Irfan Habib, senior Mughal historian, has some thoughts in The Hindu, Subaltern studies a challenge to historians [via Naim Sahib]: Talking to The Hindu on the sidelines of the 69th session of the Indian History Congress, which concluded on the Kannur University campus at Mangattuparamba on Tuesday, Professor Habib said globalisation was accompanied by an [...]
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update: On FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, there will be a roundtable discussion of the state of the field, moderated by David Ludden and possibly others. The event will be held in THE HILTON NEW YORK, NEW YORK SUITE (4TH FLOOR), FROM 5-7PM. I will be there. See you all there, too. Thinking out aloud about the [...]
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SMSes are running around saying that India has attacked. To all my gentle readers, a merry end to 2008.
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The aftershocks of Mumbai continue. The incursion, last week, of Indian jets into Pakistan’s airspace has galvanized the predictably jingoistic public, once again behind the Army. The Pakistan Airforce has started running low-flying sorties over major cities (Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad). Newspapers are reporting that crowds cheer when the planes fly over. The major airports have [...]
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“The only way to stop these people is to take their money, so I say take the artifacts and sell them,” she said. “I’d ask any scholars who have a problem with that whether they have any family members that have been victims of terrorism. If not, they don’t have any right to raise an [...]
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Anyone wanna design a new look for CM that looks passable on IE/Win? I am about ready to go back to .txt files.
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Bahār-i Dānish (Garden of Wisdom) by Munshi Ināyat Allah Kanbuh in the mid-seventeenth century. These are hikayāt (tales) of a romance between a prince Jahandar Sultan and a maiden Bahrawar Banu, translated by the narrator into Persian. Think Sheherzade, but with a Munshi. I was delighted to find this on Google Books – though, it [...]
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The ads were in the magazine section of Pakistan News – an Urdu weekly for diaspora desis in NY, Chicago etc. In breathless prose they invited broken hearts and spirits to have their problem solved within “two and half minutes”. One promised a reward if not successful, another lauded his experience of 55 years. In [...]
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Naim Sahib has a must-read review, in Outlook India of LeT’s propagandistic Ham Ma’ien Lashkar-e-Taiba Ki, The Mothers Of The Lashkar. I will leave you to read the essay in full, but apropos of my earlier post, this stood out: To my knowledge there is no companion book about the fathers. In fact, in a [...]
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“… in the Arab culture, the shoe is considered an insult…” oh, schadenfreude.
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George Packer, in the NYer: “The core problem is that Pakistan is no longer really a country, if it ever was.” Actually George, the core problem might be that you (read, U.S.) have never understood it as a country.
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Subrahmanyam deals … Even the broad intellectual grouping known as Subaltern Studies hasn’t taken domestic work into account, save for the occasional moment when a conversation with a servant provides the researcher with an anecdote or factoid to motivate an essay on some profound question or other. There are lots of nice bits in that [...]
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Friends in NYC, please attend. Friends elsewhere, please link/spread the word of this. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: progpak@gmail.com / 917.922.9836 Pakistanis Hold Vigil for Mumbai Victims Call Upon India and Pakistan to Work Towards Peace When: Saturday, December 13th, 4:00 pm Where: Union Square NORTH (16th Street) – across the street from Barnes and Noble [...]
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Dipesh Chakrabarty has a lucid look at some of the key realities facing Indian democracy in the aftermath of the attacks in his Reflections on the future of Indian democracy: The growth of this politics of identity has made elections into the mainstay of Indian democracy. It has distanced politics from issues of governance, and [...]
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What great news! The Library of Congress’ 2008 Kluge Prize has been given to historians Romila Thapar and Peter Brown. I am huge admirer of these fine historians. In addition to her scholarship on antiquity and medieval Indian history, Thapar is the pre-eminent public intellectual with a staunch commitment to a secular India. Her work [...]
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I wish Angelina Jolie would just stay at that charpai and solve all our problems, with her ballpoint pen. In related news, CM was nominated for Best South Asian Blog at Brass Crescent Awards. Go look see at the best of Muslim-themed dishes the blog kitchen has to offer. I picked up a number of [...]
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