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The Lawyer vs the Oligarchy: An Interview with Ehsan Ali Advocate

Below we present a composite write up of three interviews with Ehsan Ali by Qalandar Bux Memon, Haider Ali, and Sonia Qadir. The interviews took place between 2015 and 2022. Comrade Ehsan Ali is a Marxist leader from Gilgit-Baltistan and member of Inqalabi Communist Party. He is the founder of Gilgit-Baltistan Awami Action Committee and…

ByQalandar Bux Memon

Art History’s Unfinished Argument with Itself

"Which art history should I teach in Khartoum?” —Salah M. Hassan, an art historian, critic, and curator, Cornell University. Art history occupies a unique position in the longue durée of intellectual thought. It is a narrative of images and a history of ideas inscribed in pigment and stone, language, philosophy, and shifting regimes of visibility.…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

ESHAN ALI AND THE GILGIT-BALTISTAN WHEAT MOVEMENT

‘Gandum Subsidy Tehreek’ (Wheat Subsidy Movement) stands as thelargest protest in the history of Gilgit Baltistan region. At its height, it spanned every area and involved hundreds of thousands of people — men, women, children, Shia, Sunni, Ismaili, Noorbakshi, Balti, Burusho, Wakhi, Yasini, Puniali, Astori, Shin, Pathan, Kashgari, Gujjar, Chilasi and Dareli. In Skardu city…

ByQalandar Bux Memon

We Will Not Forget: Feroz’s Life Matters.

The last three years have been a long wait, and it's not over yet, with countless nights and nightmares. Balochistan has been entrenched in conflict for a long time, where students have been the primary victims of state violence. Throughout the last two decades, starting from the 2000s, students have been the vanguard for a…

ByChangeez Nazeer

Histories of the Ephemeral: The Qawwali Legacy of Fareed Ayaz and Abu Muhammad

“ To be a qawwal is more than being a performer, more than being an artist, One must be willing to release one's mind and soul from one's body to achieve ecstasy through music. Qawwali is enlightenment itself.” — Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Gateway Theatre in Chicago, 1993 in an interview to Andy Carvin The…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

From Library to Dungeon : Feroz’s Story and His Parents’ Grief

When we chant the slogan "Taleem do, zindan nahi" (Give education, not prison) on the streets in Pakistan. we truly mean it — because as Baloch students, our lives have always been destined for something different from the average students in Pakistan. We have lost thousands of our youth to years of extrajudicial killings…

ByNoorjan Barkat

Sacred, Seen, and Shifting: The New Language of Islamic Art

“What can ‘art’ mean in a culture where the primary organ of perception is not the eye or the ears, but the heart? It requires a shift from the visible to the sensible, in which attention is directed not outwardly toward the object, but inwardly, within the heart.” — Wendy M. K. Shaw, What…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Is Pluralism the New Orthodoxy in Global Art?

“What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization—and therefore force—is already a sick civilization, a civilization which is morally diseased.” —Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism. Translated by Joan Pinkham,…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Stolen Fathers, Stolen Childhoods: Ten Years of Waiting for Zaheer Baloch

A Name Among Thousands, A Family Among the Broken On April 13, 2015, Zaheer Baloch, a resident of Panjgur district, was forcibly disappeared by Pakistani security forces from Hub Chowki, Balochistan. As of April 13, 2025, ten years have passed. No charge sheet, no trial, not even a confirmation if he is alive. He simply…

ByDilshad Baloch

‘Regimes of Authoritarianism’ and the Need for Organic Intellectuals

What is the role of intellectual leadership in our troubled times? At a time when universities are converted into stock exchanges, singularly focusing on “return on interest” (ROI), and scholars – a chunk of them, at least – investing their ideologies and praxis keeping in mind their own personal extravaganza and leadership positions, while few…

ByOm Prakash Dwivedi