(Courtesy Iftikhar Chaudri) Saadat Hassan Manto (May 11, 1912 – January 18, 1955) was a Pakistani Urdu short story writer, most known for his Urdu short stories , ‘Bu’ (Odour), ‘Khol Do’ (Open It), ‘Thanda Gosht’ (Cold Meat), and his magnum opus, Toba Tek Singh’. Unfortunately having spent life on both sides of the border he was portrayed as an Indian writer in Pakistan and in India he was portrayed as a Pakistani writer. But truely he was a writer of the subcontinent above distinctions of coutry or religion.
He was also a film and radio scriptwriter, and journalist. In his short life, he published twenty-two collections of short stories, one novel, five collections of radio plays, three collections of essays, two collections of personal sketches. (more…)

Book Review

Name of the Book: Sacred Kerala—A Spiritual Journey

Author: Dominique-Sila Khan

Publisher: Penguin, New Delhi, 2009

Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand

The southern Indian state of Kerala has a unique population mix. A little less than half of Kerala’s inhabitants are Hindus, who belong to various castes. The rest are Muslims and Christians, in roughly equal number, and a miniscule number of Jews, who form India’s oldest Jewish community. In contrast to much of north India, inter-community relations in Kerala have always been fairly harmonious, although the situation is beginning to change today. At the popular level, economic and social ties and inter-dependence between Kerala’s different religious communities have given birth to a strong sense of Malayali identity that transcends religious boundaries. This has been facilitated by the use of the Malayalam language by all of the state’s communities as well as a long-standing tradition of religious overlapping or shared religious identities, which is what this fascinating book is all about. (more…)

“The tour’s cancellation means that terrorists have won; this is what they wanted to achieve.”

I was quoted in a piece published by Hindustan Times

Cricket is not just a game. It is also a standard to measure the tense relationship between India and Pakistan at any given moment. With India’s tour of Pakistan being called off, fans have been deprived of a rollicking good time. But not many players are complaining. The reason being the Mumbai terror attack. (more…)

Delhi based writer Tridivesh Singh Maini sent this piece that was published here

The Indo-Pak relationship has been so enmeshed in political issues – mostly disputes – that often both countries tend to neglect important developments which facilitate cultural cooperation between them. Foreign ministries in both countries are engrossed in thinking of CBM’s, though if one were to look, not much progress has been made with regard to educational and cultural exchanges. Meanwhile, a Washington-based non-profit organisation named APNA, (Academy of the Punjab in North America) has taken a significant step — publishing a quarterly Punjabi magazine by the name of Saanjh (which means commonality in this context) in both Gurmukhi, the Punjabi script used in East Punjab), and Shahmukhi, the script used in West Punjab. (more…)

Courtesy AHRC

I come from there

I come from there and I have memories
Born as mortals are, I have a mother
And a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends,
And a prison cell with a cold window.
Mine is the wave, snatched by sea-gulls,
I have my own view,
And an extra blade of grass.
Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words,
And the bounty of birds,
And the immortal olive tree.
I walked this land before the swords
Turned its living body into a laden table.

I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother
When the sky weeps for her mother.
And I weep to make myself known
To a returning cloud.
I learnt all the words worthy of the court of blood
So that I could break the rule.
I learnt all the words and broke them up
To make a single word: Homeland…..

*****************

Identity Card

Record!
I am an Arab
And my identity card is number fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the nineth is coming after a summer
Will you be angry? (more…)

South Asian Cooperation and the Role of the Punjabs. Tridivesh Singh Maini. New Delhi: Siddharth Publications , 2007 

South Asian Cooperation and the Role of the Punjabs is a book that approaches the topic of conflict resolution with a difference. Trividesh Singh Maini’s book does not approach peaceful cooperation from the normative security framework. Nor, for that matter, does the author take the increasingly emergent economic approach to conflict resolution despite the fact that the book’s content deals with the subject of regional cooperation. Alternatively, Maini’s book helps its reader understand the dynamics of cooperation and peace among members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation or SAARC (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan and the island nations of Sri Lanka and Maldives) by presenting a cultural analysis.

This use of culture is persuasive. The author posits himself and his book as scholarship that thinks outside the bureaucratic box of normal research on South Asia with its vested interests in the region to reveal the “emotional” trajectory of cooperation that is occurring in this region. Using culture to support his thesis, Maini illustrates for the reader various cultural exchanges between two cities, Amritsar in East Punjab in India and Lahore in West Punjab in Pakistan. These include visits to religious shrines, literary exchanges and especially recent transportation events such as the initiation of bus services to help people meet their relatives on the other side of the border. (more…)

Nirmila Deshpande is dead. She will be remembered for her invaluable services for peace in the region. This statement from the Asian Human Rights Commission says it all:

“Nirmila Deshpande, a well known peace crusader of India, died on May 1, 2008, after a long period of illness. She was 79-years-old and left behind so many followers who like her, wanted peace. From her early years she was a Gandhian and an enlightened person whose only aim in life was to work for the cause of humanity. Nirmila was the one by whose efforts the bus service between different cities of India and Pakistan particularly, between the Kashmiri people of both sides, were started. She worked extensively all her life for peace among various religious and linguistic communities in India and to achieve this cause she undertook a 40,000-km padyatra (long march) across India to carry Mahatma Gandhi’s message of Gram Swaraj. She firmly believed that although it was difficult to practice Gandhian principles, it was the only way towards a truly democratic society.
At the time of her death she was Chairperson of the Pakistan India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy, an organization with chapters all over India and Pakistan that works for peace in the region. (more…)

A Poem by K.G. Sankarapillai

Dear Che

Dear Che,
you came to our university campus
in mid sixties
with a comrade and a modernist friend
with visuals of jungles past and present
with a vision of a new battle for justice.

Like a fresh wind of October
you joined us
moved us
renewed us
and smoothened our entry into history
with love, dreams and plans.

You told us about the sleeping rebel powers
of mountains and forests of the new minds;
quite often you talked of the day when
the Andes would become
the Sierra Maestra of America.

Our modernist friend said:
you are the red star over the world
tarnished by America;
you are the future of the world
crippled by America;
you are the Jesus of the modern age
crucified by America.

Although you remained evergreen in us
showed us the exit to the oceans
from the lyrical ponds of our
post Independent Indian youth;
the exit to the storm from the water lily breeze
of our weeping romantic poems;
dear doctor, you redefined us
living with us
living for us
living in us
passing the confidence of torrents into our deserts
weaving sunlit paths into our prodigal nights.

You brought world into our words
and future into our past.
You opened blast-furnaces for our ore. (more…)

Herat Hami

A poem by Wimalaratne Kumaragame (a translation)

Herat Hami who lived in Aliya Watunu Wawe*1
Even someone like me was more important than him
Though Harat Hami cut dead bodies*2
He was twenty, thirty times more decent than me
In the hospital of Aliya Watunu Wawe
He spent his time removing night soil
Though he lived happily with a monthly salary
Whenever I saw him I was moved with sadness

A hard, wiry body, handsome and thin
Not much of age, fresh and young
No wife as yet
I was perplexed by the job he did

Making someone like me sad
Each day he carried my excrement
If someone dies suddenly
Doctor comes
He cut the dead bodies in front of us

None from the farmer, worker or elite caste
Ever did such a job
No known disease of mind he had
He did no harm to any dwellers of the forest

He spread a docile smile
Every word of his spread ahimsa
Every evening he drank burning water
His heart overflowed with kindness

His sister was stabbed
Recalling her my eyes get wet
He did not cry the day his sister died
When she had a fever he wailed with tears in his eyes

When his younger sister died he went with a doctor
Her dead body was cut by Herat Hami
Though the villagers blamed him in harsh words for this
He did not care much about the world’s violent flesh
As he was not born in a rich mansion
He went to the temple at every Poya
He was a member of the newly built stupa
Even more than that he respected Iyyenayaka*3

Translation by Basil Fernando (more…)

Amir Khusrau

I am a pagan (worshiper) of love: the creed (of Muslims) I do not need;
Every vein of mine has become (taut like a) wire; the (pagan) girdle I do not need.
Leave from my bedside, you ignorant physician!
The only cure for the patient of love is the sight of his beloved
other than this no medicine does he need.
If there be no pilot on our ship, let there be none:
We have God in our midst: the pilot we do not need.
The people of the world say that Khusrau worships idols.
So I do, so I do; the people I do not need,
the world I do not need.

By Nadir Ali

A little over fifty years ago our Persian teacher, a pious maulana in the old mould, was explaining the exemplary character of the Holy Prophet (pbuh). He quoted lines from Baaba Naanak to explain his point ‘Ek ne keh di ek ne maani’. This was not uncommon. From great Punjabi poet Hafiz Burkhurdar (17th century) to a common Punjabi villager, everyone quoted Naanak. Now they teach no Naanak at Punjab University Lahore, because Naanak was a non-Muslim.

However in Muzaffar Ghaffar’s series on Punjabi classic poetry, you get an insight into the great wisdom and beauty of Naanak’s poetry. Muzaffar is a great cultural asset and in presenting a selection of Naanak after seven volumes in this remarkable series on Sufi poetry of Shah Husayn, Bulleh Shah, Sachal Sarmast and Khawaja Farid, he has excelled himself in this one. His series presenting all the major poets of Punjabi language in English is a work unique not only in the subcontinent but among world literature. In no other language are all the major poets of a language explained so comprehensively and competently by one author. Punjabi has a very rich heritage and Muzaffar has done justice to this colossal undertaking. (more…)

Thanks to Beena Sarwar’s updates, I read this moving account, THE OTHER HALF in ‘Srinagar diary’ by Kalpana Sharma.

… the Indo-Pak peace process, the people to people exchanges, the opening up of meeting points along the Line of Control have
raised some hope that permanent peace is possible. Apart from the larger questions, what concerns the ordinary person is finding ways to increase communication between divided families and communities straddling the LoC. This was the question that engaged a group of almost 50 women from both sides of the State of Jammu and Kashmir.

Fourteen women from the Pakistan side of Kashmir crossed the Wagah border in mid-November, travelled by road to Jammu and then flew in to Srinagar to meet their counterparts on this side of the border.

This was the first time such a meeting was held between women from the two sides.The result was unusual and memorable. For the women from the Pakistan side, it was a deeply emotional moment. Many of them came with preconceptions. They had heard of the sufferings of people on this side of the border. They were upset at seeing the soldiers on the street. They were even more perturbed that they could not call their families and inform them of their safe arrival.

BC is carrying the captioned post of mine today. I am posting some excerpts here: (more…)