Jinnah and Gandhi
HECTOR Bolitho’s biography, Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan, doesn’t get the attention it deserves, even though it was the Quaid-e-Azam’s first biography in English by an internationally recognised author. American writer…
Jinnah’s citizens
HISTORIANS have aptly noted that Jinnah kept his notion of Pakistan ambiguous — more promised homeland and less concrete reality, a tactical manoeuvre that ensured its clarion call would appeal…
A billion Indians minus the four
ELECTIONS are underway in five Indian states. The BJP lost all five last time, though it has created the impression that it won the round hands down. Many see the…
Wider aperture to a truer world
RENOWNED actor Amitabh Bachchan made unusually bold observations recently about the problems with film censorship in India. He spoke of the perennial hardball played between filmmakers and the state since…
A world sacrificed at Israel’s altar
IT isn’t concealed from the keen observer of politics that the Five Eyes Anglosphere created the modern state of Israel in 1948, which in turn birthed the Hamas as a…
Wound & the light
RUMI had said: “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” One must get through intense pain; follow the path of deep sorrow to be able to emerge…
Modi’s double-engine sarkar
WHEN Prime Minister Narendra Modi barrels around India to support allies running for state government elections his war cry is: ‘ab ki bar double engine ki sarkar’ (this time a…
Celebrating Christmas in dark times
COME Christmas and the invisible jukebox lodged somewhere in the benign recesses of the brain switches inevitably to Jim Reeves and Mahalia Jackson’s carols. But Christmas has not been the…
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…
Modi’s countermeasures and 2024
IT goes without saying that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would take every possible countermeasure against an invigorated opposition alliance, which believes the 2024 battle against his two-term, right-wing rule, though uphill,…
