[Part 2 of 6] Translation: The Ideology of Pakistan: Every nation has a specific civilization and culture. The civilizational and cultural capital of the Muslims of the Subcontinent comes from Islam. This capital, their beliefs and religious rituals, mannerisms, religious and historical literature, literary and technological research, is preserved in their literature and philosophy. On this [...]
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[Part 1 of 6] Forgetting is imposed as a strategy to hide the haunting memories that cannot be revealed without destroying our romance with nationalism. ~Yasmin Saikia During the many blackouts and power outages in the Pakistan of my childhood, my family used to sit in the veranda of our home cursing the electricity department [...]
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[This is a guest post from Rohit Chopra -eds] 16 excursuses in despair 0. Sepoy and Lapata have very kindly given me the opportunity to share some thoughts about the Rushdie affair (the new one, at the Jaipur literature festival this year, which, of course, is connected to the old Rushdie affair, 23 years to [...]
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Sepoy insists that I share this painting of Nehru by my grandfather. He also has asked me to share my thoughts and feelings. Here they are: When I painted Nehru, I didn’t realize, at least not consciously, that my grandfather had painted him. When I found out, it made me feel kinda funny. Look at [...]
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(A version of this review essay ran in The Friday Times, Vol. XXIII, No. 41) Review Essay by C.M. Naim In May 1962, when the first groups of America’s newly established Peace Corps were flying out to various “underdeveloped” countries to help them along the road of “progress”, a twenty-eight years old woman set off [...]
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Naim Sahib, one of my teachers at Chicago, has a must-must-must read “rant” (as he puts it) in Outlook India. I really think it is one of his best and critically lays bare a key disconnect between the intellectual engagements within Urdu and English presses when it comes to matters of Muslims and Islam. I [...]
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Some Indian Uses of History on a Rainy Day 1935. Professor of Sanskrit on cultural exchange; passing through; lost in Berlin; reduced to a literal, turbaned child, spelling German signs on door, bus, and shop, trying to guess go from stop; desperate for a way of telling apart a familiar street from a strange, or [...]
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Holy Jesus, Moses and Muhammad. The power-points, I urge you to drop everything and just stare at them, are amazing. They really are. They show, quite clearly, the mental acuity of a 12 year old child when confronted with a newspaper. There is reading comprehension, of course, and even retention and maybe some kind of [...]
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A few weeks ago, I visited Hamburg’s vast harbors and storage houses. There, I saw the faded signs of an old network of traders from Iran, Afghanistan and Kashmir who came to Hamburg in the 1880s and 1890s bearing carpets and artifacts. I loved that part of Hamburg, and I wished I had had more [...]
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I have a more detailed review of Maleeha Lodhi’s edited volume Pakistan: Beyond ‘The Crisis State’ in Dawn’s Books & Authors: All is Well… or is it? I had briefly discussed it in my previous review essay, but this is special care: Pakistan, as a subject of critical analysis, is ill-served when realities are ignored [...]
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If tear-streaked faces of broken families begged you to stop killing their sons, would you reflect and see your wrongs, or would you still load your guns? For every girl who lost a father, every wife now a widow, I hope you see that you have spilled, the blood splattered on my window * I [...]
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I was asked, by Murtaza Vali, to write for a “Manual of Treason” which dealt with the notion of treason and affiliation in the colonial and postcolonial settings. I offered to write on the case of Seth Naomul Hotchand (1804-1878) and the annexation of Sindh in 1843 by the East India Company. The essay was [...]
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Yes! If/when you buy it, and read it, I would appreciate comments on Amazon (be partisan!) and also your grandmother wants this book. love, s
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I have a piece in Hindoostani glossy magazine The Caravan Beta. It is about my research trip to Uch Sharif. Actually, no, but almost about that. Here is a paragraph that didn’t make the cut (or got cut, rather) but I liked it: To make conversation, I told him about the Arab migrations of the [...]
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I. Rudolph says to the sheriff, “For five long years you’ve tried. And you can search as long as you like, you can try with all your might, but I’ll see you in the sweet bye and bye. I’ll see you in the sweet bye and bye.” Sheriff says to Eric Rudolph, “Through caves and [...]
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Lahore, if you want to believe me, is a city about food. The second most popular gossip in Lahore is about specific sites/corners in the city and the specific foods available there. The first most popular being a vehement disagreement/challenge/let-us-go-RIGHT-NOW-and-SEE about that food-stuff. Or maybe, this is just my Lahore. I mentioned earlier that I [...]
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Belatedly, I have learned that the one of the most significant historian of Sindh, and one of the most meticulous historian in Pakistan, Nabi Bux Khan Baloch passed away on April 6, 2011. Almost every thing I have touched, directly related to my dissertation, was created, edited, compiled or reflected upon by Dr. Baloch. I [...]
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That Lahore, of late 80s, is no longer there. Neither is the Lahore of the 90s, or early 2000s. The city has changed, most rapidly, between 2002-2009 and further in the last few years. The roads have been widened, new beltways built, farm land confiscated by the Army and parceled out to its million-strong leeches, [...]
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This trip had, what learned call, serendipity flowing through the pores. One such serendipitous moment resulted in my encounter with the Resettling the Indus project. A group of architects, media and finance specialists, wise fools gathered to help raise funds and resources during the greatest natural disaster in Pakistan last year – the floods. However, [...]
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[You may know that CM has long had an official Archivist - a person who has helped maintain the Facebook page, and helped me cull through the huge archive for posts and materials. You know him as Salman in the comment sections, SalmaanH on twitter, and patwari as author on CM. This is a first [...]
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