India and Pakistan’s new education policies will push their respective religious minorities into a corner Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy ON July 29, Narendra Modi’s government unveiled what it calls a groundbreaking new national education policy (NEP 2020). The 65-page document’s wide range — from primary to university — forces me to consider here just a single issue: To what extent does …

Partition left many border people in the lurch. Dr Asim Sajjad Akhtar THE announcement by the prime minister earlier this week of a ‘new political map’ of the country in which India-occupied Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh are depicted as part of Pakistan is, on the surface, much ado about nothing. Designed to coincide with the first anniversary of the Modi regime’s decision …

In responding to Indian provocation, Pakistan abandoned its principled stand about who can legitimately decide on the fate of Kashmir, writes Farhatullah Babar by Farhatullah Babar Exactly a year after Prime Minister Modi annulled the special status of Kashmir and annexed the region into the Indian territory, Pakistan responded by unveiling with great fanfare its own new political map. The new …

On two days, seventy-five years ago, the United States used nuclear weapons in combat for the first and, so far, only time in history. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on August 6 and 9, 1945, killed a quarter of a million people and ushered in an era of imperialist aggression through the threat of global annihilation. Then, as now, …

UN-appointed independent human rights experts have called for urgent action in India’s Jammu and Kashmir, amid concerns of ongoing abuses against civilians there.

Covid-19 has exposed the myth of neoliberal free-market economic model Herald Report The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that the world is at breaking point, and the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the free market and deep divisions in society, calling for a new global deal to combat climate change, forced migration, diseases, patriarchy and racism. Inequality, an issue …

Hunza matters, of course, but those who live in poverty are not troublemakers and there is no technical or academic solution for that, writes Amir Hussain in his latest article. He attempts to provide a critical reflection of socio-economic and political transformation in the Hunza valley.  by Amir Hussain The article is by no means a review of ‘Hunza Matters’, …

We must look at the roots of capitalism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and anti-Blackness to leave settler colonialism in the past.   by LEANNE BETASAMOSAKE SIMPSON I understand settler colonialism’s present structure as one that is formed and maintained by a series of processes for the purposes of dispossessing, that create scaffolding within which my relationship to the state is contained. I certainly do …

Beware splashy corporate gestures when they leave existing power structures intact. by Helen Lewis Tumbrels are rattling through the streets of the internet. Over the past few years, online-led social movements have deposed gropers, exposed bullies—and, sometimes, ruined the lives of the innocent. Commentators warn of “mob justice,” while activists exult in their newfound power to change the world. Both groups …

  News Desk The US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was backed by most countries in the region, who shared the goal of ousting the extremist Taliban regime and eliminating the allied Al-Qaeda terrorist network. The governments in Tehran, Moscow, and Islamabad readily helped the United States fight the extremist groups. Iran provided crucial intelligence to support US special forces …