Posts Tagged South Asia

South Asia is a region marked for its turbulent history and its endemic poverty and misgovernance. Much has been written about how certain states in India are worse off than Sub Saharan Africa in terms of social and economic indicators. Or that Pakistan and Bangladesh have millions of people struggling for a meager income to keep their families alive. The truth is that despite the recent gains made in economic growth in most South Asian economies, the structural causes of poverty persist and haunt the national planners.

The World Bank, or the rather grandiose title – the Bank – has remained a major player in the South Asian economies aiming to help these countries in reducing poverty and enhancing economic growth. The Bank has gained more traction in countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh where the unelected executive is eager to engage with the IFIs and decisions on lending are achieved quickly. India has remained engaged but its complexity and federalism makes transactions more intensive. Having said that the country has emerged as World Bank’s favorite in the recent years. For instance, the Bank, committed USD 9.3 billion in financial assistance to India in the 2009-10 fiscal, more than the aid committed by the U.S. and the European Union. Although this is a small sum for India’s U.S. $1.2 trillion economy, it represents a sharp increase from the U.S. $2.2bn lent to India by the Bank last year  – Bank lending to India has traditionally averaged about U.S. $2.5-3bn a year. Similarly, for Pakistan the average lending level has been around $1-2bn, this has increased lately due to the recent recession and food and energy shocks. (more…)

My essay on Mehdi Hasan has been published in this book compiled by Asif Noorani Saheb. This is a memorable collection of essays, reminisces and two CDs of choicest music from Mehdi Hasan. The greatest of Pakistan music icons deserves much more but this little offering brought tears to his eyes. Here is an excerpt from the essay which I will post after a permission from the publishers:

“But this has been our tragic tradition. Our greatest artists, singers, poets and intellectuals have suffered at the hands of a conformist society and state captured by puritans especially since late 1970s. It is never too late for the intelligentsia of this country to mobilise public pressure on the state machinery so that it learns to respect cultural diversity and the imperative to nurture a creative, healthy and civilised society.
Tansen taught us how music is a route to immortality. An ailing Mehdi Hasan in 2010 is fighting with death. His longevity is ensured. Tansen must be proud of his new age prodigy. “

My latest piece on Pakistan’s incredible calamity and its after-effects

Pakistan’s devastating floods have opened up a Pandora’s Box of governance dysfunctions and historical distortions that have plagued the polity since independence. It remains to be seen what will be the outcome of the greatest calamity in our recent history. Various estimates show that the floods have affected 18-20 million people. The death toll has crossed the figure of 2000 while 2 million houses have been damaged or destroyed. Floodwaters are receding in many areas, and though there are concerns about standing water that remains in Punjab and other areas, the worst of the current flooding is taking place in Sindh.

The disaster is still not over but the fissures within Pakistan have started to erupt and once again proving how vulnerable the state is and how fractured the Pakistani society has become. Five key crises have emerged, some old and some new. However, they point to the fact that our continuous refusal to address structural problems remains a key challenge.

Martial state syndrome: Pakistan’s history is an uninterrupted tale of direct and indirect military rule and centralisation. Each time there is a crisis there is a need to resort to the de facto, real governance paradigm: the military rule. Therefore, Altaf Hussain of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and Imran Khan of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) are not saying anything new. The perennial search for a Messiah, rooted in the religious ideology that the state and education system have cultivated, is back in full force. This time the media and other discordant voices are calling for another phase of direct military rule. (more…)

My op-ed today for Express-Tribune

Once again, the fragile peace process between India and Pakistan has commenced. It is too early to say whether it will lead to an amicable settlement of seemingly intractable issues. What is clear is that the peoples of the two countries want peace, security and progress. The elites, which agreed on the messy Partition and raised nation-states and huge militaries, have surely flourished at the expense of people. A causal look at India’s poverty and Pakistan’s social indicators proves this point.

As a confidence building measure, a group of Pakistani journalists visited Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore to meet their counterparts, think tanks and selected top-level officials. This was a timely and fruitful visit and reminded us that there is a formidable peace constituency in India. After the Indian home minister it is the turn of the Indian foreign minister to visit Islamabad from today for a three-day tour. Regardless of the outcome, sensible neighbours must continue to talk. (more…)

This is a fabulous, almost flawless performance by Sreeram, an aspirant for the Indian Idol selection. Originally rendered by A R Rahman, this young talent has given a new dimension to this ode to South Asia’s celebrated saint Khawaja Muinduddin Chishty of Ajmer.

Khwaja Mere Khwaja By SHREERAM

 It is not a coincidence that Qurratulain Hyder, grand dame of Urdu literature, is remembered whenever we are faced with crises of state and society. Hyder was not just a fiction writer but a chronicler, for her sense of history remains unparalleled in the annals of South Asian vernacular literature. Her magnum opus “Aag Ka Darya” (AKD) was written and published in the highly contested milieu of the post-partition Indian subcontinent, when the new nation states were re-writing their historical discourses. In Pakistan, AKD was a sensation right from the time when it was published in the late 1950s. The controversy it created remains pertinent despite the passage of five decades.

Hyder’s nuanced and highly sophisticated vision was not easily apparent to officialdom or to state-sponsored literary critics in Pakistan. (more…)

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…)

I am posting the synopsis of my paper entitled Silhouetted Silences – contemporary Pakistani literature in the ‘age of terror’, that I presented at the SAARC writers’ festival held in Agra, India (March 13-17, 2009). The full paper needs to be edited and referenced so that will posted a little later.

Round my neck,
from time to time, there was the hallucination
of a noose, and now and then, the weight
of chains binding my feet.
Then one fine day
love came to drag me, bound and manacled,
into the same cavalcade as the others (Faiz)

Since the invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and the global hysteria about ‘terror’ and ‘terrorism’, Pakistan has faced the greatest of existential challenges after its dismemberment in 1971. As a frontline ally of the US in the war on terror, Pakistani society and polity have been engulfed by growing militancy and acts of violence commonly branded as terrorism. Whilst there is no single definition of ‘terrorism’, the mainstream media and policymakers – in the service of imperial rhetoric aimed to justify and perpetuate the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq – have established terrorism as the major threat to domestic and regional peace in South Asia. Acts of premeditated and organised violence in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have thus assumed a central place in discourse on regional cooperation or its converse: the rivalries between the constructed nation states and their irresponsible power-elites.

In this milieu, the South Asian citizens have been the victims of violence, uncertainty and acrimonies that have only led to exacerbation of poverty, inequality, ascendancy of militarism and war-mantra. All of this is taking place when globalization is relentlessly seeping into domestic economies, cultures and social systems. Where does this leave the writers and poets of the region who grapple with the complex, confusing and fast changing social and political realities? Whilst the community of South Asian writers – traditionally the forbearers of intellectual and political movements – is beleaguered by corporate media industry, it has struggled to respond to challenges that events have created. (more…)

Finally managed to reach Agra to attend the SAARC Literature festival organised by the inimitable Ajeet Caur. It is a lovely event with people from all over the region bemoaning what has happened to the region when it should be taking off.

The news from Pakistan are disturbing to say the least and the headlines here are not all that flattering. Alas, we are in a tight corner once again.

As part of my paper entitled Silhouetted Silences – contemporary Pakistani literature in the ‘age of terror’. While I am still refining my paper, here is an excerpt:

The current political and social milieu has created deep contradictions for the writers and the poets of contemporary Pakistan. If on the one hand they are bruised by the widespread violence and desecration of humanity, on the other they are equally aware of the public mood on the way imperial powers are playing another great game in their neighbourhood. This is what makes the task of the poets and writers extremely difficult.

I quoted this powerful poem called A Mourning poem for Bajaur by Pakistan’s eminent poet Kishwar Naheed here:

Coffins have become so numerous
That the city is shrinking

The eye is oozing
And not even a word of association
Like an open wound
On the lips.

The sky looks over everything
And remains silent.
Why does it go on believing
That mankind will awake once again
From its deep slumber
And laughter will ring again
On the threshold of houses.

No, it was not yesterday
But many years ago,
We held hope with our hands
We sat in the shadow of wide-awake walls
And used to think:
Yellow-gold wheat smiles and laughs
In our court-yards

We have the same court-yards, the same threshers
But bullets jump through them,
Riddle holes in my fields
and in the bodies of my children

With my tear-soaked pillow
I sit in the court-yard, watching

Coffins have become so numerous
That the city is shrinking.

Translated by Asif Farrukhi

More later….

My new piece for The Friday Times

South Asian history is a tale of capitulation of local elites before external invaders. Be it the Aryans, the Mongols or East India Company officials, we have always relented, and sometimes quite painlessly. This is an area of history that remains less explored as it conflicts with the grand narratives of ‘resistance’ and nationalist myths we love to construct.S

A phrase locked into our cultural memory – Hunooz Dilli Door Ast (Delhi is as yet far away) explains this historical pattern. It has become a metaphor for the insularity of the elites and the powerlessness of the common people. The complacency that Delhi, the capital of the Islamic empire was not accessible to the hordes of invaders, was the tragic reaction by debauched kings, local Rajas and their henchmen who were either men of straw or active collaborators. (more…)

found this excellent piece at Virodhi’s blog on caste, casteism and love authored by Taimur Rahman

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. (more…)

This new book by Yoginder Sikand has been published by Global Media Publications in 2008.

Messianic hopes and expectations are common to almost all religions. Jews expect the Messiah to arrive to re-establish their temple in Jerusalem; Christians pray for Jesus to return to earth in his ‘Second Coming’; Hindus believe that Kalki, the tenth and last avatar of Vishnu, would appear just before the end of times; and the advent of the Imam Mahdi, who will usher in the end of the world, is a cardinal tent of the faith of Shia and many Sunni Muslims.

The messianic figure that almost all religions expect to arrive some time towards the end of the world is generally portrayed as representing the forces of good, as an agent of God and as eventually vanquishing, in a war of global and cosmic proportions, the forces of evil. (more…)