Thatās a sharp observation, and worth expanding. The truth is, in the West, all immigrants eventually become āwhiteāānot in phenotype, but in assimilation, in aesthetic, in aspiration. Continue reading Everyone Western Becomes White Eventually
Tag: Politics
šÆļø Saving Adam
Posted on Categories Blog, Geopolitics, Politics, Religion9 Comments on šÆļø Saving AdamI donāt often comment on the IsraelāPalestine conflict, and I try not to be reactive. But there comes a point where neutrality becomes its own kind of indulgence.
Alaa al-Najjar, a pediatrician, lost nine of her ten children, and her husband, in an airstrike on their home in Khan Younis. Her surviving son, Adam, 11, had his hand amputated and was flown out of Gaza to Italy, where he says he hopes to live in āa beautiful placeā¦ where houses are not broken and nobody dies.ā
The children killed were: Sidar (7 months), Luqman (2), Sadeen (3), Rifan (5), Raslan (7), Jubran (8), Eve (9), Rakan (10), and Yahya (12). May they rest in the Highest Heaven. Continue reading šÆļø Saving Adam
š§µQuick Moderation Note
Posted on Categories Blog, Open Thread, PoliticsLeave a comment on š§µQuick Moderation NoteJust a heads-up for everyone:
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IndiaāPakistan threads are totally fine when the post is about IndiaāPakistan, or if itās an Open Thread. Let the sparks fly there.
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But on other postsāplease avoid steering every conversation back to IndiaāPakistan. Itās not always relevant and derails useful discussion.
I wonāt be actively moderating every thread. If something is genuinely offensive or disruptive, feel free to flag itāIāll step in only if needed. Continue reading š§µQuick Moderation Note
š®š³Op Sindoor: A Podcast on Pahalgam, Pakistan, and the Limits of Peace
Posted on Categories Geopolitics, History, India, Pakistan, Podcast, Politics101 Comments on š®š³Op Sindoor: A Podcast on Pahalgam, Pakistan, and the Limits of PeaceIāve just listened to the first half-hour of Op Sindoor, the latest Brown Pundits Browncast featuring Amey, Poulasta, and Omar. The full episode runs over 90 minutes; Iāll be reflecting on the rest in due course. For now, some thoughts on the opening segment, which focuses on the recent terror attack in Pahalgam and its aftermath.
š§Ø The Attack Itself: Pahalgam as a National Trauma
The episode begins by recounting the massacre in Pahalgam, Kashmirāa tourist meadow turned execution ground. Twenty-six people, most of them honeymooning Hindus, were murdered after being identified through religious markers: circumcision, Kalma recitations, names. The hosts donāt shy away from calling it what it is: a targeted Islamist attack. The group responsible, the TRF (The Resistance Front), is introduced as a Lashkar-e-Taiba cutout, designed to launder Pakistan-backed militancy through a local Kashmiri lens.
There is a palpable sense of cumulative fatigue in how the Indian speakers describe itānot as an aberration, but as part of a 30-year continuum of such violence. The emotional register is high, but justified. The use of plain terms like terrorists over euphemisms such as militants or gunmen reflects a long-standing frustration with how such attacks are framed in international discourse.
š¤ Ā Modi, Nawaz, and the Civ-Mil Waltz Continue reading š®š³Op Sindoor: A Podcast on Pahalgam, Pakistan, and the Limits of Peace
Belated Podcast: Operation Sindoor (and Bunyan al Marsoos)
Posted on Categories Geopolitics, History, India, Military History, Pakistan, Podcast, Politics3 Comments on Belated Podcast: Operation Sindoor (and Bunyan al Marsoos)Another Browncast is up. You can listen onĀ Libsyn,Ā Apple,Ā Spotify, andĀ StitcherĀ (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we donāt have a regular schedule is toĀ subscribeĀ to one of the links above!
In this episode Amey hosts myself (omar) and Poulasta (our resident Bengali expert) to talk about the recent India-Pakistan kerfuffle. Amey was ready for war, but we found common ground š (as usual with India and Pakistan, a lot of the discussion is about partition and related misunderstandings)
The importance of being President
Posted on Categories Caste, Civilisation, Culture, India, Race, Uncategorized29 Comments on The importance of being PresidentI’m writing this article because a) I feel quite strongly about it, b) it has been largely ignored in the foreign press.
Protocol in India is a hidebound affair, I would imagine the current system possibly has its origins in the Mughal courts, but it was the British who codified it to the extreme : designating the number of bows, whether one could sit or stand, who took order of precedence, what adornments were allowed. There are whole volumes dedicated to the subject, which I will happily continue to avoid.
The Indian state inherited a lot of this barely updated pageantry and continues to enforce these rules at every level of government. At the top of the protocol list, replacing the king is the President, the nominated monarch of the republic. This brings us to the slightly delayed point of the article, our current President. Droupadi Murmu.
Wikipedia will list her myriad achievements and milestone accomplishments, they speak for themselves. This isn’t about that (not to dismiss them, they’re just superfluous to the point I am trying to make). It is about the optics. A tribal woman is nominated the Queen. Protocol demands that every citizen gives her precedence over all others. In a country with a preference for fair skin above all else, for European features in their actresses, a tribal woman can never win a beauty contest. But she can far surpass it. She is the projected face of the country at foreign events, at international forums. It gives me great pride and joy to see her representing us everywhere, at royal events, at the Pope’s funeral.
Open Thread: Rajiv Gandhi, 34 Years On
Posted on Categories History, India, Open Thread, Politics, X.T.M9 Comments on Open Thread: Rajiv Gandhi, 34 Years OnOn 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 ā the good, the controversial, and the unresolved.
Southasia Is One Word
Posted on Categories Geopolitics, India, Pakistan, X.T.M104 Comments on Southasia Is One WordReflections on Pervez Hoodbhoy at MIT
Zachary L. ZavidƩ | Brown Pundits | May 2025
Pervez Hoodbhoy needs no introduction. As one of Pakistanās leading physicists and public intellectuals, he has long stood at the uneasy crossroads of science, nationalism, and conscience. He spoke this week at MITās Graduate Tower ā the final stop on a grueling five-city U.S. tour, a new city every two days ā in support of The Black Hole Initiative, a cultural and intellectual space heās 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 ā sober, lucid, and grounded in decades of hard-won clarity.
The Logic of Annihilation
Dr. Hoodbhoy walked us through Pakistanās nuclear doctrine: under long-standing military assumptions, if the northāsouth arterial route is severed, a tactical nuclear strike becomes viable. But the calculus is disturbingly abstract. Hiroshimaās 20-kiloton bomb killed 200,000. India and Pakistan each possess an estimated 200 warheads. One general once told him that, by crude arithmetic ā obscene as it sounds ā āonlyā 80 million would die in the event of a full exchange. Continue reading Southasia Is One Word
Gana Sangha and Rajatantra in Ancient Bharat
Posted on Categories ancient india, History, India, Politics
Script for the Youtube Video:
Around the time of Mahavir and Gautam Buddha, a powerful ancient monarch named Bimbisar reigned on western side of Ganga.
On the east lay the ancient Vrjji Gana-Sanghas – Sakya Malla Licchavi Videha –
The lands to the east of Ganga had no Kings but were ruled by leaders of various Kshatriya clans in an assembly where every family had a voice.
As part of his strategy, Bimbasara married a princess of Videha and to her was born Ajatashatru – the one without any enemies.
When Ajashatru ascended to the throne of Magadha, he formed staging post on the western bank of Ganga and waged a terrible war against the Vrjji Republics lead by the Licchavis and won.
This staging post would be called Pataliputra and serve as the seat of the Magadhan Monarchs like Mahapadma Nanda, ChandraGupta Maurya and Ashok Maurya.
800 years later when Ancient Bharat lay fragmented and scattered after centuries of Yavana, Shaka and Kushana invasions,Ā a Small King called Chandra entered a matrimonial alliance with the same Licchavis marrying Kumara Devi.
His fine golden coins carried images of both him and his queen.
His young son who called himself Licchavayah – to emphasise the backing of the prestigious Licchavis in the Gupta Game of thrones. This young man would go on the reshape Bharat with his sword and help usher in the Golden Age of Ancient India.
His name of Samudra-Gupta – which means Protected by the Sea because his sword had added the Southern coastal kingdoms into his Raja-Mandala.
But this Golden Era of Ancient India also meant the fight between the ideas of Gana-Sangha and Rajatantra was almost settled in the favor the Chakravatri in the ideal of a fearsome conquerer like the Licchavi Dauhitra – Samudragupta
Rajaji: Our forgotten hero
Posted on Categories Caste, Economics, History, India, Politics, Uncategorized
In the run up to Indian parliamentary elections in 2024, there is excitement in some sections of social media about “freemarket”Ā ideas espoused by C Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) and the Swantantra Party he helped found in 1959.
Sharing a piece here I wrote on Rajaji’s ideological relevance in contemporary politics. This was written after visiting and reporting from the many institutions he built pre and post 1947 for the now defunct Pragati Magazine in 2018.
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And the food-and-agriculture-focussed independent media platform called the ThePlate.in I run.
Here goes…
Rajaji: Our Forgotten Hero
Among the leaders in the front ranks of the freedom movement, and those counted as the makers of modern India, Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) is perhaps the man most forgotten. Gandhi is the āFather of the nationā; the very existence of India as a modern democracy, and lately all its faultsāfrom clogged drains to currency fluctuationāare credited to Jawaharlal Nehruās side of the ledger; the race to usurp Vallabhbhai Patelās legacy has given India a Guinness record for the worldās tallest statue; Bhimrao Ambedkar is not only a Moses-like lawgiver who framed the constitution but also the messiah of marginalized; Maulana Azad, now firmly located in Indian-Muslim politics, finds an occasional ode to his prescience about the fallacy of Pakistan and subsequent fate of subcontinental Muslims. Rajaji is less lucky than Azad. Continue reading Rajaji: Our forgotten hero