Zulfiquar Rao
Daily Times
Contact Zulfiquar
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
| Recent: |
|
| Past: |
|
Past articles by Zulfiquar:
Jinnah’s August 11 speech wasn’t about a secular Pakistan
Modernists love to believe that since Jinnah spoke in most secular terms at the very inauguration of the constituent assembly of Pakistan which was going to emerge on the globe three days later — this is what must define Pakistan constitutionally. Conservatives have been of the view that just one speech from Jinnah can’t be … → Read More
Kartarpur Corridor: a right that tells what's wrong with us
While visiting Pakistan on the eve of Kartarpur corridor’s foundation laying ceremony this week, the Indian Punjab’s Tourism minister, Navjot Singh Sidhu, hardly exaggerated when he likened Pakistani Punjab as the Mecca and Madina for the Sikhs world over. Certainly, it was in the Pakistani side of Punjab where Baba Guru Nanak, the founder of … → Read More
Girls’ education holds the key for social change
During all his struggle in the last 22 years and more incessantly so in the last five years Imran Khan rightly voiced for preferential investment into human development. Education and health come up as obvious areas of attention. Given the fact that Pakistan’s population has doubled between 1998 to 2018, still growing at a rate … → Read More
Demonizing the physical symbols of our republic
Last week Prime Minister (PM)Imran Khan, tweeted with a brimming sense of achievement that the Governor House in Lahore was open for the public for the first time in the history of Pakistan. He also shared a photo of a swarm of disorderly people entering the building. We also saw a TV Show where the … → Read More
A reservoir of juvenile hypocrisy
The noisy zealousness that we are witnessing about the need to construct the Diamir-Bhasha dam reflects very poorly of our national psyche. It’s amazing how suddenly, we have woken to this reality that water scarcity poses an existential threat to Pakistan. However, the situation did not turn dire recently. The fact is, Pakistan has been … → Read More
Bhutto’s role in the 1965 War
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was a lone star under Ayub Khan’s regime, who enjoyed exceptional influence among both the masses and the military establishment. Despite being from a landed aristocratic family from Sindh and studying in the west, Bhutto’s vision of Pakistan was laced with a complicated identity of Socialism and Islam. For instance, although back … → Read More
A brief history of the PTI
Imran Khan’s ascendency as the 22nd Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan is indeed a spectacular outcome for Khan’s 22 year old political struggle. He founded his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in 1996, and stood for social justice and accountability on the model set by Hazrat Omar (RA), the second of the four Rightly Guided Caliphs … → Read More
What democracy are we scared of losing?
Just last month in Delhi, a family of eleven committed collective suicide. Initially, it looked as if there must be some wicked perpetrator behind this chilling mass suicide; however, not before it was too late, the police found out that the deaths were result of a shared psychological disorder that this unfortunate family lived with. … → Read More
Tokenism won’t help women
When Benazir Bhutto got elected as the first woman premier of a Muslim country in the winter of 1988, it was a spectacular feat in the real sense of the word. With understandable awe, the whole world admired this achievement. A woman had been elected Prime Minister (PM) of a country which had just passed … → Read More
Behind the Judicial smokescreen
Political history in Pakistan oscillates between the years of democratic rule and military dictatorship. Incidentally, in every decade of Pakistan’s existence in the last seventy one years, this back and forth of regimes has happened between the 7th and 9th year of the decade. For instance, the first inning of a democratic regime ended in … → Read More
No, Asma would not agree to a state funeral
When news of renowned human rights defender Asma Jahangir’s passing broke out on Sunday, it seemed as if the most marginalised sections of Pakistani society had been orphaned. She was an active defender of democracy and human rights till the night before her death. So much has been written about Jahangir in the last few … → Read More
Pakistan’s adrenaline fuelled judiciary
Medical science tells us that the hormone known as adrenaline is released inside an animal’s body in response to fear, anxiety or excitement. What is more interesting is that the hormone is secreted as a result of the body’s psychosomatic functions — the presence of a real cause for fear or excitement hardly matters. Just … → Read More
Why religious intolerance isn’t surprising
As if the situation of religious freedom in Pakistan was any good in the previous years, in early January, the US re-designated Pakistan on the watch list of countries where the states have either tolerated or unleashed outright violations of religious freedom. It has been reported that for the last fifteen years, the so-called independent … → Read More
A séance with Jinnah's spirit
I was captivated to know of a document archived in British Library, London, which is a record of a special séance with the spirit of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah held at 6 pm on March 13, 1955 — eight years after creation of Pakistan and seven years after Quaid’s death. The special séance, where a … → Read More
Has Punjab changed?
It’s been almost three months since Nawaz Sharif was ousted through a questionable verdict by Supreme Court. Many in Pakistan and abroad believe it was actually part of the scheme from the Pakistani establishment. Although it’s just over ten weeks since Sharif’s removal, a small time to witness the usual defections from among his party … → Read More
Decimating dissent
The ongoing crackdown through FIA on liberal and democratic social media activists, supposedly to protect the security forces from unwarranted criticism through their online contents seems a flashback from 1999. Around the same time of the year in 1999, as imminent as just five months before the second government of Nawaz Sharif was overthrown by General Musharraf, the government was so obsessed… → Read More
DAWN Leaks has lessons for PPP
It’s heartening that the DAWN Leaks stalemate — obviously blown out of proportion from the day one — is now settled. However, the entire episode offers several lessons for political parties and their leadership — particularly for the Pakistan People’s Party that so proudly lays claim to its democratic credentials. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had exercised its rightful powers when it issued… → Read More
A ‘psychic’ tweet
Last October, daily Dawn carried an exclusive story about deliberations from a meeting on national security, chaired by the prime minister. The meeting was called to review the results of Pakistan’s diplomatic outreach to the world for countering India’s avowed plan to isolate it internationally in the backdrop of Pathankot Attack. India had claimed that the attack was carried out by terrorists… → Read More
Re-integration: not this way, please!
Since 2008 Pakistan military along with federal and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial governments have signed over a dozen truce agreements with TTP and its variants. These agreements ranged from with a particular group of TTP within a part of the FATA Tribal Agency to a broader agreement as we saw in Malakand Swat. While the incumbent government, military officials, and apologists of TTP in… → Read More
Let us reclaim Pakistan from extremists
On April 13, a mob at Mardan University tortured two students one of whom was lynched to death over rumors of blasphemy allegations. The incident happened just days after we came to know that the family of slain qawwal Amjad Fareed Sabri was desperate to leave the country. They fear retaliation from members of a TTP-affiliated LeJ group following the arrest of two men associated with this banned… → Read More