mRNA and Ghalib
“mRNA TECHNOLOGY is a watershed moment for the future of vaccines. The same technology can be used to prevent dozens of otherwise untreatable autoimmune diseases. The same manufacturing facility and…
A critique of three scholars
Some of my readers have asked me to write more on historiography in Pakistan other than the writers such as Ali Abbas Jalalpuri, Dr Mubarak Ali, and Sibte Hasan. In…
The deepening crisis of scholarship
Part - III Side-effect So what does this deepening crisis of scholarship mean for us as a people – South Asian Muslims – in our daily lives and social experience…
Poetry and patronage
The year 1856 was a significant one in the history of the subcontinent, not for what had occurred during its days, weeks and months but for what had not yet…
Eight lives short
“WHENEVER an elder dies, a library burns down.” When Dr B.N. Goswamy (India’s pre-eminent art historian) died and was cremated on Nov 17 in Chandigarh, a second Library of Alexandria…
Divided hells
INTERNATIONAL borders emphasise insularity: Litfests are the corrective reminders of our inherent universality. The Khushwant Singh Litfest draws, as Khushwant Singh’s mind did, from skeins of history, literature, poetry, politics…
Let the poets speak
Less than two weeks after he had promulgated an ordinance to amend the Pakistan Electronic Crimes Act (2016) that was widely acknowledged as ‘draconian’, President Arif Alvi graced the inaugural…
Different idioms, similar stories
IRFAN Husain had made it a habit to forward me the occasional email in which his Indian fans would snitch about the poor calibre of my columns from New Delhi,…
Rest in peace, Teacher
When we first met, we were poles apart ideologically. When he departed, we were less so. He had converted me to many of his ideas. We spent many an evening…
Does the Shariah permit trading shares?
The law is always catching up to the inventiveness of merchants. Islamic jurisprudence and commercial law, is no exception. Two modern inventions-the fiat-money banking system and the business corporation-have posed…
