhere the peasant knows it.

On the day of the trillionaire

Continue reading The Patriarchy Survives Everything

Open Thread – Brutal clampdown, protesters shot in Kashmir (Pak administered)

June 9, 2026 3 Comments filed under Open Thread, RecoveringNewsJunkie, Uncategorized

The ‘K’ word serves as a lightning rod in any discussions involving Indians and Pakistanis. And the BP space is no different. That there are diametrically opposing views, fiercely dug in, is an understatement.

Over the past few days, the portion of J&K that came under Pakistani suzerainty after the ‘tribal’ invasion of 1948, has seen massive political protests that have led to violence and deaths of civilians. This isn’t the first time for such incidents in what Pakistani refers to as “Azaad” (free) Kashmir. The old Pakistani playbook of deploying military force, banning political organizations, and media blackout has been deployed once again. This time however, ‘feels different’ somehow. It has become increasingly difficult for totalitarian states to execute media clampdowns in the social media age, and videos and information are steadily streaming out of Rawalkot, Muzaffarabad and elsewhere.

I would hope that this open thread stays away from the always contentious circular ‘debates’ on whether India/Pakistan are the ‘rightful owners’ of Kashmir, and focuses on the specifics of the ongoing protests instead.

Why is that over the last decade or so, such repeated outbreaks of protests show up repeatedly, often swiftly followed with brutal state clampdowns. I think its reasonably fair to say that a strong majority of the residents of Pak-administered Kashmir were and continue to be, willing subjects of Pakistan. What then, is triggering such unrest, repeatedly?

Apprehension (translation from the Urdu)–Part 2

June 9, 2026 3 Comments filed under Kabir

This is the final part of “Apprehension”, a translation of Bilal Minto’s short story “Andesha”. Part 1  was previously published on BP.

Farhat Auntie was pleased when the car arrived. That very day, she suggested they go out for some shopping, but Fizzu Uncle flatly refused. He said he wouldn’t leave the house except in case of dire need and she could go shopping in a rickshaw the way she always had. He said he had retired so early so he could give his full attention to study and reflection. Auntie didn’t reply because for many years she had been following Ammi’s advice to retreat whenever she heard the words ‘study’ and ‘reflect.’

But now a new problem had arisen. She had sold her jewelry to buy the car and there was no one to drive it. She couldn’t figure out what to do with it. She couldn’t even sell a car with Hala tiles. After a while she asked Fizzu Uncle why he had bought the car in the first place?

“I didn’t buy it,” he said. “You did.”

Auntie was shocked at this response but at that very moment she decided, if I am the one who bought the car then, inshallah, I will be the one to drive it. And then, you, Fazeelat Bajwa, when you find yourself paralyzed, that thing you have been saving all your money for, you will have to go to the hospital in a rickshaw.

The same day, Auntie spotted a car from a driving school parked in front of the bakery. Interpreting that as a sign from the unknown, she jotted down the number of the “Fee-Male” Driving School.

The driving school was owned by Farzana Malik. She had two cars. She taught in one while a woman she had employed gave lessons in the other. When Auntie phoned the next morning, Farzana Malik herself answered. Auntie said she wanted to learn to drive and hoped the school was open to women.

“Ha ha ha!” Farzana Malik laughed happily. “We teach both — women and men. Ha ha ha! But only I teach males. I’m afraid if I let my assistant, Rozina, do that, she might run away with one. Then where would I look for a new assistant? Ha ha ha!”

“Oh, I see,” Auntie said. “I had taken your school’s name to mean it was only for women.”

“Ha ha ha! No. We have the two ‘e’s and a dash in the middle of “Fee-Male” to indicate that we take fees from males and teach them to drive. Isn’t that funny? “Fee-Male.” Ha ha ha!” Continue reading Apprehension (translation from the Urdu)–Part 2

Review: Pakistan: Courting the Abyss by Tilak Devasher, a 10 year retrospective

June 8, 2026 26 Comments filed under Uncategorized

Hey folks, this will be my first article on Brown Pundits. Hope you guys enjoy it! Any recommendations regarding future topics, books, or just critique on the article itself will be greatly appreciated!

Tilak Devasher is a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat Government of India. He is now known as a prolifically researcher on Pakistan in India. 10 years ago he began his scholarly journey with Pakistan: Courting the Abyss. As I was going through the book I wished there was a 10 year retrospective on his work which would help us determine how well his work has held with time. So, I’ve decided to undertake that task myself.

Continue reading Review: Pakistan: Courting the Abyss by Tilak Devasher, a 10 year retrospective

India’s Wealth will not turn Pakistan into East Germany

June 5, 2026 199 Comments filed under Comment as Canon, Precedent, X.T.M

Our 2026 reader survey is open until 7 June – anonymous, roughly five minutes. Please take a moment.

The Comment thread is afire with the usual (and senseless) India-Pakistan arguments (essentially which of the two is poorer). Q waves the whole question away by pointing at the figure, unimpressed by “an average Indian producing only $2,800 in GDP every year,” and asks what the point even is. There is a point, two in fact.

First: per capita and scale measure different things. Per capita describes the life of a citizen. Scale describes the weight of a state. A single integrated market of 1.4 billion people generates agglomeration, economies of scale, and a pull on capital and talent that no small rich economy can match (India’s ascent in the world of cricket is an extremely interesting meditation). That is why India passed Japan in 2025 to become the world’s fourth-largest economy, why it is the fastest-growing major one, and why it is on course to take third from Germany by around 2028. The market no exporter can ignore, the trade terms a four-trillion-dollar base can lean on, the air defence and roads it can fund: that is concrete power, and it is not nothing. Much of the gain is siphoned by a clutch of oligarchic houses, but the dynamism is real.

Second: however that same wealth does not buy what BB imagines it buys. India outweighs Pakistan in GDP by something close to eleven to one. It has still not turned Pakistan into its East Germany, a dependent satellite drawn quietly into its orbit and, in time, absorbed. Pakistan remains sovereign, armed, and unbought. Pakistanis are not running across the Punjabi wall to their ethnic kin.

In May 2025, after Pahalgam, the larger economy did not dictate terms: Operation Sindoor ended not in surrender but in a ceasefire announced, awkwardly, from Washington, with both capitals claiming the win.

Look West. Iran is a fraction of the wealth of the United States and Israel, yet it has absorbed the most advanced air forces on earth, kept its regime, and kept the knowledge to rebuild what was struck. The guns fell silent at a ceasefire, not a capitulation. Wealth buys reach. It does not buy outcomes.

BB treats the GDP gap as a deed of ownership over Kashmir, and assumes Kashmiris will swallow their pride for a higher income per head, that prosperity purchases consent. It misreads the Islamicate moral economy entirely. In that ledger ‘Izzat and Deen, dignity and faith, are not line items to be outbid. The Hyderabadi Harvard PhD still sings the song of his lost people.

Peoples who set independence above comfort have done so across the whole anti-colonial century, and no balance sheet has ever talked them out of it. Money may buy luxury but not loyalty.

What price will any Indian or Pakistani nationalist accept for their love and loyalty to their homeland?

The Pakistani Voice That Isn’t in the Room

May 31, 2026 145 Comments filed under Precedent, X.T.M

BB made a very sharp observation, and we want to put it on the record as a note rather than a finished argument, because it deserves more elaboration than we can give it today.

Who carries the Green Passport

Look at who carries the Pakistani case at BP. Kabir holds a foreign passport. Q and EK write from the diaspora. Every voice that argues the Pakistani perspective here argues it from somewhere else. Not one of them speaks from inside the country: resident, middle or upper-middle class, holding a green passport with everything the green passport actually costs at the visa counter, at the airport, in what can and cannot be said at home. India, by contrast, is argued for in large part by Indians who live in India (BB is one such example). So the table is lopsided in a particular way. One side is represented by people inside the country it speaks for; the other, almost entirely by people outside it.

No photo description available.
The Great Cleft

Diasporas are powerful but deadly

Continue reading The Pakistani Voice That Isn’t in the Room

The invisibility of caste in Pakistan

May 30, 2026 8 Comments filed under Bombay Badshah

I’ll do a larger post sometime later (maybe tomorrow) but a quick rebuttal of some points raised by Kabir in his latest post regarding caste.

Kabir mentioned this about privilege.

All the Pakistanis on BP are privileged given that we are all English-speaking and all of us have foreign citizenship (I assume).

 

All the Indians on BP are also privileged in that they are able to converse in English.

Notice the difference. The Pakistanis had to go abroad to live/study. The Indians didn’t. I don’t know about most Indians here (maybe they would like to enlighten) but I have spent my entire life in India. I have only gone abroad on vacation. There is no Pakistani equivalent here.

And that is telling.

India is better than Pakistan on all socioeconomic metrics. And I can link charts, data etc here but real world examples like this are more telling.

Sujatha Gidla, a Dalit was able to get education in some of India’s best educational institutions and make it to the United States where she could write a book in English. Unlike in Pakistan, one need not be a descendant of “doctors and lawyers” to be able to go down that path.

Again, I am not denying the existence of discrimination against Dalits (or for that matter Muslims) in India.

But the fact that Dalits (and Muslims) have dissenting voices as well as a visible presence in India speaks for India’s relative egalitarianism vis a vis Pakistan.

In fact, I would say caste is even more pervasive in Pakistan than India due to the complete denial by the privileged castes (as we can see here) and the complete invisibility of it. Kabir has multiple times spoken of his Iranian ancestry as well as EK of his Kashmiri Brahmin ancestry so they are very much “Ashrafs” speaking about “Ajlafs” and “Arzals”.

Poetry by Iqbal is fine and dandy but that doesn’t change the reality on the ground.

All those Muslims exist on the Indian side too where they receive affirmative action (as they should). What is called as “biradiri” is basically “caste”.

Kabir did make this comment about “proper Muslims”.

Proper Muslims (Arabs) don’t have caste.

First of all, it is good to see the acceptance by Pakistanis that they are not “proper Muslims”.

Secondly, since they are not “proper Muslims” but “Hindu Muslims” maybe time for them to examine their faults?

 

 

 

Open thread

May 27, 2026 178 Comments filed under Open Thread

On early Sunday morning, May 24, 2026 — Just a few days before the festival of Eid al-Adha — on a quiet morning in Quetta’s Chaman Pathak neighborhood.  An explosive-laden vehicle ripped through a shuttle service carrying passengers, from the Quetta Cantt station –  killing at least 24 and 70+ wounded, mostly military personnel, laborers and families, that were headed to the Peshawar-bound Jaffar Express. These were ordinary Pakistanis looking forward to getting back to their hometowns for the Eid holidays. The Balochistan Liberation Army has claimed responsibility for the attacks. This tragedy comes just around the first anniversary of the Khuzdar school bus bombing  — killing 8 civilians, injuring dozens, most of the fatalities being school girls. This attack was also connected to separatist militants in the province. Celebrated by journalists, talking heads and govt officials across the eastern border along with their social media commentariat – blinded by nationalism.

Jaffar express sounds familiar as that train was also attacked a little over a year ago, March of 2025, early in the holy month of Ramadan. That attack orchestrated by the BLA, killed over 60. It seems like attacking Pakistan around the holidays is the M.O of these militant groups and their handlers.

There is grief across Pakistan as terrorism has gone up, patience is wearing thin among the general public with the states inaction against these adversaries of the nation. The Dhurandars are running up their kill streak, maiming innocent Pakistanis across the country, trying to instill fear, chaos and division. There is palpable frustration among the citizenry due to government incompetence and lenience towards ethno-fascism and a failure to protect its citizens from this regional proxy war. Will the Dhurandars be brought to justice for the mass murder of innocent civilians or will the Dhurandar-ing continue with more violence, terrorism and bloodshed across Arz-e-Pak to no avail.

Here’s to another somber Eid and world peace.

Mardana’s Children: The Rababis of Lahore (Short Film)–Kabir’s Open Thread

May 26, 2026 16 Comments filed under Kabir

I don’t want to post too much in one day but this short film is worth sharing. On BP, there is a lot of focus on the negative side of Pakistan (understandably since this blog’s commentariat is mostly Indian nationalists and of a “Saffron” persuasion). Often, I feel that this commentariat finds the very existence of Pakistan personally offensive.  

This film serves as a counter to that discourse. 

A short film on the Rababis of Lahore, a community of Pakistani Muslim musicians with deep-rooted ties to the Sikhs by way of a centuries-old music tradition. Mardana’s Children traces the current descendants of Bhai Mardana (the 15th century musician and disciple of Guru Nanak), piecing together a story of shared devotion across India and Pakistan, traversing the modern boundaries of religious and nation, and highlighting the unifying power of music in the face of the divisive legacy of identity politics and the partition of 1947.

Disclosure: I know one of the producers (Kirit J Singh) from SOAS where he was doing a Phd on Sikh Music.  My father facilitated one of Kirit’s research visits to Lahore.

A useful piece to accompany this documentary is Arieb Azhar’s essay “Soundscape: When Punjab Sang as One” published in yesterday’s DAWN.

Finally, I would like to share a clip of myself performing the Shabad “Suraj Kiran Milay”. This shabad was composed in Raga Darbari by Ustad Hamid Hossain.

 

 

 

 

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