Pakistan: myth of a secular state on June 3, 2012Pakistan may be no heaven on earth but we are undoubtedly much better off today than our elders who had to live through the nightmare of communal rioting that had ensued months before India’s independence. Yet we are no closer to reaching a consensus on the issue whether Pakistan was meant to be a secular […]
How liberal are they? on April 22, 2012Self-proclaimed liberals in our country are also the self-appointed guardians of Jinnah’s liberal political philosophy. Imran Khan does not fit in their grand scheme of things, therefore he is fair game. He cannot do anything right. As long as he was a cricketer and a philanthropist, he was a saint, but ever since his mammoth […]
Revolution: to be or not to be on December 21, 2011In the wake of what happened at Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI’s) public rally in Kasur, is it not time to pause and rethink the fallout of a ‘tsunami’ and ‘revolution’ on our society? Do we, as a society, even understand the very basics of a revolution? It would help to start with the most elementary: what […]
Head of state immunity II on November 28, 2011Even today, in constitutional monarchies like Britain, all the laws are posited in the name of the Queen, the head of state of the UK and Northern Ireland. Although she is legally obliged to work in tandem with her cabinet and does not enjoy unbridled powers over her kingdom, she nevertheless enjoys full immunity from […]
Head of state immunity I on November 26, 2011The honourable Supreme Court’s (SC’s) verdict on the NRO case in December 2009 and its rejection of the government’s review petition, thereby upholding its original decision, has restarted a debate about whether the president of Pakistan enjoys immunity in cases involving foreign and Pakistani courts’ jurisdiction. The debate has been often confusing as leading legal […]