BRAHM Newsletter is back after a hiatus, and the first piece connects three things that don’t usually appear in the same sentence: the Lion and Sun flag flying on Tehran campuses this week, Lisa Randall on Epstein’s jet, and Trump’s noose-without-tightening strategy on Iran.
The argument is simple. Both the Iranian clerical class and the American academic establishment ran the same transaction; moral authority traded quietly for proximity to power. When that transaction becomes visible, as it has in both cases, the institution doesn’t recover quickly. Trump, whatever one thinks of him, has understood this about Iran in a way his predecessors didn’t. He is letting the regime exhaust itself.
BP readers will recognise the geopolitical thread. The BRAHM audience is wider and less South-Asia-focused. While written for them, the analysis however will be familiar here.
J.R. Ackerleyâs Hindoo Holidayâoriginally published in 1932âtells the story of the five months (December 1923-May 1924) he spent as secretary to Maharaja Vishwanath Singh of Chhaturpur (called âChhokrapurâ in the book). In his âExplanationâ, Ackerley describes the Maharajaâs motivations for hiring a private secretary from England. He writes:
He wanted someone to love himâHis Highness, I mean; that was his real need, I think. He alleged other reasons, of courseâan English private secretary, a tutor for his son; for he wasnât 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 labelâany of the tidy buff labels that the official mind is trained to recognize and understandâto being told âI want someone to love me.â But that, I believe, was his real reason nevertheless.
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.Â
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 ârespectableâ 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
Before anything about this blog, its standards, or its arguments, I want to begin with a story;Â 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.
Brown Pundits exists to test ideas against evidence. That is not happening consistently. Four contributors have split into two camps. Threads are filling with video links and recycled assertions. Serious readers are leaving. This post explains what changes and why.
Effective immediately, all four authors have been moved to commentator status until each individually promises they can maintain the same standard in comments as in posts; high signal, evidence-based, no exceptions.
Eighteen months after the youth uprising that resulted in former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s fleeing to India, Bangladesh has a new government headed by the BNP’s Tarique Rahman who is looking to reset ties with India. A US court has accepted the guilty plea of Nikhil Gupta, the Indian charged in the trans national plot to kill Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. AI Summit in Delhi made headlines for chaos, mismanagement and Chinese robot being passed off as India. Impact of the Epstein Files meanwhile has reached the British monarchy with former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the younger brother of King Charles III arrested. The Wire’s Sravasti Dasgupta is joined by Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor, The Wire and Sreeradha Datta, professor, international affairs at the O.P. Jindal Global University.
*XTM edit what does India have to do with the Epstein files? Hence why I edited the subject. Also I don’t know what this post adds per se?
A small administrative note that matters more than it sounds. Brown Pundits now has 3,920 posts. Every single one is categorised. There are no uncategorised posts left. The entire archive is structured.
That is not glamorous work. It does not trend. It does not go viral. But it is the difference between a website and a timeline. Writing is not just producing new content. It is tending an intellectual garden. Adding categories, refining tags, standardising slugs, back-tagging fifteen years of material; this is not clerical labour. It is editorial discipline. It forces you to reread your own history. It reveals patterns. It exposes gaps. It shows where the site has been narrow and where it has been expansive.
Substack has made everyone an author. It has not made everyone an editor. Most platforms reward velocity and outrage. The incentive is to post faster and louder than the next person. Community becomes an audience. Conversation becomes branding. Writers become marketers. We are structured differently.
RecoveringNewsJunkie · February 20, 2026 · 9 comments
Usman Tariq Image from CricTracker
The last few days have really been dominated by a cacophony of ….tu, tu, mai, mai in the BP comment threads with competitive “patriotism” flying thick and fast. Amidst all the noise generated by …certain hostility focused agendas, its easy to lose sight of the fact that for all the problems and challenges faced by the 2 nation-states, the people that inhabit the subcontinent, still continue to have a bunch of things in common.
So allow me this …palette cleanser of a post. The ICC T20 Cricket World Cup is in progress, and the teams of both India and Pakistan have managed to qualify for the “Super 8” stage. Usman Tariq, is a rising star who has recently joined the Pakistani team, as a bowler who serves up ‘mystery spin’ from a unique bowling action, enabled slightly in part due to an anatomically exceptional elbow which has elicited some allegations of chucking (throwing). He has undergone test and has been cleared of this allegations already.
What I found notable about Usman, apart from his repertoire of unique googlies and arm angles, is him sharing the fact that watching an Indian movie inspired him to pursue his dream – a career in cricket. M.S. Dhoni a former India captain, had a biopic made about him a few years ago, which was a massive hit in India and beyond. Usman, as we know, is hardly an exception when it comes to Pakistanis consuming Indian content including movies. Pakistanis, in some ways, are arguably even more ardent consumers and fans of ‘Bollywood’ than Indians. As an Indian listener to Pakistani podcasts, you can’t help but notice how movie and song quotes from Indian films and pop culture, are seamlessly used by Pakistanis as metaphors to describe situations. Even more so than is common for Indians to do so.
On the flip side, Indians are enthusiastic consumers of Pakistani music – the popularity and opinions on the ‘quality’ of Pakistani Coke Studio abound, so does a sizeable number of fans for Pakistani soap operas.
The point is, as much as the interactions of India and Pakistan is dominated by the disproportionate shadow cast by the history of conflict between the two states, and especially the untenable history of PakMil sponsored multi-decade history of terrorism and “non-state actor” violence, we still see a common culture interwoven through the day-to-day existence of the …awaam
âNo one wants a strong India. But PM Modi opened doors. He strengthened the military, advanced the economy, maintained balanced relations with the West, Russia, and China. That is serious statecraftâ –Aleksandar VuÄiÄ, President of Serbia
India is richer
Strip away the noise and a simple asymmetry remains. India will almost certainly remain richer than Pakistan for the foreseeable future. The gap in GDP, fiscal depth, technology, and demographic scale is widening, not narrowing. On material indicators, India has the advantage. Yet material advantage does not always translate into strategic dominance.
India is louder
India is a mass democracy. It is electorally accountable, media-saturated, and sensitive to public opinion. Governments must justify escalation. Markets react to instability. Voters punish miscalculation. This imposes restraint.
Pakistan is tighter
Pakistan is structured differently. Power is narrower. Decision-making is concentrated within a smaller elite, with the military as the central institution. That creates rigidity in some domains but flexibility in others. Strategic continuity does not reset every five years. Public opinion matters, but it does not directly determine policy in the same way it does across the border.
Structural Differences
This structural difference shapes behaviour. India must think about global markets, coalition politics, and reputational cost. Pakistan can absorb economic stress more easily because its political system is already insulated from full electoral volatility. That insulation produces durability, even under strain.
