Mahatma Gandhi once said that India’s soul lives in its villages. That may well be so, but there is increasing evidence that itsbrain has developed in towns and cities. Unfortunately, while this could never have been the Mahatma’s intention, a curious guilt complex has gripped India’s policy makers as far as the development…
Faiz Ahmed Faiz walked up the stairs to the high terrace of his house in Karachi, and looked down at the city that lay in front ofhim. The country was going through a phase of intense repression under the rule of General Ayub Khan. What Faiz could see from his vantage point was a seamless and unified urban grid that resembled…
In recent years several books have been published on Indian cities. This is a healthy trend because the more we know about our cities,the more effectively we will be able to mediate its development. In this genre, the most written about city in India is perhaps Mumbai. Publications on the city have ranged from coffee table books, fiction…
Mushairah is a poetic symposium in which contemporary poets congregate and recite their original poems. In its classical form, a Mushairah is a literary spectacle where poets of the day exhibit their tremendous creative energies, combined with deep imagination and emotional intensity in their poetry…
Mainstream historiography of Medieval India has hardly explored the early period of the Delhi Sultanate. As the author states in the Preface, the modern historians of Medieval India, with the exception of Peter Hardy, have utilized the compiled histories of the Medieval Period primarily as sources of information…
Dislocation and rootlessness are modern phenomena which stem from the emergence of the nation state and has opened up an entire arm in academics that focuses ‘on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences.’ As Homi Bhabha puts it, ‘The move away from the singularities…