Muhammad Bezinjo Pakistan’s port city of Gwadar, the hub of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), is in a siege-like situation amid unrest caused by a crackdown against protesting citizens. The city faced a blackout of mobile and internet communications for almost a week. While the mobile networks have been restored, the internet has been shut down… Read More Pakistan’s Port City Gwadar in Chaos
Mehrub Moiz Awan. Welcome to the Incel Republic of Pakistan. We have 210 million citizens in our country, and many non-citizens: some men, some women, and some “transgenders.” Previously, we used to call them “shemales,” as that is what porn had taught us. Now, they call themselves “transgender” in English and “khwajasira” in Urdu, but… Read More An uncensored guide to the republics of Pakistan
AYESHA SIDDIQA A recent article by Air Vice Marshal Shahzad Chaudhry (retd) in Tribune will certainly grab your attention. One could not have expected a former Pakistani military officer— and that too an Inter-Services Public Relations favourite — to so candidly admit the India-Pakistan socio-economic disparity and argue that the bigger neighbour is now a regional power and global… Read More Four times Pakistan came close to making peace with India
Literature once filled in archival gaps by saying the unsayable. Now a younger generation is devising new modes of telling the story and finding new stories to tell. By Parul Sehgal Before it was an edict, and a death sentence, it was a rumor. To many, it must have seemed improbable; I imagine my grandmother, buying… Read More Seventy-five Years After Indian Partition
Whenever India’s political or military leaders brandish threats during periods of ‘uneasy peace’, Pakistan Army becomes the main beneficiary. LT GENERAL PRAKASH MENON In 1999, Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited the Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore. It symbolised the Indian State’s acceptance of Pakistan’s sovereignty. On 1 December 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, writing on… Read More Akhand Bharat shouldn’t enter Indian military gates. Army can’t afford to lose focus
Akhtar Balouch Published March 23, 2015 First posted May 29, 2015 NB – This is a beautiful and moving story. It provides yet another example of human goodness, and reminds us how quick we are to pass it by, to overlook it, because we are so accustomed to negativity, denunciation and animosity. Beneath it (in the original) are scores… Read More Daya Ram Gidumal of Sindh: A silent servant, a silent sufferer. A good man
Gandhi’s Last Fast: January 13-18, 1948 First posted March 30, 2012 This article is based on a lecture I prepared for university students, named Mahatma Gandhi’s Legacy. It includes the text of the Delhi Declaration on communal harmony, January 18, 1948. Citations are from Gandhi’s Collected Works Gandhi’s Last Fast: January 13-18, 1948 From September 1947,… Read More Another time, another mosque
Ironically, the late Asma Jahangir’s last public appearance and speech were at a demonstration led by Pashteen in Islamabad, February 2018, against the extrajudicial killing of a Pashtun youth in a ‘police encounter’ in Karachi in January 2018. The protest marked the launch of the PTM. Jahangir passed away just days later at her home in Lahore. Since then,… Read More Struggles for democracy and human rights in South Asia: Taking forward Asma Jahangir’s legacy
First posted May 26, 2019 NB: Ambedkar’s book is a crucial archive for the climate of the times in which it was written. A noticeable feature is the extensive research, done in short time, soon after the Muslim League’s Lahore Resolution in March 1940. It is also noteworthy that he used stereotypes, fairly common in… Read More Extracts from B. R. Ambedkar’s book on Pakistan (1940, 1945)
Hundreds of thousands of homes are under water in Sindh province. Locals have no food and say the state has abandoned them by Shah Meer Baloch in Dadu After several attempts, Zameer Ali, his son and his brother were finally heaved on to the deck of a wooden boat. Early that morning, the exhausted 48-year-old had waded… Read More ‘There is nothing for us’: Pakistan’s flood homeless start to despair
After the truth-shower 