Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies
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Rumination on Chronopoetics and the Political Subject: Miraji Reads Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Lyric
Get PDFUsing the poet Miraji’s short exegesis of the Faiz’s poem IntebÄh (warning or alarm), popularly known by its opening word , bol (speak), this paper will parse a small entry into Faiz’s poetics. What did this curious imbrication of modernist exegesis with political poetics allow us to see?  In this paper I suggest that Miraji’s analysis allows us to see anew the ways in which romantic realism, fleshed politics and chronopoetics come together to give us another take on Faiz’s luminous corpus
Post 9/11 Identity Crisis in H.M Naqvi's Home Boy
Get PDFSince 9/11, the paradigms defining identity underwent a major transition. People came to be termed as ‘terrorists’ on the basis of their religious and ethnic roots. The identity based issues faced by an average Pakistani on the streets of New York or any other American city were highlighted in many post 9/11 Pakistani English novels. The Pakistani writers of English fiction placed the varying notions of identity under the microscope of their penetrative insights. What this study proposes is that among Pakistanis living in the USA, an identity crisis has been generated in the 9/11 backdrop. With American imperialism surfacing, the individual self has become the negotiating ground for the subaltern to establish balance between ‘Otherness’ as being contoured by religion as an identity signifier. The major research objectives of this study are defining the notions of the ‘Self’ as exemplified by the protagonist of the novel Home Boy by H.M Naqvi in addition to defining the idea of a ‘terrorist’. This study will also investigate the perplexity that has been added to the concept of the ‘Self’ in the average pro-West Pakistani citizen and its reflection in post-9/11 Pakistani fiction in English. It will also scrutinize the search for a new parameter to define identity in terms of being a Pakistani and a Muslim by the protagonist of Home Boy. The research questions that this study undertakes are: What is meant by the notion of a fragmented identity in the context of Pakistani fiction in English? What alterations has the concept of the ‘Other’ undergone in the post-9/11 world and how has this affected the notion of the Self in post-9/11 Pakistani fiction in English? Are the protagonists in the post-9/11 Pakistani fiction in English moving from a hybrid identity to a unified identity? Is the Westernized protagonist of this novel aspiring towards a Muslim identity? The study is exploratory in purpose, following the holistic content-based mode of analysis
Faiz’s Letters to Alys
No full textFaiz’s letters to his wife from jail (1951-55) were published in 1976. Titled ‘Saleebein Meray Dareechay Mein’ (Crufix in my window) they were translated into Urdu by Faiz himself. The originals, stored in his house in Lahore, were thought destroyed by termites during his exile in Beirut. Thirty five of them were discovered among Alys’ papers in 2009, restored and published in 2011.These form a small part of the correspondence between Faiz and Alys, which spans four decades. The earliest letters date from 1939 when they were courting and the last written in 1984, the year Faiz died. The letters are now in the process of conservation, which will take the better part of two years. As they become available to scholars, they will be a valuable source of information and insight into his personal reflections and his milieu. This piece represents mostly Faiz’s jail letters, including a cursory look at letters ranging from the 1940’s to the 1980’s
A Note on the Poetic Aesthetic of Faiz
Get PDFFaiz’s championship for a classless society has a conscious voice in his poetry. His attempt is to uphold the tenets of Communism and the cause of the deprived, the underdog “yeh galion ke awara bekar Kutte†(Faiz  Nuskha Haai Wafa 71) which is well manifest in his poetry. His voice is robust with optimism, courage and strength. In him, there is a celebration of not only the intellect which is often a prerogative of the upper class that can afford time and energy to spend for the acquisition of intellectual prowess and aesthetic taste; but there is also a bonhomie about physical strength that the proletariat are more associated with as theirs is real struggle of the body and its sustenance. Hands, mouth and lips, voice, a tall and erect body accustomed to hard work are the main sources of power. His poetry enthuses many and is appreciated by many. Some of his poems are in Punjabi aiming at the Punjabi peasantry. Is Faiz’s appeal really universal, cutting across the class borders? The aesthetic peculiar to Faiz that he perhaps shares only with Ghalib, involves an amalgamation of high and low styles and diction. His conversational style admixes with Arab-Persian lexical chunks. It was something inevitable for his lack of control of the language that draws its aesthetic conventions in an intellectual hybridity resulting from its historical contact and association with Arabic and Persian, once languages of the intellectual as well as emotional make-up of the learned class. A reading of his poetry against its grain reveals the fault lines inherent in his aesthetic. It is ironic that crux of his message is for the proletariat of the society who cannot read him with felicity as they lack the pre-requisite literary competence and are beyond the purview and leisure of reading sessions. Major Mohammed Is’haaq’s “Roodad-e-Qafas†(Faiz Zindan Naama 9), epitomises warring nature of the ideology, theme and aesthetic that inheres Faiz’s poetry. Mohammed Is’haaq’s sense of honour associated with the task of writing an introduction to Faiz’s poetry, his alleged plebeian background and his hyperbolic confession of nervousness for the said task (in a language that again belies the said words) affirms the opposing threads of potential interpretations that make apparent that the unity of his voice and theme remain elusive and indeterminate. The question whether Faiz may infuse the real underdogs with the real zeal, ardour and passion, as he talks about the uplift of their lot demands an attempt to affirm an answer or lack thereof. The paper is an experiment with the trailing of the fissures and gaps that leave any interpretation of Faiz’s poetry indeterminate without undermining the effect it has on a particular class that controls, defines and patents aesthetic sense
Agricultural development in Khyber Pakhtun Khwa, prospects, challenges and Policy options
Get PDFKHYBER PAKHTUN KHWA is home to citizens, famed and known for their sense of honor, bravery, and hard work. This is evident from their history and their achievements in Pakistani metropolis and abroad. Despite true potential of its dwellers the Frontier Province is one of the poorest in Pakistan. The main income generating sectors of the province being hydro-power, tourism, horticulture, forestry, tobacco, maize marble and gemstone while main hurdles in the way of development are poverty, ignorance, security threats, religiosity and narrow nationalism. In KHYBER PAKHTUN KHWA agriculture is the main source of livelihood for masses. The emerging scenario of globalization demands a type of agriculture that can compete in the global market. The agriculture in the KHYBER PAKHTUN KHWA though diversified and possesses potential but is still under developed. There is a dire need of a thorough study on agriculture of the region to investigate the factors, which cause backwardness of agriculture in the province. To know about the causes of comparatively lagging state of agriculture in KHYBER PAKHTUN KHWA, investigation of various physical, institutional and economic questions about the role of government in disseminating information and knowledge, enabling farmers to accede to physical inputs, removing where ever possible environmental obstacles and improving the structure of incentives will have to be explored on the inter-provincial level. The study will induce the efforts for improving the living standards in the rural areas of the province. As the study is spadework in its nature on agricultural development in the province. It may stimulate the policy makers, practitioners and researchers whose daily concern brings them into direct contact with the problem of lagging agriculture, to do thorough work on agriculture of KHYBER PAKHTUN KHWA in future. Â Â
British hunters in colonial India, 1900-1947: The Gentleman Hunter, New Technology, and Growing Conservationist Awareness
Get PDFI hope to fill the scholarly void on British hunters in colonial India. There has been relatively little scholarly work on hunters in India in general in comparison to Africa where there is a proliferation of academic work done on hunting. This paper deconstructs the hunting experiences of British men in India by drawing upon a collection of hunting books, private papers, and letters. These men include eminent sportsmen like James Best and humanitarian hunters like Jim Corbett. By the 20th century there developed a conservationist ethos among many hunters and the colonial state to protect wildlife as a system of laws, licenses and permits was instituted along with the use of guns, restraint and reliance on shikaris or native hunters. My argument is that the character of British hunting changed and can be summarized as gentlemanly masculine, as well as imperialist. Distinct differentiation between tribals/poachers and British sportsmen were also clearly defined in the 20th century. By the 20th century, humanitarian hunters appear who only hunted to protect villagers, new technology becomes intertwined with hunting, a greater sense of nostalgia for the past makes its presence, a greater introduction of emotion, artificial rearing appears in the subcontinent, and sahibs (British males) emulate maharajas or native princes
Review, Islam, Women, and Violence in Kashmir: Between India and Pakistan
No full textNyla Khan’s Islam, Women, and Violence in Kashmir: Between India and Pakistan (2010) is extremely significant and timely for two reasons: first, she traces the political and cultural history of Kashmir’s demand for self-determination through the category of “Kashimiriyat,†which draws on the vibrant diversity of Kashmir’s cultural and political heritage, and second, her project is feminist, drawing on the intersectionality of gender, sexuality, religious identity, and ethnicity in discussing the varied forms of resistance in Kashmir
Admission and Visa process of Norway for Pakistani Students
Get PDFThis is a brief guide over the process of admission and visa to Norway for students from Pakistan
Impact of Radical Islamisation of Education on Pakistani Society
Get PDFThe radicalization of Pakistani society has invoked international security concerns in this age of global terror. However, few analysts have delved into the real causes of how a culturally diverse and tolerant society came to be radicalized to such an extent that almost all trails of terrorist attacks end up in this country of 180 million people. This article traces the history, rather briefly, of how the national educational policies and curricula in social sciences and humanities have been changed to serve the jihadist ideology in Pakistani society. The crumbling social order in Pakistan is not only an indication of the bad governance but also the systemic inculcation of ideologies of hatred and extremism among a whole generation of school children and college graduates. It is a society where extremism, not only of the radical Islamists but also of the common man, is on the rise. Many Pakistani social scientists blame the flawed educational policies, framed since Independence in 1947, for the rise of nationalist, religious and sectarian ideologies that have been eating the vitals of state and society in Pakistan. Instead of creating a humane and just society, the national educational policies, particularly the one promulgated during the Zia era, have contributed to the radicalization of the youth. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this scenario is that the policymakers have not yet realized the gravity of the situation as is evident in the attitude and policies of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan towards the state of social sciences and humanities in the country, and reflected in the statistics given in its own annual reports