From the Guardian
Water is potent: it trickles through human dreams, permeates lives, dictates agriculture, religion and warfare. Ever since Homo sapiens first migrated out of Africa, the Indus has drawn thirsty conquerors to its banks. Some of the world’s first cities were built here; India’s earliest Sanskrit literature was written about the river; Islam’s holy preachers wandered beside these waters. Pakistan is only the most recent of the Indus valley’s political avatars. I remember the first time I wanted to see the Indus, as distinctly as if a match had been struck in a darkened room. I was twenty-three years old, sitting in the heat of my rooftop flat in Delhi, reading the Rig Veda, and feeling the perspiration running down my back. It was April 2000, almost a year since the war between Pakistan and India over Kargil in Kashmir had ended, and the newspapers which the delivery man threw on to my terrace every morning still portrayed neighbouring Pakistan as a rogue state, governed by military cowboys, inhabited by murderous fundamentalists: the rhetoric had the patina of hysteria. But what was the troubled nation next door really like? As I scanned the three-thousand-year-old hymns, half listening to the call to prayer, the azan, which drifted over the rooftops from the nearby mosque (to the medley of other azans, all slightly out of sync), I read of the river praised by Sanskrit priests, the Indus they called ‘Unconquered Sindhu’, river of rivers. Hinduism’s motherland was not in India but Pakistan, its demonized neighbour.
At the time, I was studying Indian history eclectically, omnivorously and hastily – during bus journeys to work, at weekends, lying under the ceiling fan at night. Even so, it seemed that everywhere I turned, the Indus was present. Its merchants traded with Mesopotamia five thousand years ago. A Persian emperor mapped it in the sixth century BCE. The Buddha lived beside it during previous incarnations. Greek kings and Afghan sultans waded across it with their armies. The founder of Sikhism was enlightened while bathing in a tributary. And the British invaded it by gunboat, colonized it for one hundred years, and then severed it from India. The Indus was part of Indians’ lives – until 1947. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Alice Albinia, books, Buddha, Empires of the Indus, India, Indus, pakistan, River
With legendary artist S.M. Sultan as his mentor, Anadi Kumar Boiragi from Jessore attended Khulna Art College in the late ’80s, before enrolling at the Oriental Department at Charukala in Dhaka to further his artistic education.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: art, artist, Bangladesh, Boiragi, Dhaka
Rumi on knowing ourselves
Suppose you know the definitions of all substances
and their derivatives,
what good is this to you?
Know the true definition of yourself.
That is indispensable.
Then, when you know your own definition, flee from it,
that you may attain to the One who cannot be defined,
O sifter of the dust.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: mystic, poem, Poetry, Rumi, sufi, Sufi poetry, Sufism
“By Ratnadeep Banerji “The sway of the Bauls:Oblivious minstrels of soul” - Organiser - New Delhi, India
Weekly issue: August 17, 2008
Baul etymologically arises from Sanskrit batul or byakul that literally means divinely inane or fervently eager
The Charyapadas (Buddhist hymns) which gave rise to Bengali bear references to the precepts of Baul. It is conjectured that around 6th century AD, Mahaprabhu Chaitanya, culled this esoteric coterie of Bauls as a formal community though the word ‘Baul’ appeared in Bengali texts around 15th century.
Bauls are essentially mystic minstrels hailing from the hinterland of West Bengal and Bangladesh. Baul is not just a music tradition but it’s also a syncretic religious sect out of Vaishnavite Hindus, Sufi Muslims and Hindu tantric sect of the Kartabhajas as well as Tantric Buddhist schools like Sahajia. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Bauls, Bengal, mystics, Soul, sufi, Sufism
Why We Love To Hate Ms Roy - Saba Naqvi on Arundhati Roy (OUTLOOK)
Arundhati Roy certainly has a stomach for controversy. By writing several articles and providing an introduction to a book defending Mohammad Afzal Guru (13 Dec, A Reader: The Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament), the main accused in the December 13, 2001, attack on the Indian Parliament, she has stuck her neck out again. Ever since the lady made her views on the matter public, many furious friends have called. “Who does that woman think she is?” they have thundered, accusing her of “passing off conspiracy theories as investigations”. As far as they are concerned, Roy should be the first citizen in their rogue’s gallery of ‘anti-national’ elements. No other writer inspires as much anger and mountains of hate mail to publications where she writes as this ‘petite woman’. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Arundhati Roy, India, writer
Rumi on the deeper meanings of fasting in Ramzan
What sweetness lies in an empty stomach!
Man is like a lute: no more, no less.
If the lute is full
it cannot sing a high or low note.
If your mind and stomach
burn with the fire of hunger
it will be like a heavenly song for your heart.
In each moment that fire rages
It will burn away a hundred veils
And carry you a thousand steps
toward your goal. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: fasting, Islam, Muslim, mystic, Poetry, ramadan, ramzan, Rumi, sufi, Sufi poetry, Sufism
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 and Pakistan was threatened, an alternative reconciliation was underway in Lahore. Music became the metaphor of shared ground between the two countries, challenging divides between them that can become violent.
Lahore hosted the legendary vocalist Shubha Mudgal for a few days. The crusade launched by Beyond Borders Television, a production house and sister company of The Friday Times and Good Times, is a unique development in Pakistan’s media world. 
It is Beyond Borders’ mission statement to produce programming for regional channels that promotes understanding between peoples. Undaunted by visa restrictions and overcoming official barriers, Beyond Borders organised Mudgal’s visit to Lahore to record a tripartite discussion between Mudgal, Tina Sani and Jugnu Moshin, the compere.
The night before the recording, there was a get-together at the home of Jugnu Mohsin and Najam Sethi. It was a typical July evening, marked by the promising stillness of the monsoon. The fragrance of tuberoses, motia and lillies had made the atmosphere surreal and when the power breakdown happened, and candles were lit, it was like a slice out of some previous age. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Beyond Borders, classical music, Hidusthani, India, Lahore, Music, pakistan, Shubha Mudgal, South Asia, thumri, Tina Sani
Nicholas Cranfield considers work that draws deeply on traditional Islamic art
FATIMA ZAHRA HASSAN has been teaching in London for more than a decade, and is an accomplished artist. Dr Hassan’s little show of some 17 works happily fits the commercial gallery in St John’s, Notting Hill, in London, where the blank white walls draw the eye by their rich palette. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: art, FATIMA ZAHRA HASSAN, Miniatures, Rumi
Courtesy Three Essays Collective, I found this book review on an important yet less known facet of South Asian History:
Opium City
The Making of Early Victorian Bombay
By Amar Farooqui
REVIEW in ‘Mid-Day’
MUMBAI’S OPIUM PAST
by Mahmood Farooqui
December 23, 2005
It sometimes appears, from the nature of current historical debates, as if the British empire in India was purely an orientalising mission whose discourses generated a politics of identity but that it was little more than an ideological apparatus that hegemonised us. It is difficult therefore to connect back to the earliest nationalists who decried the drain of wealth from India, who lamented India’s deindustrialisation and the economic exploitation of our people by foreign occupiers.
It is easy, in the miasma of post-colonialisms emanating from American universities, to forget that the Empire came into being and remained in force as an economic entity, that it was instituted by traders, that there was also something called economic imperialism.
Amar Farooqui’s Opium City — The Making of Colonial Bombay is welcome because it reorients us to the fundamentals of how and why we were colonised by the East India Company. It is a new title by the Three Essays Press, a Delhi-based outfit, which has been publishing tracts in the form, as its name implies, of three essays in slim volumes by renowned and radical academics in a style and on subjects that are of general interest. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Bombay, books, city, opium, urban, Victorian
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 Islamabad just came to an end. It was not the Islamabad that I had lived in or the one that my memory was intimate with. It has changed and perhaps forever.
I have been an accidental resident of Islamabad as I was thrown into the sleepy folds of the capital by imperatives of securing a livelihood. Lahoris can never be content with any other city. But Islamabad’s serenity as a stark contrast to the urban mess of Pakistan was most endearing to say the least. Even its cultural wastelands were forgivable for the communion with Nature was a splendid alternative to civilisation. Thus the sprawling greenbelts of Islamabad and its wild foliage became a source of inspiration and muse. I left the city three years ago with fond memories. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Capital, development, islamabad, pakistan, urban
The annual Urs of Bulleh Shah, the Punjabi mystic poet, commenced yesterday in Kasur yesterday. Bulleh’s poetry reflected his rejection of orthodox hold of mullahs over Islam, the nexus between the clergy and the rulers and all the trappings of formal religion that created a gulf between man and his Creator. A common theme of his poetry is the pursuit of self-knowledge that is essential for the mystical union with the Beloved. Among Bulleh’s timeless verse, I love this one Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Bulleh Shah, Kasur, mystic, pakistan, poet, Punjab, Punjabi, sufi, Sufism, Urs
Shahbaz Qalandar was born in Marwand to a dervish, Syed Ibrahim Kabiruddin whose ancestors migrated from Iraq and settled down in Mashhad, a center of learning and civilization, before migrating again to Marwand.
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Tags: Jhulelal, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, mystic, pakistan, Sehwan, Sindh, sufi, Sufism
Also published in the Weekly Friday Times July 24 issue
The subcontinent during the 15th century witnessed the coming of age of a process that started brewing with the arrival of Central Asian Sufis, those eternal travellers who arrived in India with a message of Islam and mystic love. When Sufi thought, an off-shore spiritual undercurrent to the rise of Islam, met its local hosts, the results were terrific. There was no shortage of fundamentalists and communalists in that cultural landscape; and the gulf between alien rulers and the native subjects was a stark reality as well.
Nevertheless, a synthesis of sorts was navigated by hundreds of yogis, Sufis and poets of South Asia. Very much a people’s movement from below, the Bhakti movement articulated a powerful vision of tolerance, amity and co-existence that remains relevant today. This is many centuries before the suave, Western-educated intelligentsia coined the “people-to-people” contact campaigns. Yes, much has been lost in the tumultuous 20th century and perhaps these histories are irreversible. But a vast and complex common ground was nurtured by mystic poets of northern India, now comprising India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Bengal, Bhakti, Buddhism, Bulleh Shah, Hindusim, Islam, Kabir, Kasur, Lalon Shah, lotus, Music, mystic, mystical, Mysticism, sufi, Sufism, Tagore
A few quotes from this article in the Hindustan Times - incidentally it also includes what I rambled….
Freedom means everything. But I’m not free. All these concepts are self-imposed imprisonments.—Roshan Seth, actor
Independence has provided me with a national identity but it hasn’t meant freedom. I find myself enslaved to narrow ideas of patriotism. I’m trying to break free. And writing a book on Delhi, the capital of the ‘enemy’ nation, is my first step.
—Raza Rumi, blogger
Personal freedom is crucial to my growth as an artist. ‘Independence Day’ is a distant celebration for me. Each year, as mid-August approaches I am conscious of a sense of loss — I wonder what could have been had the subcontinent not been splintered.
— Sehba Sarwar, poet
Being a (somewhat) responsible parent, I will share with my children the notion that today we remember our national heroes. And amidst the nationalistic pop nuggets being broadcast round the clock, I hope they hear Yeh watan tumhara hai, tum ho Pasban iss kay, yeh chaman tumhara hai, tum ho naghma khwan iss kay…
— Shandana Minhas, author
More here
Tags: 14 August, freedom, HT, Independence, India, pakistan, Partition
UPDATE from SAJA Forum, articles, news and comments here
UPDATE: Arundhati’s brutally frank piece where she asks this question:
The unimaginable sums of public money that are needed to keep the military occupation of Kashmir going is money that ought by right to be spent on schools and hospitals and food for an impoverished, malnutritioned population in India. What kind of government can possibly believe that it has the right to spend it on more weapons, more concertina wire and more prisons in Kashmir?
“India needs azadi from Kashmir as much as Kashmir needs azadi from India.” Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Arundhati Roy, Azadi, freedom, India, Kashmir, movement, pakistan
These pithy Urdu verses by Nazeer Akbarabadi lament that all will be abandoned when the Banjara (gypsy), the headman or Naik in the folklore, [or at a general level the life-traveller] will leave his temporal abode. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: banjaara, gypsy, Nazeer Akbarabadi, poet, Poetry, Urdu, verse
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 Pakistan. My host was the amiable, 70 year-old Khurshid Khan Kaimkhani, a noted leftist activist, author of the only book on Pakistan’s almost 3 million Dalits. Along with a friend, he edits the only Dalit magazine in the entire country.
Khurshid met me at the railway station in Hyderabad, Sindh’s largest city after Karachi. We drove to his small farm, on the outskirts of his hometown of Tando Allah Yar, a two hour bus-ride ahead. Several Bhil families live on the farm. “They are like my own family,” Khurshid says as Baluji, a tall, handsome Bhil man, manager of the farm, welcomes us in with a tight embrace. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Dalits, Hindu, India, Muslim, pakistan, Sindh
BY SHAJAHAN MADAMPAT
SIR Salman Rushdie, that beloved symbol of freedom of expression, has now turned Khomeini, so to speak, exposing, in an ironic twist of tale, the hypocrisy and double standards that marked the entire liberal case for unqualified and unrestrained freedom of representation.
The man, in whose defence the world’s intelligentsia mounted an intellectual blitzkrieg against the alleged medievalism of the Muslim masses, has threatened to sue the publishers of a book about him by a former police officer, Ron Evans. In his forthcoming book, On Her Majesty’s Service: My Incredible Life in the World’s Most Dangerous Close Protection Squad, Evans dares to paint a rather unflattering portrait of the writer, whose unflattering ways stirred up controversies ever since he began to write. Rushdie alleges that the book “destroys his character” and “presents wholly made up incidents as facts.” Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: expression, fatwa, freedom, London, Salman Rushdie, Scotland Yard, UK
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? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Arab, Mahmoud Darwaish, Palestine, poem, Poetry
Found these amazing images on a deeply problematic exhibition on the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb here
Exhibit No. 2: Prince Dara Shukoh translating the Upanishads.
Prince Dara Shukoh, the eldest son of Emperor Shah Jahan, was like his great ancestor Akbar, a very liberal and enlightened Musalman and a true seeker of truth. Akbar respected all religions – Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Sikhism, etc., and gave their votaries complete religious freedom. He was ever keen to discuss and understand their religious beliefs, practices and philosophy and, in order to make the Musalmans familiar with the culture, and universal values, philosophy and traditions of India, he had the great epics of India – Ramayana and Mahabharat – translated into Persian. He also arranged for the translation of the Atharvaveda.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Aurangzeb, Dara Shikoh, India, Mughal
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