This section presents the history of Pakistan from the partition of British India (1947) to the present. For a discussion of the earlier history of the region, see India. Background to partition The call for establishing an independent Islamic state on the Indian subcontinent can be traced to a 1930 speech by Sir Muhammad Iqbal, a poet-philosopher and, at the time,… Read More »
Noted poet Mir Taqi Mir had a daughter who was also a poet and used ‘Begam’ as her pen name. It is said that she died soon after her marriage. Mir plunged into deep mourning and said a couplet on this incident which is not even found in his kulliyat or any hand written books. ab aayaa dhiyaan… Read More »
Thanks to the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in Peshawar, 23-year-old Jabeen said she had been able to continue her master’s degree – keeping alive her dreams of becoming a botanist. “My parents had decided to stop my education … because they didn’t like me travelling in the dishevelled Mazda wagons,” Jabeen said, referring to the city’s privately… Read More »
There lived three brothers. They had a small firm and little cottage, in which they lived. The eldest brother, Tanyen, worked hard in the firm while his lazy and selfish brothers, Zhoshu and Penhun, ate and slept all day. It was difficult to meet the needs of the family with the meager income that Tanyen said to his… Read More »
The industrial revolution, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, saw a mass migration from small villages and towns to cities. Previously, most people had lived in rural locations and would be buried in the local church’s graveyard. But with a growing urban population, the authorities in Victorian Britain built large cemeteries, often on the outskirts of cities. Those… Read More »
Often people use the words home and house interchangeably assuming they mean the same thing. These are actually similar words. In fact they can mean the same entity, but in different contexts. When you point out to a building and say it is your house, you mean the physical building; whereas when you say it is your home,… Read More »
Giving children gifts during religious festivals is a tradition followed by families across the globe. For Muslims, those presents often take the form of eidiyah, spending money distributed to children on celebrations such as Eid Al Fitr and Eid Al Adha. The social tradition dates to the early Middle Ages, when the Fatimid caliphs distributed money, sweets or… Read More »
I remember when I first became aware of my out-of-control father-anger. One frigid winter morning when I was 15, my mother woke me to go with her to the welfare office on Chicago’s West Side. She’d received a notice that her check was being held due to insufficient information. My mother was mumbling under her breath that all… Read More »
Garlic not only helps in controlling blood pressure but also lowers cholesterol and at the same time eliminates heart diseases With the help of garlic, your immune system will work better, toxins will be released from the body, if onion and garlic are used together, then the harms caused by chemotherapy can be reduced. Health experts say that… Read More »
Prince Philip is famously required to walk two steps behind his wife in public. But is he required to stand two steps behind her, even when this leads to his head and that of his wife’s being on different sides of a theatrical curtain? That’s what happened when the couple stood as they listened to the National Anthem… Read More »