A tribute to the late Shashi Kapoor (1938-2017) on December 11, 2017The youngest son of Prithviraj Kapoor (1906-1972), passed away in Mumbai a few days ago. His brothers Raj Kapoor and Shammi Kapoor died earlier. Some of his nephews and nieces continue to be big names in Bollywood. The Kapoor story began in our part of the subcontinent, in Peshawar, where their elders were settled. They […]
The Afghan war and its aftermath on April 27, 2015The translation of this important book, written by a general of the Soviet Red Army, must be celebrated as a most important contribution by Dr Najam ul Sahar Butt. He has previously translated Russian literature and now a book of vital historical significance has been made available to Pakistani readers. General Makhmut Akhmetovich Gareyev, who […]
Imagining Pakistan as an Islamic state on April 6, 2015In the liberal-Marxist intellectual environment in which I received my political grooming in the Lahore of the late 1960s, the standard view was that the Muslim League, especially its supreme leader, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, wanted a separate state for the Muslim nation to escape exploitation at the hands of the Hindu moneylenders. On the other […]
Where peace comes from on November 10, 2014Dr Khalid Sohail is a prominent opinion builder in the South Asian community of Canada. A psychiatrist by profession, he actively debates issues of peace and shared humanity. In his latest book he captures the ultimate irony of religious extremism and terrorism. He writes: “To kill human beings in the name of a merciful God […]
What transpires in Afghanistan on November 3, 2014As 2014 draws to a close, the concern uppermost in the mind of many an individual is that of the future of Afghanistan once the US pulls out (will they really or can they really or should they really?). What happens in Afghanistan will inevitably carry deep implications and ramifications for neighbours and indeed the […]
A story set in pre-partition Amritsar on October 27, 2014Kiran Ahuja’s historical novel, set in the Amritsar of 1900-1940, traces the contrasting destinies deriving from two separate but identical acts of two classfellows, Mohan Rai and Prashant Singh. Through painstaking background research Ahuja provides a fairly faithful and realistic social and political context to tell their stories. The main protagonist is Mohan Rai who […]
A story told with a brush on December 21, 2013The publication of a book telling the life story and presenting the artistic creations of one of Lahore’s, and Pakistan’s, leading artists, Mian Ijazul Hassan, is a most welcome contribution to the world of art and culture. In a society afflicted by extremism, intolerance and outright obscurantism claiming hapless victims every now and then, the […]
A history of Punjab a subject long overdue I on November 17, 2013The distinguished historian Professor Rajmohan Gandhi’s monumental contribution, Punjab: From Aurangzeb to Mountbatten, is meticulously, deftly crafted and structured and is a reader’s delight no doubt. Sayyid Muhammad Latif’s History of the Panjab (1889) and Ikram Ali’s History of the Punjab — 1799-1947 (1971) had been available in the public previously. However, while Latif’s work […]
The Partition legacy on November 9, 2013The personal and the public, the normative and the objective — these dimensions are bound to inform a writer affected by the greatest peacetime forced migration of people in modern history: the partition of India but actually that of the Punjab in 1947. I had the occasion to meet the author, Subhash Chopra, at the […]
Leninism, Gramsci, culture: predicaments of Indian Communism I on October 19, 2013The collapse of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc countries, the metamorphosing of the People’s Republic of China into the bankers to global capitalism are cataclysmal events of such gigantic proportions that it would take a very long time before one can begin to understand how and why the communist project […]