Tag: postcolonial trauma

Open Thread: From Flattery to Fatigue — What the Iranian Diaspora Can’t Admit

On July 14, I wrote about Ta’arof ; the millennia-old Persian art of flattery, refusal, and ritualised courtesy. It’s often misunderstood in the West as “saying no three times,” but it’s really about emotional high-context negotiation, reading the room before the room speaks.

The next day, on July 15, Sharghzadeh posted a powerful video, calling it Iranian Diaspora Fatigue. A searing takedown of the Iranian Diaspora’s toxic racial insecurities, internalised Islamophobia, misogyny masked as modernity, and cultural denialism. He’s mostly right.

What he calls fatigue, I’d call poisoned flattery turned inward. Because Tehranglos are no longer performing Ta’arof to honour guests or elders. They’re doing it to whiteness itself. Hoping if they refuse our own identity long enough, maybe the West will say: “Yes, come in.”

That’s not assimilation. That’s exhaustion. And the worst part? Even the racism feels borrowed; against Arabs, against Afghans, against Iranians back home. It’s not even Iranian. This isn’t just about cringe TikToks or awkward panel guests. It’s about who gets to narrate Persian culture. And what gets flattened when tradition becomes product. I was stunned when Zachary Newman — one of the most prominent Persian-Jewish American chefs — endorsed Netanyahu’s strikes on Iran. That moment crystallised something.

Sharghzadeh and I are saying the same thing: Persian culture is being gentrified by its own children. What survives isn’t tradition. It’s content. It’s vibes. If Iran is an unreadable poem, diaspora is turning it into a slogan. If Iran is lived, diaspora is increasingly just captioned. And they wonder why they’re tired. Is the Persian diaspora preserving a culture, or just performing it for the algorithm?

Was Partition Good for Muslims?

Kabir:I will remind you of the Sachar Committee Report which stated that the condition of Indian Muslims was worse than that of Dalits. This was a report commissioned by the Congress government not by Pakistanis. India has never had a Muslim Prime Minister. I would be willing to bet that this is not going to happen in my lifetime. The Muslim League succeeded in getting the Muslim majority provinces a country of our own. This is a huge achievement.

Partition was sold as deliverance. In hindsight, it may have been the most sophisticated act of self-disinheritance in modern Muslim history. A century ago, Muslims on the subcontinent were a political force — deeply embedded, numerically significant, and intellectually diverse. Today, they are divided, disenfranchised, and disoriented. Three nations. No unity. No power. No clear path forward. Let’s take stock:

1. Divided into Three

Pakistan. Bangladesh. India. Three fractured expressions of one civilizational legacy — none of which fully represents or protects the totality of South Asia’s Muslims.

2. No Electorate Leverage

In India, Muslims lost their negotiating bloc overnight. From being a decisive vote in undivided India, they became a permanent minority — politically cautious, rhetorically silenced, and often viewed with suspicion. In Pakistan, Muslim identity became so hegemonic it erased internal plurality. In Bangladesh, it became suspect altogether.

3. Psychological Cleft

Two-thirds of Muslims had to unlearn India. Partition forced them to disown their history. The other third had to choose between being Muslim or becoming more Indian. This psychic wound — of being here, but not quite belonging — has never healed.

4. Urdu: From Bridge to Burden

Urdu, once the cultural glue of the Muslim elite, is now:

  • Enforced in Pakistan (to the resentment of Sindhis, Baloch, and Pashtuns)
  • Marginalized in India
  • Extinct in Bangladesh

A shared language was replaced by suspicion and statecraft.

5. Islam as a Spent Force

Partition Islam was meant to be political. It became performative. There is no robust Muslim political expression in the subcontinent today — only tokenism, sectarianism, or silence. It resembles post-revolution Iran: Islam was not discredited by the West, but by what its stewards did in its name. Partition didn’t solve the “Muslim Question.” It just made it unspeakable — in three different politicised idioms.

Brown Pundits