postcolonialism – Brown Pundits

Pakistaniat & Urdu from Qasim to Quaid

July 16, 2025July 18, 2025X.T.MBahá’í, BRAHM, Brown Pundits, Culture, India, Iran, Islam & the Middle East, Language, Pakistan, Partition, Postcolonialism & the Global South, Politics, Religion, X.T.MArabic, Baha’i Faith, Civilizational Commentary, colonial legacy, Cultural Assimilation, Culture, Diaspora, Identity, Juhi Malik, Language, Mahajir, Pakistan, Pakistan Studies, Partition, Persian, Politics, postcolonialism, Punjabi, Religion, Sindhi, South Asia, Ta’arof, Urdu2 Comments

UP’s very long shadow:

As I board my flight back to the UK after a brief but productive trip, I find myself reflecting on a language that continues to haunt and inspire me: Urdu.

It is a tongue caught between paradoxes. The language of courtesans and qawwals, of sacred supplication and sly seduction. It carries within it the scent of jasmine and blood, of Delhi’s dusk and Lahore’s lingering grief.

The Beloved Guardian of the Baha’i Faith once noted that while most Baha’i texts should be translated from English, Urdu alone is trusted for direct translation from Persian and Arabic. That proximity, that spiritual siblinghood with Persian, the language of kings, and Arabic, the language of God, renders Urdu magical.

Sanskrit, of course, is the language of gods, but Urdu, its stepdaughter of sorts, captures the longing of poet to partisan.

There’s a reason the Bahá’í prayer I share below is so piercing in Urdu. So here, before I cross back into another timezone, I offer this prayer—without commentary, without translation. Just Urdu, as it was meant to be heard.

And I wonder: perhaps this is what Pakistan truly is—a project in transcending the local. Not rooted in soil, but in sentiment. A place where Punjabis, Pathans, and Muhajirs are asked to shed skin and commune in Urdu. Where Pakistaniyat, for all its fractures, has succeeded in producing a common idiom: of piety, pride, and pain. Continue reading Pakistaniat & Urdu from Qasim to Quaid

The Gratitude Trap: On Escaping Asia but Staying Captive

July 11, 2025July 13, 2025X.T.MCivilisation, Culture, India, Pakistan, Partition, Postcolonialism & the Global South, X.T.Marchitecture, Canada, Civilizations & Identity, Diaspora, Global South, gratitude, India, material culture, postcolonialism, South Asia, urban design3 Comments

In a recent video, a young Punjabi woman, likely Sikh, candidly shares her discomfort upon returning to India after living in Canada (this kind of echoes the Aussie influencer’s comments on chronic Indian inequality). The noise, the pollution, the density. Her frustration is raw, familiar, and deeply sincere.

But beneath her words lies something larger: the aesthetic asymmetry that defines the postcolonial condition. Wide roads, clean air, manicured parks; these are not just amenities. In the global South, they become symbols of escape, status, and salvation. And so, millions migrate. Or aspire to. Not just for jobs, but for dignity. For air that doesn’t burn. For order that doesn’t humiliate. For a feeling of being seen.

And when they do, when they arrive in Canada, the UK, Australia, something subtle happens: they become grateful. Not just for opportunity, but for escape. For the fact that the West “works.” That gratitude then curdles into deference.

They begin to believe that the world outside the West is meant to be chaotic, dirty, loud. That governance is a Western gift. That clean streets and quiet parks are civilizational rather than institutional. This is the gratitude trap; the soft power of asphalt, symmetry, and silence.

And it’s why postcolonial recovery is so difficult. Not because the global South lacks culture or potential, but because its own elites, shaped by extraction, not architecture, rarely build for elegance. Rarely build for pride. Rarely build for joy. What the West exported was not just railways or rule of law. It exported a built environment that still shames us. And until that is understood, until we take seriously the spatial dignity of our cities and the material form of our futures, the colonial spell will remain unbroken.

Borders, Blind Spots, and the Mirror Game of South Asia

July 10, 2025July 13, 2025X.T.MBrown Pundits, Culture, Geopolitics, History, India, Pakistan, Partition, Postcolonialism & the Global South, Politics, X.T.M1947, Balochistan, Brown Pundits, civilizational politics, Comparative Nationalism, exceptionalism, Geopolitics, Hindustan, history, Hyderabad, hypocrisy, India, Junagadh, Kashmir, Liberalstan, Pakistan, Partition, postcolonialism, realpolitik, secession, self-determination, South Asia, sovereignty26 Comments

A recurring tension in South Asian discourse is the question of consistency: how states interpret borders, secession, and sovereignty; not in principle, but in practice.

Liberalstan’s case is that India acted selectively in 1947: Junagadh saw a plebiscite, Hyderabad faced military action, and Kashmir was referred to the UN. From this perspective, India chose whichever method suited its interests in each case. To Liberalstan, this isn’t pragmatism, it’s hypocrisy. The charge: if self-determination wasn’t good for Kashmir, why should it be for Balochistan? And what of Sikkim, Goa, Pondicherry, Khalistan, Nagaland, or the Naxalites?

Hindustan’s reply is rooted in realpolitik: decisions were shaped by demography, geography, and threats; not abstract norms. Q.E.A. Jinnah’s attempt to absorb Junagadh and court Jodhpur are seen as deliberate provocations, since Junagadh was Hindu-majority, non-contiguous, and largely symbolic (home to Somnath). After that, New Delhi abandoned any illusions of standard rules. From Hindustan’s view, Liberalstan’s moral framing is not only naïve but deeply asymmetrical; ignoring 1947, 1965, Kargil, Mumbai, and the long shadow of Pakistan’s own interventions.

When it comes to Balochistan, Hindustan notes its accession was closer to annexation, comparable to Nepal or Bhutan vanishing into India. Three major insurgencies since the 1960s complicate the narrative of “finality.” But here, Liberalstanflips the script: what is labeled a disputed territory in Kashmir is declared settled in Balochistan. This inversion doesn’t go unnoticed.

In truth, both sides are mirrors. Each demands flexibility for itself and finality for the other. Each invokes “consent”selectively; whether that of a prince, a people, or a state. The tragedy, perhaps, isn’t inconsistency but the absence of a shared regional framework for self-determination. One not held hostage by grievance, revenge, or exception.

Until then, accusations of hypocrisy will persist, each side fluent in the other’s blind spots.

The Myth of the “Average Pakistani”

July 8, 2025July 13, 2025X.T.MBrown Pundits, Culture, Iran, Islam & the Middle East, Pakistan, Partition, Postcolonialism & the Global South, Politics, Religion, X.T.Manti-capitalism, Baltistan, Brown Pundits, civilizational dignity, civilizational identity, cultural erasure, Culture and Politics, development narratives, education in Pakistan, English language imperialism, Ideology, Language, liberal elitism, medical colleges, modernization vs values, Muslim World, Pakistan, Pakistani identity, postcolonial hangover, postcolonialism, Religion, religious modernity, Shia Muslims, Western gaze38 Comments

Dave’s comment:

“I have in fact met some. In person. Ran into a lovely couple while on vacay in Guatemala. Excellent conversation along a 2 hour shared shuttle ride. Shia muslims from Baltistan – he took great pains to indicate that his community is not like the average Pakistani, and that in his biradari they are proud to educate their daughters and wives, have them take the lead in public lives. Both his daughters were young med students.

The tragedy for Pakistan is that such actual liberals with modern outlooks wisely avoid taking public positions. They don’t want to get lynched. Hence the domination by the nutters and fringe on the right continues. Leading to mis-categorization of the right-wing as “the center”.”

The above praises a “liberal” Shia couple from Baltistan for educating their daughters and living modern lives, contrasting them with “the average Pakistani,” portrayed as a backward, anti-education fanatic. This framing is not just lazy; it’s offensive.

It reflects a deeply colonial hangover: the idea that modernity is rare in Pakistan, that deviation from presumed fanaticism is a revelation. But let’s be clear, Pakistanis, like people anywhere else, are ambitious, aspirational, and complex. Medical colleges are oversubscribed. Education is highly prized. And many people, devout or not, are navigating life with dignity, values, and a deep desire to move forward; not just materially, but spiritually and ethically.

Politics of Projection

Just because a population is not obsessed with hyper-capitalism doesn’t mean it is “backward.” It may simply mean it has not surrendered entirely to the logic that everything must be monetized. That’s not regression; it might be restraint. In a world where the only metric that seems to matter is money, resisting that tide is itself a kind of wisdom.

This kind of patronizing liberalism, one that exoticizes progressive Muslims as rare exceptions, isn’t harmless. It feeds into a narrative that justifies erasure: of language, culture, self-rule, and civilizational continuity. South Asians speaking in English, debating one another with colonial grammars, is not a mark of modernity, it is a symptom of displacement. The Global South doesn’t need to be saved. We need to be seen, on our own terms.

Hinduism was not invented by the British (or Muslims)

August 15, 2018August 15, 2018Razib KhanReligionHinduism, postcolonialism66 Comments

I’m reading a book titled The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History. It’s works within the postcolonial framework. Unlike a lot of postcolonial scholarship it isn’t bluster and rhetoric riddled with basic historical errors. The author presents a lot of interesting facts. But, as I’ve said elsewhere I disagree with the thesis of the book, which is that modern Islamic identity can be understood primarily through its interaction with European colonialism.

This isn’t to say colonialism doesn’t matter. It does matter. It’s just that Muslims are not inactive substrate upon which European agents operate. Muslims, and Islam as a civilization, has its own life, orientation, and self-conceptions, which exist somewhat apart from Europeans, and the West (I say somewhat because it is hard to understand the modern West and Islam without their coevolutionary dance over the centuries). Colonialism did not create the idea of the Muslim world de novo, it operated upon the idea of the Ummah which predated the modern West, and in fact emerged in tension with the ancient late antique Near East and Turan in the 7th and 8th centuries AD.

But this post is not about Islam. From the comments:

The big tragedy during the unmitigated disaster that was the partition upon the Hindus, many realized was that while there was a thing known as Ummah, there was no such thing as the Hindus. There are Muslims, but they are actually the largest plurality. There was no such thing as the Hindus. There was the Brahmins. There was the Namashudra. There was the Punjabi. There was the Thakur…

This to my mind is a much stronger position to defend than the ideas above in relation to Islam. To a great extent modern day, Hindu nationalism seems to be about creating an analog to the Dar-ul-Islam and Christendom for Hindus, many centuries after Muslims and Christians. But, I do think I disagree with this. It seems clear that Megasthenes, al-Biruni, and Faxian all had a sense of Indians, or Hindus as we were all called then, as a distinct, albeit variegated, people.

Hinduism as a particular confession with a creedal orientation is a relatively recent affair. Perhaps you can date it to Adi Shankara. Or even as late as Arya Samaj. That doesn’t matter. Hinduism as a distinctive civilization of Indians, with consistent particular unifying beliefs, is very ancient and dates to antiquity.

One might object that this only applies to the twice-born varna. But the Maurya were like of sudra origin. And South Indian polities welcomed Brahmins, who they clearly saw as part of their civilization, albeit different and apart.

Of course one might change the goalposts with some semantics. I myself liked to be clever and would say that Hinduism was invented by Muslims or Westerners a few years ago. But thinking more deeply, I think that that was just a stylistic pose by me, attempting to burnish my heterodoxy, as opposed to reflecting the first order substance.

Addendum: Genetics is now making it clear to me that the matrix of “Dravidian” and “Indo-Aryan” proto-India were closely connected and emerged around the same time, probably in tension, conflict, and interaction. Religious ideas we’d term “Hindu” probably didn’t exist 4,000 years ago, but the openness of South and North India to engagement and cultural exchange in the historical period is not I think coincidental, but reflects primal commonalities derived from the tumult in the centuries after the decline of the IVC.