Why Mohammad Hanif uses satire to write about Pakistan|Scroll Adda (Open Thread)

May 31, 2026 Kabir 9 Comments filed under Kabir

Based on the 1988 aircraft crash that killed Zia-ul-Haq, the military dictator of Pakistan, A Case of Exploding Mangoes made a big splash in the South Asian literary world when it was released in 2008. Readers loved that a desi writer was nailing political satire. Since then Mohammed Hanif has written three more novels, masterfully blending politics and the absurdities of life. He’s so captured the genre that some say he’s the Pakistani Joseph Heller. Hanif has a new book out, The Rebel English Academy. On Scroll Adda, he talks about why he uses satire, his relationship with three languages – Punjabi, Urdu and English – how Operation Sindoor ended up strengthening army rule in Pakistan as well as describing Imran Khan as a political prisoner.

Incidentally, I keep meaning to review Rebel English Academy. I have a copy autographed by Hanif.

2) Muhammadi Begum in Oxford

Although many young women are studying abroad and living alone these days, this wasn’t the case for Indian women in the 1930s. But, as they say, there are always exceptions to a rule, and one of them was Muhammadi Begum, who went to study at Oxford University during the 1930s.

The book under review, Deccan Say Duur, Oxford Ke Roz-o-Shab: Aik Naujawan Taliba Ka 1935 Ka Roznamcha, is a reproduction of the diary entries Muhammadi Begum wrote while at Oxford. She was born in Hyderabad Deccan, and graduated from Osmania University. As she secured the first position there, she was awarded a scholarship by the Government of Hyderabad Deccan to study at the University of Oxford, making her one of the few women to receive such an opportunity.

In 1934, she went to the UK with her husband, who took a year’s leave from his job to accompany her. To prepare for admission to the University of Oxford, she had to pass certain exams, for which she studied for a year. Although she wanted admission in Lady Margaret Hall, she had to settle for Saint Hugh’s College, which offered her a space.

The review goes on to note that Muhammadi Begum was part of the organizing committee for the women’s jalsa that the Quaid-e-Azam attended in 1945. Her family migrated to Pakistan in 1950.

The Pakistani Voice That Isn’t in the Room

May 31, 2026 X.T.M 141 Comments filed under Precedent, X.T.M

BB made a very sharp observation, and we want to put it on the record as a note rather than a finished argument, because it deserves more elaboration than we can give it today.

Who carries the Green Passport

Look at who carries the Pakistani case at BP. Kabir holds a foreign passport. Q and EK write from the diaspora. Every voice that argues the Pakistani perspective here argues it from somewhere else. Not one of them speaks from inside the country: resident, middle or upper-middle class, holding a green passport with everything the green passport actually costs at the visa counter, at the airport, in what can and cannot be said at home. India, by contrast, is argued for in large part by Indians who live in India (BB is one such example). So the table is lopsided in a particular way. One side is represented by people inside the country it speaks for; the other, almost entirely by people outside it.

No photo description available. — The Great Cleft

Diasporas are powerful but deadly

Continue reading The Pakistani Voice That Isn’t in the Room

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Controversy around the novel’s depiction of homoeroticism

May 31, 2026 Kabir 2 Comments filed under Kabir

This essay has nothing to do with South Asia but I am sharing it in the interest of mixing up topics and discussing things that don’t have to do with Ind-Pak. For FlyDie specifically.

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is a classic work of 19th century gothic horror. Initially published in the July 1890 issue of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, the novel became immediately controversial, primarily because of its “immorality”. In his “Introduction” to the annotated, uncensored edition (Belknap 2011)–based on Wilde’s original typescript– editor Nicholas Frankel quotes a contemporary review in the Daily Chronicle:

It is a tale spawned from the leprous literature of the French decadents–a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction–a gloating study of the mental and physical corruption of a fresh, fair and golden, youth, which might be fascinating but for its effeminate frivolity, its studied insincerity, its theatrical cynicism, its tawdry mysticism, its flippant philosophizing…

Frankel argues that a large part of the reviewers’ outrage arose out of what they perceived to be the novel’s references to homosexuality. He writes:

That outraged British reviews of The Picture of Dorian Gray share the same coded language (unhealthiness, insanity, uncleanliness, and so on), while making allusion to criminal prosecution, shows very clearly that many early British readers were cognizant of the the ways in which the novel challenged conventional Victorian notions of masculine sexuality, particularly through its preoccupation with the homoerotic and emotional relations between the three main male characters (Dorian, Basil, and Lord Henry) and through its complex interest in the potentially corruptive nature of interpersonal influence.

As a response to this criticism, Wilde made substantial changes to the 1891 book-length version, substantially toning down the homoerotic content. However, during his 1895 trials for “gross indecency”, passages from the novel were often introduced into evidence, usually in the more scandalous magazine version. Thus, the controversy around Dorian Gray became inseparable from the scandal around Wilde’s sexual behavior more generally. Continue reading Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Controversy around the novel’s depiction of homoeroticism