Permanent Black

The Writer of Modern Life Three scholars on the making of Indian literature By VINEET GILL  |  1 February 2017   "M odern writers and artists in India—and in other postcolonial countries—have always had to contend with the politics of cultural exchange between the colonised and the coloniser. When the Bengali critic Dineshchandra Sen, in a letter to the British historian EP Thompson, referred to Rabindranath Tagore as “a European writer of Bengali,” he was articulating a grievance against all cultural renegades. Yet far from being a failing on the part of the postcolonial writer or artist, the urge to cross over is essential to modernity. The scholar Rosinka Chaudhuri, in her 2014 book The Literary Thing —a fascinating study of the beginnings of modern poetry in Bengal—employs an interesting phrase to describe the phenomenon: “creative cross-contamination.” Let there be no doubt: the spirit of modernity is confused, many-hued, contaminated. How t...

In his first speech after taking office, Pakistan's new army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, urged officers to read ARMY AND  NATION by STEVE WILKINSON, reports Salman Masood in The Nation . ISLAMABAD - The gathering of senior army officers of Rawalpindi Garrison sat alert in the General Headquarters auditorium and listened to their chief intently. It was the last week of December and Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, the army chief, had been into the top job just weeks earlier. The general delivered his first speech – an articulation of his vision – as the new army chief in a poised manner and communicated it to his officers in unequivocal terms. The army has no business trying to run the government, the general said. The army must remain within its constitutionally defined role, he stressed. Gen Bajwa also alluded that an impression of a competition between the civilians and the military is counter-productive for the country. And, apart from other professional advice, he urg...