1) Doha Debates: Have Universities begun to favor ideology over truth?
2) Dur e Aziz Amna on writing women’s lives in Pakistan: Southasia Review of Books podcast #37
3) From Ziaul Haq’s Era to Gaza and Homesickness: The Politics That Shape Salima Hashmi’s Art
(Note: Salima Hashmi is Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s daughter)
This translation was originally published in The Peshawar Review earlier this month. It is an excerpt from my translation of âSphygmomanometerâ, one of the Urdu short stories included in Bilal Hasan Mintoâs collection Model Town (Sanjh Publications 2015). The collection consists of linked short stories set in Lahore in the late 1970s and early 1980s â at the beginning of General Zia ul Haqâs martial law. The narrator of these stories is an adolescent boy who comments on the hypocrisies of the adults around him.
One day, Naveed Bhai hadnât returned from college by five oâclock. Usually, this wouldnât have been cause for concern â a slight delay in returning home. But, over the past few days, Naveed Bhai had been behaving in a way that caused Abba to worry that he might be getting involved in something that would land him in trouble with the government of the cartoonish General Zia. Sitting at the dining table one day, Naveed Bhai had said angrily, through clenched teeth, that âwe should teach these ignorant student union thugs a lesson.â On hearing this, Abba stared at him and said they had sent him there to study, not to get involved in useless things. Naveed Bhai should go straight to college and come right back. He shouldnât even think about getting involved in union affairs and getting mixed up with dangerous people. Instead of being quiet after this reprimand, Naveed Bhai started speaking even more loudly:
âThey are thugs! Their legs should be broken the way they broke Junaidâs. General Zia is behind them!â
Alarm bells had gone off in Abbaâs head once before when Naveed Bhai had said he was going to join an underground group of progressive, pro-democracy students. Abba had only gently rebuked him, saying that future doctors shouldnât get involved in such nonsense. Student unions were against the law. There was no need to get himself in trouble.
Who knows who he was, poor Junaid, whose legs had been broken. And I didnât even know what a âunionâ was but when Abba and Naveed Bhai started arguing loudly, I figured some dangerous people had become members of a student group sponsored by a political party, and now they were hovering around colleges and universities. The party they were affiliated with considered itself the last word on religion, and its sole champion. From Abba and Naveed Bhaiâs conversation, I also gathered that these political workers used to beat students and coerce them into obeying strange orders. For example, boys and girls could not walk together on the street. If an emergency forced a boy to talk to a girl, neither of them was to be heard laughing â but such an emergency should never occur. Similar illogical things spewed from their strange minds, like the vomit from Faizanâs mouth. They had always done things like this, on behalf of that criminal general with the cartoon face and never did anything commendable just as that shameless general hadnât either.
When Abba heard from Naveed Bhai about poor Junaidâs broken legs he became even more worried. Pointing his finger for emphasis, he warned, âDonât you dare get involved in such things!â Continue reading Sphygmomanometer (Excerpt)–Translation from the Urdu
From my SubStack:
The Ghazalâa love lyric in Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish and Urduâ has historically been defined as âtalking with or about womenâ. For example, in his Persian dictionary compiled in eighteenth century Hindustan, Tek Chand Bahar defines the genre as follows: âTalk about women, or talking about making love with them or a poem that is said in praise of womenâ. However, as Shad Navedâ a professor of literature and translation at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University, Delhiâ argues in his book The Ghazal Eros: Lyric Queerness in History (Tulika Books 2025), âthe central role the ghazal played in the development of literature in Persian and Urdu during these six centuries is as a love lyric, in which men speak almost never about women but about other men and youthful boysâwith the exception of Arabic, in which a strong current of love poetry about women written by male poets played an important role in the development of the ghazalâ (Naved 9). Naved goes on to ask the crucial question: Why do the dictionaries lie?
For the purposes of this review, I will restrict my discussion to chapter one of Navedâs bookâentitled âSexual Orientation as Styleâ. It is this chapter which lays out the basis of Navedâs argument. Part Two of the book consists of three chapters that provide specific examples of lyric queerness in the Urdu ghazal. For example, chapter 2 focuses on the poet Mir Taqi Mir (1723-1810)âspecifically on his poems dealing with âboy-loveâ. These detailed examples are outside the scope of my review. Continue reading Review: The Ghazal Eros: Lyric Queerness in History by Shad Naved
With Europe and America increasingly locked in an acrimonious struggle over the future of Greenland, we examine the fate of the western world. Could it end up divided and at odds with each other? Could NATO collapse? And if that happens, will Russia and China be the only countries to gain? And what sort of international order will we then have to grapple with? Join me live at 4.30 p.m. (11.00 a.m. in the UK/Ireland) on Tuesday the 20th of January to hear Bill Emmott, the former Editor-in-Chief of The Economist and Chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, address these questions.
Prof John Mearsheimer argues that Western media misrepresents events in Iran as an organic, popular uprising against a mismanaged regime. Instead, they claim the unrest follows a familiar U.S.âIsraeli four-step regime-change playbook. Economic warfare: The U.S. imposes sanctions that deliberately damage Iranâs economy, creating widespread hardship. Protests then arise largely in response to these externally induced economic conditions. Fueling protests: The U.S. and Israel allegedly encourage, organize, and support mass protests, citing evidence such as Israeli media reports, statements by U.S. officials, Mossad involvement, and the use of Starlink terminals by protesters after Iran shut down the internet. Disinformation campaign: Western audiences are told the protests are purely internal and democratic, while messaging inside Iran is designed to convince people the regime is collapsing and momentum is unstoppable. Military intervention (planned but not executed): Once the regime appears near collapse, U.S. and Israeli military force would be used to strike infrastructure and elites to finish it off. According to the speaker, this strategy has failed because protests have sharply declined and the Iranian governmentâs crackdown has largely succeeded. Israeli commentators and even President Trumpâs shifting rhetoric are cited as acknowledgments of failure. The concern now, they argue, is that Trumpâhaving expected the regime to be on its last legsâmay consider military force to ârescueâ a collapsing strategy, despite reduced U.S. combat power in the region and Iranâs stated intention to retaliate directly against U.S. and Israeli targets.
From my Substack:
J.R. Ackerleyâs Hindoo Holidayâoriginally published in 1932âtells the story of the five months (December 1923-May 1924) he spent as secretary to Maharaja Vishwanath Singh of Chhaturpur (called âChhokrapurâ in the book). In his âExplanationâ, Ackerley describes the Maharajaâs motivations for hiring a private secretary from England. He writes:
He wanted someone to love himâHis Highness, I mean; that was his real need, I think. He alleged other reasons, of courseâan English private secretary, a tutor for his son; for he wasnât really a bit like the Roman Emperors, and had to make excuses.
As a matter of fact, he had a private secretary already, though an Indian one, and his son was only two years old; but no doubt he felt that the British Raj, in the person of the Political Agent who kept an eye on the State expenditure and other things, would prefer a labelâany of the tidy buff labels that the official mind is trained to recognize and understandâto being told âI want someone to love me.â But that, I believe, was his real reason nevertheless.
In his initial meeting with Ackerley, the Maharaja asks him if he has read certain books as he wants them explained to him. Ackerley writes:
His highness seemed very disappointed. I didnât know what âPragmatismâ meant, and had read practically none of the authors he named. I must read them at once, he said, for they were all very good authors indeed, and he wished me to explain them to him. He had them all in his library in the Palace; I must get them out and read them⊠(9)
Later, in the same conversation, the Maharaja wants Ackerley to settle the question of the existence of God. Ackerley writes:
âIs there a God or is there no God?â rapped out His Highness impatiently. âThat is the question. That is what I want to know. Spencer says there is a God, Lewes says no. So you must read them, Mr. Ackerley, and tell me which of them is right (9)
This interaction immediately characterizes the Maharaja and sets the tone for the rest of the book. Continue reading Review: Hindoo Holiday by J.R. Ackerley
1) “Dargahs Beyond Belief” by Shah Umair
2) “After Khaleda and Hasina: What lies ahead for Bangladesh and India?”
3) “Politics of History: Manu Pillai with Salil Tripathi”
4) Trump is ‘Chest Beating’ Over a Retreat| ‘The Opinions’ Podcast
1) Khaleda Zia, Bangladesh’s first female prime minister, dies at 80 after prolonged illnessÂ
Begum Zia was Bangladesh’s first female prime minister–and only the second female prime minister of a Muslim majority country (Benazir Bhutto was the first).
Prime Minister Modi has expressed his condolences as has PM Sharif of Pakistan. PM Sharif called Begum Zia “a committed friend of Pakistan”.
She will be given a state funeral on Wednesday (December 31) and then buried alongside her late husband, Ziaur Rahman. Her son, Tarique Rahman, recently returned to Bangladesh after seventeen years in self-exile. He is expected to be prime minister if BNP wins the February elections.
2) Khaleda Zia: How Begum Khaleda influenced Bangladesh, India| AnalysisÂ
Join The Hindu’s Suhasini Haidar, Kallol Bhattacherjee and Stanly Johny as they decode the influence of Khaleda Zia, Bangladesh’s first woman prime minister. Zia, along with archrival Sheikh Hasina, defined the countryâs politics for a generation.
3) “Inside ‘The Great Shumsuddin Family”: Anusha Rizvi in Conversation|Speak Easy-Episode 4″Â
In the fourth episode of SpeakEasy, senior journalist Amit Baruah is in conversation with filmmaker Anusha Rizvi, on her latest film âThe Great Shamsuddin Familyâ and the questions it raises about fear, belonging, and everyday life in contemporary India. Rizvi discusses how the film unfolds over the course of a single day, capturing the quiet anxieties of a middle-class Muslim family in Delhi. She emphasises that there is no single, uniform idea of âMuslimnessâ in the country, a point the film quietly makes through its characters and situations. She reflects on why the film avoids overt drama, instead foregrounding the persistent undercurrent of fearâof being misunderstood, misread, or targetedâthat shapes ordinary decisions, conversations, and silences. The conversation also explores Rizviâs approach to representation, her resistance to stereotypical portrayals of Muslim households in cinema, and her focus on women characters who navigate work, family, and crisis with agency and humour. Rizvi also speaks about how social media, surveillance, and heightened public hostility have altered the emotional landscape in which artists and citizens now operate.
1) “How Indian media sold out|The Caravan Long View Ep 5”
In this episode of The Caravan Longview, Hartosh Singh Bal and Sushant Singh provide an analysis of the structural decay within Indian journalism and how its inherent vulnerabilities have been weaponised for political gain. They argue that the “Godi Mediaâ phenomenon was not an overnight accident, but the result of a pre-existing, fragile ecosystem being systematically re-engineered into a disciplined machinery for narrative management.
2) “Osman Hadi is becoming a Malcolm X for Bangladesh, influence multiplied after death”
Bangladesh has been on the boil since the death of a prominent student activist, Osman Hadi and a core component of it has been the anti-India sentiment. But what is driving it? It is just a student leader’s death, Sheikh Hasina’s exile to India post 2024 or more? Bangladeshi political analyst Shaquat Rabbee speaks to Debdutta Chakraborty on this and more in ThePrint #Uninterrupted
3) How Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka and Myanmar shatters the global myth of Buddhism as peaceful
How did a religion symbolised by its guiding tenet of non-ahimsa or non-violence see a shift where the monks ended up picking swords in pursuit of a nationalist identity across South and South East Asia? Author & journalist Sonia Faleiro discusses this and more in ThePrint #SoftCover, where she discusses her newly released book, The Robe and the Sword with Debdutta Chakraborty
4) Aamer Rahman on “Reverse Racism”
âThere is an attempt to erase Nehru from history,â said Aditya Mukherjee, a former professor of contemporary history at JNU and author of a book on Nehru. âThe idea is to minimise his presence. There are text books in Rajasthan on the contemporary period that do not mention him,â he said in a podcast conversation with Sidharth Bhatia. Mukherjee said that Nehru was the antithesis of all that the Sangh Parivar stands for and he created the structure to understand communalism. In the conversation, Mukherjee lays out the many reasons why Nehruâs view of what India should be is totally against what the communalists believe in. He also points out the ways in which Mahatma Gandhi is sought to be undermined, by reducing him to be âjust a pair of spectacles and a jhadu.â âThe real target is Gandhiji. âHe is the real enemy, he even took religion away from them.â
