Author: Manav Sachdeva

Manav Sachdeva Maasoom (also known as Maasoom Shah, and MS Maasoom) is a poet, diplomat, chief international officer with McCann Kyiv, and writes literature in Urdu and English, with some contributions in Punjabi as well. His work is listed on Mr. Urdu Poetry website (mrurdupoetry.com). Manav Sachdeva Maasoom Shah was the New York City Luce Foundation and the United Nations Poet Laureate for 2015. His first book, The Sufi’s Garland, was published by Roman Books Kolkata in 2011. His second book, Siyaah Shaam Ka Ikhtetaam (The End of a Very Dark Evening), is expected to go to press this year (2020). He studied Poetry and Policy Studies for his Master’s at Columbia University, and at Harvard University Olympia Program in Comparative Literature, Society, and Culture through a full Kokallis Foundation Scholarship. Manav Sachdeva Maasoom Shah grew up in Ludhiana, Punjab, India till fifteen, went to high school and undergraduate in California, dropped out of a seven-year UCR-UCLA Biomed program for the love of poetry writing and social reform as a shock decision for a scion of doctors, pursued love of literature and languages through an arduous journey at various universities and through various loans and scholarships (Ann Arbor—University of Michigan) and Harvard and Columbia.

Pak Journalist Blames Munir for India and Pak Blasts

Fascinating take by Taha Siddiqui.

Taha is in exile.

He says Red Fort and the bombing in Pakistan both done by Munir. Is it sour grapes or does he have evidence that points to Munir?

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Taha Siddiqui, a Pakistani journalist living in exile in Paris, is a strong critic of Pakistan’s military. He has claimed on X that the suicide bombers involved in the Delhi and Islamabad blasts were ‘assets’ of the Pakistan Army. Pakistani journalist Taha Siddiqui has linked the recent blasts in Delhi and Islamabad to suicide bombers he termed as ‘assets’ of the Pakistan Army. His claim has drawn wide reactions online. The blast near Red Fort in India on November 10 claimed at least 13 lives while 12 people were killed in the Islamabad explosion, the next day, on November 11.”

https://newsable.asianetnews.com/amp/world/pakistani-journalist-taha-siddiqui-pak-army-assets-claims-delhi-islamabad-blasts-articleshow-r0sg3mc

Red Fort Attack and Aftermath: Initial Thoughts by Manav S.

Last evening’s devastating car-explosion near the Red Fort in Delhi is not only a cruel assault on innocent lives but an assault on the very symbolism of our nation. According to early reports, a vehicle detonated close to the busy metro zone at the historic Red Fort complex, killing at least eight people and injuring more than twenty. The government has invoked anti-terror legislation and launched a full probe under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

First, we must recognise the human tragedy behind the headlines. Lives shattered, families devastated, fear spreading in a city already grappling with chronic insecurity. For those of us of South Asian heritage who carry memories of communal strife, of migration and displacement, this attack touches a deeper chord of vulnerability and of collective memory. Hospitals have reported frantic cries, missing persons, relatives screaming for loved ones.

Second, the choice of location amplifies the message. The Red Fort is not just another landmark: it is an emblem of India’s sovereignty, its layered history, its identity. To strike here is to strike at the heart of public confidence and to send a message of audacious defiance. As scholars writing on “brown diasporic publics” know, our public spaces carry meaning not just for those inside India, but for those of us abroad who anchor our identity in ‘homeland’ narratives. This attack disrupts that anchor.

Third, we must resist both fear and simplistic narratives. The invocation of terror laws suggests the state is treating this as a planned act of violence, not an accident. But let us guard against quick binaries: Us vs Them, Hindus vs Muslims, India vs Outsiders. In a plural society like ours, sweeping communal attributions too often deepen fault-lines rather than heal them. Our commentary must demand both justice and wisdom: meticulous investigation, transparent process, and safeguarding civil rights in the process.

Fourth, what does this mean for our shared public culture? For someone born in Punjab and now living across borders, the explosion challenges our sense of movement, of belonging, of normalcy. We think of carrying family across continents, of re-configuring identity in Washington–DC and Delhi , how do such apparently random acts of terror recalibrate the psychic cost of migration and the distance between home and homeland? The answer is: they make the cost higher, the emotional freight heavier.

Finally, the path forward must hold three imperatives: one, empathy – for all victims, irrespective of religion, class or residence; two, accountability – for whoever plotted, financed or enabled this attack; and three, renewal – of the public realm, the shouting panic, the fear-laden sighs, with something stronger: resilient civic culture, public institutions we trust, cross-community solidarity.

As a brown pundit, I urge our readership to see beyond the flashes of violence, beyond the political spin, and to ask the deeper questions: What kind of society are we building? What kind of public spaces do we imagine, and what cost are we willing to pay for them? For if we shrug now, the symbolic scar will grow — far after the immediate blast damage is repaired.

In that moment of stillness after the blast, we owe to our fellow citizens not just sorrow, but vigilant hope.

Mamdani and India — A Strategic Moment

The Desi Mayor and the Mirror of India: What Zohran Mamdani’s Victory in New York Means for a 2050 India

by Amb Manav Sachdeva

When Zohran Mamdani — the 34-year-old Indian-heritage, Muslim-American democratic socialist — clinched the victorius count for the mayoralty of New York City, it was more than an American political event. It was a global inflection point. For the first time in history, the world’s most influential city is poised to be led by a man who not only traces his lineage to India but proudly identifies himself as desi — as an inheritor of South Asian pluralism, Muslim humanism, and diasporic imagination.

For India, Mamdani’s win ought not to be filtered merely through the lenses of political affinity or ideological tension. Nor should it be reduced to whether he has praised or criticized Narendra Modi. It must be read as a civilizational opportunity — a chance to reflect on how India sees itself through the mirror of its far-flung children, and how it chooses to relate to a diaspora that has become not just prosperous, but powerful.

From Symbolism to Strategy Continue reading Mamdani and India — A Strategic Moment

“Between Scripts, Beyond Borders: What It Means to Be a Punjabi Hindu-Sikh Sufi Poet in Urdu”

“Between Scripts, Beyond Borders: What It Means to Be a Punjabi Hindu-Sikh Sufi Poet in Urdu”
By Manav Sachdeva urf Maasoom Shah

What is my being as a Punjabi Hindu-Sikh writer of Sufi Poetry in Urdu while living between Ludhiana, New Delhi, and New York? What does it mean to me, mean for me, and mean to other people as they look at me with equal parts wonder and disdain as I embrace Farsi and Urdu as my own as did my ancestors prior to partition when Urdu was a language of our regions, as Javed Akhtar once said about language being of regions rather than religions?

To be a Punjabi Hindu-Sikh writing Sufi poetry in Urdu is to carry the weight of centuries in my breath and the burden of a border in my bones. It means returning to a home I never left—and was never allowed to fully claim.
It means that when I write in Nastaliq script or even Roman or Hindi script but in Urdu, or quote Hafiz or write in Naskh in Farsi, I am not converting, betraying, or straying. I am completing a circle. One my ancestors began long before Partition redrew maps and mistrust into the fabric of everyday language.
As Javed Akhtar once reminded us, “Languages belong to regions, not religions.” I write in Urdu not because I am Muslim though I don’t deny that label for myself either, but specifically, because I am Punjabi. Because I am from a land where Heer ran through the fields, where Bulleh Shah danced with defiance, where Shah Hussain stitched poetry into the shawls of the soul.

It means I am watched—sometimes with wonder, sometimes with suspicion. Some marvel at the fusion: the New York poet invoking Mir and Ghalib in Brooklyn cafés, speaking of ishq-e-haqiqi in the same breath as trauma therapy and diasporic longing. Others look on with narrowed eyes, asking—silently or aloud—“Whose side are you on?”

To that, I say: I am on the side of poetry. Of shared breath across centuries. Of the tongue that trembles with truth regardless of script. Of the language that fed my grandfather’s soul in Amritsar and now finds voice again in mine in Washington Square or Connaught Place.

It means I translate myself daily—between identities, continents, alphabets. Sometimes I write Mohabbat in Devnagari. Sometimes I whisper shukr where others expect dhanyavaad. I live between the ik onkar and the bismillah, between naan and bagel, between Sufi silences and the American chaos of self-invention.

And what does it mean for me? It means freedom. It means rebellion. It means healing.

It means to remember that before Urdu became politicized, it was loved. Before it was feared, it was sung. It was the shared heritage of Lahore and Ludhiana–the cities of my father’s and my birth, Delhi and Dera Ghazi Khan–cities of ancestry, further and present.

I do not ask permission to write in Urdu. I write to reclaim what was always mine.

And what might it mean to others?

Maybe discomfort. Maybe curiosity. Maybe a slow awakening to the lie that language must belong to creed. Maybe the beginning of a reckoning: that art refuses to stay in its box, that love poems don’t ask for passports, and that faith is sometimes just the belief that what was broken can be made whole.

So I will continue.

To write qawwalis and qasidas and sehras and ghazals and nazms in cafés. To quote Baba Farid beside Rumi. To live as a bridge—not between East and West, but between the false walls we’ve built within ourselves. And if some still look on with disdain, let them. I am writing in the voice of my ancestors.

And they are no longer silent.