A few updates from this week:
Sri Lanka is facing severe flooding. Sbarkkum reports major damage to rail and road networks, with Dutch support expected for reconstruction.
Sana Aiyarâs âWorld at MITâ video touches on her life and work
Sam Dalrymple has a clip on Lahore and Delhiâanother reminder of how closely the two cities mirror each other despite partition.
Pakistanâs minority rights bill is worth watching. Continue reading Open Thread: From Floods to LaBal
Here is an excerpt from another story from Bilal Hassan Minto’s Model Town:
There are people who might have felt the neighborhood was against Apa Sughra just like that, without a reason. They could have wondered how anyone could be against a woman so devout that she had fired her cleaning lady Alice on a matter of principle when she found her drinking water from glasses reserved for Apa Sughraâs Muslim household. A woman so righteous that she had summarily dismissed Susan because her husband supplied alcohol to a Muslim. But such people who question our hatred of Apa Sughra are ignorant of the facts.
We had not always been against her. When she rented the house next door, Ammi sent her both meals that first day because her kitchen wouldnât be ready. So obviously, we hadnât hated her from the very beginning. Quite apart from all the terrible things we found out later, what she did to her own daughter Pari, soon after moving to our neighborhood, was enough for us to condemn her, vilify her, and treat her with hostility. Pari was not at all to blame for the incident. Whoever heard of it said âWhat did the poor girl do wrong?â Naveed Bhai had been really angry and said Apa Sughra needed to be taught a lesson but Ammi strictly forbade him, saying there was no need to mess with that witch. Itâs a different matter that I suspected Naveed Bhai didnât have any way to do anything to Apa Sughra even if Ammi hadnât said so. I thought he was just boasting.
Ever since Apa Sughra began living in our neighborhood we had noticed she didnât allow her twin daughters, Fari and Pari, out of the house at all. Meeting us was out of the question; they werenât even allowed to play with the neighborhood girls. We always thought the poor things were locked in the house after school. What did they do all day? Did they play with each other or was that not allowed either? And if they were so constrained, why did Apa Sughra even send them to school? Why was she educating them? Continue reading Aasiya–Translation from the Urdu
If China endured a century of humiliation, India has lived through a thousand years of it. Invasions and exploitation left it poor in wealth but rich in culture; intricate, adaptive, and resilient. That depth shows in Desi English, which often favours long, ornate sentences over plain ones.
This habit echoes Persianâs former role in the subcontinent: a prestige language whose mastery signalled rank. Even Ghalibâs vast Persian verse drew less love than his Urdu. In India, Persian was the colonial language of power; today, English plays that part.
In Iran, Persian changes fast. Slang, borrowed terms, and foreign tones reshape it so quickly that many in their forties struggle with teenage speech. My own Persian, kept alive in Kuwait and India, is closer to Shirazi and Tehrani standards than to the language my ancestors spoke. Iâm self-conscious with Iranians, but with diaspora Persians, I speak freely; we share a looser, accented form of speech. Continue reading Why Indian English Loves Long Sentences
Iâve been enjoying the new direction Brown Pundits has taken since the recent shake-up. Posts are now generating 100+ comments, and that kind of engagement creates a virtuous cycle. You want to write more, think more, respond more. Iâm leaning into that.
For now, a lot of the content burden rests on me and thatâs okay. Itâs been encouraging to see older names return: Girmit, for instance. It feels like a slow reconsolidation of the original readership. Letting people return on their own terms.
Meanwhile, BRAHM, my newsletter, has taken on a different role; a home for more composed writing, life pieces, and the slow launchpad for my business. I just posted something there recently, which Iâll link to for now and follow up on soon. But here, on BP, is where I let myself think in public. Where I go long. Where thoughts breathe.
Iâd said to myself: Why donât I do my own Bhartiya-karan, that is, Indianise myself, before someone else thinks of doing it? The first problem was my name. Perhaps you donât know: my name is Iqbal Chand. It occurred to me that âIqbalâ is an Arabic word. What kind of nationalism is it to live in India and have an Arabic name? And so, I changed my name to Kangaal Chand. As it happens, this name is far better suited to my financial condition considering that âkangaalâ means âpoorâ. And why just me, it suits the rest of my country too.
The second problem that arose was of the dress. There was no trace of Indianness in the pants, coat and tie that I wore. In fact, all three were a reflection of my slave mentality. I was amazed that I had worn them all this while. I decided to wear pajamas instead of pants. But then, a certain Persian person told me that the pajama had come to India from Iran. And so, I began to wear dhoti and kurta. But not a kameez, as the word âkameezâ, too, is of Arabic origin and it reeks of the stench and stink of an Arab!
The third problem was of hair! After all, was it not treachery against the country, a blatant form of antinationalism, to keep oneâs hair fashioned in the English style? I instructed the barber to keep only one lock of long hair at the back of my head and shave off the rest. He did exactly that. I had seen images from ancient India showing men with long and lush moustaches. Following their example, I began to grow my moustache. When my friends saw the large moustache on my somewhat small face, they assumed that I had put on a fake one, possibly because I was acting in some play. Forget my friends, when I saw myself in this new look, I began to feel that I had been created not by God, but Shankar, the cartoonist. But I did not lose heart. One has to do all manner of things to be Indian.
An excerpt from a story by Kanhaiyalal Kapoor in âWhose Urdu Is It Anyway?: Stories by Non-Muslim Urdu Writersâ, edited and translated by Rakhshanda Jalil.
As the posting on BP (and the comments) are pretty fast and furious; my capacity to edit and moderate is getting pretty stretched..
After Kabir exited the WhatsApp group, the conversation between the Manavs and Furqan (who I have made Editor to encourage more DPPs) drifted, inevitably, to poetry and Punjabi. Furqan has already made two excellent contributions, A flying peacock and Lord Ganesh in a confectionary mill. Kabir did a great job in diversifying the Authorial voices on BP.
As we shape the future of Brown Pundits, I keep returning to one submerged voice in the Persianate world, particularly in Pakistan. A voice that is Westernised, undercapitalised, and culturally adrift. These are not the clerics, generals, or capitalists. These are the middle-gentry, the in-betweeners; fluent in English, wired to the internet, but uncoupled from patronage and power.
Like much of the Muslim world, Pakistan remains profoundly hierarchical. And I suspect its creative pulse, its latent genius, lies in that Westernised fringe of the lower elite: the zone between the bourgeoisie and the establishment. The boundary class. Half-in, half-out.
In a strange way, Pakistanâs obscurity may be its shield. Unlike India, an excavated society with every civilizational layer being rapidly monetised (Saiyaara is breaking records), Pakistan is a half-formed splinter. It doesnât face the same pressures of internal reckoning. That may be a blessing.
Across the Persianate world, from Anatolia to Delhi, we are witnessing a civilizational scatter. The old cosmopolis of the Gunpowder Empires (Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal) has collapsed, leaving behind cultural debris. The Persianate polity, once a unified Empire of the Mind, is now a broken archipelago.
India, by contrast, benefits from its post-colonial majority. Like Israel, it is 80% one faith; with all the confidence and coherence that brings. It has the numbers, the market, and a dominant civilizational script. The Sanskrit world, if not unified, is at least centrally anchored.
In this context, Kabir represents one pole of the Pakistani elite: articulate, English-speaking, confidently liberal but also capable of drowning out the marginal voices heâs adjacent to. And yet sadly, I donât think Pakistan is headed for any Hindufication. The trajectory is different.
Pakistan is not returning to India. It is, perhaps, becoming the lowlands of the Iranian plateau;Â a bridge nation once again, neither fully Arab nor Indic. Suspended between worlds, it may rediscover itself in that liminality.
Because sometimes, the dead poets are not gone. Theyâre just waiting for the right silence.
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 Delhiâs dusk and Lahoreâs lingering grief.
The Beloved Guardian of the Bahaâi Faith once noted that while most Bahaâi 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.
Thereâs a reason the BahĂĄâĂ prayer I share below is so piercing in Urdu. So here, before I cross back into another timezone, I offer this prayerâwithout commentary, without translation. Just Urdu, as it was meant to be heard.
And I wonder: perhaps this is what Pakistan truly isâa 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
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 â deeply embedded, numerically significant, and intellectually diverse. Today, they are divided, disenfranchised, and disoriented. Three nations. No unity. No power. No clear path forward. Letâs take stock:
1. Divided into Three
Pakistan. Bangladesh. India. Three fractured expressions of one civilizational legacy â 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 â 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 â of being here, but not quite belonging â has never healed.
4. Urdu: From Bridge to Burden
Urdu, once the cultural glue of the Muslim elite, is now:
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 â 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 didnât solve the âMuslim Question.â It just made it unspeakable â in three different politicised idioms.
The plot above shows the % Urdu speakers vs. % Muslim in states where Muslims are 4% or more of the population. The data is from Census 2011 (thanks for Vikram of the language data). There are some interesting trends. Assuming that the vast majority of Urdu speakers are Muslim, it seems that in India the core Urdu-identified region is in the Deccan and to the east of its traditional heartland, in Bihar. In South India, 30% of Muslims in Tamil Nadu may be Urdu-speaking. But in Kerala the fraction is almost zero, while in Gujarat and West Bengal less than 10% of the Muslims are Urdu-speaking.
Below the fold is the table.
