Narendra Modi has a penchant for diplomatic showmanship – but his latest adventure in West Asia may go down as the stunt that finally exposed the hollowness of the so-called “Modi Doctrine.” In late February, as fires raged in Gaza, India’s prime minister jetted off to Israel for a red-carpet welcome. He basked in the […]
Facts and Fiction: Imran Khan in Prison
The state has finally put its version on the record – not on a talk show, not through a “sources said” whisper, but in black and white before the Supreme Court. And what that record describes is not a man “buried alive” in Adiala; it describes a former prime minister living inside a private enclosure […]
Corruption and Pakistan
There is a familiar reflex in Pakistan to greet every global ranking with either indignation or despair, to treat incremental progress as cosmetic and structural weakness as destiny. Yet the release of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2025 invites a more measured, forward-looking interpretation-one that neither romanticises the present nor discounts the significance of […]
World War I Memorial
We have a habit of mistaking earthmovers for policy. That is why the Capital Development Authority’s clarification on the World War I memorial matters beyond the immediate outrage cycle: it forces a simple question onto a city that is constantly “developing” and rarely governing. Do we preserve history by freezing it in place, or by […]
Preventive Health v/s Youtube Campaigns
Islamabad’s annual pollen season no longer arrives quietly. It floods emergency rooms, clogs outpatient clinics, and turns a city designed for wide boulevards and open skies into a public-health pressure cooker. Every spring, paper mulberry pollen fills the air in concentrations that physicians describe as extraordinary by urban standards, triggering allergic rhinitis, asthma exacerbations, and […]
Modi’s Strategic Failure
For a decade and more, Narendra Modi’s government has sold its economic brand as a “transformational agenda,” a promise that India would move from managerial inscrutability to free-market confidence, from regulatory sclerosis to investment magnetism. Reality has proved far less dramatic. When tested by the harshest external shock of the post-pandemic decade–a sweeping 50 per […]
Libel Verdict in London
In an age when misinformation travels at the speed of a click and digital platforms amplify every sensational claim, a sober reminder has just echoed from the halls of justice in London: freedom of expression is not freedom from consequence. The UK High Court’s recent ruling in a high-profile defamation case involving UK-based commentator Adil […]
Systematic Religious Dispossession in India
In a nation that proclaims itself a secular democracy, the reality of land-ownership reveals deep fractures-fractures aligned not simply with class, but with faith. For India’s Muslims, the story of land is one of systematic dispossession, legal marginalisation, and historic neglect. The numbers alone speak volumes: between 1949 and 1970 the government of Uttar Pradesh […]
Influence Warfare
A professional fundraiser for a United States congressional campaign receives an invitation to a gala in suburban Washington. The host is a “Hindu American advocacy foundation.” The guest list includes U.S. representatives, Indian diplomats, wealthy donors of Indian origin, and lobbyists. The foundation’s stated purpose: to raise awareness and funds for the “Hindu American community.” […]
Cost of Simplistic Narratives
When The Telegraph published Hardeep Singh’s article titled “The Grooming Gangs Rapists Are Mainly Pakistani Muslims, Not ‘Asian’,” it revived a narrative Britain has been trying to move past; one where the fight against child sexual exploitation is reduced to a matter of ethnicity and religion. The piece claimed to expose a “suppressed truth,” yet […]