Category Archives: Sociology

Years Ago, Two Urdu Poets Had Spoken on the Dishonour of Honour Killings-By Raza Naeem

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(Shared by Dr. Ehtisham)

On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, translations offer a glimpse into Kishwar Naheed and Zehra Nigah’s protests against the practice.

On this day in 1960, 60 years ago, three activists against the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic were beaten and thrown off a cliff. They were the Mirabal sisters. They were called ‘Las Mariposas’ or ‘The Butterflies’. This brutality took place fewer than two weeks after another incident under another brutal dictatorship, thousands of miles away in Pakistan. The brutal murder and disappearance of the communist leader Hasan Nasir under the Ayub Khan dictatorship on November 13.

In memory of the slain sisters, in memory of their indelible beauty, today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. 

There are many mounds of earth

The ones hidden in the mounds

Are girls without a mark or trace.

Every evening Bhittai the master comes here

Comes and sits after squandering

The pearls of tears on all of them

And the fragrance of his consolations

Springs from the depths of the earthen desolations.   

He says, you my daughters

Will not be without name or trace

This will rather be the fate of those

Who have surrendered you without a bath or a shroud

To the earth’s repose

He says the culprits of love

Have indeed always suffered

But like my poetry

They too have always attained immortality.

You are that song of my art

Which I am writing with the blood of my heart.’ 

Meanwhile, Kishwar Naheed’s poem Kari Qabaristan Ki Sadaaen (‘The Cries of the Kari Cemetery’) is longer and is from her collection Shireen Sukhni Se Pare (‘Away from Sweet Talk’, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 2018). In contrast to Nigah, it is a masterful soliloquy of the Kari with her murderers:

‘What was my crime

Just this to put henna on my hands sometime

Then sometimes on my own while alone

Moving my bangles and legs

Gathering the blooming buds

Of my dreams and joys

And laughing

My father and brother

Saw, moved forward

And seized my throat

Those who saw had told

That the marks of the veins of my neck

Had been imprinted on their fingers.

Baba, the one who you had nursed

Watching her wither like a red leaf

Prostrating in gratitude

You never even sweated

You never even buried me

They were some strangers definitely

Who brought me to the Kari cemetery.

Now when the evening arrives

From the grave every uncomfortable dream thrives

In the whole cemetery the lamps of desires

Light so many fires

Those who were released from life

With their Saanval in the name of honourhttps://6e91dae8cc2105781b21a3ed0ed35310.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

They had been buried as they were within the earth.

Those who saw have told that every evening

A pair of pigeons arrives at their grave for mourning.

All the stars in the sky

Are watched by angels from up high

In the lanes, quarters and bazaars

The people wearing higher turbans

In the form of intoxicated slogans

Speak in unison

Upon a girl being made Kari

“Thanks God! Our honour is still virgin.”

Oh my God!

Do you also consider my complaints

To be my sins

My mothers had covered me with many a curtain

You had given me the power to raise my pen

Upon all patriarchal, so-called men

Now to those who behead, do teach a lesson 

Open the bundle of the day when

The wish of my Punoon, my Ranjha, my Umar be fulfilled

Grant me again the twitter of parrots

Give me, not a black

But a striped scarf, which is embroidered!’

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International experts warn on impending danger of ‘genocide’ of Indian Muslims

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Washington DC:  At a panel discussion, international experts on genocidal violence warned on Tuesday the impending danger of ‘genocide’ of India’s 200 Million Muslims under the watch of present Indian regime.  They alerted   the international community to wake up to this lurking danger as unfolding situation in India is grim.

The panel discussion on “Ten Stages of Genocide and India’s Muslims,” expressed an urgent need to not only’ indict and sanction’ the Indian government, but to also expose it in the international community to prevent crimes against humanity. The discussion was organized by the Indian American Muslim Council.

In his opening remarks, Dr. Gregory Stanton said, “Preparation for genocide is definitely under way in India.” He explained, “The persecution of Muslims in Assam and Kashmir is the stage just before genocide. The next stage is extermination—that’s what we call genocide.”

Dr Stanton is the founder-president of Genocide Watch, an organization that works to predict, prevent and stop genocide and other forms of mass murder in the world. He also served in the U.S. State Department in the 1990s when he drafted the UN Security Council resolutions that created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

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shared by Dr. Ehtisham and posted by f.sheikh

Natural Pathogens & Social Affliction-By Kenan Malik

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“What iftropical diseases had as much attention as Covid?”, asked Francine Ntoumi, director of the Congolese Foundation for Medical Research, recently. Ntoumi was really asking two questions. What is happening to all the other diseases that ravage the global south as the world’s attention has focused on Covid-19? And why can’t we put as much energy and resources into tackling diseases such as malaria and TB as we have into stopping the coronavirus?

So far, around 1.5 million people have died from Covid-19 worldwide. That’s the same number that tuberculosis kills every year, year after year. Some studies predict that between now and 2025, up to 1.4 million more people will die from TB than normal as cases go undiagnosed and untreatedbecause of Covid lockdowns. Other studies suggest that deaths from malaria could increase by more than a third over the next five years. In India, registration of new TB cases between January and June this year dropped by more than 25% compared with the same period last year, while more than a third of people with TB found health facilities closed because of Covid-19 restrictions. In Uganda, the number of maternal deaths almost doubled in the first three months of this year, largely because there were far fewer births in hospitals and clinics.

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posted by f.sheikh

3 reasons for information exhaustion – and what to do about it-By Mark Satta

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An endless flow of information is coming at us constantly: It might be an article a friend shared on Facebook with a sensational headline or wrong information about the spread of the coronavirus.

It could even be a call from a relative wanting to talk about a political issue.

All this information may leave many of us feeling as though we have no energy to engage.

As a philosopher who studies knowledge-sharing practices, I call this experience “epistemic exhaustion.” The term “epistemic” comes from the Greek word episteme, often translated as “knowledge.” So epistemic exhaustion is more of a knowledge-related exhaustion.

It is not knowledge itself that tires out many of us. Rather, it is the process of trying to gain or share knowledge under challenging circumstances.

Currently, there are at least three common sources that, from my perspective, are leading to such exhaustion. But there are also ways to deal with them.

1. Uncertainty

For many, this year has been full of uncertainty. In particular, the coronavirus pandemic has generated uncertainty about health, about best practices and about the future.

At the same time, Americans have faced uncertainty about the U.S. presidential election: first due to delayed results and now over questions about a peaceful transition of power.

Experiencing uncertainty can stress most of us out. People tend to prefer the planned and the predictable. Figures from 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes to 20th-century Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein have recognized the significance of having certainty in our lives.

With information so readily available, people may be checking news sites or social media in hopes of finding answers. But often, people are instead greeted with more reminders of uncertainty.

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posted by f. sheikh