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‘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 DwivediApril 21, 20250Comments

Liberalism’s Stage Directions

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple” —Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays. Penguin Classics, 2000, p. 293. It began with a slip—not of the tongue, but of an unguarded conscience. At a campaign rally in…

ByNarendra PachkhédéApril 12, 20250Comments

The Hollow Centre – How Canadian Elections Became a Ritual of Consent.

The current framing of Canadian elections is fundamentally flawed "We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” —Didion, Joan. The White Album. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009, p. 3. Canadian electoral politics presents a carefully crafted facade of choice. Party platforms, debates, policy pivots, and rhetorical clashes all contribute to the illusion of a functioning…

ByNarendra PachkhédéApril 5, 20250Comments

The Odyssey of “Nako” Mayar and his Family

I had heard of “Nako” (Uncle) Mayar, who was looking for his missing son and to write his story I had to travel to the village Gilli in Tehsil Buleda. Buleda Tehsil is a peripheral region in an already peripheral province of Balochistan surrounded by mountains on all sides. It is located about 45 to…

ByHazaran Rahim DadMarch 8, 20250Comments

People POLITICS

They killed Allah Daad Wahid – this land won’t forget

The University of Karachi is a world in itself. Walking through the shade of trees and exploring the long roads across multiple seasons, you meet a lot of people you wouldn’t otherwise encounter. Sometimes, you don’t even meet them—you just keep hearing about them. And sometimes, you don’t hear about them at all until they…

ByAleezeh FatimahMarch 3, 20250Comments

The Ugly American Show

"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.” —Henry Kissinger in William F. Buckley Jr. United Nations Journal: A Delegate's Odyssey (1974), pp 56–57. In the spring of 2008, a nation's intricate history was brought to the forefront in a televised spectacle: 'Great…

ByNarendra PachkhédéMarch 3, 20250Comments

POLITICS Poetry

‘Your Madness Carries the Weight of Centuries’

As a Baloch child growing up in Balochistan, the years 2009, 2010, and beyond remain engraved in memory—memories that can never be erased. I often ask myself: how do the events of 2009 and years beyond, those that consumed lives, drowned memories, and silenced voices, continue to haunt us? Who can claim how a child's…

ByHazaran Rahim DadFebruary 17, 20250Comments

POLITICS Poetry

Temples of Memory, Monuments of Forgetting

There is no crop other than god and god is harvested here around the year. —Arun Kolatkar, verse 22, Jejuri, 1976 Located in the ancient city of Ayodhya in northern India, the Ayodhya Temple, is one of the significant spiritual landmarks. Revered as the birthplace of Lord Rama, a central figure in the Hindu…

ByNarendra PachkhédéJanuary 10, 20250Comments

Canada at the Edge of Its Idea

“Having to wait until one’s death to be allowed to live is really quite an ontological feat.” - Robert Musil, Austrian Novelist, Journalist and Writer Like a phantom limb, the unfinished The Man Without Qualities haunts the landscape of modern literature. It is…

ByNarendra PachkhédéJanuary 7, 20250Comments

Poetry POLITICS Reviews

On Palestine And Narrative: We are in a new territory

“Gaza does not propel people to cool contemplation; rather, she propels them to erupt and collide with the truth.” — Mahmoud Darwish, Silence for Gaza (1973) Recognizing the Stranger - On Palestine and Narrative, a slim volume of 80-odd pages brings together Isabella Hammad’s the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture delivered at Columbia University nine…

ByNarendra PachkhédéDecember 28, 20240Comments