Kleptocratic Pakistan versus Oligarchic India

X.T.M · February 26, 2026 · 6 comments

A word was flagged in our comments last night. I think it deserves its own post.

Kabir called RNJ’s use “kleptocracy” offensive, when used to describe Pakistan. I understand the instinct. Words carry weight. But here’s my problem: in the High Signal era of Brown Pundits, we don’t retire words because they sting. We interrogate them.

So let’s interrogate this one.

I. What Does the Military Actually Own?

Fauji Fertilizer Company Office PhotosNot metaphorically. Literally. The Fauji Foundation operates across fertiliser, cement, food, banking, and energy. Revenues exceeding $1.5 billion annually. The Army Welfare Trust adds real estate, insurance, agriculture. Neither answers to civilian audit. Neither tables accounts in Parliament. DHA schemes, Defence Housing Authority, operate in every major Pakistani city. Land acquired below market rate. Sold at market rate. The differential isn’t commerce. It’s transfer. Ayesha Siddiqa documented this in Military Inc. back in 2007, estimating military business interests at $20 billion. That figure is now considered conservative. The military controls an estimated 12% of all state land. In a country where land is wealth, that number is not incidental.

II. But Is That Kleptocracy?

Avenfield House, Park Lane by Bree Day Ltd
Continue reading Kleptocratic Pakistan versus Oligarchic India

Open Thread: Who Would Be India’s Best Prime Minister, And Why?

X.T.M · February 26, 2026 · 35 comments

Replying to Sbarrkum got me thinking; instead of relitigating India-Pakistan, a more interesting question: across 14 India Prime Ministers, who actually did the job best?

Simple question. Hard answer.

Make the case. What criteria matters most to you?

  • Economic stewardship
  • Institutional integrity
  • Foreign policy judgment
  • Social cohesion
  • Crisis management

No slogans. No party loyalty. Just reasoning.

Moderated for substance. Indian-centred perspectives prioritised.

Double Standards, Modi’s Gamble, and Why Ramadan Gets It Right

X.T.M · February 25, 2026 · 104 comments

Two comments overnight exposed different sides of the the same problem.

You Can’t Weaponise Islamophobia and Then Kneecap Hinduism

Kabir tried to circulate a link around Manu Pillai’s Gods, Guns and Missionaries, a serious book, framed around whether Hinduism was, in some sense, constructed. The question is legitimate. All traditions are constructed. All identities consolidate under pressure.

Top 10 Muslim Inventions in History - The Muslim Vibe

But Hinduism and Islam are pari passu in this respect. The nineteenth century shaped both. Colonial enumeration shaped both. Reform movements reshaped both. Romila Thapar, Wendy Doniger, Sheldon Pollock; the literature on Hindu consolidation is vast. So is the literature on Islamic reform: Wahhabism emerging from Najd in the 1740s, Deoband crystallising in 1867 directly in response to 1857, Barelvism as counter-movement to both. All traditions have formation moments. All traditions modernise under pressure.

To apply the deconstructive lens to Hinduism while leaving Islamic historiography untouched is not intellectual rigour. It is asymmetry. Kabir, who deploys “Islamophobia” as a first-strike weapon with the hair-trigger of a seasoned litigator, has never shown the slightest inclination to subject his own tradition to equivalent scrutiny. If the lens is universal, use it universally. If it is selective, say so.

Anything else is prosecution dressed up as scholarship.

Pakistan’s Literacy Problem Is Real. The Comparison to India Is Useless. Continue reading Double Standards, Modi’s Gamble, and Why Ramadan Gets It Right

The Cantonment and the Clean Street: Why Pakistan’s Punjab Looks More Ordered Than India’s

X.T.M · February 25, 2026 · 20 comments

A dispatch from a quieter Brown Pundits

The Observation

My Urdu teacher said something that lodged itself in my brain. India is vastly richer than Pakistan; and yet Pakistan’s Punjab, in his experience, feels cleaner. More ordered. Less like South Asia. I pushed back. Then I stopped.

The Numbers

In 2024, India’s GDP per capita was $2,695 against Pakistan’s $1,479; roughly 1.8 times higher on a nominal basis, and India’s total economy at $3.9 trillion is approximately ten times Pakistan’s $372 billion. Until 2008, Pakistan was actually richer per person; India led that measure for only 14 of the 60 years after independence. The divergence is real but recent and accelerating.

The sanitation data cuts against the perception: 81% of Indians have access to basic sanitation versus 72% of Pakistanis (WHO/UNICEF, 2024). On paper, India leads. So the paradox isn’t statistical. It is visual. The question isn’t who has more toilets. It is why certain Pakistani streets feel more governed.

The Answer: 41 Cantonments Continue reading The Cantonment and the Clean Street: Why Pakistan’s Punjab Looks More Ordered Than India’s

According to BAFTA, ‘Free Palestine’ is the slur. Not the N-word.

X.T.M · February 24, 2026 · 8 comments

The Man, Not the Scandal

John Davidson has Tourette’s. He did not mean it. His tics are involuntary — the condition is neurological, not moral. The audience was warned before the ceremony began. Davidson left the room when he realised what was happening. He has spent his life teaching the public what Tourette’s actually is. None of what happened Sunday night was his fault.

Now the second thing. The BBC broadcast it anyway.

The Edit Suite Had Two Hours Continue reading According to BAFTA, ‘Free Palestine’ is the slur. Not the N-word.

Review: Hindoo Holiday by J.R. Ackerley

Kabir · February 23, 2026 · 4 comments

I am cross posting this review here because Hindoo Holiday is a fascinating work of literature describing one man’s experience in a princely state during late colonial rule.  Ackerley is a well-regarded British author. 

J.R. Ackerley’s Hindoo Holiday–originally published in 1932–tells the story of the five months (December 1923-May 1924) he spent as secretary to Maharaja Vishwanath Singh of Chhaturpur (called “Chhokrapur” in the book). In his “Explanation”, Ackerley describes the Maharaja’s motivations for hiring a private secretary from England. He writes:

He wanted someone to love him–His Highness, I mean; that was his real need, I think. He alleged other reasons, of course–an English private secretary, a tutor for his son; for he wasn’t really a bit like the Roman Emperors, and had to make excuses.

As a matter of fact, he had a private secretary already, though an Indian one, and his son was only two years old; but no doubt he felt that the British Raj, in the person of the Political Agent who kept an eye on the State expenditure and other things, would prefer a label–any of the tidy buff labels that the official mind is trained to recognize and understand–to being told ‘I want someone to love me.’ But that, I believe, was his real reason nevertheless.

Continue reading Review: Hindoo Holiday by J.R. Ackerley

Thumri and Social Change

Kabir · February 22, 2026 · No comments

Since there has been some discussion about “Indian” and “Pakistani” music recently– and in the spirit of being “high signal”– I am cross posting this essay I wrote about thumri and social change. The essay was originally submitted as part of my M.Mus coursework at SOAS, University of London. 

Thumri is a semi-classical genre of Hindustani vocal music, associated primarily with the emotional expression of romantic longing. It is said to have originated in the 18th century from a mixture of folk and art music. The genre reached its height in the 19th century at the court of Wajid Ali Shah, the last nawab of Avadh, who was an enthusiastic patron and even composed several thumris.

Since the 19th century, thumri repertoire and performance style have undergone several changes. These include the de-linking of the genre from the courtesan tradition, the separation of music and dance, and a re-interpretation of lyrics in a devotional, rather than erotic, framework. These changes were linked to the impact of British colonialism, particularly social reform movements such as the Anti-Nautch Campaign. In addition, the shift in patronage from royal courts to concert halls led to the emergence of non-hereditary female performers. In order for performing thumri to be considered acceptable for “respectable” women and to avoid offending the new middle-class audience, the genre was de-eroticized and reinterpreted in a spiritual fashion. This often entailed the sanitization of lyrics. Continue reading Thumri and Social Change

She Parked a Car With Her Husband. Fifty Years Later, She Is Still Waiting.

X.T.M · February 22, 2026 · 69 comments

Before anything about this blog, its standards, or its arguments, I want to begin with a story; because sometimes a single human life cuts through every debate and reminds us what any of this is actually for.

Damayanti Tambay was 21 years old, a three-time national badminton champion, when she married Flight Lieutenant Vijay Tambay in April 1970. Twenty months later, war broke out. On 3 December 1971, they drove together to a garage in Ambala cantonment to park their bottle-green Fiat. That was the last time she saw him.

On 5 December, flying a strike mission over Shorkot Airbase in West Pakistan, Vijay was hit by anti-aircraft fire and ejected. Radio Pakistan later broadcast his name among those captured. Damayanti heard it alone. She felt relief. A prisoner of war comes home eventually, she thought.

He never did.

A Loving Wife’s Unending Search Continue reading She Parked a Car With Her Husband. Fifty Years Later, She Is Still Waiting.

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