Islamabad Chaupal

Since ancient times, Chaupal has been revered as the sacro sanctum place in the village community. Traditionally the platform of village elders sitting under a banyan tree to address issues faced by village folk. Chaupal is a meeting of all in the rural society-men and women, young and old, strong and feeble…

Glimpses from Recent Chaupals
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Nadeem Omar Tarar

HEC’s Unending Failures
01/01/2020

With an annual budget of Rs 90 billion, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) strives to follow its mission statement ‘to facilitate institutions of Higher Learning to serve as an engine of Pakistan’s socio-economic development’. Last month, HEC released its annual performance report on the state of higher education in the country for the year 2014-15, after a lapse of three years. This defeats the very purpose of an annual report, which is...

The Historical Tombs of the Martyrs of Gomal Valley
01/01/2020

The spread of Islam in South Asia brought in its wake the tradition of funerary architecture in India, where no such custom existed. In medieval Islamic society, the commemoration of the dead and their celebration in architectural form was reserved for the powerful and wealthy. Over the course of centuries, a large number of tombs and shrines of the spiritual and political Muslim elite began to dominate the Indian landscape. Housed in aquatic or...

The Monument of Ideology
01/01/2020

Minar-e-Pakistan is one of the most publicized monuments of the country, which has become the emblem of national identity of Pakistan. Inaugurated in October 1969, Minar-e-Pakistan marks the passing of Lahore Resolution on March 23, 1940 by the All India Muslim League (AIML) at Minto Park, Lahore. The resolution marking the anti-colonial struggle called for separate states in the Muslim majority areas of the Indian subcontinent. Twenty years...

A Pictorial Memorabilia of Pakistan’s Independence
01/01/2020

F. E. Chaudhry, Pakistan’s first professional press photographer, extensively covered the activities of the Muslim Leagues' struggle for the independence. Credited to have taken photographs of Quaid-i-Azam, he followed the lives and career of all the Muslim League leaders, including Liaquat Ali Khan. As a visual chronicler of his times, he photographed the upheavals of partition and the migration of thousands of refugees from across the newly-drawn...

Pakistan’s National Culture: A Mosaic of Regional Identities
01/01/2020

14th August is not only the day for celebration of national independence, but also a day for the reclamation of the cultural paradigms of Pakistani nationhood. It is a historic day to remember that the very etymology of the word Pakistan, as coined by a young Muslim nationalist, Chaudhry Rahmat Ali in 1933, is rooted in its regional identities. Like the acronym itself, which draws from the initials of the five regions of Northern India, including...

Connecting the Two Capitals: From Taxila to Islamabad
01/01/2020

When Pakistani government chose to shift capital from the bustling port city of Karachi to the north of Rawalpindi, where the Potohar plateau rises to Margalla Hills, little did they realize that they are establishing a direct territorial link to the capital of an ancient civilization, Takshasila, i.e., the hill capital of the Kingdom of Gandhara. Situated at the pivotal junction of trade routes of South Asia and Central Asia in the lush green...

Cultural Heritage on the Cusp of Silk Roads: Caravanserai Kharbooza in Islamabad
29/12/2019

Historically, the caravanserais supported the flow of commerce, information, and people across the Silk Road networks of trade routes connecting Asia, North Africa, and southeastern Europe. Many thousands of caravanserais were built across the world, over the millennium, from the 9th to the 19th centuries, in the wake of spread and stability of Muslim rule in vast territories across continents, leading to the growth of land trade between...

Reclaiming Pakistan’s Central Asian Heritage
29/12/2019

Little do we realize that Pakistan's historical cultural geography makes it as much a part of South Asia as it is of Central Asia. Historically linked by trade, politics and religion, Pakistan and Central Asia share a historic legacy, which is based on thousands of years of known interaction between the Central Asian and South Asian civilizations. The cultural imprint of Central Asia on the social fabric of Pakistan is reflected in its...

Defeating Terrorism to Promoting Tourism: Pakistan’s Promise for Cultural Diplomacy
29/12/2019

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts,” wrote famous American writer Mark Twain in his 1869 travel book, The Innocents Abroad. Pakistan was a prominent tourist destination in the days of overland journey connecting Pakistan with its Asian neighbors in the 1960-70s. The “hippie trail” brought thousands of travelers from Western Europe and America to...

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