The July 15, 2013 House of Lords ceremony on July 27, 2013On July 15, 2013, Baroness Shreela Flather, great granddaughter of the great builder, social reformer and philanthropist of undivided Punjab, Sir Ganga Ram, hosted my book The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed (Oxford, 2012), in Committee Room No. 2 of the House of Lords. It was packed to full capacity and many people had to […]
RK Studios, Subhash Ghai, Gulzar and Kalpana Kartik on July 20, 2013My friend Sujeet Bhatt’s commitment to communal harmony and India-Pakistan peace is exemplary and easily exudes in his gentle and kind personality. I arrived in Mumbai from Nagpur on February 9 and met his like-minded friends at his residence in the evening. I delivered lectures at the Department of Political Science, Mumbai University, on the […]
A journey across Maharashtra II on July 13, 2013Last week I talked about the first day of my car journey beginning in Panchgani from where Ajay Deshpande and I left for Nagpur. Next day, February 6, 2013, after paying a visit to the austere mausoleum of Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir (died 1707) we went on to visit the historic Ellora and Ajanta ‘caves’, which […]
Asghar Ali Engineer on May 18, 2013The death of veteran scholar, indefatigable champion of reform, secularism and communal harmony, Dr Asghar Ali Engineer ((born March 10, 1939 — died May 14, 2013) in Mumbai would be mourned by his admirers and friends in the subcontinent and all over the world. Engineer’s Sahib’s departure marks the closure of a role model combining […]
The bloody Punjab partition VIII s on September 8, 2012In February 1947, the British government announced the transfer of power to Indians by June 1948. Although the Muslim League agitation had ended on February 26 and all Muslim League detainees released, Premier Tiwana had lost heart because British rule would soon end. He therefore resigned on March 2, 1947, precipitating an acute political crisis. […]
Kamini Kaushal: Lahore is home on July 7, 2012As I continue probing the Lahore-Bombay film industry linkage, the pre-partition Lahore legend grows larger and more fascinating. “It was the city of cycles; everywhere you could see people on cycles, we girls went around on cycles”, recalled the famous Lahore-born Indian film industry actress, Kamini Kaushal (born Uma Kashyap on January 16, 1927) when […]
The bloody Punjab partition VII s on July 1, 2012The biggest deception that Pakistani Marxists and liberals have been indulging in is that the ulema as a whole opposed the creation of Pakistan. Maududi did oppose, but he was an outsider who shifted to Pathankot, Punjab, where in 1941 he founded the Jamaat-e-Islami. It had no significant following in Punjab in 1945-46. The Deobandi […]
The bell who sang mellifluously on June 30, 2012Among the few surviving Lahori folks still in Bombay are Shamshad Begum, Shyama (Khurshid Akhtar) and Kamini Kaushal. I suppose another old-timer would be music director Khayyam, though he hailed from Jullundar but was groomed in Lahore. Shamshad Begum (born April 14, 1919) and the late Mohammad Rafi were born in Amritsar district, but their […]
Actor Shyam (1920-1951) who died very young on June 23, 2012The partition of India and Punjab entailed human tragedies on a gigantic scale. Naturally, filmdom had its fair share of such tragedies. As the Lahore-Bombay link physically ruptured, it left a trail of blood in a metaphorical sense, as fond memories, close friendships and deep emotional ties were also snapped. On April 26, 1951, Shyam, […]
Mehdi Hassan epitomised shared India-Pakistan culture on June 16, 2012On Wednesday when I got up in the morning and began to get organised to write my weekly column, the idea I had in mind was to return to the Lahore-Bombay film industry theme that was suspended some time ago. I was hoping to follow a chronological order of presentation, but an email from the […]