The decline of Indian Muslims
Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece Shatranj Ke Khilari, or The Chess Players, is a sublime and moving lament for the passing of the Muslim aristocracy in India. As the British plot their…
A journey through fiction
Historical novels can be a good source for understanding our past depending on who has written them and how. In modern world literature, there is a fine example of Hilary…
The blinding spiral in Kashmir
The murderous attack on Indian soldiers in Uri offers one more sample of the bloodthirst infusing India-Pakistan rivalry over Kashmir. No one seems to want the simpler, obvious ways to…
What’s our Hindustan problem?
Our heroes are the Muslim conquerors of Hind, from Mahmud Ghaznavi onwards. We name our missiles after them — Ghauri, Abdali — and of course after Iqbal’s mythical Shaheen. We…
Why do they hate us?
Being a student of media, it never ceases to amaze me how popular perceptions and opinions are formed. How tiny little nuggets of misinformation and hearsay, misconceptions, old-fashioned biases and…
History’s baggage: Pakistan’s Punjab problem
Arising from the same soil, breathing the same air, moving to the same folk songs and music, defined by the same five rivers, Punjab over the centuries has yet produced…
Hyderabad nostalgia
“NEVER in my life,” said Mir Laik Ali, Hyderabad’s last prime minister, “had I ever seen Mr Jinnah emotional except on that day.” Pakistan was fighting for its survival in…
The ‘modernising’ project
IN 1886, the Colonial and Indian Exhibition was held in London. It lasted for six months, and visitors — there were said to be over five million of them —…
Temples and tourists
LATE last week, a joint team of Italian and Pakistani archaeologists, working in the Swat region, announced that they had discovered a 2,300-year-old Buddhist temple. The temple is located in the…
New status of Hagia Sophia
THE reversion of the celebrated Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque is perhaps the most telling sign of the rolling back of Turkey’s secular character and a reflection of the…
