Monthly Archives: March 2010

Thanks to Isa Daudpota  who sent me the text and the translated poems after he had heard Kamila Shamsie talk about her..

Fahmida Raiz, who graduated from Sindh University and married in 1965, has published several volumes of poetry. During the Martial Law regime she was editor and publisher of the magazine, Awaaz. In all, fourteen court cases of sedition were filed against the magazine, one of which (under section 114A) carried a death penalty. She escaped to India whilst on bail, with her husband and tow children, where she lived for seven years. She worked as Poet-in-Residence at Jamia Millia, an Indian university, during this period.

She has translated Erich Fromme’s Fear of Freedom and Sheikh Ayaz’s poetry, from Sindhi into Urdu. Since the restoration of democracy she has returned to live in Pakistan and served as Director General of Pakistan’s National Book Council in Islamabad when Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party was in power. (more…)

Much has been elaborated on the binding constraints faced by Pakistani democracy. Conventional wisdom suggests that the civil-military imbalance has left little space for democratic institutions to grow and flourish. There can hardly be any disagreement with this point of view. In fact, decades of centralised martial rule have resulted in the militarisation of the society to such an extent that one can hardly discuss anything pertaining to Pakistan without a mention of the Pakistan Army and its role in the country.

There is also a predominant counter narrative in the mainstream discourse. This view holds the impatient and elitist Pakistani politicians responsible for the systemic crash each decade. It stresses that the politicians are adept at undermining the democratic order and it is because of their petty differences and thirst for power that they enter into alliances with the powerful establishment.

The year 2010 is no different as these competing narratives are yet again haunting us. The major breakthrough that was ostensibly achieved with the signing of the Charter of Democracy (CoD) appears to have been diluted at best. In fact, all signs suggest that the mistrust and acrimony of the earlier eras is gradually returning thereby paving the way for another systemic breakdown.

The civilian space reclaimed by the political parties in the year 2008, backed by political mobilisation in that same year was heralded as a new beginning. The elections of 2008 returned the banned parties and their leadership into the legislature, thus defeating a decade of political engineering by general Musharraf and his political and non-political cronies. What happened in the following two years is a question that needs to be addressed. (more…)

Mara ba ghamza kusht o qaza ra bahana sakht
Khud sooy e ma na deed o haya ra bahana sakht (more…)

NPR has featured Asha Bhosle (12,000 songs and the greatest of Bollywood divas) and her fabulous voice – this is what the text has to say (full article here and recording at Los Angeles on Ashaji’s 75th birthday)

Asha sang naughty songs, and she had somewhat of a naughty personality, and she had a personal life that also had some naughtiness in it — the fact that she had run away from home and divorces and marriage and all of that.”

Bhosle made the vamp her specialty, and “Dum Maro Dum” is one of her most famous songs in that persona. It was written by composer R.D. Burman, who not only worked extensively with Asha Bhosle, but also married her. Burman took advantage of Bhosle’s vocal versatility and created songs for her that brought Western musical influences to Bollywood — combining, say, congas with tablas, or finding some of the grooviest psychedelic rock sounds. If anything cemented her reputation as a bad girl or turned people on, it was this song, writer Lavanya Shah says. (more…)

Succession intrigues:Emperor Jahangir receiving his two sons; an album painting in gouache on paper, c1605-06.

Read the related story here: Power, then as now, brings its own price. Neither life nor death was kind to this unfortunate son of Jehangir. AROON RAMAN recounts one of the most tragic yet inspiring stories to come out of Mughal India…

The controversy regarding the conferment of Qatari nationality upon M.F. Husain — and his acceptance of it — has given us the opportunity to revisit an old but neglected debate. The debate on being an Indian Muslim or a Muslim Indian is old hat; but the one concerning the “secular Indian Muslim” — the SIM? — needs our urgent attention. Those who doubt the existence of such a breed and view it as a contradiction in terms would do well to remember the legacy of a long line of distinguished people, from Mirza Ghalib, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Dr M.A. Ansari, Maulana Azad, Dr Zakir Husain to M.F. Husain, to name just a few. Then there are the nameless millions — doctors, lawyers, writers, journalists, teachers, wage earners who are living proof of Indian secularism. Husain is simply another link in this ganga-jamuni chain. He needs to neither establish his credentials nor protest his innocence; his work speaks for him.

Having established the credentials of this breed, let us set out the contours of its present dilemma: one, it exists in sufficiently large numbers to have escaped our notice yet, oddly enough, has never managed to establish a public profile for itself; nor has it, given its numbers, translated into a sufficiently large, and therefore woo-able, vote bank. Two, despite its largish presence (I imagine roughly half the population of Muslims in India), the breed is under severe threat.

One is not interested in establishing the presence of the SIM, for that one takes as a given. It has always existed in the weft of the Indian tapestry as the warp that runs alongside. In fact, what ought to concern us is the threat to its existence. That this threat is (more…)

Amir Khusrau’s lofty couplet

Abr mi barad-o man shovm-e az yar-e judaa
Choon kunam dil becheneen roz zedildar judaa.
Abr baraan wa man-o yar satadah ba-widaa
Man judaa girya kunaan, abr judaa, yaar judaa

The cloud weeps, and I become separated from my friend -
How can I separate my heart from my heart’s friend on such a day.
The cloud weeping, and I and the friend standing, bidding farewell -
I weeping separately, the clouds separately, the friend separately..

(trans. A. Schimmel)

Also see this

Oxford University Press and the British Council are holding a literary festival – first of its kind.

The programme can be viewed here. KLF programme

I am off to Karachi next weekend to attend this moot.

Peter Gabriel feats Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in Signal to Nois