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India’s Nuclear Fizzle

Suspicion has now turned into confirmed fact: India’s hydrogen bomb test of May 1998 was not the fantastic success it was claimed to be.

Hindu Mathematics – How Original Was It?

Plofker’s book (Mathematics in India) fulfils an important need in a world where mathematical historiography has been largely shaped by the dominance of the Greco-Christian world view and the Enlightenment period.

It's Yet Another Pakistani Nuclear Anniversary Today

People of North Korea gained nothing from their country’s nuclearisation. But they cannot challenge their oppressors. But, we Pakistanis — who are far freer — must ask: what have we gained from the bomb?

How Greed Ruins Academia

Naked greed is now destroying the moral fibre of academia. Professors across the country are clamoring to lift even minimal requirements that could assure quality education.

World Bank Help For Pakistan’s Education – A Poisoned Chalice?

What Pakistan needs from the Bank is help for improving the dilapidated infrastructure of ordinary colleges where the bulk of Pakistani students in higher education study, not more half-baked universities.

Reckoning Time for HEC

The new HEC head, yet to be appointed, has a difficult task ahead. One hopes that he or she will have the dynamism and eloquence of Dr Atta-ur-Rahman, but not the flaws.

Anti-Americanism in Pakistan and the Taliban Menace

The Taliban are waging an armed struggle to remake society. They will keep fighting this war even if America were to miraculously evaporate into space.

Pakistan's Nuclear Test - Ten Years Later

Today we are at war on multiple fronts. But the Bomb provides no defense. Rather, it has helped bring us to this grievously troubled situation and offers no way out.

Where Billions Vanish

The Musharraf years are over. It is now time for parliament to carry out a public inquiry into the irresponsible and crazy policies that have hitherto been the hall-mark of decision-making.

Pakistan: The War of Drones

Why do so many Pakistanis suddenly lose their voice when it comes to condemning suicide bombings? Is it because the bomber kills in the name of Islam?

Pakistan's Universities - Problems and Solutions

300% jump in research publications, nine new engineering universities with European faculty, 3000 Pakistani students sent overseas for higher-degrees...self-serving lies, half-truths and deceit.

The Power of Ideas and the Modern University

Ideas rule the world, drive our actions, inform our beliefs, and unleash mighty revolutions. How must Pakistan’s higher education system change for it to succeed?

Jinnah and the Islamic State – Setting the Record Straight

What did Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, want for the country he was destined to create in 1947?

Science and the Islamic world --- The quest for rapprochement

With well over a billion Muslims and extensive material resources, why is the Islamic world disengaged from science and the process of creating new knowledge?

Preventing More Lal Masjids

What should the government do after the guns stop firing and the hostages are out, whether dead or alive?

Pakistan – The Threat From Within

It is an open question as to exactly how much further Pakistan will move towards religious radicalism in the years to come.

What Next After Karachi’s Carnage?

Although Musharraf denies that he wants a postponement, a lengthy martial law may now be his only chance for a continuation of his dictatorial rule into its eighth year – and perhaps beyond.

Teaching Science Badly – and Well

Dogmatism kills science. Students should therefore experience science as a process for extending understanding, not as unalterable truth. Never should the teacher say X or Y is true just because that’s what the textbook says.

Education Reform: Signs of Hope

There is good news: the “White Paper” to “debate and finalize national education policy”, distributed in December 2006 by the Ministry of Education, though incomplete and flawed, is an enormous step forward.

Re-Imagining Pakistan

Commencement lecture by Pervez Hoodbhoy at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, 9 December 2006.

Musharraf’s Coup - Seven Years Later

Some had feared – while others had hoped – that General Pervez Musharraf’s coup of October 12, 1999, would bring the revolution of Kemal Ataturk to a Pakistan firmly in the iron grip of mullahs.

Waiting for Enlightenment

After almost five years of ‘enlightened moderation,’ it seems there is more continuity than change. And, with each passing day, it becomes harder to see how such a policy can hope to stem the tide of religious radicalism that is overwhelming P

What Pakistan’s Bomb Could Not Buy

Nuclear racing and doctrines is everywhere and always driven by the same implacable, mad, runaway logic. Should there be the slightest danger of the race slackening, a nuclear “expert” will point to the other side’s latest acquisition an

South Asia Needs a Bomb-less Deal

One certain consequence will be more bombs on both sides of the border. The deal is widely seen in Pakistan as signaling America’s support or acquiescence, or perhaps even surrender, to India’s nuclear ambitions

Assessing Pakistani Science

Websites of most Pakistani science and technology institutions are national embarrassments; the Centre for Applied and Molecular Biology has pictures of political personalities, starting with Gen. Musharraf, but links to its activities lead nowhere

No Burial for Balakot

Four days later, they are still not even trying to extricate the dead in the town of Balakot, flattened on the morning of October 8.

Bin Laden And Hiroshima

Even as the United States dusted off its hands and moved on, elsewhere the radioactive rubble of the dead cities spawned not only a sense of dread, but also an obsessive desire for nuclear weapons.

Reforms! What Reforms?

Pervez Hoodbhoy, a leading thinker and educationist in Pakistan is the latest target for the mindless policy makers running Pakistan. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, the same people, after all, have tried to stifle the voices of many others –

India Through Pakistani Eyes

Is India now set to become a science juggernaut, a leader of the coming 'Asian Century'? A nascent superpower of the East?

Reforming Pakistan’s Universities -- II

Three years ago the first serious effort to deal with Pakistan’s chronically ill universities was finally initiated. Unfortunately, this effort by the Higher Education Commission has now become mired in an intense, growing controversy.

Reforming Pakistan’s Universties -- I

In this article I will look at the problems in our higher education system and why the HEC reforms are set to make a bad situation worse rather than better.

Can Pakistan Work?

According to a popular but rather humor­less Pakistani joke, “all countries have armies, but here, an army has a country.”

Pakistan: Inside The Nuclear Closet

Many in the Pakistani press had warned that any attempt to punish Qadeer, advertised for near two decades as the architect of Pakistan’s and the Islamic world’s nuclear bomb, would provoke rampaging mobs to demand an end to Musharraf’s p

The Nuclear Noose Around Pakistan’s Neck

Thirty years ago, fearful of India’s newly acquired nuclear weapons, Pakistan set out on its own quest to become a nuclear weapons state...Few could have imagined then that the move from buyer to seller of the world’s deadliest technology w

Rethinking Plebiscite In Kashmir

By declaring that 'we have left aside' the United Nation Security Council resolutions for a solution to Kashmir, General Pervez Musharraf shattered a long-held taboo.

Pervez Hoodbhoy-Paul Kurtz correspondence

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Edward Said was slandered by Ibn Warraq, a man with pretensions to being a secular humanist and the author of several books.

Terror in Okara

Pakistan cannot bear the shock of nearly a million of its own people being dispossessed

Is It A War On Islam?

What, then, should be the strategy for all those who believe in a just world and are appalled by America's war on the weak?

What I Saw In Okara

An investigation into the Okara land dispute

Were We Too Hijacked by 9/11?

Al-Qaida had to be bombed, to let the Taliban be was not an option.

How Not to Reform Universities

By a stroke of some bureaucrat’s pen, the ’University of Malakand’ has now been deemed to exist

Lighting The Nuclear Fire

nuclear affairs are now being guided by wishful, delusional, thinking

The Wages of Obedience

The systemic failure of a whole class of people to think honestly and seriously, in short a failure to do their job as political analysts

Muslims and The West After 11th September

America has exacted blood revenge for the Twin Towers

Black Tuesday: The View From Islamabad

CNN and the US media have so far made little attempt to understand this affliction

Refusing the Sitara-I-Imtiaz

...look at our generals – they get a shovel-full of impressive medals each year that they proudly wear on their chests. But tell me how many wars have they won?

Refusing The Sitara-I-Imtiaz

our national awards have come to be associated with political maneuverings and manipulations

Our Blind Nuclear Prophets

why did Indian and Pakistani defence budgets go up, rather than down, after the May 1998 tests?

IT Is Not A Magic Wand

Pakistan yearns for a magic lamp

Defending the Indefensible

a lazy and heartless educational bureaucracy

Education Reforms: Yet Another Sham

In the hands of a semi-literate bureaucracy, which couldn’t care less about education

The Menace of Education

We cannot entrust the future of our country to those who cannot write a single straight sentence

Eqbal Ahmad: Post - Pokhran Days

The mountain had turned white. I wondered how much pain had been felt by nature ...

What are they Teaching in Pakistani Schools Today?

How Pakistan has been educating its young?

Pakistan in the Year 3000

Apes and Dumbos dont have much of a future on planet Earth

Men of the Millenium

Five personalities who shaped the last 1000 years

Dear Chowk Readers

A call for action from Pervez Hoodbhoy to the Chowk community for Science education in Pakistan

Why An Interim Civilian Government will Fail

Putting up a front government will achieve simply nothing

A Recipe For Unbridled Pak-India Competition

Independent thinking on foreign and defence policies has virtually ceased to exist

Pokhran-Chaghi audit: Winners and losers

India and Pakistan conducted their nuclear tests one year ago.

Eqbal Ahmed - As I Knew Him

I had not heard of Eqbal Ahmad until I heard him speak in 1971 at an anti-war demonstration at MIT

Bombs, Missiles and Pakistani Science

The Chaghi tests, and more recent Ghauri-II and Shaheen-I missile launches, have been deemed heroic symbols of high scientific achievement... Are they?

Why The War On Ghosts Was Lost

The scourge will be eradicated from its roots, thundered Mr. Shahbaz Sharif

Is Accidental Nuclear War Impossible?

...the truth is that accidents, sabotage, and tragedy have frequently haunted our two countries.

Living with the Bomb

A 2-5 minute flight time, almost zero chances of interception, and the impossibility of recall

Say No to Indian and Pakistani Bombs

...against the ideologies of hate created and promoted by our governments

The Rape of Khairpur University

Why have we collectively lost the will to protest crimes against people and institutions?

Salam, Science and Secularism

...I have chosen to talk not about Salam’s brilliant successes but, instead, his most spectacular failure ...

Why didn’t the Scientific Revolution happen in Islam?  

Every great civilization writes its own history, selectively extracts data from the past, and then proves to its satisfaction that its greatness has no peer or rival.

Pervez Hoodbhoy

• Articles on Chowk: 69
• First article: Dec 23, 1997
• Latest article: Sep 3, 2009
• Times read on Chowk: 2352990