There were two brothers, Kala and Qadir. No one knows who they were, but a very small village bearing their name existed in tehsil Narowal of district Sialkot. Village Kala Qadir. My father saw the light of day in a destitute family of this village, a family where, to conserve the oil, the light of the clay lamp was put out early in the evening.   

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The British tradition of announcing the death of a king is "The king is dead, long live the king!"Nearly 25 years ago, Mahatama Gandhi writing a moving editorial on the late C.R Das in his exquisite English captioned it as "Deshbandhu is dead, long live Deshbandhu!" If we have chosen such a title for our humble tribute...

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As we write the Muslims of India and Pakistan are celebrating the birthday of the Quaid-i-Azam. As the man who has propelled, guided and controlled the national policies of nearly hundred million human souls, the man who has been responsible for the birth of a major State and the liberation of a major nation from economic...

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It is August 15 today. The dawn that brought this day into the world also restored to our people their long-lost freedom. Through many bleak decades of political serfdom, millions of us have waited and hoped for this dawn. It has arrived at last and yet, for us in the Punjab, it is not bright with laughter and buoyant with song. It is black with...

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Violating the restriction imposed on his speech (by his physician), Faiz Sahib had been talking to me for an hour now. He was to proceed soon for his medical treatment and I wanted to cover as many subjects as possible concerning as many issues as I could during our meeting. Sitting in Begum Majeed Malik's drawing room, where Alys Faiz had peeped in twice, I was becoming more convinced that she was not happy with the situation as was plainly evident from her expression. But she said nothing to deter or impede the conversation.

After exhausting certain aspects of the subjects related to literature and the domestic film industry I sought his views on the cultural affairs of the 'Idarae-Saqa fate Pakistan'...

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Creating words and shaping them in an orderly form is the vocation of poets and men of letters. But there are occasions in life when one is left speechless. This is one such occasion for me; I don^'t have the words with which to adequately thank the Lenin Peace Prize Committee, as well as other Soviet institutions and friends, for the honour they have conferred upon me. The Peace Prize is invaluable because it carries Lenin^'s honuored and sacred name with it. Lenin is the most revered standard-bearer of liberty and peace in our time, peace which is a prerequisite for human life and its beauty and excellence. I do not find anything in my life and work which should have made me worthy of this single honour. However, I can think of one reason: the fervent yearning for peace and independence which has motivated me and my colleagues.

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The vast land mass known as Asia encompasses numerous countries and peoples and the cultural patterns specific to different lands do not easily yield to broad generalizations. Thus we have in Asia a number of Socialist States where cultural planning obviously takes on a completely different orientation from other countries operating under a different socio-political organization. Then there are countries which have escaped direct foreign colonial domination or occupation and where the continuity of cultural traditions was not radically subverted by foreign influences. Lastly, there is a group to which my country - Pakistan - belongs who have been only recently liberated after a prolonged era of subjugation.

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Sometime ago we had occasion to refer to the politics of the Indian Christians. We said that the future of small national groups was indissolubly linked with that of the bigger people among whom they were destined to live, and the sooner they made a choice of their alliances in the light of the new circumstances that have arisen, the better it would be. Hesitancy and indecision at this stage would be as dangerous as lack of political realism and fanciful wish-fulfillment. The problems of the small Anglo-Indian minority are very similar. The members of both these communities will henceforth be the nationals of two separate...

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On June, 30^th the representatives of Baluchistan consisting of the Shahi Jirga (excluding the Kalat State nominees) and non-official members of the Quetta Municipality, will be called upon to record their vote in favor of joining either of the Constituent Assemblies. From all indications public opinion in that Province is overwhelmingly in favor of entering the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. Only isolated voice are heard (as one was the other day) the Baluchistan should negotiate with the Congress as well as the League, and side with that body which offers the most advantageous terms. Apart from the fact that any hesitation to choose between Muslim India and Hindu...

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We are a Muslim League paper. We claim to speak for thirty million Muslims of Northern India who have sworn allegiance to the Muslim League. Pakistan is the declared political objective of the party and the people it represents. While we propose to present the news objectively and to confine comment to the editorial columns, we shall use our voice to interpret this national ideal and to bring it nearer. We believe that all people have a right to live their own lives and order their own affairs as they desire in freedom as in peace. Freedom for one people should not mean enslavement for another and the liberation for one national homeland should not involve the subjugation of the homeland of others. We believe, therefore, that when political sovereignty devolves once more on the people inhabiting the Indian subcontinent, both the Hindus and the Muslims should be free, the Hindus in their homelands, the Muslims theirs.

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The division of the Punjab, as demanded, by the Hindus and Sikhs, has taken place. The formality of ratification has been performed by the Punjab Legislative Assembly meeting for the last time. The Boundary Commission remains and its task of delimiting the frontiers; but the final boundary line cannot vitally change the balance of power in the two zones of the Punjab. In the West the Muslims will still be a huge majority. In the East, while no single community will have a complete majority, the Hindus will be the biggest group, the Muslims second and the Sikhs thirds, the last two being 34% and 18% respectively. The Congress are ruminating over the creation of a Haryana Pratn, by the amalgamation of the 12 districts of the Punjab with the...

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Faiz Ahmad Faiz remained Editor-in-Chief of the "Pakistan Times" from 4^th February 1947 to March 1951-till his arrest by the Government of Pakistan. The editorials of the newspaper were written by either Mazhar Ali Khan or Faiz during 47 to 49.However others like Zohair Siddiqui and Ahmad Ali also joined the team after 49.However some of the editorials written by Faiz for the years 1947 and 48 have been identified and are being reproduced for the readers of Viewpointonline. Here we see Faiz as an intellectual a nationalist with a humanistic vision and a symbol of hope for the newly born State. In his editorial dated 4^th Feb, 1947 Faiz declares that "Pakistan Times" is a Muslim League paper and speaks for 30 million Muslims of the sub- continent.

Read more...             Download PDF file                                 Waseem Altaf

Our poets have always complained that the world hasn^'t cared for them enough. Indifference to poets on part of the culture at large has been a stock theme of our poetry. My complaint, if any, has been that I have received so much affection and kindness, from friends, from acquaintances, and even from those who hardly knew me, that I constantly feel that I have done much less than I should have done to earn all that love. This too is nothing new. I have had this impression since I was a child. When I was very young and still at school, I had this same relationship with classmates and school fellows. For no reason that I could fathom, they had somehow decided to treat me as some kind of a leader...

Read more...             Download PDF file                          Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Kishwar Nahid, a veteran Urdu poet, feminist and a progressive writer of our time, known for her courageous and blatant poetic discourse, resolutely challenges patriarchal repression of women and inequalities in her society. Her poetic discourse and her autobiography "Buri Aurat Ki Katha" narrate a highly candid and honest view of life and its realities with uncompromising posture of an outspoken feminist. The two prominent Urdu poets, Faiz Ahemed Faiz and Kishwar Nahid, who passionately wrote about the common men and women and inequalities in their society, represent similar ideological streams in their poetry and writing. When Faiz passed away on November 20, 1984, Kishhwar Nahid expressed her profound sense of grief...

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To speak of death is also to speak of life, for death is part of life and all our references to death are in terms of life. That is why when we speak of Faiz' death all we can speak of is a life fully lived. On November 20^th, just a day before Faiz' death, I was talking to Afzal Randhawa, a famous Punjabi writer and poet from Faisalabad, who had stayed close to Faiz, in his last days. He had driven Faiz down to his village and back to Lahore. As the car hit the highway after the trek through the dirt roads that connected to the village, Faiz turned to Afzal Randhawa and said: 'You are right, our villages are distanced from the town by about five hundred years.'      

Read more...             Download PDF file                                  Ahmad Salim