A Work In Progress My dear Stuka Dive Bomber,
Thanks for correcting me about Bengal. You see the piece of land in question is this part, and so my omission.
By the way, I am new to chowk, but I wonder what made you have the nom de plume of JU87D (if I remember correctly from my childhood war comics) `Stuka` dive bomber of Luftwaffe, the terror of European cities till it met its superiors, hurricane and spitfires?
And when I said overwhelming majority, I did not forget the minority communities, and neither did Mr Jinnah. His historic 11 August 1947 opening address to the constituent assembly of Pakistan guaranteed equal rights to all. And Mr Jinnah, everybody agrees, meant what he said.
I do not know why are you terrified of being a minority under muslim rule, when inspite of all the horror stories, the share of state posts in Aurangzeb`s Mughal heirarchy was 50/50. Please see Sir Jadunaath Sarkaar`s History of Aurangzeb.
As for Jinnah, he nominated the hedonistic barrister son of Sir Sobha Singh, I mean our dear old Khushwant Singh, as Justice of Lahore High Court. Prime Minister IK Gujraal`s father I forget his name was his first choice as the Law Minister, later the Honorable Joginder Naath Mandal , a lower caste member from Bengal, was selected. Gujraal senior was on the Governor General Council as Minister Without portfolio with special responsibility for inter-communal relations, till he left for India in december 47 or jan 48. I have discussed that in detail in Chowk unplugged, off the wall discussions, Happy Birthday Mr Jinnah, so no point repeating here that the Pakistan Dream was very different from what India has forced it to become. Your brother, IK

A Work In Progress My dear Stuka Dive Bomber,
Thanks for correcting me about Bengal. You see the piece of land in question is this part, and so my omission.
By the way, I am new to chowk, but I wonder what made you have the nom de plume of JU87D (if I remember correctly from my childhood war comics) `Stuka` dive bomber of Luftwaffe, the terror of European cities till it met its superiors, hurricane and spitfires?
And when I said overwhelming majority, I did not forget the minority communities, and neither did Mr Jinnah. His historic 11 August 1947 opening address to the constituent assembly of Pakistan guaranteed equal rights to all. And Mr Jinnah, everybody agrees, meant what he said.
I do not know why are you terrified of being a minority under muslim rule, when inspite of all the horror stories, the share of state posts in Aurangzeb`s Mughal heirarchy was 50/50. Please see Sir Jadunaath Sarkaar`s History of Aurangzeb.
As for Jinnah, he nominated the hedonistic barrister son of Sir Sobha Singh, I mean our dear old Khushwant Singh, as Justice of Lahore High Court. Prime Minister IK Gujraal`s father I forget his name was his first choice as the Law Minister, later the Honorable Joginder Naath Mandal , a lower caste member from Bengal, was selected. Gujraal senior was on the Governor General Council as Minister Without portfolio with special responsibility for inter-communal relations, till he left for India in december 47 or jan 48. I have discussed that in detail in Chowk unplugged, off the wall discussions, Happy Birthday Mr Jinnah, so no point repeating here that the Pakistan Dream was very different from what India has forced it to become. Your brother, IK

A Work In Progress The season of Jinnah-bashing is in full swing again. Now he is akin to some real -estate man rather than the statesman he was.
His Pakistan was not created with all these fantastic possibilities in mind: It was already there- the solid land-mass where muslims constituted an overwhelming majority of the population , and aspired to an independent state for - as you say- the Pursuit of Happiness according to their own ideas.

Master of Islam Master of Islam? Master has the connotations of some thing par excellence.
Psycho of Islam would be more appropriate.
The Afghan `Jihad` of the 80s symbolizing the dead mother in Bates motel.
And Bates Motel??
Taleban Afghanistan???

Calligraphy In Islam Bhai Banjaara,
Kis problem main par gaye ho bhai. As they say,little knowledge is dangerous, but in this case it is hilarious. Calligraphy has nothing to do with the supposed suppression of any other creative art-form. The very english word is not derived from any arab/muslim root (as chemistry, algebra etc) so obviously it described something in the european context. The medaevial europe wrote their books, especially holy bible, in beautiful calligraphic forms, and illuminated it with human-form and practised sculpture as well. So please dont spoil my fun I just had attending the Canterbury Catheral new year service while visiting Kent university. Before you start condemning me, I went/ was invited inspite of declaring myself and declining holy communion. I went for sheer drama and enjoyment of spiritual music and, er, calligrapy!!!

Calligraphy In Islam Hey Jay
How would you describe all the calligraphic hindi/devnagri script signboards, not to talk of all stylized calligraphy of English words which look nagri script at first glance? Prime example roaming the world is Air India . Now what suppression makes them to paint their aircraft widows, each one of them, as mihrabs of Jamia Masjid in Delhi. Surely some musla conspiracy here, Jay ram bhai?

Calligraphy In Islam Dear mbenzenglish
I wonder why you spin every purely muslim cultural/aesthetic activity into a nightmarish scenario of possible coming armageddon . Your latest ramblings are of a bizzare blurred kind associated with you know what.

Imran Khan Needs Money The comments have gotten off the rails and heading nowhere. Lets get back to the Great Khan and his big Ego problem, sorry, his political problem. In the dirty waters of Paki politics, even a moron does know his worth after a while, unless he or she has Angles as voters and Brass monkeys as backers. So ideally he should have struck to his charity work. Now one way out of this dilemma is for Payjama,sorry Jemima Khan to set up an endowment trust with once in a life time mega donation to run the hospital from its income, so that the Great Khan is free to muck around in the dirty waters of Paki politics full time. And you never know, some Major/Lt. Col level circle of friends in some Garrison club are already watching his ARY appearances with fond approval...

Foreword of Aag ka Dariya I think Annie Hyder (as she styled herself while holding the powerful Information Czar post in the government of Pakistan) wrote best and fresh in ` Maire Bhi Sanam Khanay`.Its zietgiest portrayal was never surpassed in later work, which increasingly became a rehash and totally baroque .
Anyway, I would like to know if Qurratul ain Haider is still alive, and if so, where?

Fair and Lovely Dont blame the Fair and Lovely wallahs. The wedding photographers have started creating hollywood class beauties by paling and airbrushing the brides so that even their husbands do not recognize them the day after...and wonder, ahem, have they been cheated!