The pain of Dardistan
Borderline communities are badly affected when new empires and states are made. New borders while making new national states often divide these communities, even families and clans. These newly formed…
Empowering our culture
The 21st century has witnessed a paradigm shift in almost every sector. including education. Previously, education was all about gaining knowledge of a specific subject or enrolling in career-oriented courses.…
Beware of data ‘colonialism’
In 2017, data overtook oil to become the world’s most valuable commodity, but it remains hard to define. At its most basic level, data is said to be humans in…
When the elite make policy
According to a 2015 news report in this paper, the Islamabad Capital Territory is home to 52 urban and suburban slums (‘katchi abadis’) out of which only 10, less than…
Is Urdu our ‘second mother tongue’?
On September 5, 2021, an article titled ‘Language beyond Politics’ written by an experienced teacher Syed Nomanul Haq appeared in Dawn. Though many of the points raised by the learned…
Houses of horror
OF all the many genocides that history has witnessed, perhaps the most successful was the one perpetrated on Native Americans, entailing as it did not just the physical elimination of…
Unfinished business of independence: Part – II
In the first part of our discussion, we talked about how a modern 20th century democratic state was high-jacked by medievalism 73 years ago and is still struggling to free…
At a loss for words
I RECENTLY visited public high schools in two villages in Mandi Bahauddin district. I was impressed by the insights of their heads on the merits of various languages of instruction.…
Vaccine thieves
The former head of a Canadian casino company and his wife, an actress, were recently charged under Yukon Territory’s Civil Emergency Measures Act for chartering a private plane to fly…
Thought experiment
SOMETIMES an extreme example is useful to make a point. I am going to rely on one to argue about the language of instruction in early childhood. Imagine a girl…
