Simone and Malcolm walk through a widely circulated write-up on izzat—the North Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi honor/reputation system—after Homath quote-tweeted it. They treat it the same way they treat critiques of Western hookup culture, Chinese face, or American individualism: as a cultural technology that can either support or sabotage flourishing.
They read the original Kiwi Farms post, then fact-check it. Izzat is a real, documented concept of collective family/clan honor. It is not practiced by all Indians. It is concentrated among many Hindi and Muslim communities in the north and is a poor fit for Jain, Christian, and Buddhist communities. Admitting fault can be treated as humiliating the whole group. Disputes can escalate past the original slight. Police and officials sometimes avoid taking sides. Honor killings are the part the original post underplayed: UNFPA and NGO estimates put worldwide honor killings in the thousands per year, and peer-reviewed work ties izzat to those cases in India and Pakistan. The 2017 Delhi toilet/urination murder they cite is a real case.
They also cover jugaad (workaround culture that can mean frugal innovation or cheating the rule), H-1B co-ethnic hiring and the Cognizant discrimination findings, Air India training scandals, and why a high-performing Indian diaspora can coexist with a country that still struggles with public goods and trust. Malcolm’s secondary explanation: License Raj and the post-independence decision to treat British rule as synonymous with capitalism.
Firsthand: their travel business had clients from many countries. Indian sub-agencies, they say, repeatedly broke vendor contracts, hid large bills, and scammed end customers—including after second chances. They live in a majority-Indian neighborhood and like their neighbors. The argument is about norms and selection, not “all Indians.”
They close by comparing this to Africans, Chinese, and Indians criticizing Western individualism and hookup culture, and by arguing that slapping “racist” on a pattern debate makes the backlash worse (Streisand effect), especially after Canada’s diploma-mill wave.
Weekend episodes and citations: Patreon / Substack.Books: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FMWMFTG
Show Notes
The Izaat Post
On November 2nd, 2025, @XJosh posted three recent Kiwifarms screenshots to X, saying: Kiwi Farms user breaks down ‘Izzat’, the Indian subcontinent’s cultural honor system. It effectively explains every single trope about Indian behavior: they all participate in an invisible clout-chasing game that involves screwing over everyone as much as possible. Worth the read
The screenshots, showing a post by GluttonousManSlob read:
Hi. I didn’t see this term mentioned in the thread, so I wanted to share this all with you. It’s about Izzat. Some posts have mentioned ‘saving face’, which is Izzat, but I wanted to elaborate on it.
Izzat has no direct translation into English. We only have terms that can broach the same concept such as ‘honour’ or ‘reputation’ or ‘face’. Izzat is so much more than that. It’s a zero-sum game of collective honour shared by whole groups of people, all of whom take it very, very seriously. A system like this isn’t just foreign to Enlightenment values, but I’d argue it’s antithetical to every sensible form of governance on the planet. It will destroy any system that assumes good faith.
Izzat conflicts are not about who is right and who is wrong. It’s about who wins and who loses. This means it’s a zero-sum game where just about any action is justified (including murder) to restore the lost Izzat. Izzat is a limited social currency and the easiest way to get it is to take it from someone else. Winning is righteous in Izzat. Losing is unrighteous. This means that if someone plays the game of izzat well enough, they can get away with just about anything (murder, rape, scamming, cheating, stealing). The only morality in Izzat is the protection of your group’s collective ego. The only appropriate response when your Izzat is attacked is the complete destruction of whoever insulted it.
Two people get into an argument. They might escalate, but chances are it won’t be that bad. i.e. ‘Sorry I broke your garden gnome.’ With two Indians in an argument, the stakes are always deadly thanks to Izzat. Neither of them can back down, nor can they admit fault. Admitting fault is seen as deliberately humiliating yourself. Not only that, but because Izzat is shared, you are shaming everyone who shares your Izzat. So, admitting fault or taking responsibility for a problem is a form of social suicide. This means even if the dispute was over something completely f*****g stupid or trivial (like a broken garden gnome), it could spiral into a decades long honour feud.
Izzat is also the reason why police are reluctant to get involved in disputes. Because Izzat is a zero-sum game, all participants are involved in the game. If a policeman sides with one family over another in an Izzat dispute, this means that he’s deliberately taking the side of that family and dishonouring the other. This marks him for retribution by the offending party. Without parties being able to be impartial, then centralized authority cannot effectively function.
Let’s say someone in India complains about a broken water pipe. Instead of the problem being addressed, the official responsible for the water pipe denies it’s a problem and counterattacks him instead, because daring to question his efficacy in his role was challenging his Izzat. So the official destroys the person who brought the problem up. The water pipe never gets fixed.
Izzat is also the reason why Indian managers are so infamous for hiring more Indians. It’s because from the manager’s perspective, he’s using his position to gain an invisible social currency. Merit and actual qualifications come second to that idea. If he hired a westerner, he would not gain or even lose Izzat by doing so. He has a very strong cultural incentive not to be impartial. Meanwhile, if he can strong-arm dozens of Indians into a company, he is gaining huge quantities of Izzat and conspirators who owe an absolute debt to him.
It’s not uncommon to see Indians gloat about their success in the west. And yes, izzat is very much a system that enables short term success. But the fundamental reality is the prosperity that these Indians find so attractive in the first place wouldn’t exist if the west practiced something similar to Izzat. Our systems can only exist on the assumption of good faith, and not a majority of people exploiting them for destructive short term gain. On top of that, if an Indian causes the systems and companies he comes into contact with to collapse, then he can just go back to India with his plunder. He has no stakes in the long-term prosperity, functionality or stability of these systems. The stakes are completely asymmetrical in the Indian’s favour.
You all know about that infamous video of that Indian scamming a food bank. Once again, winning is righteous. Losing is not. By employing ‘clever’ means (jugaad), he successfully extracted more resources for himself and his family. From the perspective of jugaad, a rule is not something to respect, but merely an obstacle to the Indian’s own gain. Since he cheated the system and wasn’t caught, he is seen as a righteous and dignified man in the Izzat framework.
* We can attest to this being an issue: One of the businesses we ran had clients from all over the world: The USA, Spain, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, and India
* While we had occasional issues with Venezuelan clients getting in trouble by helping people flee the country (pretty reasonable) for the most part our agency clients were reasonable
* However, our Indian clients were so systematically scammy that we had to completely change our terms
* They violated major vendor contracts so egregiously we almost lost key vendors that were crucial for our business operations
* One racked up $60,000 in expenses in a way that was o…
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe
