October 2014
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Pankaj Mishra and his discontents…
The author answers Pankaj Mishra’s New York Times op-ed, granting that Indian hypernationalism is real but arguing that Mishra’s worldview, with its distrust of strength and material progress, is neither…
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Hazara Genocide: Are the police just stupid or is there more to it?
Quoting Mohammed Hanif on Quetta’s police, who say Hazaras are easy to identify, the poster comments that an organised militant group has declared war on them and asks whether police…
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High Court Upholds Death Sentence on Aasia Bibi
The author condemns the Lahore High Court’s decision to uphold Aasia Bibi’s death sentence, arguing that lower courts award death automatically in blasphemy cases and that Christians and Ahmadis in…
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Geography is indestructible
The Face of the Ummah –
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Sun wey bilori akh waaleya
A link to Coke Studio’s version of a Punjabi song with Meesha Shafi, noting how it salutes folk and classical elements in modernised form, and suggesting material for a postcolonial…
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Haider – a spectacular tour de force
A short, admiring review of Haider as a ‘spectacular’ adaptation of Hamlet set in Kashmir, praised for staying true to Shakespeare while adding a desi element, for showing the region…
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Pashtun power play(s)
The author argues that post-2014 Af-Pak may turn from a slow burn into a hot battlefield, that Pashtuns have never accepted the Durand Line, and that Pashtun nationalism allied with…
