This lecture was delivered by Arundhati Roy, author of the recently published Azadi: Fascism, Fiction, and Freedom in the Time of the Virus (Haymarket Books), at the University of Texas at Austin on April 19. Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting me to deliver the Sissy Farenthold lecture. Before I begin, I would like to say a few words …

Considered to be the icons of High Asia, the elusive snow leopards have evolved to live in some of the world’s highest and harshest habitats in 12 countries.

The matter of granting provisional provincial status to Gilgit-Baltistan involves a contested political process with multifarious implications to the interests of stakeholders

by Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed Contemporary states are territorial entities whom international law invests with sovereign rights over their recognized territory within well-defined and demarcated borders. International law outlaws the violation of the territorial integrity of a state. The state enjoys the exclusive prerogative to exercise the monopoly of power over its territories and population. It means the right of states …

British colonial officer John Biddulph’s book is considered as one of the pioneering works in English that provided an insight to the secluded societies, lifestyles, languages,  customs, marriages, festivals, ruling families and general characteristics of the many tribes that inhabited the Hindu Kush region Reviewed by Basharat Wakhani Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh written by British colonial officer John Biddulph is considered as one of the …

The team is there to re-measure the height of Everest, which is on the two countries’ border A team of Chinese surveyors have scaled Mount Everest, becoming the only climbers to summit the world’s highest peak during the coronavirus pandemic. Chinese media report the team is there to re-measure the height of Everest, which is on the two countries’ border. …

There was an uncanny similarity between the lives of Pushkin and Manto, writes Raza Naeem. Both were largely unrecognised in their own lifetimes, despite believing unapologetically in their own greatness, achieving immortality only after death   Herald Report On May 11, Google celebrated the 108th birthday of renowned short story writer Saadat Hasan Manto with a doodle. Saadat Hasan Manto was …

“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky …

In 1856, the Maharaja Gulab Singh ruled the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir, with the blessing of the British. Lieutenant Thomas George Montgomerie, the commissioner of the Great British Trigonometric Survey of India, was trying to ascertain the heights of the peaks in northwestern Kashmir, but he couldn’t actually get close to ones he wanted to measure: He was …

He was one of Indian cinema’s finest actors and among its most successful exports to Hollywood. He had only just begun, writes Nandini Ramnath.   News Desk Irfan Khan (1967-2020), one of the acclaimed and finest actors of Indian cinema died in Mumbai on Wednesday. He was 53. A veteran of nearly 80 films, Irrfan almost gave up acting in his …

Migrant workers in India, Pakistan and Nepal are crushed by poverty as earnings come to an abrupt halt in the lockdown forced by the Covid-19 pandemic, says a report compiled by Joydeep Gupta, Zofeen T Ebrahim, Ramesh Bhushal, published in thethirdpole.net online magazine. News Desk Across South Asia, the impact of the Covid-19 on livelihoods has been extreme. Despite being an outlier …

A Pakistani worker in Karachi sorts wheat grain on April 7 to make flour to keep people fed during the country’s lockdown amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Photo: Shahzaib Akber (EPA-EFE) That strawberry you’re eating while self-isolating from the coronavirus? Chances are it came from a farm. Or it may have come from a large agricultural operation many, many kilometres …

The award-winning author addressed a gathering at Jantar Mantar in Delhi on Sunday   Beloved friends, comrades and my fellow writers, This place where we are gathered today is only a short bus ride away from where four days ago a fascist mob, fired up by speeches made by members of the Ruling Party, backed up and actively assisted by …

Hong Kong, Lebanon, Sudan, Brazil and Colombia are witnessing similar movements.   by Alka Kurian Women are among the strongest opponents of India’s Citizenship Amendment Act and the proposed National Register of Citizens, which threaten the citizenship rights of vulnerable groups like Muslims, poor women, oppressed castes and LGBTQ people. The Act, passed in December 2019, fast-tracks Indian citizenship for undocumented refugees from …

Abhrajyoti Chakraborty on a giant of the Bengali renaissance   When Rabindranath Tagore died in 1941, crowds gathered outside his ancestral mansion in Calcutta hoping to catch a last glimpse. As soon as the body was brought out of the house, everyone charged toward it at once. Hairs were plucked from his beard, wreaths tossed from buildings on the funeral …