Searching for the Antebellum South in Charleston, South Carolina on April 11, 2018On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state in the US to secede from the Union, which at that time consisted of 34 states. The state opposed the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency of the US since he had vowed to abolish slavery. The first shots of the American Civil War […]
The Radcliffe Line revisited on April 6, 2018For decades, the prevailing view among historians has been that the boundary lines between India and Pakistan were drawn by Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a barrister. A man who had never traveled east of Paris, Radcliffe was given a few weeks to accomplish this task by Lord Mountbatten, Britain’s last viceroy, during the summer of 1947. […]
Emulating the Asian Tigers on April 1, 2018Pakistan is in crisis. There is trouble brewing on both the western and eastern borders. The menace of terrorism hangs in the air. There is increasing anger and alienation among the marginalised minorities. The world’s worries continue about Pakistan’s role in financing terrorism. The rupee has fallen by ten percent against the dollar in the […]
‘Viceroy’s House’ and end of the British Raj on March 27, 2018Any discussion regarding the end of the British Raj is bound to be controversial. Pakistanis insist that partition was the right thing to do whereas the Indians insist it was wrong. But there is one thing on which both agree: that partition was carried out in great haste, and to use Churchill’s phrase, it was […]
Operation Searchlight revisited on March 25, 2018In the end, the man who had launched Operation Searchlight felt he had done no wrong. The fault for the breakup of Pakistan was all Mujib’s On the 25th of March, 1971, General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan, the president of Pakistan and the commander-in-chief of the army, ordered the Eastern Garrison to open fire on […]
Bracing for an Indian attack on March 19, 2018Pakistan seems to be bracing itself for an Indian attack. In January 2017, the military declared that a new surface-to-surface ballistic missile, Ababeel, had been tested. With a range of 2200 kilometres, Ababeel can deliver multiple nuclear warheads to the enemy, using MIRV technology. The military said that the missile was designed to “defeat the […]
Coup-proofing Pakistan on March 12, 2018In its 70-year history, Pakistan has experienced at least nine coups, of which six have succeeded. The coups have yielded 33 years of military rule and dominated the defence and foreign policies of the country for another 25 years. How does Pakistan’s experience with coup propensity and military dominance compare with that of other countries? […]
The bloody legacy of partition on March 7, 2018The Second World War had bankrupted the United Kingdom. It was in no position to continue holding on to the British Empire. The first to go would be India, home to 400 million of the 500 million subjects of Her Majesty. Prime Minister Clement Attlee surprisingly defeated the war hero Winston Churchill in the elections […]
In Search of Homer’s Greece on February 28, 2018In grade school, I came to know of heroes and gods who fought in an ancient land known for its grapes and olives, of Helen whose uncommon beauty had launched a thousand ships, and of the mysterious Trojan horse whose arrival had doomed Troy. In middle school, I came to learn that these tales were […]
Can demographics predict political change? on February 28, 2018One of the big unknowns in politics is when a country truly becomes a democracy. An equally big unknown is how long democracy lasts in that country. In 2010, the Arab Spring seemed to come out of nowhere. One after the other, rulers were ousted in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, falling like chess pieces. […]