South Asia – Page 5 – Brown Pundits

What Kind of Space Is Brown Pundits

A few of us authors have been actively discussing the future of Brown Pundits; the space, the tone, and the deeper ideas we’re engaging. It started informally on our WhatsApp group, but the questions are foundational: What kind of platform is BP becoming? What should it strive to be? And what kinds of ideas does it host best?

At its best, Brown Pundits is a bridge; across nations, faiths, ideologies, and lived experiences. It’s a space where one can be deeply Indian, wholly Pakistani, broadly Bangladeshi, or diasporic and disillusioned but still belong. But like any bridge, it needs conscious upkeep. If a conversation leans too far in one direction, it doesn’t stretch, it collapses inward.

Some contributors feel the platform has become overly shaped by one ideological current. Others argue that the real problem isn’t dominance, but disengagement ; those who want plurality must also show up. And both perspectives can be true.

Pakistaniat & Urdu from Qasim to Quaid

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

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.

The Gratitude Trap: On Escaping Asia but Staying Captive

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.

Why Pakistan Is a Colonial Project & India a Civilizational One

Over the past few months, I’ve noticed a marked improvement in the quality of conversation on BP. A large part of this, I suspect, is due to eliminating trigger-response dynamics; as seen when I barred Q on a technicality. It created space: suddenly, the commentariat was thinking, not reacting. In that quiet, something became obvious.

Whenever Kabir invokes “neutral experts,” they always seem to be Western, usually venerably white, often from institutions directly involved in the colonial rape of India. And yet these same voices are elevated as if they were impartial or above it all. They aren’t. They are the architects, not the observers. This is the paradox at the heart of Pakistan. Continue reading Why Pakistan Is a Colonial Project & India a Civilizational One

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

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.

Let Hindus Decide for India

There’s a quiet but persistent coalition, inside and outside India, that seems intent on denying Hindus the right to define their own future. It includes unreformed Islamists who refuse to reckon with modernity, English-speaking liberal elites still shadowboxing for Nehru, minorities with veto power but no stake in cohesion, and a chorus of Western (and increasingly Chinese) voices, eager to manage India’s trajectory from afar. What unites them? A shared discomfort with Hindu political consolidation.

Let’s be clear: Hindu identity is not a new construct. Whether you place its roots 3,000 or 5,000 years ago, it’s one of the world’s oldest living civilizational continuities. That identity has always been plural, regional, and evolving. But it has also always been there; visible in memory, ritual, geography, and language. Today, that identity is waking up to its political form. And it will not be put back to sleep.

Hindutva is not going anywhere. Nor is the Indian Union. Those who hoped Kashmir would stay outside this arc have already seen the direction of travel. Pakistan’s decision to opt out of Hindustan, and then build an identity against it, has led not to strength but to strategic stasis. Bangladesh, too, for all its cultural richness, now stands as a separate civilizational lane. And so we arrive at the core truth: Hinduism and India are coterminous.

This isn’t a call for exclusion. But it is a reminder that those who opted out do not get to dictate terms to those who stayed in. That includes foreign commentators and diasporic gatekeepers alike. There is a difference between pluralism and paralysis. There is a difference between nationalism and denial. And if majoritarianism is the anxiety; perhaps the deeper fear is that Hindus are no longer apologizing for being the majority. Let India decide. Let Hindus decide. Let the world, finally, learn to listen.

Did the Muslim League and RSS Want the Same Thing?

Let’s just ask it plainly: if the Muslim League got what it wanted—a Muslim-majority Pakistan—then what, exactly, is the problem with the RSS wanting a Hindu-majority India? This isn’t a provocation. It’s a genuine question.

The Muslim League, by the end, wasn’t fighting for shared rule. It wanted partition. It wanted sovereignty. It wanted to exit the Hindu-majority consensus that the Congress represented. And it succeeded—through law, politics, and eventually blood.

The RSS, for its part, never pretended to want pluralism. It’s been consistent for nearly a century: it wants India to have a Hindu character, spine, and center. If the League could ask for a state that reflects Muslim political interests, why is it unthinkable for the RSS to want the same, flipped?

This is where I struggle with a certain kind of liberal-istan logic—found across both India and Pakistan. You’ll hear:

“India must stay secular! Modi is destroying Nehru’s dream!”

But what was Q.E.A-Jinnah’s dream? Was Pakistan built as a pluralist utopia? Or was it built—openly, unapologetically—as a Muslim homeland?

If Pakistan’s existence is predicated on Muslim majoritarianism, then India’s tilt toward Hindu majoritarianism isn’t an anomaly. It’s symmetry. Maybe even inevitability.

So either we all agree that majoritarianism won in the subcontinent—and everyone adjusts accordingly. Or we all agree that the Congress secular ideal was the better one—and try, equally, to hold both India and Pakistan to it.

But it can’t be:

Muslim nationalism is liberation
Hindu nationalism is fascism

That math doesn’t work. And yes, the Muslim League had more polish. Jinnah smoked, drank, defended pork eaters in court. The RSS wore khaki and read Manu Smriti. But don’t be fooled by aesthetics. At the core, both movements rejected the idea of a shared national project. They just took different exits off the same imperial highway.

So pick one: Either Nehru and Gandhi were right—and so was Maulana Azad. Or everyone else was right—and we all now live in our chosen majorities. But don’t demand secularism from Delhi while praying for Muslim unity in Lahore. That’s not secularism. That’s selective memory.

Resistance, Realignment, and the Roads Not Taken

First, a brief acknowledgment: Kabir remains one of the pillars of this blog. His consistency, depth, and willingness to engage with the hardest questions are invaluable. I don’t always agree with him—but the conversation would be much poorer without his voice. The post is a series of reflections—stitched together from the comment threads.

I. Gaza: Beyond the Pale of Language

The death of a 19-year-old TikToker, Medo Halimy, in South Gaza this week caught my eye—not because it was the most horrific (foetuses are sliced in two in Gaza as Dr. Feroze Sidwa* attests). But because having seen his video, it just made the death so immediate (yes that is a cognitive bias).

At this point, to debate whether what is happening is a genocide feels grotesque. It clearly is. The scale, the intent, the targeting of civilians and children—it’s all there. The legal frame collapses under the moral weight. We are witnessing something darker than war: ethnocultural suffocation & demographic extinction, broadcast live and met with diplomatic shrugs. But the world is watching inspired by the very brave Bob Vylan duo (UK punk-rap duo opposing imperialism, recently denied US visas):

Something stirs and pricks beneath the rubble.

II. The Huma Moment: A Civilizational Reversal? Continue reading Resistance, Realignment, and the Roads Not Taken

What Was the Point of Israel’s Iran Strike?

The Limits of Provocation

At some point, the world will have to ask: what exactly was Israel hoping to achieve?

In the days following the dramatic escalation between Tel Aviv and Tehran, we are left not with clarity but with a deepening sense of confusion. If the intention was to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program, there is little to show for it—centrifuges still spin, scientists remain in place, and the infrastructure of Iran’s deterrent capability stands unshaken. If the aim was to trigger chaos within the Iranian regime, then that too has failed—Tehran did not descend into disarray; it retaliated, measured and intact. And if the goal was symbolic, to remind the world of Israel’s reach and resolve, then the moment has already passed, clouded by questions of proportionality, legality, and consequence.

For all the fire and fury, the strike landed with the strategic weight of a gesture. Continue reading What Was the Point of Israel’s Iran Strike?