The British – terrorised by German bombing, demoralised by various defeats and large numbers of their soldiers taken prisoner, shaken by the desertion of Indian soldiers and the mutiny of Indian sailors, shivering in the record cold of the winter of 1945-46, crippled by power cuts and factory closures resulting from a post-war coal shortage […]
When India and Pakistan became independent 70 years ago, they were at the same level of development, with both equally poor and wretched. But the economic gap between them is growing. Read Here – Deutsche Welle
Both Gandhi, for all his saintly status a profoundly sectarian Hindu leader, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the All-India Muslim League and the founder of Pakistan, were dead within a year after partition. If the British government had not been in such a panic-stricken rush to get out of India, there might have […]
As India and Pakistan celebrate their twin 70th birthdays this August, the frontier post of Wagah reflects the profound dysfunction in their relations. On its side Pakistan has built a multi-tiered amphitheatre for the boisterous crowds that come to watch the show. The Indians, no less rowdy, have gone one better with a half-stadium for […]
Pakistan’s religio-nationalism started under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1972-77) and got a major impetus under General Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamisation drive through the 1980s. This drive was also located in nurturing public acceptance of jihad as state policy in Afghanistan and later in India. Sadly, we have indoctrinated at least one or two generations with the idea that […]
Jamsheed Marker has been Pakistan’s ambassador in more countries than any other diplomat. He has a plethora of information and memories from those assignments in different capitals of the world. He has seen the formative phase of Pakistan from close quarters and is witness to some of the most decisive phases of the country’s history, […]
Pakistan is there. It is on India’s western border (and until 1971 was also on the eastern border). It cannot be wished away; nor can India pretend it will go away. On the very day the two countries became independent, they inherited a clutch of problems that was the inevitable result of Partition. I know […]
How did India and Pakistan arrive at this equilibrium? The answer starts, of course, in Kashmir, which has always been the primary point of contention between the two countries. Unfortunately, the Kashmir question is unlikely to be answered soon. While territorial disputes between states are usually bitter and persistent – states usually perceive competition over […]
The legacy of tension has persisted for nearly seven decades, but one thing people on both sides of the India-Pakistan border have shared is the memory of partition’s trauma. Now, though, people who were children in 1947 are in their seventies and eighties, meaning that these common memories are fading. Read Here – The Atlantic
Pakistan was born on the top deck of a London bus. Or on a walk along the Thames – different witnesses, different stories. What’s more certain, is the time: the early 1930s; and the place where that place-name was first committed to paper: a modest boarding house at 3 Humberstone Road in Cambridge. Read Here […]
looking beyond borders 