December 2017
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Shaheed Rani. Hasan Mujtaba’s Poem for Benazir Bhutto
Presents the author’s own translation, made with the poet’s approval, of Hasan Mujtaba’s Urdu poem on Benazir Bhutto’s assassination on 27 December 2007, whose refrain says that a Bhutto will…
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Will the US Continue to Attract International Science Talent?
Asks whether the US will keep attracting international science talent, pointing to visa obstruction and a falling reputation under Trump and a perceived left-liberal drift in universities, while noting that…
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Happy Christmas to one & all
What is everyone doing for Christmas??
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Bahá’ís & Pakistan
Responding to Omar Ali’s post on Pankaj Mishra, a Bahá’í writer notes the book’s passage on Jamal-ud-Din Afghani, the Babis and Bahá’í emigres to Bombay, and compares Urdu to the…
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Review: From the Ruins of Empire; The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia
A long rolling review, written while reading Pankaj Mishra’s From the Ruins of Empire and reposted after editing, argues the book is not really about the intellectuals who remade Asia,…
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The Indian Political Service (Raj era)
Introduces an exchange on the little-studied Indian Political Service, which handled indirect rule of princely states, frontier areas and Persian Gulf outposts, reproducing a Maj Gen Syed Ali Hamid account…
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East Pakistan 1971
Prompted by Dawn’s summary and an Ahsan Butt article, the author gives his own view of 1971 in East Pakistan, covering the disputed death toll, Pakistani denial and Bengali reprisals…
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Anushka Sharma – Virat Kohli wedding
Jokes that he used the same wedding video company, and his wife walked to the same song for the pheras, as at the Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli wedding.
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Review: On China
A review of Henry Kissinger’s On China: thin on early history, stronger from the Opium War onwards, and partly a self-serving memoir.
