Lahore blasts fail to terrorise Lahoris
Having lived two days in Lahore as a ‘resident’, the three low intensity blasts are a rude reminder that there is a war all…
Closing the gap
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 –…
Through a screen, darkly
Pakistani cable operators, following the cyclical escalation of imagined hatreds, discontinued the transmission of Indian satellite channels in 2002. The absence of Indian TV…
The Zardari conundrum
By all statistical estimates and anecdotal evidence, Pakistan’s middleclass has grown during the last decade. The visible manifestation of this historically significant trend was…
Utopia for me- Pieces of my heart
My piece published in the News on Sunday yesterday – Karta hun jama phir jigare lakht lakht ko (I seek to gather the scattered…
South Asian Cooperation and the Role of the Punjabs
South Asian Cooperation and the Role of the Punjabs. Tridivesh Singh Maini. New Delhi: Siddharth Publications , 2007 South Asian Cooperation and the Role…
Capital shock
My op-ed published in the NEWS. This was also posted at ATP and a robust discussion took place there. A week long sojourn in…
National identity sans freedom
A few quotes from this article in the Hindustan Times – incidentally it also includes what I rambled…. Freedom means everything. But I’m not…
Beyond Borders – with Shubha Mudgal and Tina Sani
My article published in the Friday Times (Aug11-18) Days after the recent skirmishes at the Line of Control, when the composite dialogue between India…
Visit to Sindh, Udero Lal (the story of the Dalits in Pakistan)
Yoginder Sikand writing at DNA South-central Sindh isn’t quite a favourite holiday destination, but I spent a fortnight there while on a vacation in…
The pursuit of the Southasian past
Moving beyond the colonial-era understanding of the history of the Subcontinent gives us a whole new way of looking at the Subcontinent’s past. This…
A brush with the new – Asim Butt’s Art
What distinguishes Asim Butt from his generation and perhaps the preceding generations of artists is the sheer originality of his vision and an iconoclasm…
Unimagined by Imran Ahmad
BOOK REVIEW Vinod Joseph Unimagined is the growing-up story of Imran Ahmad, whose parents migrated from Pakistan to England in the early 1960s when…
Pakistan’s ruling coalition must not splinter
My op-ed piece that was published in the NEWS, Pakistan On these erudite pages, and elsewhere, there has been much ado about the fact…
SURVEY: South Asian countries not too happy, survey finds
SAJA Forum has this interesting post: Bangladesh, India and Pakistan ranked 64th, 68th and 81st in the latest World Values Survey published by the…
Civil Service is no longer an alluring career for Pakistan’s youth
The captioned article of mine appeared in News on Sunday a week ago. I was quite glad to note that the NEWS wrote an…
Mystical expressionism and Jamali’s art
Jamali is a contemporary artist of Pakistani origin. It was a delight to have discovered his artistic vision. Mystical expressionism is a new mode…
The electric, worrisome and meandering Long March in Pakistan
NYT report on Long March highlights the electrifying atmosphere in Islamabad yesterday: The crowd, including an unusual number of women for this Muslim country,…
The myriad voices of Pakistani blogosphere
My first post at Global Voices “Pakistan’s growing blogosphere presents a kaleidoscope of the complex, contradictory developments within the country. The country is in…
Shoaib Akhtar – a fallen hero
There have been some avoidable outbursts by both Akhtar and his disciplinarians. Akhtar has a chequered past in the conventional sense; and perhaps his…