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Last month, Pakistan witnessed some of the most violent clashes between protestors and security forces in the country’s recent history, which left 6 police officers and 12 protestors dead. The protests were led by Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a right-wing religious group that came to (...)
Picture: jamhoor
Student and worker movements took place across the world in the late 1960s. So the fact students and workers across Pakistan also came out on to the streets in the same period is not particularly remarkable. However, historian Srinath Raghavan goes so far as to say that, “the (...)
He died wanting the same peace that his comrades, young and old, yearned for and will keep working towards.
Early on Sunday morning in Karachi, a little over a month after his 89th birthday on July 18, 2019, B.M. Kutty slipped into the ever after. A lifelong activist, trade unionist, political (...)
In the late spring of 1919, green meadows in the fertile plains of the Punjab were acquiring a golden hue with the sun’s rising radiance. It was the onset of harvest time. A century ago the near-absence of pollution, the air would have been fresh. With mustard yellow pastures in the periphery of (...)
In the land of the pure, many intellectuals, analysts and political commentators are always curious about the lives of bourgeoisie politicians. They seem to have a dogged determination to learn about the type of clothes that a particular politician prefers; the kind of food that he craves; or (...)
Manto’s writing serves as an introduction to some of Iqbal’s revolutionary, socialist poetry, away from the pan-Islamist, male-chauvinistic zeal with which he is usually associated.
Translator’s note: On the occasion of Iqbal’s 141st birth anniversary today (and the 80th anniversary of his death (...)
IT is salutary to recall that one of the most potent popular rebellions in Pakistan was sparked by goods worth Rs5,000. Sure, that meant a great deal more 50 years ago, but even so it was a pretty paltry amount in comparison with what the chief beneficiaries of Ayub Khan’s “the decade of (...)
Fifty years ago this land witnessed the most glorious moments of its history. Pakistan’s virgin proletariat and the oppressed classes were storming heavens. They had entered the arena of history and were determined to take their destiny in their own hands. Revolutionary periods are historical (...)
During the 1880s the economic landscape of Western Punjab (now part of Pakistan) was radically reshaped. Through a vast irrigation project, consisting of a network of canals, large tracts of arid and barren lands were brought under cultivation. There were no individual property rights on these (...)
An excerpt from ‘Imagining Lahore’,writer Haroon Khalid’s romance with the legendary city, once in undivided India, now in Pakistan.
While Lahore is undoubtedly a symbol of hegemonic authority, it is also the city of Habib Jalib, the rebel poet, who challenged this hegemony his entire life. His (...)
In his poetry, Elia points out that the enmity between religious people and communists is not innate but a later invention of elites to discredit Marxist ideas.
During the past few years, Jaun Elia has taken Urdu poetry circles in cyberspace by storm. A well-known name among aficionados of (...)
This is an attack on a Pakistan, where the diversity of its citizens is the fabric of the society and history.
There is a legend told through oral tradition in the sub-continent. There was a man who appeared before a great city, a wanderer seeking refuge in a new land.
When the king found out (...)
Farahnaz Ispahani, the Pakistani politician and author blames, the military-mullah nexus for the terrible discrimination against minorities. But she believes that there is hope for a turnaround.
Farhanaz Ispahani was a Member of the Pakistani Parliament and the Media Adviser to the President (...)
A short history of the mass strike in Karachi in June, 1972 following the killings of three striking factory workers by police.
Within a year of coming to power in late 1971, the popularly elected prime minister of Pakistan, Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, crushed a major strike by industrial workers in (...)
Let me start with a profound apology for covering, what many might deem an “unimportant” issue this week. With all my sympathies with the innocent children and civilians being killed on the pretext of targeting terrorists in Gaza, I for one, could not help thinking about a ‘minor’ incident that (...)
In what could be the most insightful dialogue in the history of American television, The Wire’s character Omar Little (an African-American man charged with murder and robbing drug dealers) replies to Maurice Levy’s (an influential white lawyer representing a drug cartel and its more legal (...)
Anger as election candidates barred under article in constitution that demands each is a ’good Muslim of integrity and honesty’.
Dozens of candidates, including the former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, have been excluded from some constituencies in the coming Pakistani elections after being (...)
In her posthumously published book, Reconciliation, Benazir Bhutto named a man who she believed had tried to procure bombs for an unsuccessful attempt on her life in Karachi in October 2007:
"I was informed of a meeting that had taken place in Lahore where the bomb blasts were planned … a bomb (...)
In 1971 the Jamaat e Islami supported the Pakistani army against the nationalist Awami League: now their leaders are being indicted by an international crimes tribunal and secularism is back on the agenda. It’s time to discuss the forgotten role of the fundamentalist militias in the war of (...)
Excessively snobbish and completely cut off from grass roots politics, while immensely westernized and totally inaccessible to the man in the street were some of the characteristics of the great leader.
He was an Ismaili and Ismailis are generally not considered a part of mainstream Islam. And (...)
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