Posts Tagged Krishna

My first time in the enemy capital as a journo – Part One

Twenty-four hours before my departure to the enemy lands, I still had not received my visa. This time my rushed, jam-packed travel to India was a bit of an identity switch. From a development professional, a Sufi devotee and a culture-vulture, I was now a journalist representing none other than The Friday Times. Accordingly, I sat on a plane with pockets full of visitors cards and little idea of what this junket was all about.

Indeed, the peace industry across the globe is an unbroken series of junkets, high-sounding statements and admittedly a lot of fun. I was travelling with ten other Pakistani media persons: from Urdu, English, electronic and print varieties. Luckily, I knew Cyril Almeida of DAWN, our Shaukat Piracha (who also works for AAJ) and Asim Awan of Express-Tribune – there was little awkwardness in getting familiar with the group.

Between the two high profile visits of the Indian Home and Foreign Ministers this was a visit to give Pakistani media representatives access to the Indian mood and where it stood. Perhaps, an effort to forge a better understanding of what Indians were thinking and to hear of the Pakistani concerns from the non-state side. A tacit and slightly belated acknowledgement that the Pakistani media has arrived (perhaps nowhere) and has entered the power-game. (more…)

Raza Rumi

The elusive quest for peace between India and Pakistan remains hostage to the military-industrial complex at both the global and regional levels. Such is the dynamic unleashed by two imagined “nations” that their existence as states is dependent on a perpetual state of confrontation. More so for Pakistan, given its deeply embedded paranoia, which has assumed a reality of its own. Sixty-two years ago, it was hardly envisioned that the two states would erect an iron-curtain and fight forever. From actual wars to propaganda campaigns the task seems complete now. The oft-repeated phrase ‘trust deficit’ is a natural culmination of this ugly process. Of late, another dimension has been added, i.e. information-deficit as India had marched towards a new phase of its economic development, it has stopped taking interest in transitional Pakistani society and kept the time-warped framework of understanding Pakistan. However, the situation cannot remain static. Policymakers are slow to catch up on both the sides.

Mumbai factor: Twenty months ago, the Mumbai attacks changed the atmosphere created by President Zardari’s unprecedented offers of peace, dialogue and cooperation. The day Zardari made his remarks in a conclave organised by the Hindustan Times in 2008, many observers saw a Mumbai coming. The jihadis of Pakistan and perhaps their counterparts in India were quick to stop this process. Ironic that PPP, a party fed on the Pakistani nationalist rhetoric, thirty years down the road had read the writing on the wall. Pakistan’s future and survival is dependent on a reduction of hostilities with India. More importantly, this also holds the key to correcting the endemic civil-military imbalance. (more…)

I am posting an article by Manzur Ejaz that was published by The Friday Times. This is a great piece:

Fascination with the naughty butter-thief Krishna in the Punjab remained the undercurrent of the cultural milieu for so long that Waris Shah’s Ranjha appears to be a reincarnation of Krishna in many aspects. Khawaja Ghulam Farid, the great Sufi poet, also considered Krishna a sacred prophet of the Hindus like all other prophets. But the question is how did the dark skinned Lord come to dominate the land of the fair Aryans who believed that a dark man ‘seen seated in the market-place [is] like a heap of black beans.’ (more…)

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. (more…)