Each day brings news of fresh horror from Pakistan—as I write this review it was the bombing of Data Darbar, a shrine dedicated toLahore’s patron saint, the Persian-born Abul Hassan Ali Hajvery. Revered by Sunni, Shi’a, Ahmediyya, and Hindus, this was perhaps the greatest possible moral insult to Pakistan’s cultural capital…
The book under review is a compilation of papers presented at the Asian Security Conference organized by the Institute for DefenceStudies and Analyses (IDSA) in 2008, the tenth such annual event since it was started in 1999. The IDSA should be congratulated for their commendable initiative to hold this annual event…
A theory of International Relations (IR) which purports to be cultural needs to grapple with at least three categories of problems.The first concerns this whole business of grand theory. Dreams of a final theory, a set of immutable and fundamental truths about the universe which would explain everything that happens…
A consistent lament of those teaching Political Science in India has been the general absence of globally competent thematic collections that address the specific requirements of an Indian readership. Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta contribute fundamentally in remedying this inadequacy by inviting…
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…