Dr Saulat Nagi

Two-and-a-half decades ago, humanity suffered a cataclysmic shock when a society, having the potential of becoming an alternative to the dehumanised yet established world’s ‘reality’, vanished into thin air without a whimper. The largest state of the globe melted without a single shot fired at any living being. This tragedy reminded the oft-repeated lesson that […]

“History of man”, says Freud, “is the history of repression by the civilization”. To avoid the death-wish (Thanatos), it reins in the unbridled Eros. For id, however, every authority is reprehensible. It refuses to recognize the realm of necessity, hence rebels against the authority of super-ego and ego – the master and its watchdog. Every […]

“History of man”, says Freud “is the history of repression by the civilization.” To avoid the death-wish (Thanatos), it reins in the unbridled Eros. For id, however, every authority is reprehensible. It refuses to recognize the realm of necessity, hence rebels against the authority of super-ego and ego – the master and its watchdog. Every […]

Akin to the tempest, which inundates soil, and is cultivated by sweat, tears and toil, the ides of November (Blôtmônað, literally “blood-month”) have ended up ruffling the very fabric of the American society, leaving behind cleavages and deep scars. A vivid expression of unfathomable polarisation, this traumatic experience is bound to linger long, leaving behind […]

For Schopenhauer, death is likely to be understood as an “impossibility of all possibilities.” Nietzsche declares “the living being as only a species of the dead.” For Marcuse, death is an “unredeemable guilt of mankind… In a repressive civilisation, death itself becomes an instrument of repression …an element of surrender and submission …an un-freedom.” For […]

“A brazen face” says Oscar Wilde “is a capital thing to show to the world” when one lacks motives, an intellectual aim, and what is left is merely an appetite. After dismally failing to provide any relief to the suffering majority, the American ruling class has resorted to various distractions. The abuse of words and […]

Gone are the days when Emersonan facts thrown out of the window were found sitting snugged near the fireplace, greeting the one who denied their veracity or existence. Today, they are swept under the carpet, meticulously shelved only to appear decades later as declassified documents. With the advent of modern technology, the human being has […]

Marx says: “History of India is no history; it is the history of invaders.” The history of Pakistan is no exception with the only difference that in this case the invasion persistently and relentlessly came from within. The invaders were neither white-skinned barbarians nor the plunderers of the industrialised world. On the contrary, they were […]

“To shelve the traumatic events, human memory has a tremendous potential of undergoing amnesia, which helps to eclipse the past yet history knows no Alzheimer’s. It neither forgets nor forgives though it cannot help the victims nor can absolve their executioners.” — Herbert Marcuse In the past few years, the world especially the Middle East […]

It was August 14 when at the stroke of midnight hour a twin was born. But born out of what? Carved out might be a more befitting title for this bicephalous twin, later cleaved into two acutely uneven halves. The formidable one was named after India while the frail and tenuous became Pakistan. The Second […]