South Asia Citizens Web

Large parts of the western working class now seem to gather around right populists, demagogues and racists. They vote for reactionary and fascist oid political parties. They helped to vote the UK out of the EU, to make Trump president of the world’s superpower number one, and they vote so massively for the far right political parties so that they have government power in sight in several of Europe’s most populous countries.

This article appeared as an Op-Ed in The Times of India on 4 August 1993

(11 Feb. 2017) As a Senate committee mulls Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, thousands visit shrine to Mumtaz Qadri, killer of Salman Taseer

what exactly the authorities think as being the role of universities? To create new knowledge and critically analyse ideas, even if they may be uncomfortable? Or is intellectual thought subservient to dominant ideologies or pressure? If questioning and engaging in debate about the politics of sexuality is considered taboo or obscene, then why even keep any of the liberal arts subjects in our universities?

Just as there was no uniform, un-variegated, one-dimensional reflection in contemporary Urdu literature to the First War of Independence of 1857, there is no generalised or undifferentiated response to the partition among the Muslim intelligentsia. The Urdu literature of the Partition years – which, it must be stressed, was written by both Muslim and non-Muslim writers – reflects a bewildering and often contradictory array of opinions.