“Research is a process of steps used to collect and analyse information to increase our understanding of a topic or issue”. (Creswell, 2008). Although research has been defined differently by different authors and thinkers, the significance of research is recognised equally by all of them. Undoubtedly, research is the most important tool to investigate the […]
Manto and liberty
To be certain, in a world full of uncertainties the path that leads to humiliation, violence and fear is not an easy one to travel. History is filled with far too few who have truly rebelled against social convention and whose ideas still hold currency today. South Asian fiction’s most beloved bête noire remains Saadat […]
Extermination of history in BJP’s India
According to George Orwell, the most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history. Many attempts have been made by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to ‘Hinduise’ the educational system, root out liberal influences and in several cases, to re-write history. Critics are lashing out at […]
The agony of history
The distortion of history, which constitutes the denial of historical crimes, is called negationism. In attempting to revise the past, illegitimate historical revisionism uses techniques inadmissible in proper historical discourse. These include tactics such as presenting known forged documents as genuine, inventing ingenious, but implausible, reasons for distrusting genuine documents, attributing ones own conclusions to […]
India on the verge of self-destruction
Jawaharlal Nehru’s book, Discovery of India is based on the idea of India being a ‘composite nation’. Nehru envisaged India as a country made of a diverse collection of ethnic and religious groups which would be united by Indian nationalism. He saw Indian identity as many layered concept which grew out of the subcontinents long […]
The knowledge gap: haves and have-nots
One look at Pakistani society and you can probably divide it into two categories of people. The educated and the uneducated, the knowledge ‘haves’ and the knowledge ‘have nots’. The educated class has a tendency to look for the same information that confirms their biases and ideologies. Whereas the uneducated don’t even know how to […]
Intellectual suicide of the Muslim mind
The roots of Western civilisation lie in the culture of Greece, the religion of Israel, and the law of Rome, and the subsequent combination has prospered and decayed in a thousand ways amid the two centuries that have followed the death of Jesus Christ (PBUH). Whether venturing into new regions or retreating into urban communities, […]
History writing and nationalism
Nationalism has always been intimately connected with the sense of past. Whether defined generally as identification with a putative cultural collectivity known as a nation, or all the more particularly as the thought that a given ‘nation’ merits and can appropriately look for self-government, nationalism is constantly bound up with perceptions of the past, and […]