By day I praised you
And never knew it.
By night I stayed with you
And never knew it.
I always thought that I was me – but no,
I was you
and never knew it!
– Version by Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva
A Garden Beyond Paradise
Bantam Books, 1992
kab uskaa visaal chaahiye thaa
bas aik Khayaal chaahiye thaa
(visaal : union) (more…)
These spiritual windowshoppers,
who idly ask, “How much is that?” “Oh, I’m just looking.”
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.
What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.
Where did you go? “Nowhere.”
What did you have to eat? “Nothing much.”
Even if you don’t know what you want,
buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.
Start a huge, foolish, project,
like Noah.
It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.
Rumi –a poetic version by Coleman Barks
“We Are Three”
Maypop, 1987
Toby Lester’s incisive article What Is the Koran? argues that researchers with a variety of academic and theological interests ‘are proposing controversial theories about the Koran and Islamic history, and are striving to reinterpret Islam for the modern world…’ I was struck by this passage at the end:
Increasingly diverse interpretations of the Koran and Islamic history will inevitably be proposed in the coming decades, as traditional cultural distinctions between East, West, North, and South continue to dissolve, as the population of the Muslim world continues to grow, as early historical sources continue to be scrutinized, and as feminism meets the Koran. With the diversity of interpretations will surely come increased fractiousness, perhaps intensified by the fact that Islam now exists in such a great variety of social and intellectual settings—Bosnia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United States, and so on. More than ever before, anybody wishing to understand global affairs will need to understand Islamic civilization, in all its permutations. Surely the best way to start is with the study of the Koran—which promises in the years ahead to be at least as contentious, fascinating, and important as the study of the Bible has been in this century.
Read the full article here
April 13 will be remembered as a black day in Pakistan’s history. This is the day, future historian will write, when its pampered and stuffed-up political elites opted for a grand surrender. We have to live with the pain, infamy and ignominy of the December 1971 surrender at Ramna Park, Dhaka. That black moment was faced by a General who shall remain the face of Pakistan’s atrocities against its own citizens, the interference of an irresponsible, vengeful neighbour and the bravado of Bengalis who had been excluded from the privileged ‘martial race’ category by none other than Field Marshal Ayub Khan and his junta. This exclusionary act by the Field Marshal, later recorded in his memoirs, set the tone for an agenda of discrimination that was subsequently responsible for the second amputation of South Asia in less than 25 years. (more…)
Many months ago I received this link to the online journal of the Government College University, Lahore. It has an impressive editorial board and the editor, Tahir Kamran, is a respected historian whose efforts and contributions to revive the near-dead discipline of history deserve more than appreciation.
The said issue of The Historian has diverse articles including On the Making of Muslims in India Historically and Evolution and Impact of Deobandi Islam in the Punjab. And, there are some brilliant book reviews as well. The book that interested me were Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and M.J. AKBAR’s, Blood Brothers: A Family Saga.
I was once a student at this institution albeit for a year only. After years of state control, the recent reforms have improved the quality of instruction and of course the management. Thus the glorious tradition of the Government College shall not wane despite the awful stateof education that haunts Pakistan.
Do visit the website and browse through the pieces if history is your cup of tea.
—by Khaled Ahmed (Daily Times)
Filming the Line of Control: the Indo-Pak Relationship through the Cinematic Lens; Edited by Meenakshi Bharat & Nirmal Kumar;
Routledge 2008; Pp239;
Price Rs 650 Indian; Available in bookstores in Pakistan
If you have been put off by Indian films featuring Indian commandos defeating Pakistan Army and carrying away Muslim beauties helplessly in love with their derring-do from across the border, read this book to see how the Indian intellectual too has been put off by Bollywood’s anti-Pakistan blockbusters.
One hopes that not too many Indians have watched old PTV war dramas showing nubile Kashmiri Hindu girls smitten with the mujahideen-type Pakistani warriors whose honesty and sexual constraint contrast starkly with the base cunning of their ugly bodi-sporting Brahman fathers. Pakistani films too did this but one can’t recall too many of them, except one in which veteran actor Yusuf Khan meaninglessly slaughters hundreds of Hindus and covers the screen with gore. (more…)
Raza Rumi laments the tragedies of our times, and says that the state cannot be absolved of its responsibility to protect citizens against terrorism (The Friday Times)
Lahore has finally been encircled by the layers and tremors of violence. If the events of March 2009 were not enough, there is now a concerted effort to create panic in the city. In the past few weeks, girls’ schools have been threatened that they would face the music for educating girls and promoting co-education. How can children and their middle-class urban parents survive these gruelling times? (pic left:Pir Baba’s shrine is now closed to visitors )
Much has been made of this NYT article on the class inequalities in NWFP that are fuelling the Taliban movement. However, I would like to ask where in Pakistan class inequalities do NOT exist. They are everywhere. By using this argument then the Taliban takeover becomes a natural conclusion as a social revolution is required everywhere to correct the exploitative structures and provide ‘speedy justice’. Therefore, our political class has to rise to the occasion and provide the kind of leadership, delivery against their manifestos and restore the fading writ of the state. (more…)
guess or foreguess
she a work in progress
they aiming to regress (more…)
Read this great blog and was tempted to cross-post a few bits here:
Every year, a few hundred thousand Sufis converge in Seh- wan, a town in Pakistan’s southeastern Sindh province, for a three-day festival marking the death of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, in 1274. Qalandar, as he is almost universally called, belonged to a cast of mystics who consolidated Islam’s hold on this region; today, Pakistan’s two most populous provinces, Sindh and Punjab, comprise a dense archipelago of shrines devoted to these men. Sufis travel from one shrine to another for festivals known as urs, an Arabic word for “marriage,” symbolizing the union between Sufis and the divine. (more…)
Zinda dilaan-e-Lahore say no to Talibanisation, reports Raza Rumi
Never before have we citizens been traumatised with an uncertain future and the knocks of destruction at our door as is the case in the year 2009. The celebrated twenty first century has, if nothing else, blown the contradictions of Pakistani society and state right into our faces. One hundred and eighty million people cannot be spectators to the imperial great games and a callous state that gropes in the dark trying to locate the ‘enemy’ outside, instead of looking into its own crevices and cracks.
Not that Lahore has been a haven of peace in recent years – the inequities, the crime levels have been on the rise. However, March 2009 witnessed two full-scale terror attacks in the city of gardens, shrines and a centuries-old tolerant culture. Media gurus were quick to involve India, RAW, the Americans, everyone under the sun except the enemy within. First the friends of Pakistan – the Sri Lankans and then the ill-equipped and vulnerable Police Academy at Manawan, were attacked by trained assassins who espouse a version of Islam that no sane Muslim can ever live with.The panic and fear generated by these two incidents had not ended when the brutal video of Chand Bibi getting lashed on the streets of Swat was released. (more…)
Found this translation and music video here
The famous Bengali author Rabindranath Tagore was influenced by Bauls. He translated the following Baul verse into English in his book The Religion of Man. The quote highlights the mystic Sufi focus on celestial love:
Where shall I meet him, the Man of my Heart?
He is lost to me and I seek him wandering from land to land.I am listless for that moonrise of beauty,
which is to light my life,
which I long to see in the fulness of vision
in gladness of heart.
Times of India has quotes my post on Varun Gandhi today. Well, I know media-wallas have to find stories and sell. It was good to see my name in a prestigious paper but the intent ascribed was not too flattering. I believe in peace and reconciliation between India and Pakistan as the only way forward for South Asia. And, I will condemn extremism wherever it raises its ugly head – in India, in Pakistan and elsewhere.
What is good is that at least we – the citizens/bloggers – are being heard. (RR)
Elections, the new e-conflict zone for Indian, Pak netizens (PTI – in TOI today)
NEW DELHI: It’s a virtual war in the cyber space. As the election scene hots up in the country, netizens especially in Pakistan are watching the scene keenly and letting out their views on all issues ranging from elections, candidates to Varun Gandhi and his controversial speeches. (more…)
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