Brown History

Is it possible that some people, after dining on human flesh, develop a real taste for it?

Like many countries, Pakistan has never had any specific laws against cannibalism but when police discovered the canabilistic acts of two brothers in 2011, so grotesque and so horrifying, that law makers rushed to introduce new legislation. In the latest Brown History Newsletter, Alivia Banerjee delves into the mind of the Cannibal Brothers and investigates what possesses someone to eat another human being.

🧷 Full story available in the link in the bio or visit brownhistory.substack.com

Why does expressing vulnerability feel natural in one language and awkward in another? For many, the language of home is not always the language of their inner world. Feelings that flow effortlessly in English can suddenly become difficult, embarrassing, or impossibly out of reach in a mother tongue spoken around family dinner tables and across generations.

In the latest Brown History Newsletter, Nashia Rizvi Nashia | Mom & Lifestyle Blogger asks whether the struggle is really about vocabulary, or whether it reflects something deeper: a culture that often communicates love, grief, and longing through food, music, poetry, films, and sacrifice rather than direct conversation. In the space between English and a mother tongue lies a larger story about identity, belonging, and the emotions we inherit.

🧷 Full story available in the link in the bio or visit brownhistory.substack.com

Why does expressing vulnerability feel natural in one language and awkward in another? For many, the language of home is not always the language of their inner world. Feelings that flow effortlessly in English can suddenly become difficult, embarrassing, or impossibly out of reach in a mother tongue spoken around family dinner tables and across generations.

In the latest Brown History Newsletter, Nashia Rizvi Nashia | Mom & Lifestyle Blogger asks whether the struggle is really about vocabulary, or whether it reflects something deeper: a culture that often communicates love, grief, and longing through food, music, poetry, films, and sacrifice rather than direct conversation. In the space between English and a mother tongue lies a larger story about identity, belonging, and the emotions we inherit.

🧷 Full story available in the link in the bio or visit brownhistory.substack.com

"Harris’s maternal grandmother was an activist in India, sheltering women from abuse and leading education initiatives for them about contraceptives. Her maternal grandfather was active in the fight for Indian independence...The Harrises were intellectual activists, with a keen interest in black struggle and its broader implications. They organized study groups focused on black writers such as Ralph Ellison, Carter G. Woodson, and W.E.B. Du Bois. They debated apartheid and decolonization... Harris’s parents saw MLK speak together, protested the Vietnam War, and marched for civil rights pushing their firstborn in a stroller.

“These were my mother’s people,” Harris writes in her memoir. “From almost the moment she arrived from India, she chose and was welcomed to and enveloped in the black community. It was the foundation of her new American life."

Harris recalls the walls of her day care center as decorated with posters of Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman...She recalls being sent on Sundays to the 23rd Avenue Church of God, where Harris and her sister, Maya, sang in the children’s choir. They were reared in a social justice Christianity, which called upon them, according to Harris, to “defend the rights of the poor and needy.” This does not strike me as the biography of someone who needs lectures on the nexus between the black freedom struggle and its import to the broader world. To the contrary, it reads like the story of someone steeped in that knowledge.

And that story forces a very basic question: What was the point of all this? Why the invocations of Tubman, the readings of Du Bois, the visits from Hamer? And did the advocates of this collective pedagogy imagine their children rising to heights of power, only to view the darker nations of the world through the same violent lens as their oppressors? And if they did not, if they believed that the “poor and needy” meant those within the empire as well as those without, then what moral mandate does that place upon their children?

And if their children have come only to praise, not check, empire, then why have they come at all?"

— Ta-Nehisi Coates, Vanity Fair, Jun 15, 2026.

What can a moustache tell us about power? In India, quite a lot. Long associated with masculinity, status, and authority, facial hair has become intertwined with nationalism, caste, regional identity, and ideas of what it means to be a man. The simple act of growing a moustache can carry meanings that extend far beyond personal style.

In the latest Brown History Newsletter, Samihah Safeel examines the curious case of how facial hair on men takes a life of its own and becomes a tool ready to be wielded by the ones in power in India.

🧷 Full story available in the link in the bio or visit brownhistory.substack.com

More than a novel, A Fine Balance is a window into India during one of its darkest periods. Through unforgettable characters and remarkable realism, Rohinton Mistry brings together the lives of four strangers sharing a cramped apartment, revealing how politics, poverty, and chance shape ordinary lives. Published in 1995, the novel is a powerful story of survival, dignity, friendship, and resilience. If you've never read it, this is one book that stays with you long after the final page.

*Tap the link in our bio to explore our newsletter for South Asian stories, and check out our shop Brown History Shop

Every Father's Day, we honor the countless fathers around the world who have carried their families through war, genocide, forced displacement, separation, and migration. Fathers who crossed borders with children on their backs. Fathers who held families together in refugee camps and resettlement centers. Fathers who have buried their grief beneath tents, checkpoints, and airstrikes. Fathers who dig through rubble with bare hands. Fathers who are forcefully separated from their children "by racist regimes and distant prisons."

Today, we remember them, not as statistics or headlines, but as silent anchors in storms the rest of us will never fully understand

In 1957, renowned New Zealand photojournalist Brian Brake traveled through Kashmir, capturing images of its breathtaking landscapes and everyday life. During his journey, he also witnessed Muharram, one of the most important periods in the Islamic calendar.

Muharram commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hussain ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, who was killed at the Battle of Karbala in present-day Iraq. For many Muslims, particularly Shia Muslims, it is a time of mourning, remembrance, and reflection on sacrifice, justice, and resistance against oppression.

Brake's photographs captured mourners, processions, and rituals associated with Muharram, preserving a remarkable visual record of the commemoration in Kashmir during the mid-twentieth century.

*To learn more about Kashmir, check out episode 71 of the Brown History Podcast

**Tap the link in our bio to explore our newsletter for South Asian stories, and check out our shop Brown History Shop

This is a photograph of a Muharram procession in Trinidad from 1910. The tradition of Muharram commemorations in Trinidad and Tobago was brought by South Asian indentured labourers who were transported to the Caribbean to work on sugar plantations during British colonial rule.

In 1884, British authorities banned Hosay processions in the towns of Port of Spain and San Fernando. In response, a group of South Asian labourers chose to defy the ban and continue the procession as an act of civil disobedience. Many believed the law was unjust and assumed the authorities would not use deadly force against people participating in a peaceful religious observance that had been held annually for years.

When the procession passed through San Fernando, police opened fire on the crowd. Men, women, and children were shot. Between 18 and 20 people were killed, and hundreds more were injured. The event became known as the Hosay Massacre of 1884. British officials, however, referred to it as the "Hosay Riots," a name that shifted attention away from the violence inflicted on the procession's participants.

More than a century later, Muharram processions continue to be held across Trinidad and Tobago. Known locally as "Hosay," a Creole adaptation of the name Hussain, the commemoration has evolved beyond its South Asian roots and today draws participation from people of different cultural and religious backgrounds, making it one of the country's most distinctive shared traditions.

Source: "The Hosay or Muharram Massacre of 1884 in Trinidad," Caribbean Muslims / Virtual Museum of Trinidad & Tobago.

*To learn more about Hosay, check out episode 40 of the Brown History Podcast

*Tap the link in our bio to explore our newsletter with unique South Asian stories, and check out our shop Brown History Shop

This is a photograph of a Muharram procession in Trinidad and Tobago from 1904. The tradition of Muharram commemorations in Trinidad and Tobago was brought by South Asian indentured labourers who were transported to the Caribbean to work on sugar plantations during British colonial rule.

In 1884, British authorities banned Hosay processions in the towns of Port of Spain and San Fernando. In response, a group of South Asian labourers chose to defy the ban and continue the procession as an act of civil disobedience. Many believed the law was unjust and assumed the authorities would not use deadly force against people participating in a peaceful religious observance that had been held annually for years.

When the procession passed through San Fernando, police opened fire on the crowd. Men, women, and children were shot. Between 18 and 20 people were killed, and hundreds more were injured. The event became known as the Hosay Massacre of 1884. British officials, however, referred to it as the "Hosay Riots," a name that shifted attention away from the violence inflicted on the procession's participants.

More than a century later, Muharram processions continue to be held across Trinidad and Tobago. Known locally as "Hosay," a Creole adaptation of the name Hussain, the commemoration has evolved beyond its South Asian roots and today draws participation from people of different cultural and religious backgrounds, making it one of the country's most distinctive shared traditions.

Source: "The Hosay or Muharram Massacre of 1884 in Trinidad," Caribbean Muslims / Virtual Museum of Trinidad & Tobago.

*To learn more about Hosay, check out episode 40 of the Brown History Podcast

*Tap the link in our bio to explore our newsletter with unique South Asian stories, and check out our shop Brown History Shop