Who says countries are permanent?
We should know this more than others. The Pakistan of 1947 is not the Pakistan which exists today, one half of it having broken away to form another country. I…
The legacy of the PPP government
The Pakistan People’s Party got a monumental mansion built in Lahore for its supreme leader towards the close of its tenure (2008-2013), which, if doesn’t outdo, by all accounts matches…
Our textual religiosity
Whereas an ever-growing number of Islamic social forces in the Muslim world are looking towards Turkey and its Justice and Development Party to replicate its workable model of democratisation as…
Privatising free education
Article 25-A of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973, declares that “the state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to 16 years in…
Gwadar and ‘the great game’
It is perhaps a less known fact that when President Richard Nixon visited Pakistan in 1973, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto sought US help to construct a new port at…
Checks on immigration
Immigration has been a highly emotive issue in British politics since Enoch Powell made his famous 1968 “rivers of blood” speech which sketched a picture of Britain inundated with immigrants.…
Soundtrack of imperialism
Oscar winner for best picture, Argo and its comrade in imperial revisionism, Zero Dark Thirty both attempt a recasting of America’s failed foreign adventures, first during the Iranian hostage crisis…
The long shadow of Afzal Guru
When Afzal Guru was hanged secretly last month in Tihar Jail, Indian officials claimed that it was a simple case of the law taking its course and that politics had…
All in the family
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was 19 when he was named the chairperson of Pakistan’s largest political party.Bilawal’s natural political progression — not uncommon for a scion from a political dynasty —…
The ides of March again
As if ethnic and sectarian strife were not enough to go with terrorism, we are now facing religious strife. One is under no illusion that this is not being deliberately…
