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Posts Tagged ‘pakistan’
On Damadam Mast Qalandar
The unrelenting terror trail across India recalls young Pakistani author Raza Rumi’s wistful remark that Hindu-Muslim amity seems like “a fairy tale from Never-Never land”. But surely India can wake up and recall how she managed things? Here’s an old story about one of modern India’s favourite songs, Damadam Mast Qalandar. Runa Laila of Bangladesh, Reshma of Pakistan and the Wadali Brothers of India have all sung it. The song came back this month with Ruby, Reshma’s daughter, who was in Delhi to sing at a Deepavali party held in a Muslim gentleman’s house.
The fact is that Jhuley Lal and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar are the patron saints of both Hindus and Muslims. Jhuley Lal (or Udero Lal/Amar Lal/Lal Sain) is said Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: India, Indus, Lal Shahbaz, pakistan, Qalandar, Saint, Sehwan, sufi, Sufism, terror
Fahmida Riaz: A neglected genius
My op-ed for The NEWS
Whilst my earlier piece on the IMF programme and the tremendous discussion it has invoked deserves a rejoinder, I want to write on a completely different subject this week. I am perturbed by the fact that thousands of jobs have been recreated for those who were rightly or wrongly dismissed in the earlier dispensations; there is silence about one luminary, a towering one at that, who lost state employment twice. Fahmida Riaz’s name is yet to appear amongst the reinstated ones.
Following the physical departure of the leading Urdu poets – Qasmi, Munir and Faraz – Fahmida Riaz is arguably the greatest living poet of Pakistan. Controversial though this statement might be, her originality and path-breaking poetry has yet to find an equal in the turbulent waters of the Pakistani cultural river. It is hardly surprising that Fahimda Riaz has been targeted all through her otherwise illustrious creative career by state and society alike. She was branded as unpatriotic when she had to run for her life in the Zia-ul-Haq days and live in exile. In India, she was termed as a Pakistani agent since she criticised the communal tensions that the Indian state had encouraged. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Culture, Famida, Ghalib, India, Mir, pakistan, poet, Poetry, Riaz, Urdu
Let the cynics froth and fume
My piece published in The Friday Times
This is the magic of Lahore and its deep-rooted cultural mores. No other city can boast of such individuals, movements and trends. Hopefully, the music will live on. The interest of younger generations and their experiments with various forms of music hold great promise
Last week the breezy environs of the majestic Lawrence Gardens once again swayed to the tunes of Hindustani classical music. A week long music festival organised by the All Pakistan Music Conference attracted musicians, vocalists and enthusiasts from all parts the country, as well as from the imagined “enemy” India. How could it not be the case when musical traditions emerged out of a cultural synthesis of 700 years or more?
The leading light of APMC was Hayat Ahmad Khan, whose sad demise in 2005 was interpreted as an end to the glorious tradition of subcontinental streams of music in Pakistan. However, 83 years of hard work and philanthropic contributions was not in vain. He left behind a powerful institution and a network of committed individuals and aesthetes who have kept the torch ablaze. Not a small feat in the troubled waters of a Pakistani cultural landscape constantly under attack by nation-state ideology and extremism that consider music to be too “Indian” or, even worse, un-Islamic.
This is the greatest irony of our existence: the Muslims in India contributed to what is known today as Indian classical music and innovations such as the sitar and the tabla. The Qawwal bache trained at the shrine of Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi under the tutelage of Amir Khusrau became the founders of what was to later evolve as the sophisticated Khayal style of music. In dire times of the Sultanate and Mughal periods, these musicians had to take refuge in the princely states, and this is how the various gharanas, or schools of music, originated. This loose network of musicians organised along the lines of kinship or teacher-pupil bonds, sustained by court patronage and eclectic and secular in appeal, led to some fine moments. Tansen at Akbar’s court, Mohammad Shah Rangeela’s patronage and later the Kingdom of Oudh defined the high-points of this fused and seamless culture beyond religion, communal and sectarian divides.
To keep this tradition alive in post-independence Pakistan was a Herculean task. Pakistan was a moth-eaten and truncated country in the words of its founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The psychological trauma and barbarity of the Partition had jolted everyone and the traditional patronage of the state was missing. It was under these circumstances that on September 15 1959, music-inspired citizens met at the famous Coffee House of Lahore and launched a voluntary organization called The All Pakistan Music Conference. Eminent personas such as Roshan Ara Begum were among the illustrious list of its founders.
It should be noted that this was also the age when the maestro Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan migrated to India and Roshan Ara Begum was almost about to give up the passion of her life. Thus Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: APMC, classical, conference, Gardens, Lahore, Lawrence, Music, pakistan
More on the debate on IMF
I had posted my piece on the forthcoming (?) IMF programme and expressed fears as a citizen. The op-ed that was published in the NEWS has evoked a hard-hitting response by a former IMF staffer. I am happy that a debate has ensued - this is why his scathing attack on my argument is more than welcome. Any noise is better than the silence of complacency. Raza Rumi (ed.)
by Dr Meekal Aziz Ahmed
Raza Rumi wrote a nice article entitled “Debating the aid plan,” in your newspaper of Nov 1. I agree with a lot of what he says. Things in our land are pretty grim these days. But just as Mr Rumi’s article was engaging me, there came the usual blast against everyone’s favourite whipping boy and scapegoat, the IMF.
Let me recall a timeless phrase so that Mr Rumi knows “where I am coming from,” as they say, and then move on to the substance of his critique. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Mr Rumi, who must have read his Shakespeare, surely is familiar with these words. How well that quote describes our hapless country which seems to be going nowhere, while we insist it is everyone else’s fault? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: capitalism, IFI, IMF, net, pakistan, program, safety, social
The words of others
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Faiz Ahmed Faiz with friends: Faiz’s poetry is now being used to advertise phones |
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Habib Jalib: anti-establishment |
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Opposition to the military regime was marked by a liberal ethos, a value-system that stressed constitutionalism, rule of law, and the independence of judiciary, rather than identifying with the politics of redistribution or attacking Pakistan’s problem uno supremo: poverty |
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My piece published in the Friday Times last week
For decades, Pakistan’s poets and writers have defied conventions and the almighty establishment. Rooted in the progressive writers’ movement, the literature of resistance was a pro-people ideology that kept redistribution of power and resources at its core. The great poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz was often jailed and kept on the margins of the literary and cultural establishment and castigated as a “foreign agent” and “anti-Pakistan.” Scores of other writers had to suffer torture and silencing by the state when they challenged its arbitrariness. Habib Jalib faced similar treatment and died a poor man after decades of acting as the poetic conscience of a nation.
It was the lyrical, direct poetry of Habib Jalib that stirred the street for decades, echoing the vision of the world from below. Jalib’s expression was popular and immediate, and could be related to easily by the average listener. During the rule of General Ayub Khan, from 1958 until 1969, Jalib particularly represented the public conscience when he chanted his poem Dastoor (Constitution), which was about Ayub Khan’s tailor-made “constitution.” Later, this work was utilised in support of Fatima Jinnah’s (the Quaid-e-Azam’s younger sister’s) campaign against the general:
Aisay dastoor ko,
Subh-e-baynoor ko,
Mein naheen manta,
Mein naheen janta
(I do not accept/I do not recognise/A constitution that resembles/A morning with no light).
In 2008, we saw the Punjab Chief Minister chanting these lines. The poetry has come full circle. While the Chief Minister’s
Tags: capitalism, corporations, establishment, Faiz, Jalib, pakistan, Poetry, progressive, Urdu
In City of Tolerance…
I was quoted in this NYT article on Lahore
Still, Raza Rumi, a writer and blogger who takes great pride in his city, insisted that “Islamic extremism has had very little appeal here.” The cultural life of Lahore goes on, as it has for centuries.
He said that a recent stage play, “Hotel Moenjodaro,” whose theme was against religious fundamentalism, drew a packed audience. “It was very encouraging,” Mr. Rumi said.
Nonetheless, he said, the Hall Road incident and the juice store blasts were alarming. “If the traders, the merchant class, which forms the bulk of the middle class of Lahore, becomes Talibanized, then the whole complexion of the city will change,” he said. “That’s a fear amongst the secular intelligentsia and elite of Lahore.”
Full story here
Tags: Extremism, Islamic, Lahore, pakistan, Taliban, tolerance
Pakistan: IMF Programme needs to be debated
Debating the aid plan
Raza Rumi’s op-ed published in the NEWS (Pakistan)
The not-so-inevitable is about to happen. After weeks of groping in the darkness of global financial mess, the Pakistani government is negotiating with the International Monetary Fund. Admittedly, Pakistan’s options are limited, given its intractable dependence on oil imports for survival. The civilian government moving from one crisis to another has elevated indecision to a policy status. This does not imply that we start echoing the unwise cacophony of impatience with an elected and far more legitimate government than the eight-year-long authoritarian regime. But then who cares: if recent history is a guide, PPP governments come with a brand or at least get branded as incompetent comprising coteries of cronies, as if the rest of the country is a fair, rule-based haven.
The plain truth is that the power-wielders of Pakistan have been following a set of disastrous policies for decades that have now put the survival of the state, or as we knew it, in question. From the great hunts for strategic depth and Jihad, and from nurturing domestic oligarchies and pampering a delinquent industrial sector at the expense of land tillers and equitable irrigation, we are now paying the price for policy making by the elites for the sustenance of the elites. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: economy, financial, global, hunger, IMF, mess, pakistan, Poverty
Ajoka Theatre and the Caucasian Chalk Circle
My piece published in The Friday Times (October 24 issue)
Who is entitled to keep the child - one who is a better, nurturing mother, or the one who may be the natural mother but could not care for the child? The larger question then haunts the audience: who is entitled to ownership – the one who has the deed or the one who tills the land?
Ajoka Theatre has revived a production that was first staged twenty three years ago. A deft adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle, its vernacular version, Chaak Chakkar, is a timeless comment on the viciousness of Pakistan’s exploitative culture of power politics. Perhaps the duo, Shahid Nadeem the playwright, and Madeeha Gauhar the director, would have tried to capture bits of social reality in the mid 1980s when General Zia was still the Lord Master of Pakistan. Why did Ajoka choose to stage this after a gap of two decades?
As Madeeha Gauhar explained: “In 2008 one marvels at how Brecht had foreseen the chaos, the anarchy, the shameless switching of loyalties of recent years, especially since the return of the popular leadership exile.” The seat of total power, “symbolized as Lal Mahal, is uncannily similar to Lal Masjid and Lal Haveli of our times,” she added. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Ajoka, Brecht, Caucasian, Chaak, Chakar, Circle, class, drama, inequality, Lahore, pakistan, play, revolution, street, theatre
Confronting militancy
The unedited version of my op-ed published in the NEWS today:
It is time that the vocabulary introduced by the global imperial projects is changed in Pakistan. The infamous and rotten coinage – war on terror – needs to be trashed. It was constructed by an imbecile global leader, whose vision defies basic standards of human intelligence. And, in our case the frontline-state status is a passé title as well. The war has now entered the Pakistani consciousness, has consumed thousands and continues to destabilize the country to a point where its citizenry is insecure and bereft of hope. We have to now protect Pakistanis and Pakistan first. All else is secondary.
The gravity of the situation is however not shared by many. The rugged militants are artfully backed by the ‘urban Taliban’, a term that has emanated from Sindhi intelligentsia. There are political parties and their leaders who downplay the threat to Pakistan, and few journalists and TV anchors brazenly eulogise the Taliban bravery and, believe it or not, ‘sound’ governance. Even some on the residual Left term this extremism as an anti-imperial struggle. We are being reminded that the destruction of private property and daylight murders of innocent civilians are nothing but a ‘reaction’ to our policies and Western diktat. Ironically, a key religious party now train-marching across the country on a was ruling two of the war zoned provinces for nothing less than five years tacitly supporting Army operations as well as legitimizing a military ruler through a constitutional amendment. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Army, civil, defence, media, militancy, pakistan, provinces, Taliban, terror, urban, violence, War
The pampered Islamabadites
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| Mahboob Ali |
Located in the foothills of the Margallas, and boasting green spaces and forests intertwined among the folds of the city, Islamabad appears almost surreal against the densely populated rest of Pakistan. Built during the early 1960s by Pakistan’s developmentalist dictator, General Ayub Khan, Islamabad was seen as an antidote to politicised Karachi – which, in any case, was a bit too far from the Punjab and the NWFP, the popular bases for Pakistan’s powerful military. Laid out as a model city with the help of Greek architects, this city of the exclusive was formally born in 1965. Nearby Rawalpindi was already the seat of the army’s headquarters, and its proximity to the new capital was certainly intentional.
The new city’s layout was divided into sectors, numbered streets and broad avenues that are called ramna, using the Bengali term. The civil bureaucracy of federal united Pakistan moved here, and thus the sleepy town suddenly emerged as a new urban settlement in line with the earlier planned emergence of Chandigarh. In Islamabad, roads would empty out after sunset, and the national capital would be oddly deserted on all public holidays. After all, for decades none of the residents actually belonged to this city.
Tags: Army, Ayub, Capital, city, islamabad, Khan, pakistan, Rawalpindi, urban
Poverty and Inequality - the brewing storm
By Raza Rumi
(My op-ed first published here)
As I sipped the tenderly brewed coffee facing the lush green golf course of a relatively new Lahore Country Club, the new reality of Pakistan became a little clearer. The sprawling premises of the club were a preserve of the Railways Department until the inefficient Pakistan Railways could not manage it and doled it to the new, oligarchic big business of Pakistan. Much ado was made when the land owned by the Railways was privatised and questionable deals were transacted in that moderately unenlightened era. Nothing came out of the public questioning and today a lavish country club, far removed from its downmarket environs, has sprung out for the affluent and the upwardly-mobile classes of Lahore and Punjab.
The classic barriers to entry created by the cliques that lord over Pakistan’s elite clubs is being undone. Pay a handsome fee now (way over a million rupees) and you are a member to this new “club” built on the ashes of the Raj steelframe, albeit, reminding one of the nasty remarks of Churchill on how the brown, rapacious Rajas would appropriate the space created by the wise and just colonists. As my host elaborated on the entry procedures to Lahore’s richy-rich club, I could not help but remember the compensation to a suicide bomber that has also increased over the years and now hovers between one to two million rupees. A grossly-overlooked fact is that the grinding poverty in the pockets of Pakistan, seemingly unaffected by the consumerist prosperity, is the key to our current turmoil and violence. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: club, country, FATA, inequality, Lahore, pakistan, Poverty, Richistan, Royal Palm, Taliban
History’s ghetto - (Geneva Camp, Dhaka)
My recent piece for the The Friday Times - about the bitterness and destitution in a Dhaka camp for Biharis
It was almost by accident that I visited the Mohammadpur Geneva camp in Dhaka – one of the largest settlements housing thousands of stranded Biharis in Bangladesh. On my last visit to Dhaka, my guide Ronny offered the possibility of getting the best bihari kebabs in town. He told me that his house was near the place and I could meet him somewhere close.
This was an extraordinary afternoon when the receding sun was converting the sky into a field of unimaginable colours that artists can only aspire to create through their limited palettes. Dhaka, the noisy, overcrowded megapolis can be enchanting at times, especially during late springtime when the Krishnochura trees (the Flame of the Forest) bloom all over with their fiery flowers. I almost cancelled the trip thinking that a walk in the park might be a better alternative to the usual South Asian gluttony. Quite soon, I arrived at the meeting point having rationalised my proclivity for indulgence.
Little did I know that the meeting point was nowhere but at the doorstep of Dhaka’s underbelly, the easy to ignore Bihari camp. Not until I had reached there had I realised how the wounds of 1971 were festering for hundreds and thousands of men, women and children who have waited for all these years to attain identity and citizenship of Pakistan. As if it were a curse, the Pakistani state soon forgot about their existence as its ethnic politics dominated the policy commitments of Bhutto. And for the Bangladeshis these were the “traitors” who continued to wave Pakistani flags when the vast majority of East Pakistanis revolted against the excesses and the might of Pakistan army following the infamous and mischievous army action of 1971.
In a few minutes I had all but forgotten about the famous Mustaqeem kebabs and parathas and forced Ronny to take me inside the camp. Very soon I realised I did not need any Bangla-speaking guide as the ghetto was Urdu speaking, and portraits of Pakistani leaders and flags could still be spotted despite the passage of three and a half decades. Ronny knew the locals and found his younger friends, child workers and idle youth who took charge of our little tour.
Shamed by guilt and excited by the real experience, I wandered the smelly, open-drained and dark streets of the ghetto. I have frequented other slums but this one was special for it reeked of the contemporary elite politics, bloodshed and cold inhumanity that Pakistanis are shy of confronting. The living conditions would put any half-concerned South Asian to shame. The homes for most of the families comprised tiny little rooms, with all the belongings and large families concentrated in the inner space. No proper toilets and water supply – as if civilization had taken a backseat here. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 1971, Bangladesh, camps, Dhaka, Geneva, India, Liberation, Mohammadpur, pakistan, Pakistanis, Partition, Poverty, refugees, Urdu, violence, War
Living Lohawarana - a Lahori rambling
My piece for Himal Magazine’s October issue
There was a Lahore that I grew up in, and then there is the Lahore that I live in now. Recovering from an exile status for two decades, I find myself today turning into something of a clichéd grump, hanging desperately on to the past. Yet I resist that. Writing about Lahore is a sensation that lies beyond the folklore – Jine Lahore nai wakhaya o janmia nai (The one who has not seen Lahore has never lived). It has to do with an inexplicable bonding and oneness with the past, and yet a contradictory and not-so-glorious interface with the present.
Lahore is now the second largest city in Pakistan, with a population that has crossed the 10 million mark. It is turning into a monstropolis. Had it not been for Lahore’s intimacy with Pakistan’s power base – the Punjab-dominated national establishment – this would be just another massive, unmanageable city, regurgitating all the urban clichés of the Global South. But Lahore retains a definite soul; it is comfortable with modernity and globalisation, and continues to provide inspiration for visitors and residents alike.
Over the last millennium, Lahore has been the traditional capital of Punjab in its various permutations. A cultural centre of North India extending from Peshawar to New Delhi, it has historically been open to visitors, invaders and Sufi saints alike. Several accounts tell how Lahore emerged as a town between the 6th and 16th centuries BC. According to commonly accepted myth, Lahore’s ancient provenance, Lohawarana, was founded by the two sons of Lord Ram some 4000 years ago. One of these sons, Loh (or Luv), gave his name to this timeless city. A deserted temple in Lahore Fort is ostensibly a tribute to Loh, located near the Alamgiri gate, next to the fort’s old jails. Under the regime of Zia ul-Haq, Loh’s divine space was closed and used as a dungeon in which to punish political activists. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: city, History, Lahore, Mughal, pakistan, urban
Three Pakistani film songs
Jab Koi Piyar se Bulaye ga
Tags: Cinema, film, Mehdi Hasan, Muneer Niazi, Nasim Begum, Noor Jehan, pakistan, Pakistani, songs
Abida Parveen sings Faraz’s poem
Found this enchanting piece of music here:
In his latest double CD “Paigham-e-Muhabbat” composer Muzaffar Ali, who has brought so much pleasure to our lives in the last two decades, included ‘O des aane wale bata’. This nazm by Ahmed Faraz and Akhtar Sheerani is beautifully sung by Abida Parveen.
For those of us who migrated during Partition from India to Pakistan or vice versa and have memories of the old homeland. Also many who have lived overseas, away from our birthplace for several years, and yet have a deep felt love and nostalgia for what was left behind, it strikes a cord.
In memory of Ahmed Faraz who was one of the greatest contemporary Urdu poets…
Tags: Abida Parveen, Ahmad Faraz, Music, Muzaffar Ali, Paigham-e-Muhabbat, pakistan, Poetry, soulful, Southasian music
Revisiting the concept of Jihad in Islam
By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
(Translated from Urdu by Yoginder Sikand)*
The word ‘jihad’ is derived from the root juhd, which means ‘to strive’ or ‘to struggle’. It denotes the exertion of oneself to the utmost, to the limits of one’s capacity, in some activity or for some purpose. This is how the word is understood in Arabic grammar.
Because fighting against one’s enemies is also one form of this exertion or striving, it is also sometimes referred as jihad. However, the actual Arabic word for this is qital, not jihad. Fighting with one’s enemies is something that might happen only occasionally or exceptionally. However, jihad, properly understood, is a continuous action or process that animates every day and night of the life of the true believer. Such a person does not let any hurdle affect his life, including desire for gain, the pressure of customs, the demands of pragmatism, lust for wealth, etc.. All these things serve as hurdles in the path of doing good deeds. Overcoming these hurdles and yet abiding by the commandments of God is the true jihad, and this is the essential meaning of the concept of jihad. There are many references to jihad, as understood in this way, in the collections of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Arabic, ideology, India, interpretation, Islam, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jihad, juhd, Muhammad, Muslim, pakistan, Peace, Prophet, Quran, South Asia, struggle
Delhi and Islamabad blasts: Deadly tale of two cities
Tags: blasts, deadly, Delhi, India, islamabad, pakistan, SouthAsia, terrorism
Islamabad is burning - down with terrorism
What jihad, what Islam and what kind of Muslims these butchers are - they kill innocent people, the underclass outside a posh hotel in Islamabad and think that they are serving some cause. And, this is the month of Ramzan when the Satan is apparently locked up….
The numbers of dead and injured are mounting - there is blood everywhere and a commentator has termed it Pakistan’s 9/11.
About time Pakistani government weeds them out and saves us all from this menace.
Horrific. Barbarity at its worst.
ISLAMABAD, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) — A blast occurred outside Marriott hotel in the center of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad on Saturday evening, leaving at least 30 dead and scores of people injured, said the Pakistani Adviser to Prime Minister on Interior Rehman Malik. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: blast, islamabad, pakistan, suicide, Taliban, terror, terrorism
From Persia to Pakistan, via Mysore
Zafar Hilaly recounts the history of his distinguished family, amongst whom were Sir Mirza Ismail, Agha Hilaly and Agha Shahi
Family legend has it that my great grandfather, Ali Asker, fled the court of the last Shah of the Qajjar dynasty of Iran sometime in the late 1800s. No one quite knows why he did so but he must have had good reason because he did not stop running till he reached Mysore in Southern India. And only when several thousand miles separated him from his nemesis did he pause for breath.
Alerted to the arrival of a disheveled Iranian, along with some horsemen, the Maharaja of Mysore enquired about the purpose of their visit. When told that they sought asylum, the Maharaja enquired what could they offer in return. “We will train your cavalry and supply it with horses,” Ali Asker responded. A deal was struck; and he never returned to Iran. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: family, India, Mysore, pakistan, Persia, Travel
Through a screen, darkly
My piece published in the Friday Times last week.
Pakistani cable operators, following the cyclical escalation of imagined hatreds, discontinued the transmission of Indian satellite channels in 2002. The absence of Indian TV soaps, fodder for an entertainment hungry populace, was widely mourned. Once, not long ago, the axiomatic edge of Pakistan’s TV serials was widely acknowledged both in Pakistan and in India. No longer. This is the age of the market, of selling dreams and drama, of converting the stereotype into a saleable commodity and citing it on the cultural stock exchange.
The popularity of Hindi language soaps is not limited to Pakistan. I have seen squatters in Dhaka’s decrepit Bihari camp, Bangladesh’s largest no man’s land, glued to their colour TV sets. Here, Biharis lack citizenship; they are technically Pakistani, having opted for the Land of the Pure at the cessation of Bangladesh in 1971. But Pakistan doesn’t want them and so they continue to live in limbo. Yet, Star Plus is still beamed 24/7 into their tiny, cramped, leaking shacks. Indian soaps have made inroads even into Afghanistan, that newly liberated project of global corporate interests. They were wildly popular until the Afghan government banned them as inimical to Afghani values.
The soaring audience of Star Plus and Zee TV serials, with their in-your-face parivar mantras, is known all too well. The hype is also a constructed story of success and market acquisition. On the face of it, the commodification of entertainment is a global phenomenon. So what’s the problem, one might ask, given that most of us post-colonial wannabes in South Asia want to integrate into the global economy and its uniform cultural variants? Junk food, designer brands, pop music and the corporate media ethos are all “signs of progress.” Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Balaji,