Dr Saulat Nagi

“O judgment thou art fled to the brutish beast and men have lost their reason”. Antony addressed the Romans while standing beside Caesar’s cadaver. Brutus, however, denied him the consolation saying, “not that I loved Caesar, but I loved Rome more”. What Brutus did was a conscious act and not madness. Even madness has a […]

“We know what we are,” says Shakespeare, “but know not what we may be.” If we pose the same question to the people of Pakistan, can we expect the same answer? Probably not, “from the depths of their hearts, the masses, secretly know the truth,” Horkheimer says, “and disbelieve the lie, like catatonic patients who […]

“O Judgement,” Mark Anthony says, “thou fled to the brutish beast and men have lost their reason.” However, the reason that propelled Brutus to slay his friend was not without logic, “not that I loved Caesar less” he said, “but I loved Rome more.” In any conflict, reason becomes the first casualty on either side […]

History, Marx says, repeats itself, first as a tragedy and then as a farce, but what if the history of a country is a tragic farce? If Indian history was the history of invasions, the history of Pakistan is the history of intervention in all spheres by the mighty powers that ironically consider themselves an […]

The world is in the grip of another imperialist war: a clash of Titan is indirectly taking place in Ukraine, and a smaller nation, as ever, has become the cannon fodder for their expansionist design. “It is Putin’s war,” the west is shrieking hoarsely to make the world believe that a paranoid individual has imposed […]

So finally, it happened. One of the leading organizations has survived the deep concussion spanning over seven decades to come alive suddenly. Amnesty International, the biggest non-government human rights organisation, has concluded that the state of Israel is committing crimes of apartheid against humanity. A step in the right direction, but too little, and too […]

“To be captured is beside the point,” Nazim Hikmet says, “the point is not to surrender.” But alas, we were not only captured, but we also surrendered meekly, for we chose a wrong battleground, a part of our homeland, and fought with our people. To our dismay, we met the destiny we had written with […]

“Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord,” says Shakespeare, “when men are unprepared and look not for it.” Even on the day of his lynching and innovation, the wage-slave in Sialkot would have gone to his work like any other day, with a promise of coming back home in the evening to bring […]

“Searching for democracy in Turkey is like searching for a virgin in whorehouse.” The quote is attributed to the great Marxist poet and one can palpably feel the anguish and despair of Nazim Hikmet hidden in these words. For he, with his comrades and countrymen, fought valiantly against imperialism with the financial backing of the […]

When Prometheus stole the fire from the heavens and gave it to mankind, Zeus decided to punish both. For his transgression, Prometheus was tied to a rock and had his ever-repairing liver devoured by the eagle day after day before finally being rescued by Heracles. To punish men, Zeus instructed Hephaestus to create the first […]