Women, pilgrimage and nation building in South Asian Sufism

Came across this interesting abstract of a paper entitled Beyond division: Women, pilgrimage and nation building in South Asian Sufism authored by Pnina Werbner.…

My candle burns at both ends

Who will listen to the tale of my woeful heart? Far and wide have I wandered on the face of this earth And I…

Saadat Hasan Manto – part II

After partition of India Saadat Hassan Manto arrived in Lahore sometime in early 1948. In Bombay his friends had tried to stop him from…

Mystical Form of Islam Suits Sufis in Pakistan

A NYT piece where I was quoted. By SABRINA TAVERNISE – LAHORE, Pakistan For those who think Pakistan is all hard-liners, all the time,…

Delhi and Lahore – globalised fads and trends

This piece of mine appeared in the Hindustan Times yesterday. An accidental piece it was, written on the request of a friend during my…

Pseudo-Messianic Movements in Contemporary Muslim South Asia

This new book by Yoginder Sikand has been published by Global Media Publications in 2008. Messianic hopes and expectations are common to almost all…

Capitulating Rajas: why Taliban might not be resisted

My new piece for The Friday Times South Asian history is a tale of capitulation of local elites before external invaders. Be it the…

We shall overcome the trap of violence

As clouds of war hover in the skies of Lahore, I am missing Delhi and lamenting the relatively difficult venture to visit the city.…

Ode to Benaras – Ghalib’s grand vision

The cancer of communalism and bigotry in South Asia continues to haunt us. These days, the Muslims are once again a subject of intense,…

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…

Delhi by the book

Published in The News  What motivates me to write? Lacking an appropriate label, a catchy boxed tag such as a historian or a sociologist,…

Kabir, Bulleh and Lalon – Petals of a mystic lotus

The subcontinent during the 15th century witnessed the coming of age of a process that started brewing with the arrival of Central Asian Sufis,…

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…

Aurangzeb as he was according to Mughal Records

Found these amazing images on a deeply problematic exhibition on the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb here Exhibit No. 2: Prince Dara Shukoh translating the Upanishads.…

Sufi Qawwali – Mehr Ali and Sher Ali

Sadiq has written a wonderful post here – I am cross posting it here. Couple of nights back (24, April, 08) came an unanticipated…

“Partition: Surgery without Anaesthesia”

Titled “Partition: Surgery without Anaesthesia”, the book, a compilation of 31 individual accounts including from noted writer and columnist Khushwant Singh and artist Satish…

Journeying into mysticism (noted as one the best articles of 2007)

Indian Muslims Blog is now two years old. The IM team have compiled the best articles published at the blog in 2007. Shameless as…

Coffee and Sufism – the ancient links

Thanks to Zainab, I came across this article on the Superluminal blog that traces the links rather well.  Most modern coffee-drinkers are probably unaware…

Becoming Pakistani

A fine piece of writing at Opendemocracy: As a small child, Maruf Khwajas life was transformed by the carving of his mother country into…

The new slave dynasty in South Asia?

“Writer Arundhati Roy said in an interview last week that at least India’s growing middle class was reared on a diet of radical consumerism…