I sent this email to the CoFounders of the Blog (Omar | Razib) and tomorrow I will send through the Monthly Author Report.
Author: X.T.M
Loki has come to Asgard once again
1. The Return of Loki
Loki is the harbinger of Ragnarök. Even Iâm surprised â but perhaps it was inevitable. The Saffronite dialectic on caste had become too self-referential, too performative. The same arguments recycled endlessly, as if volume were a substitute for depth.
Girmit wasn’t speaking on national unity; only perceptions. So any analysis of the structure of society is now to be replaced by moral superiority onto their counterparts. It has become, in short, a perpetual three-minute hate, directed outward at âthe Other.â That is not intellectual inquiry; itâs emotional exorcism.
2. The Editorial Shift
So, to reset the balance and an apology, Iâve made Kabir an editor. He now has the rights to create and onboard new authors â part of what I call the Crescentisation of the blog. Think of Brown Pundits as a Saffron-hued Moon, where all Desi identities can find their place. In terms of editorial hierarchy: Continue reading Loki has come to Asgard once again
Too Much Masala Ruins the Curry
I actually agree with Kabir on one key point â I donât think people should be brought back to Brown Pundits merely as bait or for spectacle. The value of this space has never been provocation for provocationâs sake.
What makes Brown Pundits “gold” is that it forces us to face uncomfortable truths: about ourselves, our societies, our religions, our histories. The goal isnât comfort; itâs clarity.
Thatâs why I push back when people say âdonât talk about casteâ or âthatâs offensive.â Caste, class, and every other structural reality are not optional topics â theyâre fundamental to understanding how our societies actually work. Discussing them honestly is the only way to make sense of why things function, and malfunction, as they do.
If we avoid those hard conversations, the whole project collapses into noise. The point is not to inflame, but to illuminateâ even when illumination burns a little.
Saffron Strike
The silence on BP these past few days feels deliberate; a kind of Saffron Strike. If so, let it be known: this space was never meant to cater to ideological comfort.
It seems uncommonly quiet; I think I have been misunderstood. I do not care about the traffic and commentary of BP as much as I care about the integrity of the space.
For instance when I felt that Kabir had done wrong; interdiction was the answer. When I realised the narrative was being twisted so that I became his moderator (Kabir generally knows my red lines) then I realised I was wrong. Kabir’s recent postings and commentary have been very high-signal. Continue reading Saffron Strike
Zia-Era Pakistan & Today’s India
There are actual leftists and other folks who donât regurgitate PakMil propaganda â of this Iâm aware. But even amongst those, illiteracy on India is rife. I laugh with bemusement at the number of times self-appointed Pakistani intellechawals sagely nod their heads and compare Zia-Era Pakistan to present-day Hindootva. I âgetâ that such comparisons soothes Pakistani insecurities vis-a-vis its larger, democratic neighbor, but it really destroys their credibility.
Kabir removed three of Daveâs comments, and while I felt it was over-moderation, Iâve kept my promise not to interfere unnecessarily in his threads.
The excerpt above, though, is interesting â the comparison between Ziaâs Pakistan and Modiâs India. Whatâs striking about both is the twin emphasis on capitalism and cultural conservatism: the promise of economic growth wrapped in moral revival. It raises a deeper question â whether right-wing politics are, paradoxically, the only antidote societies find to extreme inequality.
Class, even more than caste or creed, is the fundamental distinction in any society. The bottom half ultimately has more in common with each other than with the top half. Yet society endures only when that bottom half is so compromised that it cannot mount effective resistance. When the Establishment promise uplift but depend on the passivity of the lower half, then the “distribution of prosperity”, twinned with ideology, itself becomes the subtlest form of control.
New writing ideas
Gâs future posts:
« I am thinking on a longish post on how the Hindu Epics actually made Geographical India into cultural India – more than wars of Ashoka or Gupta’s or Mughals. »
A very high Signal Comment by G again:
the highest signal comment of the last 48 hours
The Pakistani establishment elites have zero understanding of modern India. They donât make any serious effort to understand it.
girmit‘s response is probably the most nuanced I have seen in a long while. Quality comments like this keep Interdiction holding up. Girmit has been making such type of qualified and interrogated comments for more than a decade now at BP (after the jump): Continue reading the highest signal comment of the last 48 hours
Fire and the Saffroniate
We had a quiet Diwali dinner with some South Asian literati here in Cambridge, Mass. No fireworks, but some useful clarity especially about the need for a unified South Asian voice, and where Brown Pundits fits in.
Threads, Fire, and a New Warrior Class
Kabir remains catnip for the Commentariat or as Iâll now call them, the Saffroniate (Brahmins or Brahminised). They pretend otherwise, but the numbers donât lie. The threads light up when heâs around and yes, Iâm aware of the layered joke: threads mean something else too, especially to our youngest Pundits-in-training. Continue reading Fire and the Saffroniate
Caste, Aurangzeb, and the Price of Belonging
1. On Chasing Lost Voices and Losing the Plot
JTL suggested we bring back “Bhimrao, Saurav, Prats, the Tam Brahm married to a Sri Lankan.” Letâs be clear: BP isnât going to go chasing ghosts. We already have 14 active authors; the goal now isnât expansion, itâs distillation.
Authorship should mean something. To make it valuable, the inactive will have to go and be replaced. Thereâs a point at which nostalgia becomes necrosis; when a space keeps trying to resurrect the same arguments instead of evolving beyond them. Kabir’s Substack is a window into Elitestan, which I respect.
2. The Echo Chamber Problem
Endlessly reinforcing a Saffronite echo chamber isnât vitality; itâs entropy. Even when these voices appear âdiscordant,â theyâre usually quibbling on details inside the same frame. And when genuine Pakistani voices are sidelined so that incorrect takes on Pakistan can circulate unchallenged, somethingâs gone wrong.
The country has done remarkably well post-Pahalgam and navigated certain transitions far better than many care to admit. I rarely see the Saffroniate yield on that except grudgingly; how can one properly analyse what they hate?
Right now, the blog has rhythm. Diwali may be over, but the interdiction hasnât lifted yet (apparently in anticipation, Qureshi has taken on a new Avatar, as I like to say scratch a Pakistani, wound a Hindu)â meaning, metaphorically, Loki has yet to return with the forces of Ragnarök.
In the interim let us strengthen Asgard itself & letâs see where that leads.
3. On Caste and the Polite Lie
Thereâs this cultivated discomfort around talking about caste â as if itâs rude or too personal.cBut caste isnât a dinner-table topic; itâs the architecture of Indian society and the Saffroniate. Pretending itâs impolite to speak about it simply preserves privilege. Most of the saffronite commentariat are upper-caste; when they do speak of caste, itâs often un-interrogated.
Brown Pundits was designed to be uncomfortable. If you come here to feel safe, youâve mistaken the room.
4. The Aurangzeb Clause
Now, on a personal note â since Dr. Vâs identity (IHS) takes precedence over mine (BPB), that hierarchy inevitably colors how I write. It lends the blog its saffron hue, and Iâm fine with that. Itâs the tension that gives this space its elasticity.
People sometimes ask why I donât âinterrogate my own biases.â Well of course I have but the answer is simple: Aurangzeb is not a hill to die on. The Mughals were complex; the demolition of Babri Masjid was inhumane and reckless (the equivalent to destroying the Aya Sofia). I know that. But complexity is the price of belonging.
To gain full entry into Bharat; to speak as one of her own, you pick your battles and who you must give up. I chose to kick my Mughal padres to the wayside in my Hindufication and baptism from Mleccha to caste Hindu. And virtually no kin of mine, even the most liberal-minded in the Ummah, will ever do the same.
5. The Work Ahead
So, no, weâre not reviving old cycles. Weâre pruning, refining, and staying porous enough to hold contradiction. Caste is not impolite. Aurangzeb may not be evil. They are the two mirrors in which this subcontinent still sees itself â one social, one civilizational. The task is to look straight into both and while I can’t & won’t fight those battles since I took on the Saffron orders and joined Asgard, I won’t disallow lost kin from waging their own battles in what they see as truth. The Golden Age in Norse Mythology, only starts after Ragnarök is concluded.
Was Kabir Right?
A week ago, I imposed an interdiction on Kabir ; a move I felt was necessary at the time, not because of his views, but because of the manner in which they were expressed. His tone, his dismissal of this platform, and his tendency to escalate rather than de-escalate all contributed to that decision. But now, I find myself wondering: was Kabir right about Brown Pundits?
Since his departure, the commentariat has gone unusually quiet. Threads that once sparked with disagreement, energy, and engagement have gone still. There is a strange calm but it feels like the calm of a museum, not a marketplace of ideas. And whatâs become increasingly clear is that the âpeaceâ has come at a cost. That cost is vibrancy. That cost is friction. That cost is participation. Kabir, for all his faults, drew fire, and fire draws people.
This raises a more fundamental question: am I overestimating the commentariatâs interest in the core mission of Brown Pundits? Were people here for civilizational dialogue, or were they here for the masala of Indo-Pak antagonism? Itâs disheartening to admit, but the numbers speak for themselves. Kabir had been blocked years before (not by me), and when I released Loki from his cage, well on his return, so did the attention. Continue reading Was Kabir Right?