soft power
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Dhurandhar, Netflix and the India-Pakistan Asymmetry
The post asks why Netflix serves India so much more than Pakistan, as Pakistani viewers complain about promotion of Dhurandhar: The Revenge. It answers with market size, Indian users far…
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Dhurandhar releasing in Japan
On Dhurandhar’s release in Japan, the author notes the appeal of Japanese film posters and Indian cinema’s push for global audiences, and argues that as Bollywood grows, foreign perceptions of…
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India and Pakistan Are Playing Chicken; simply to hurt themselves
Two nuclear states with shared languages, shared music, and shared families are accelerating away from each other, each waiting for the other to swerve. Neither is. Both are losing. A…
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SS Rajamouli’s Varanasi – The next phase of the Indian wave?
Bombay Badshah argues that Asian economies follow a pattern in which pop culture goes mainstream at high HDI, and that India is still early. He sees Rajamouli’s Varanasi, after RRR’s…
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War in the Sanskritopolis
X.T.M reads the Thailand–Cambodia border dispute through the shared Hindu-Buddhist heritage of Southeast Asia, noting the Theravāda and Mahayana divide, and argues India should act as a civilisational fountainhead in…
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🪙 What’s in a Name? Mukesh, Not Mukash.
Prompted by a misspelling of Mukesh Ambani’s name, X.T.M argues that upper-caste Indians wrongly expect wealth to buy Western respect, describes a Brahmin–Baniya compact, and says China profits quietly from…
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Let Pakistan Throw Stones. India Should Build the Skyline.
Argues that India should answer Pakistan by outgrowing it, as South Korea treats North Korea, rather than retaliating conventionally. The author says conventional retaliation restores a false parity, feeds Pakistan’s…
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Browncast on Bangladesh, 2023
A BrownCast on Bangladesh in 2023: the hosts discuss the 2025 election and an emerging Awami League one-party state, the lack of contact between West Bengal and Bangladesh, a Southeast…
