[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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No one born after 1975, in my family’s circle of acquaintance, remembers the fall of Dhaka. They don’t know the year. They don’t know that Bangladesh was created out of blood spilled by their own army. I asked them what they had been taught in schools and they said nothing. I went to the market [...]
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In the Fall, I am hoping to teach a class on Experts as a category of Knowledge Brokers in the colonial and postcolonial world. Thinking a riff from Richard F. Burton to TE Lawrence to Rory Stewart by way of Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami. Plus databases and spying drones. Here is somewhat of a [...]
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Woke up this morning, a day before my own trip to Lahore, to see the sad news that Shahbaz Bhatti, a Member of Parliament for the PPP and the minister for minorities rights has been assassinated. The lunatics are running the asylum.
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The shortest period between 1981 to 2011. Viva Egypt.
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نداےً غیب ہر ایک اولی الامر کو صدا دو کہ اپنی فردِ عمل سنبھالے اٹھے گا جب جمِ سرفروشاں پڑیں گے دار و رسن کے لالے کوئی نہ ہوگا کہ جو بچالے جزا سزا سب یہی پہ ہوگی یہیں عذاب و ثواب ہوگا یہیں سے اٹھے گا شورِ محشر یہیں پہ روزِ حساب ہوگا\ Nada-i [...]
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أيام الغضب Jan 25th. Jan 28th. It isn’t a domino effect.1 What happened in Tunisia, isn’t what is happening in Egypt and what is happening in Yemen and what is happening in Lebanon and what will happen in Oman. The internet or twitter or facebook is not behind this.2 Neither is al-Jazeera.3 Each of these [...]
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The killer has been garlanded. Facebook fan pages, twitter clouds of praises. For his victim, Salmaan Taseer there are small candle-light vigils and columns bemoaning him for “going too far”. How far did he go? He visited a woman who is “accused” of blasphemy and he called the law which enables such prosecutions a “kala [...]
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“Most people in this country – and I am not talking about the lunatic fringe – are moderate.” Those words echo; now that the one who uttered them, the Governor of Punjab (the most populous state in Pakistan), lies dead at the hands of his own guard. Salmaan Taseer was many things, but most recently, [...]
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I drank a lot of tea. I drank more coffee. Yesterday, I think I had a caffeine-withdrawal headache-from-hell. Cairo, you did me wrong. If there is one complaint I could humbly launch against the Cairian food gods, it would be “masala” (ok, the kebabs were genuinely dry, everywhere, also) {Lahore food snob alert!}. But this [...]
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Khizr haunted me during my fieldwork. The legend is that he is a lost Prophet – rather a Prophet for lost souls, lost travelers, seekers. He appears when you least expect and guides you. He is immortal. He is dressed in green. When I was walking around lower Sindh, I would encounter his memory everywhere [...]
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We were there for the sake of words. Words written by some in Europe about others in Asia. There was power embedded in those words – power to change Europe, power to arrange Asia. Ours was often a contentious gathering. Some believed, perhaps rightfully, that those days were long gone when locating words into histories [...]
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Back from Cairo bearing some deep ridges in the psyche, and in the soul. There is so much to say about Cairo and I find myself unable to articulate any of it. It cannot be enough to claim, blithely, that I fell in love with Cairo. That sounds unright. Love has too many spikes on [...]
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To the many “Pakistan” related things clamoring for your desensitized attention, may I add a couple more? I. Artist and film-maker Sophiya Pandeya travels to Hingal, Baluchistan and visits “Nani Mandir” of Hinglaj Mata. This darshan tale is touching, illuminating and worthy of your time. You can watch it below. You can also see a [...]
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1. According to the 1998 census, there are slightly more than 2 million Christians (1.59% of total population) distributed roughly equally across urban and rural areas. As a minority the Christian community in Pakistan is predominantly located in the province (state) of Punjab. Although sizeable communities are found in the cities of Quetta, Karachi and [...]
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Go read all of The Language of Developmental Literature by zunguzungu. But this brought smiles. As I hope is clear, the appeal to the American example is specious on its own terms. But that’s what makes it such an interesting rhetorical move: however problematic it might be to declare that American literary history must be [...]
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My post for the November issue of Bookslut goes up today. Here it is below, excerpted in full. The conversation has just begun, so please do join in the comments section. I. Polemics Years ago, when I was engaged in the pursuit of the Hindi PhD that I now have, I was approached for an [...]
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I am currently re-reading Shame. Last I read it, I was maybe 17 or 18. I remember liking parts of it and not understanding any of it. It is an insider novel, drowning in in-jokes, self-allusions, winks and sad nods. I never realized how sad it is – Rushdie pokes into the narrative (in a [...]
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I have been doing some translation work on Shibli Naumani for a small project. He was a major historian of early Islam who published seminal works in the early 20th century. He was also a committed reformist who wanted to modernize “Muslim” education. But reading around on him, I got to read his letters to [...]
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I have a piece up in Express Tribune, ‘If you have understanding, then why this hubhub?’, Sep 9th, 2010, in reference to, Punjab govt goes after Hindu mythology cartoons The politicians are afraid, I assume, that watching the Amar Chitra Katha cartoons – which depict stories from the Mahabharata or Ramayana or Jataka or Panchatantra [...]
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