Who invited BeerBiceps?

After ceasefire, the new border crisis is this panel lineup

KARACHI:

By all accounts, the recent Piers Morgan episode on India-Pakistan relations should not have been watched, let alone dissected. And yet, here we are, post-morteming a panel discussion featuring former Pakistani foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar, Indian journalist Barkha Dutt, and — why not — two podcasters: Pakistan's Shehzad Ghias Shaikh and India's Ranveer Allahbadia, better known to his following as BeerBiceps.

Morgan, who introduced the latter two as "young influencers," offered no further justification for their presence beyond the implicit logic of online virality: if they have a platform, surely they have something to say.

In the case of podcasters, they are often brands first, people second. It's a curious question to these times of crisis where every industry, from news to entertainment, is coming to terms with social media personalities. Can they speak the truth when the time comes?

Neither Shehzad nor Ranveer has much international appeal, which means they're doubly bound to their domestic echo chambers. After the whole India's Got Latent debacle, Morgan should know better than to expect Ranveer to challenge the official line, especially when the very state he represents has cracked down brutally on stand-up comedians for a joke about incest, a trope that basically fuels half of Western prestige TV (see: Game of Thrones).

While Shehzad isn't strictly an entertainment podcaster, Ranveer very much is. However, neither is a political or cultural analyst. And Piers seems perfectly aware of this. His promotion tactics rely on zingers engineered for the comment section brain -—soundbites that rot your cortex but boost your CTR. Take, for instance, the clip he shared of Shehzad quipping, "I've now figured out why he's called BeerBiceps, because what he said sounds like the most drunk sh*t I've heard in my life." It's funny. But also, is that really the takeaway you want to amplify from a televised debate between representatives of two nuclear-armed states? A comedy roast?

"Pakistan has become the terror hub," declares Ranveer, an odd line coming from someone who doesn't even look old enough to remember when that phrase was doing the rounds in Western media with any real conviction.

He's about a decade too late to be handing out Islamophobia lollipops to the West. And honestly, are we really expected to take political analysis from a guy who believes that masturbation shrinks your penis? Maybe all those years of "no fap" are finally culminating in one long, fascist release.

Shehzad, for his part, fares better — if only because he appears less eager to please. Still, his analysis is hemmed in by a certain neoliberal decorum, a kind of progressive coyness that refuses to name Indian-backed proxies in Balochistan lest it appear to "disown" Baloch resistance.

But even when Shehzad rightfully calls out RSS's involvement in the Samjhauta Express attack and the 2002 Gujarat riots, the screen practically starts vibrating with Barkha and Ranveer aggressively shaking their heads, as if trying to physically repel the facts.

Multiverse of madness

It's hard to justify Barkha's inclusion in the lineup when her X post falsely claiming that the Indian Navy had attacked Karachi Port is still unapologetically up. Her subsequent lamentations feel not only dated but hollow - "stop both-siding jihadi terrorism" and "a Pakistani killed Daniel Pearl" - lines that once might've felt incisive but now read like they're aimed at a white audience that just wants a reason to keep hating the "Muslim."

The rest of her speech is a nuance-starved summary even Grok could churn out, minus the dramatics. Why bother watching her recite warmed-over talking points when you could glean the same sentiments from ten minutes of doomscrolling on X? If this is the extent of Barkha's analysis, maybe it's time to pivot to a profession that demands a little less credibility, fact-checking, and absolutely no spine.

And yet, sitting beside her, Hina Rabbani Khar manages to hold the kind of composure that should be the bare minimum in any serious exchange. You don't have to be a fan of Hina to acknowledge the quiet discipline with which she listens - calm, neutral, unflinching. In contrast, Barkha resorts to odd little gestures of protest, repeatedly raising her hand like a sulking backbencher desperate to be called on.

India has long insisted that Kashmir is an "internal matter," allergic to even the whiff of international mediation. A similar refrain echoes from many Indian progressives when Pakistan is mentioned — an attempt to bracket Hindutva's steady fascist creep as strictly ghar ki baat, a family affair best left unexamined.

But moral high ground is a tricky perch to claim when the terrain below you is already buckling. While Pakistan's proxy networks have largely dwindled into dysfunction, their Indian counterparts - the TTP and BLA  — used the recent four-day skirmish to sharpen their claws. The BLA even offered to serve as India's militant arm within Pakistan's borders should tensions escalate.

Both India and Pakistan wrestle with centre-periphery tensions, but only one of these states possesses both the capacity and ideological momentum to project control beyond its own borders.

Yes, Pakistan is still clawing at the residue of 19th-century pan-Islamism, a dream that blinked in and out of existence through the 20th century, and has lingered with embarrassing persistence into the 21st. But for the better part of two decades, Pakistan's fiercest battles have been with itself. It has never elected a religious party into national government - only those that flirt with the fringes to secure votes. Self-reflection, in such a context, must not blur into self-flagellation.

For the terminally online

India, by contrast, seems increasingly unable to stay within its borders. The 2023 killing of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada, and the subsequent expulsion of six Indian diplomats under suspicion, has spotlighted New Delhi's muscular foreign policy — one that sees dissent, even abroad, as fair game. For a nation so allergic to international mediation in Kashmir, India seems perfectly comfortable extending its own security apparatus into Canadian suburbia.

Yet, Barkha claims that India, on account of being the "fourth largest economy" would "love to ignore Pakistan." It certainly must be difficult to ignore a country while your cinema is fixated on its destruction and your news cycle is one meme away from frothing at the mouth.

But these "sentiments" come with no surprise to anyone remotely familiar with Morgan's brand. The entire Piers Morgan Uncensored episode plays like a show for people who don't have X, because those of us who do, we've already seen what a futile, ungrounded, aggression-laced shouting match dressed up as "debate" looks like.

At least online, you can refresh the timeline and jump from a K-pop dating scandal to an influencer breakup in seconds. But here, you're trapped in the colonial hangover of a white man refereeing two nuclear neighbours like it's a pub brawl. Oh look, they look the same and they're stupidly fighting over Kashmir—lol.

Reeling from what one X user aptly dubbed a "nightmare blunt rotation," one can only hope that Barkha's India - and the foreign approval it so desperately courts - will finally take its own advice and learn to "ignore" Pakistan.