Some random points:
1) annamalai has quit BJP. Three strands are coming through :
a) he was not accommodated properly, was not given more freedom, party did not listen to him on avoiding aidmk alliance and hence was sidelined.
B) was never a BJP man ideologically, was an opportunist, impatient and hence good riddance.
c) since BJP cannot play any shade of Dravidian game, it is better that annamalai be a silent b team of BJP.
2) Vijay has become a honorary family member and now mothers and aunties are worrying about his health, long working hours, and lack of good lunch!
They want him to eat better and go to office on alternate days.
India’s Wealth will not turn Pakistan into East Germany
Our 2026 reader survey is open until 7 June – anonymous, roughly five minutes. Please take a moment.
The Comment thread is afire with the usual (and senseless) India-Pakistan arguments (essentially which of the two is poorer). Q waves the whole question away by pointing at the figure, unimpressed by “an average Indian producing only $2,800 in GDP every year,” and asks what the point even is. There is a point, two in fact.
First: per capita and scale measure different things. Per capita describes the life of a citizen. Scale describes the weight of a state. A single integrated market of 1.4 billion people generates agglomeration, economies of scale, and a pull on capital and talent that no small rich economy can match (India’s ascent in the world of cricket is an extremely interesting meditation). That is why India passed Japan in 2025 to become the world’s fourth-largest economy, why it is the fastest-growing major one, and why it is on course to take third from Germany by around 2028. The market no exporter can ignore, the trade terms a four-trillion-dollar base can lean on, the air defence and roads it can fund: that is concrete power, and it is not nothing. Much of the gain is siphoned by a clutch of oligarchic houses, but the dynamism is real.
Second: however that same wealth does not buy what BB imagines it buys. India outweighs Pakistan in GDP by something close to eleven to one. It has still not turned Pakistan into its East Germany, a dependent satellite drawn quietly into its orbit and, in time, absorbed. Pakistan remains sovereign, armed, and unbought. Pakistanis are not running across the Punjabi wall to their ethnic kin.
In May 2025, after Pahalgam, the larger economy did not dictate terms: Operation Sindoor ended not in surrender but in a ceasefire announced, awkwardly, from Washington, with both capitals claiming the win.
Look West. Iran is a fraction of the wealth of the United States and Israel, yet it has absorbed the most advanced air forces on earth, kept its regime, and kept the knowledge to rebuild what was struck. The guns fell silent at a ceasefire, not a capitulation. Wealth buys reach. It does not buy outcomes.
BB treats the GDP gap as a deed of ownership over Kashmir, and assumes Kashmiris will swallow their pride for a higher income per head, that prosperity purchases consent. It misreads the Islamicate moral economy entirely. In that ledger ‘Izzat and Deen, dignity and faith, are not line items to be outbid. The Hyderabadi Harvard PhD still sings the song of his lost people.
Peoples who set independence above comfort have done so across the whole anti-colonial century, and no balance sheet has ever talked them out of it. Money may buy luxury but not loyalty.
What price will any Indian or Pakistani nationalist accept for their love and loyalty to their homeland?
Marjane Satrapi, French-Iranian artist and the author of ‘Persepolis’, dies at 56
Rest in Peace Marjane Satrapi – As an aside, our 2026 reader survey is open until 7 June – anonymous, roughly five minutes. Please take a moment.
Thanks to Agni for bringing this to our attention. I remember reading Persepolis years ago and it definitely does provide a different perspective on the Iranian Revolution.
From CNN:
French-Iranian artist and activist Marjane Satrapi, whose graphic novel “Persepolis” brought home the struggle of the Iranian people to millions around the world, has died. She was 56.
A statement from the Élysée Palace announcing her death Thursday lauded Satrapi’s work, saying her work “captivated a global audience.”
“Her passing marks the loss of a leading figure in French culture and an artist deeply committed to freedom, whose work carried a universal message and earned her immense international acclaim,” the Élysée said.
And:
Satrapi’s work spanned numerous graphic novels – which she preferred to call “comic books” and films. In 2019, she directed “Radioactive,” a British biographical drama film starring Rosamund Pike as Marie Curie.
But she was also an outspoken critic of Iran’s ruling establishment and a prominent supporter of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement that emerged after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in 2022.
Iranian women human rights group, the Narges Foundation described Satrapi as “a fearless advocate for feminism, women’s rights” and as someone who “champion(ed) the struggles and resilience of Iranian women.”
Review: William Dalrymple’s Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan
Our 2026 reader survey is open until 7 June – anonymous, roughly five minutes. Please take a moment.
I’m sharing this review that was originally published in 2020. After the victorious Taliban takeover of Kabul on August 15, 2021 and President Ghani’s flight from the country, Dalrymple’s prediction that the American Occupation would end up handing power to the same regime they set out to destroy seems eerily prescient. This type of book would make a good possibility for BP Book Club.
Early in Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan (Bloomsbury 2013), William Dalrymple quotes Mehrab Khan’s (the Khan of Kalat) remark to the British diplomat and adventurer Alexander Burnes: “You have brought an army into [Afghanistan] but how do you propose to take it out again?” (Dalrymple 161). As the British and subsequent foreign powers would find out, it is extremely difficult to successfully withdraw from Afghanistan. It has now been nearly two decades since the current US-led invasion began in 2001 and President Trump is promising to extensively draw down the presence of US troops, after having signed a deal with the Taliban–the regime that the US went to war to remove. In such a context, Dalrymple’s account of the First Anglo-Afghan War remains extremely relevant.
Return of a King takes its title from the attempt of the British to put Shah Shuja—the grandson of Ahmad Shah Abdali, the founder of modern Afghanistan — back on the throne after an exile of over thirty years in British India. This attempt took place in the context of the Great Game–the British-Russian rivalry for control over Central Asia. The British feared that Dost Mohammad Khan, who had usurped power from Shah Shuja, was pro-Russian and hence decided that he needed to be replaced with Shuja, whom they would use as a puppet leader. While they succeeded in removing Dost Mohammad and giving the crown to Shuja, they could not have anticipated the resistance that they would face. Continue reading Review: William Dalrymple’s Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan
Hindu-Muslim violence is changing
Our 2026 reader survey is open until 7 June – anonymous, roughly five minutes. Please take a moment.
Senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the King’s India Institute (London), President of the French Political Science Association and Chair of the British Association for South Asian Studies
Hindu-Muslim violence is changing: till recently riots were instrumentalised to polarise the voters & help BJP win elections; today BJP is in office: pogroms, lynchings, bulldozers are the order of the day. A great special issue of CSA explains why and how tandfonline.com/doi/ful…
We may expand on this but we just noticed Substack, which we rarely read, is very Left-Liberal.
Rest in Peace Henry N.
The Kirpan and its legality in the West.
Our 2026 reader survey is open until 7 June – anonymous, roughly five minutes. Please take a moment.
Review: The Disciple
Since this is a slow week on BP, I am taking the liberty of sharing this film review of Chaitanya Tamhane’s The Disciple.
Early in The Disciple, we hear a voiceover which states: “If you want to make money, sing film songs or love songs, don’t tread this path. If you want to tread this path, learn to be lonely and hungry.” This immediately identifies the theme of the movie: the arduous journey to make a career in Hindustani classical music (shastriya sangeet).
The Disciple–directed by Chaitanya Tamhane, known for Court (India’s official submission for the 88th Academy Awards)– is a Marathi-language drama that revolves around an aspiring Hindustani classical singer, Sharad Nerulkar (played by Aditya Modak–himself a classical singer). The film originally screened at the 77th Venice International Film Festival in September 2020–the first Indian film since 2001’s Monsoon Wedding to compete at the festival–where it won the International Critics Prize and the award for Best Screenplay. It was subsequently picked up by Netflix. Continue reading Review: The Disciple
Postmortem (Translation from the Urdu)
I am sharing an excerpt from my translation of Bilal Hasan Minto’s short story “Postmortem” from his collection “Model Town”. The story is about the death of a beloved pet dog and a little boy’s desire to give him a proper funeral. This desire comes into conflict with the norms of Islam which forbids funerals for animals. The entire story can be read in the June issue of The Peshawar Review.
It was a frost-laden evening in December when our Happy stopped eating. Naveed Bhai went into the garden, where Happy was sitting quietly tied to his post, to cover him with a coat. Happy looked at Naveed Bhai with barely opened eyes, and smiled. Then he moved his tail weakly from left to right. That was it. This was unlike him. He didn’t stand up and wag his tail vigorously, or play around with Naveed Bhai. Naveed Bhai was worried.
“Happy, Happy,” he cajoled.
Happy didn’t even open his eyes and just moved his tail from right to left. It was clear even that was not easy for him and he did it only out of love for Naveed Bhai. Naveed Bhai’s eye fell on his bowl. Happy’s afternoon meal was sitting there untouched,flies buzzing around it.
That night at the dining table, Naveed Bhai told Abba about Happy’s condition and said with concern it seemed he was ill because he hadn’t touched his afternoon meal. Abba said maybe he hadn’t liked it.
“But he gets this food every day,” I said, “and he always eats it.”
“Perhaps that’s why. If you got the same thing every day you would get tired one day too, wouldn’t you?” Abba said.
“Oh! So now I have to prepare a new feast for him every day!” Ammi said angrily. She hated Happy.
“Anyway, let’s see if he eats anything tonight,” Abba said, wanting to end the conversation.
“But why didn’t he move? I even had to put on his coat while he was lying down,” Naveed Bhai said anxiously.
“Maybe he has a cold. It’s freezing. If he doesn’t eat at night or is the same tomorrow, take him to Dr Walter,” Abba said. Continue reading Postmortem (Translation from the Urdu)
Open Thread: BP Survey
Our 2026 reader survey is open until 7 June – anonymous, roughly five minutes. Please take a moment.
Update – from the thread: More reading reccys. Furqan flagged Dr Naazir Mahmood’s The assassination that changed India, along with his own book review on Duniya Digital and a related op-ed, Stupidity or strategy, on the political economy of the subcontinent’s borrowed democratic forms. Kabir marked the passing of playback singer Suman Kalyanpur with two recordings: an unreleased Pakeeza song, introduced by Meena Kumari, and a Rafi duet. And from our own pages, the latest BRAHM newsletter: The Sky Above São Paulo.
Update, 1 June 2026 – links from the thread: The Peshawar Review has a new issue out, including Professor Harbans Mukhia’s reminiscences of Kirori Mal College (College Days) and Shan-e-Ahmed reading an Urdu transcreation of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (Prufrock in Pakistan). On the Tata Sons listing question, Agni flagged a cluster of commentary: the Indian Express “to list or not to list” column, The New Indian Express on the boardroom fight, Soonawala on why an IPO may not appeal to investors, and Business Standard on the 12 June board meeting. Survey responses are at 18 and counting; please add yours if you haven’t.
Editor’s note, 1 June: This Survey thread will sit on the front page through the week, until Sunday the 7th June, while we are travelling Eastbound, so we have made it an Open Thread. What strikes us, watching the comment threads, is that for all the constant bickering, BP is a community, and a recognisably Desi one.
It has the hue of a Hindu joint family (to be of the Indian subcontinent is, almost by definition, to have Hindu ancestors; “Hindu” is simply what the Persians called the people beyond the Indus) that has built a wall down the middle of the house and still cannot get over each other. The wall is real. So is the fact that nobody moves out.
Original Post: Every few years BP runs a reader survey. Razib began the tradition in 2019, and the responses then told us things the comments alone never could.
Seven years on, with a substantially different commentariat, we are running the 2026 edition. The prompt to revive it came from Kabir, whose recent post on what BP is and is not raised exactly the kind of question a survey can help answer, and we are grateful for it.
Nineteen questions, anonymous, roughly five minutes. The core spine is demographic in Razib’s tradition: age, sex, country, mother tongue, ethnic background, religion, caste, education, political ideology, and views on Hindu and Pakistani nationalism. A few behavioural questions follow on how often you visit, how long you have been reading, how you first found BP, and which topics you would like to see more of, with optional fields at the end for handle, newsletter signup, and anything else you would like the editors to know.
Please take the time to fill in this survey. Thank you for your engagement.
Why Mohammad Hanif uses satire to write about Pakistan|Scroll Adda (Open Thread)
Based on the 1988 aircraft crash that killed Zia-ul-Haq, the military dictator of Pakistan, A Case of Exploding Mangoes made a big splash in the South Asian literary world when it was released in 2008. Readers loved that a desi writer was nailing political satire. Since then Mohammed Hanif has written three more novels, masterfully blending politics and the absurdities of life. He’s so captured the genre that some say he’s the Pakistani Joseph Heller. Hanif has a new book out, The Rebel English Academy. On Scroll Adda, he talks about why he uses satire, his relationship with three languages – Punjabi, Urdu and English – how Operation Sindoor ended up strengthening army rule in Pakistan as well as describing Imran Khan as a political prisoner.
Incidentally, I keep meaning to review Rebel English Academy. I have a copy autographed by Hanif.
Although many young women are studying abroad and living alone these days, this wasn’t the case for Indian women in the 1930s. But, as they say, there are always exceptions to a rule, and one of them was Muhammadi Begum, who went to study at Oxford University during the 1930s.
The book under review, Deccan Say Duur, Oxford Ke Roz-o-Shab: Aik Naujawan Taliba Ka 1935 Ka Roznamcha, is a reproduction of the diary entries Muhammadi Begum wrote while at Oxford. She was born in Hyderabad Deccan, and graduated from Osmania University. As she secured the first position there, she was awarded a scholarship by the Government of Hyderabad Deccan to study at the University of Oxford, making her one of the few women to receive such an opportunity.
In 1934, she went to the UK with her husband, who took a year’s leave from his job to accompany her. To prepare for admission to the University of Oxford, she had to pass certain exams, for which she studied for a year. Although she wanted admission in Lady Margaret Hall, she had to settle for Saint Hugh’s College, which offered her a space.
The review goes on to note that Muhammadi Begum was part of the organizing committee for the women’s jalsa that the Quaid-e-Azam attended in 1945. Her family migrated to Pakistan in 1950.