Caesar’s Pakistani wife must be above suspicion

May those who lost their lives in the Pahalgam tragedy rest in peace. May the injured find swift healing. And may the perpetrators be brought to justice.

False Flags, Fragile Ideologies, and the Weight of History

I don’t want to take away from Omar’s excellent piece, India and Pakistan: Back to the Future—he nailed it on the trajectory of Pakistan’s self-conception and the road ahead for India.

But what began as a comment evolved into something more. I wanted to briefly address the misinformed murmurings online about the attack on Pahalgam being a false flag.

Caesar’s Wife

There’s an old line: Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. If you want to be taken seriously on the world stage, perception is half the battle. India has a clear civilizational and national narrative. Despite its contradictions, it’s attempting—seriously—to join the ranks of the U.S. and China. And it’s making real progress.

Pakistan, by contrast, seems increasingly defined by what it opposes rather than what it builds. Its civilizational narrative has, over time, narrowed into a single impulse: block India at any cost. There are dozens of Muslim-majority nations. But there is only one India. That asymmetry matters—culturally, strategically, metaphysically.

Zia’s Logic: Annihilation as Strategy

One quote making the rounds—attributed to General Zia-ul-Haq—offers a glimpse into a mindset that’s still disturbingly prevalent: Continue reading Caesar’s Pakistani wife must be above suspicion

India and Pakistan, Back to the Future..

A group of terrorists attacked tourists in a remote meadow in Kashmir, identified those who were non-Muslim, and shot them dead (they also shot dead a Muslim tour guide who tried to oppose them). The horrendous and barbaric attack has led to a predictable outburst of harsh anti-Pakistan (and in many cases, anti-Muslim) outrage in India and the govt has already announced some steps against Pakistan and is presumably planning to undertake some more in the coming days.

Meanwhile, Pakistan (and individual patriotic Pakistanis) have taken to social media and traditional media to paint this as a “false flag attack” (i.e. carried out or planned by the Indian authorities themselves, presumably to allow them to retaliate against Pakistan; why?) or at least as India being “too quick to accuse Pakistan” (ie “we did not do it, and they are accusing us without proof”). This is all as expected in the usual India vs Pakistan show, but it is important to keep in mind that the situation has supposedly changed a little since 2019. Before that date there were many terrorist attacks in Kashmir and every major event would be followed by tit for tat exchanges along the line of control, but with both sides respecting “red lines”. Then in 2019 there was a large attack in Pulwama that was followed by an Indian retaliatory attack on a militant camp in Balakot in Pakistan proper (which crossed the previous red line of what retaliation was permissible). Since then there had been relative peace in kashmir and many commentators felt that the balakot bombing had established a new “red line”, that India will respond to any major attack in this or similar manner, so Pakistan has dialed down the terrorism it previously promoted in Kashmir. But if that is the case, then this attack obviously crosses that threshold and will lead to response. Irrespective of who is at fault and who did what, this was the supposed line and it has been crossed, so what next? 

As usual, i dont know. But lets list the questions and possible answers.

  1. IF this was indeed planned by Pakistan, then the question is “why”? Why now?

Possible answers and objections:

A. The generals face total delegitimization in Pakistan and they decided to heat up the conflict with India to restore their position in society. (I dont buy this because I think they had recently recovered some ground vs Imran Khan, so why now?)

B. The Pakistani establishment genuinely does not want to give up on Kashmir and considers it non-negotiable, so the recent tourism boom had to be stopped, no matter what the cost. (I can buy this, but then what is the calculation of how the retaliation will be handled? in the past, America was the backstop, but with Trump in charge, is that still the case? If the pat on the back came from china then we are in more serious trouble because they may really want a war to happen  in South Asia, and have the ability to make it very painful for India too (and they dont give a fig about how many Pakistanis die in the process.. that remains a general theme, Muslims as cannon fodder for more capable powers)

C. The generals really felt that India is conducting terrorism in Balochistan (and perhaps even thru the “unknown men”) and that this is just payback and nothing special. Minor retaliation will be handled and eventually the two sides will have to agree to dial down terrorist proxies in BOTH countries. (the problem is, Modi cannot afford to lose face here, making this a very high risk strategy; do they really want to take the risk? I honestly don’t know).

2. And if Pakistan did NOT plan it, then what happened here?

A. Genuinely free lance terrorists made this move on their own. (IF that is the case, then we would expect Pakistan to hurry to convince India (behind the scenes) that this was not us, and then try to coordinate a face saving retaliation and a few months of high tension, but no bigger crisis. With gulf and America mediating, this could even become an opportunity rather than a crisis. This would be great as far as I am concerned, but it seems doubtful to me. The vigorous and immediate “false flag” line is not a good sign.

B. Its actually a false flag attack. I dont buy this because I dont see what India gains from it. If you want to steelman this, you can say that it is really doubtful, but IF it is true then a really big war is coming because there would be no point in doing this if you did not have a greater evil plan behind it. Again, I dont buy it. I dont think the Indian state is even capable of doing a “false flag” of this magnitude. And i dont see them planning such a risky war when Pakistan is declining in power and will be less of a threat in the future.

A few days ago I posted a piece called “The historic task of the Pakistani bourgeoisie” where I said: “ it is the historic task of the Pakistani bourg to either make Pakistan a more normal country, or to watch it broken up. i.e. the historic task of the Pakistani bourgeoisie today is to defang the two-nation theory (TNT). And that “There is a “Somalia alternative”, but one hopes that the middle classes are making too much money to want to reach that level of “low carbon footprint” eco-friendly freedom. “

Obviously I am a peacenik. I have spent 40 years trying on various forums to promote some sort of saner alternative to the 1000 year war. But if you go back and look, I do say in every case that A is the better option by far, and if we fail to do A, then B will get done with greater violence and pain.

The next few months are not going to be a good time for India and Pakistan. After that, saner heads can still prevail. The alternative is much worse, but necessity rules the world. it is what it is. My vikarna act has to end someday in any case 🙂

By the way, of historic value now, but I wrote this about “India and Pakistan, the long view” over 10 years ago:

“The Pakistani hardliners case is qualitatively different. We are the party that wants a change in borders or at least some major move towards Kashmiri autonomy that we can accept as a halfway house to union with Pakistan. We have tried to force this change using proxies as well as the regular army and we have (till now) failed. But our hardliners think the failure is not as final as it seems. Our options are still open. Now that America is getting out of our hair, and China wants us more than ever (or so we think), we can deploy the threat of revived Jihad and Khalistan to ask for concessions. If India does not make concessions, we may have to move beyond the threat. Those willing to use these levers (rather than those just wanting to threaten to use them) are probably in a minority even in Pakistan. But the minority has the Paknationalist narrative on their side. So they can get their way because they control the Pakistaniat narrative and when push comes to shove, their opponents cannot muster good arguments without challenging the core narrative. All else being equal, the national narrative wins.

So let us suppose the hardliners win the argument. Do they have a case in the real world? i.e. can they win?

That depends on what weight one assigns to different factors. Pakistan has a proven record of deploying proxies and supporting insurgencies. All talk of Balochistan and MQM notwithstanding, India does not have such a record in West Pakistan. Even though Doval sahib has reportedly said “we can hurt them more than they can hurt us using these same tools”, an objective observer would have to say the edge lies with Pakistan. Our use of proxies has a record of “success”. India’s (in West Pakistan) does not. And Indian internal security institutions are already stretched thin and their state is known to be rickety and inefficient. Advantage Pakistan?

On the other hand, India is the bigger power. It has the bigger armed forces (even if they are weaker pound for pound; I am not saying they necessarily are. Maybe they are not. But the point is that even if they are somewhat less efficient than Pakistan’s armed forces (superior American weapons, less waste and corruption in procurement and weapons systems, higher asabiya??) they are so much bigger that they probably have a conventional edge. What if they actually use that advantage? Well, we don’t know for sure until they do, but these are two nuclear powers, Everyone gets nervous. So the threat of force is in India’s favor, but even India would prefer that it not be put to the test. 

It may be that in a few years India will be in a position to impose penalties with less fear of things getting out of hand (or going unexpectedly badly) but it is not in that position yet (wet dreams of ultranationalist Indian notwithstanding). Even though India may be able to prevail in a conventional confrontation, it will not do so without considerable cost; costs that may set back the economic takeoff that is India’s best chance of breaking out of the glorious poverty that has long defined it.

So, the bottom line is, we don’t know if the hardliners on either side can win. It is best not to put their theories to the test. (note that this was written 10 years ago, much water has flown down the indus since and even the IWT is now on the table.. interesting times)

 

 

Cheap Catharsis, Expensive History

Sathnam Sanghera recently alluded to a moment from his 2019 Channel 4 documentary The Massacre That Shook the Empire. In it, the great-granddaughter of General Dyer, the man responsible for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, is brought face-to-face with descendants of the victims.

In the clip, Dyer’s descendant calls the massacre victims “looters” and praises her great-grandfather as an “honourable man.” Twitter was predictably outraged. KJo chimed in. Think-pieces bloomed.

But why does her opinion matter?

This wasn’t justice, it was television. And like most televised reckonings with Empire, it was a performance. One more entry in the growing archive of aspirational brown catharsis, where the goal is not transformation but temporary relief; therapy instead of revolution.

Yes, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre was horrifying. No one disputes that. But to repeatedly stage these moments of inherited guilt and symbolic outrage is to substitute emotional spectacle for actual change.

Britain is not closer to redress. The Commonwealth isn’t inching toward reparations. British Asians are not about to own a fairer share of land, institutions, or equity. But we are expected to feel healed by the awkward mutterings of a descendant who’s not even sorry; just embarrassed that another cousin openly defended their ancestor.

This is not about historical accountability. It is about managing the mood of postcolonial subjects. Keep us emotional. Keep us visible. Keep us grateful.

But don’t give us power.

That is the unspoken logic of these curated moments: mourn the wound, not the cause.

And it works — because so many of us still seem to want respect more than justice. To be seen, included, affirmed.

But history will not be rewritten through awkward Channel 4 moments. It will only be reckoned with through real structural change.

Until then, let the Twitter mobs rage. But some of us will remain quietly asking the harder question:

What are we really performing here?

Constitutional Preambles in South Asia

an old article from our archive that has become hard to find, so reposting.

Most Countries around the world have a single consolidated written
document as their Constitution (UK, New Zealand, Israel and Canada being
notable exceptions here) and among these, a great many also have a
preamble- a brief introductory text, preceding the main body of the
written constitution. Preamble is essentially a polemic/set of guiding
principles/visionary statement on the part of Constitution makers,
before laying the foundation of a State in the main body. While it is of
little consequence in day to day workings of a State, a Preamble does
give us a fascinating insight into the ideals and cultural-historical
myths propagated by a State- the context, the bigger picture, THE
purpose behind that particular State’s existence.
Japan’s post-war preamble, for instance, vouches for International Peace and affirms that people of Japan shall never again be visited by horrors of war due to Government actions. French Preamble recalls Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen from 1789 and establishes France as a secular and democratic country. Likewise, North Korean Preamble promises a self-reliant socialist state that has realised the ideas and leadership of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.
And what do South Asian Preambles say? All 7 South Asian Countries
have a written constitution and all, but Maldives, have a preamble. Here’s the list:

Continue reading Constitutional Preambles in South Asia

The Historic Task of the Pakistani Bourgeoisie

Every few months some Pakistani Nationalist gets upset with me when I say mean things about their beloved TNT (Two Nation Theory), and wants me to tell them what MY alternative is.. At the same time, some Hindutvvadis will jump in with “see, this is what Pakistan is really about, how can we ever have peace”. The latest was over this speech by the Pakistani army chief:

So here goes another attempt at trying to explain myself..

Background:  This is my article on the ideology of Pakistan from 2013. Please do read it if you want to know more about that.. the main point is that Pakistan was insufficiently imagined prior to birth; and that once it came into being, the mythology favored by its establishment proved to be self-destructive;  and that it must be corrected (surreptitiously if need be, openly if possible) in order to permit the emergence of workable solutions to myriad common post-colonial problems. I also argue that Having adopted Islam and irrational denial of our own Indian-ness as core elements of the state, the ‘modern’ factions of the establishment lack the vocabulary to answer the fanatics. This has allowed a relatively small number of Islamist officers to promote wildly dangerous policies (like training half a million armed Islamic fanatics in the 1990s) without saner elements being able to stop them. This unique “own-goal”, unprecedented in the history of modern states, is impossible to understand without reference to the Islamic and irrationally anti-Indian element in the self-image of the Pakistani state.

So what can be done? I believe it is the historic task of the Pakistani bourg to either make Pakistan a more normal country, or to watch it broken up. i.e. the historic task of the Pakistani bourgeoisie today is to defang the two-nation theory (TNT). Pakistani nation state is based on an intellectually limited and dangerously confrontational theory of nationalism. The charter state of the Pakistani bourgeoisie is the Delhi Sultanate.. the state valorizes turkic colonizers and looks down on the local people they colonized, and this conception lacks sufficient connection with either history or geography. Bangladesh opted out of this inadequate theory within 25 years, though its trouble may not be over yet. West Pakistan, now renamed “Pakistan” to obviate the memory of past losses, is now a geographically and economically viable nation state, but the military has failed to update the TNT and in fact, made a rather determined effort to complete the project using “militant proxies” in the 1990s, and if the Pakistani army chief is to be believed, he takes this commitment to TNT seriously even today. But the ideology in question is not compatible with regional peace or global capitalism and needs to be updated and brought in line with current requirements. This is now the great task of our under-prepared bourgeoisie. Continue reading The Historic Task of the Pakistani Bourgeoisie

A Postcard from Princeton

The symmetry, the wealth, and the mirage of American elegance

Dr. V had to give a talk at Princeton, and I tagged along. We expected an elite university (our milieu for the last decade). What we didn’t expect was how stunningly beautiful the town would be.

Everything felt curated: the neoclassical facades, the quiet wealth (it has a Hermes store for Heaven’s sake), the perfectly measured charm of a place that knows exactly what it is.

It made me think of how different America’s internal geography is from the UK or France. In Europe, the capital is the cultural and intellectual heart—London, Paris. In the US, it’s more like Germany or Italy: multiple regional power centers—city-states in all but name.

Living in Princeton, New Jersey | Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

And Princeton is one of them. Unlike either of the Cambridges:

  • Cambridge, Massachusetts is a behemoth, flowing into the urban sprawl of Boston, powered by MIT and Harvard.

  • Cambridge, UK is insular, its 31 colleges often more concerned with their individual legacy than the town around them.

But Princeton, somehow, has achieved a kind of graceful middle ground. It’s not sprawling, but it breathes. It doesn’t dominate, but it defines. Continue reading A Postcard from Princeton

Sizdeh Bedar, Identity Whiplash & the Gandharan Delusion

It’s been a minute—I’ve been quietly recovering from Sizdeh Bedar, the thirteenth day of Norouz when you’re meant to go outside and shake off bad luck. I chose to take it literally: less screen, more sky.

To be fair I did go for two consecutive daily outdoors runs, which I haven’t properly done since the late pandemic but instead of the customary picnic; I went to the Afghan restaurant, Helmand, which was excellent- Afghani cuisine is truly the dark horse of the Indo-Persianate world.

In the meantime, Razib’s dropped two excellent posts—one on Tibetans, the other on Great Men: is Trump the product of his age, or did he make the age what it is? It’s the kind of question that haunts our era, especially as 2024/25 starts to feel historically charged.

Meanwhile, the above is courtesy of Anand on our Global Politics chat & over on Twitter, a post’s been circulating about how South Asians are desperate to leave the desh, but the moment they do—they long for it obsessively.

It’s complicated. I love the homeland (Chennai is my vibe), but I’m 1.5 generation: I migrated at 14, but had spent meaningful time in the West beforehand. So what am I? Not quite immigrant, not quite native. That liminal space is familiar to many of us. It’s a tension you carry everywhere—between passport and memory, practicality and nostalgia.

On cue, our resident Pundit is once again being spammed by Pakistanis “discovering” they are the last Gandharans and telling a Kashmiri Pandit to back to the “Ganges” (the last Kashmiri Pandits who did come from the Ganges founded South Asia’s most prominent and enduring political dynasty so I guess that’s a wish for us to be under good Brahmin rule again).

Now, as a rule, you should never intellectually duel with a thrice-born. It rarely ends well. But here we are: Pakistan, in search of yet another usable identity, this time reaching deep into the vault and pulling out Gandhara. Continue reading Sizdeh Bedar, Identity Whiplash & the Gandharan Delusion

Capsule Review: The Return of Faraz Ali

 

Aamina Ahmed is an expatriate Pakistani (born in the UK, currently teaches in the USA) who has written a novel set in the intersection of the Red Light area of Lahore and the rich and powerful of the state, around the time of Yahya Khan’s martial law. The story is well crafted and the book is well written and has a “message” about inequality, oppression, patriarchy and fascism, but unfortunately her lack of direct experience of Pakistan does show. The plot is more or less believable, but the details and dialogues are off. Anyone with some familiarity with the Punjab police and the way people actually talk or react in Lahore will feel that this is a foreigner writing about Pakistan. Certainly there are books written by foreigners that sound and feel very authentic (Memoirs of a geisha comes to mind), but unfortunately this is not one of those books. Part of the problem is not Aaminah Ahmed’s fault, as any writer in English has to deal with the fact that most of the dialog actually happens in Punjabi or Urdu, but her foreign-ness goes a little beyond that.
That said, she has done her research and read everything she could about that era and it shows. Wajid and Ghazi and their adventures fighting the Germans in North Africa are clearly modeled on the experiences of Yahya Khan and Yaqub Khan, who were both German prisoners in WW2. A bengali officer shooting himself in Dhaka in 1971 is a story recorded in several memoirs from that era, and so on.
The book does try a little too hard to play around with the various timelines and while she does bring then together at the end, it can be hard to keep up with who is who. Still, the book is a fun read and the political and ideological slant is liberal and cosmopolitan. Worth a read, but could have been better.

Dr Manzur Ejaz. 1949-2025

 

Classical Poets: Understanding Mian Muhammad Bakhsh - Dr Manzur Ejaz with Wajid Ali Syed

Leading Punjabi intellectual and writer Dr Manzur Ejaz passed away at his home in Virginia on 3/30/25. Dr Ejaz was born in a village (chak 60/5-L Burjwala, Sahiwal) in central Punjab shortly after the creation of Pakistan. He contracted polio as a child and was partially paraplegic as a result, but he never let this hold him back. Familiar with traditional rural punjabi culture from his very traditional home, he became a left wing activist in college and remained active in Left wing politics all his life.

He did his masters in philosophy from Punjab University in 1970 and joined the same as a lecturer in philosophy. He remained a committed Marxist and also developed the idea that oppression took many forms and one of its forms was the denial of the language of the common people in favor of imperial languages that were used to impose a new imperial reality on the people. He always insisted that the cause of Punjabi language must be a central concern for any Punjabi Leftist and there could be no working class politics that did not include the defense and promotion of the only language in which that class was able to fully express themselves.  It was at this point that Dr Manzur Ejaz and other Punjabi activists led by Najm Hussain Syed (the most famous Punjabi critic and writer of our age) started a weekly meeting (the “sangat”) to promote the modern study of classical Punjabi literature. They tried to hold their meetings in the university but this was the era in which the jamiat (student wing of the Jamat e Islami) was taking over Punjab university and they created hurdles such that the meeting was moved to Najm Sahib’s house and met there regularly until the Covid era, when it was converted to a virtual meeting. Around that time Dr Ejaz also met his future wife (he said the first time was at a bus stop) and Attiya Kokab and Dr Manzur got married in the late seventies and remained together ever since. Continue reading Dr Manzur Ejaz. 1949-2025

Twelve Days of Norouz

Video Player

A Little Glimpse into our Norouz

Before diving into reflections, here’s a short clip from our Norouz gathering—a moment of rhythm, light, and quiet joy.

We cut the cake at exactly 9:01:30 PM, the precise moment of the vernal equinox. That instant—when day and night are perfectly balanced—is when Norouz truly begins. Not just a date on a calendar, but a celestial pivot point.

Spring Equinox, 2025 - Civilsdaily

I’ve yet to attempt a full Haft Sin, but this year, I symbolized each element in a cake and cut it at that moment of cosmic symmetry. It felt right: a gentle innovation on tradition, one that reflects the layered nature of Norouz for me—part-Persian, Bahá’í, and of distant Zoroastrian descent. My festive rhythm has long leaned toward the latter part of the year—from Halloween to Epiphany, with near-weekly celebrations—but this year, Norouz found its center.

Seven Seens of Haft Seen. an illustrated guide to an Iranian ...

As I write this, it’s also Laylat al-Qadr—the Night of Power in the Islamic calendar, believed to hold the weight of a thousand months. A rare convergence: Bahá’í and Muslim fasting overlapping, Ramadan and Norouz intertwining. From next year, they’ll decouple again, but for now, the alignment feels sacred.

The camera caught just a sliver: flickering candles, a circle of loved ones, rhythmic clapping, and a moment more felt than spoken.

Sometimes, a few seconds of joy carry the weight of an entire season. Continue reading Twelve Days of Norouz

Brown Pundits