Laal Hartal pays tribute to the revolutionary poet at ILF-2019 Farman Ali The discourse generated by a rhythmic circle titled ’22 Crore’ by Laal Hartal has been able to create a ripple effect after receiving huge appreciation by academic and literary circles. The poem was presented at the inaugural session of the sixth edition of the Islamabad Literature Festival during …

Herald Report As we celebrate the near four decades struggle launched by women activists for equal rights in Pakistani society and for democratic and secular values, there is a need to learn from past experiences, failures, successes and redefine the objectives, and direction of such movements in the face of emerging challenges like climate change, rising tide of extremism, authoritarianism …

By Abu Ayesha Ali Yavar, a former student leader, who passed away on Thursday (September 5, 2019) at the age of 74 at Ziauddin Hospital in Clifton, led a very active life during his student days at the Government College Nazimabad in the 1960s. He became president of the students union in hotly contested elections that turned out to be …

Raza Naeem on the enduring appeal of Sibte Hasan’s ‘Mazi Ke Mazar’, 50 years after it was written   by Raza Naeem In our part of the world, the life of books is too short – not unlike an untimely death in infancy. It is a small mercy if a book manages to live for four or five years, but it …

Expresses solidarity with ‘prisoners of conscience’ in GB, their families and AWPGB struggle for rights Herald Report Islamabad: Women Democratic Front (WDF), Pakistan’s premier socialist-feminist organization, has condemned a recent verdict of an anti-terrorism court awarding 90 years prison term to political activists Iftikhar Hussain Kabalai, a leader of Karakoram National Movement. WDF president Ismat Shahjahan in a solidarity message …

Algerian poet Djamal Amrani was born in 1935 in Sour El Gozlane. Central to his life and work were his involvement in the Algerian liberation movement, and his arrest and torture by the French Army for participating in a 1956 student strike. Amrani was imprisoned for two years for his revolutionary activities, and then expelled to France. From this ordeal …

Dinmukhamed Kunaev was a leader of Soviet Kazakhstan. As the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan he was in office from 7 December 1964, to 16 December 1986. The house opened as a museum on January 12, 2012, Kunaev’s birthday, and displays almost the entire heritage of its owner, creating an authentic atmosphere of the recent, but at the same …

Raza Naeem offers a translation in which the late Enver Sajjad (1935 – 2019) writes about himself and his art by Raza Naeem Translator’s Note: One of Pakistan’s last true Renaissance men, writer, novelist, artist, actor, dancer and playwright, Dr Enver Sajjad passed away on June 6 last week. He was one of the last Pakistani writers who wrote fiction of an …

Raza Naeem on the politics and worldview contained in the work of Kaifi Azmi (1919–2002) by Raza Naeem “Stone Kaifi to death, the rulers cried The Messiah? We do not know where he hides!” Born Syed Athar Hussain Rizvi, a hundred years ago this year, Kaifi Azmi, who passed away into eternity seventeen years ago on the 10th of May earlier …

by Raza Naeem “I am the trader of sighs To versify blood is my mission Remaining winds of the garden! Gather your refuges…for My fiery songs Are about to cause an upheaval within depressed bosoms” When the Jallianwala Bagh massacre occured in 1919, Saadat Hasan Manto was nine years old. The hero of Jallianwala Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew was a close relative …