Mired in economic and internal crises, Pakistan is primed for normalisation and trade with India – but Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government, beholden to anti-Muslim politics, is failing to seize the chance
Three recent volumes show historians moving beyond assumptions of a bounded Subcontinent, contextualising the 20th century by centring regional and local politics that complicate nation-state narratives
Political and military analyst Ayesha Siddiqa discusses the support for Imran Khan in Pakistan’s recent election, the formation of a new government under Shebaz Sharif and growing public disaffection with the military
Pakistan’s military is obviously backing Nawaz Sharif and the PML–N, at the cost of Imran Khan and his PTI, but how long until it again falls out with an elected government it once supported?
Pakistan’s prisons remain terribly overcrowded and under-resourced, and nascent efforts at progressive reform are stymied by ingrained attitudes of discrimination, including against religious and ethnic minorities
‘For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit’, an anthology of prison poems, testifies to the coercive nature of the state and society – yet its under-representation of regional poets speaks of wider exclusions
The conditions that created Pakistanis’ unique relationship with the Bollywood star no longer exist, and they are so mired in political and economic turmoil that even his cinematic offerings provide no respite
A crackdown on undocumented migrants is forcing thousands back to uncertain fates in Afghanistan, and ratcheting up tensions between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban
With Nawaz Sharif’s return, the Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz is looking to strengthen a shaky grip over Punjab, and testing again its tricky relationship with the military establishment
