India ends moon mission

India has ended its unmanned moon mission after failed attempts to regain contact with the orbiter, an official said Monday.

The Indian Space Research Organization currently has no means to locate Chandrayaan-I, which can float in space like a dead satellite for 1,000 more days before crashing on the lunar surface, said S. Satish, a spokesman for the agency.
"We are exploring the possibility of making a request to the United States and Russia to help locate it since they have powerful radars," Satish said.

The space agency blames system failures on Chandrayaan-I for the abrupt loss of contact Saturday.
Chandrayaan-I was originally expected to stay in orbit for two years, but Satish said that was a stretch."That probably was a mistake because such craft do not have this much life," he said.

However, the mission had met most of its scientific objectives by providing "large volume of data," the space agency said.

In 312 days, it completed more than 3,400 orbits around the moon before vanishing off the radars, according to the space agency.

Pakistan accused of fixing missiles

WASHINGTON has accused Pakistan of illegally modifying US-made anti-ship missiles to make them capable of striking land targets, creating a new threat for India.

The accusation was made in an unpublicised diplomatic protest delivered in late June to Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, senior Obama administration and congressional officials were quoted as saying yesterday. At the centre of the row were Harpoon anti-ship missiles that were sold to Pakistan by the administration of former US president Ronald Reagan as a defensive weapon during the Cold War in the 1980s, The New York Times said.

US military and intelligence officials say they suspect Pakistan has modified the missiles in a manner that would be a violation of the Arms Control Export Act, the paper reported.
Pakistan has denied the charge, saying it developed the missile itself.
But according to the report, US intelligence agencies detected a suspicious missile test on April 23 that appeared to indicate Pakistan had a new offensive weapon.

The missile would be a significant new entry in Pakistan's arsenal against India, the Times said. It would enable Pakistan's navy to strike targets on land, complementing the sizeable land-based missile arsenal that Pakistan has developed.

Asia Society brings historic show of Pakistani art to US Sep 2009

Despite Pakistan’s reputation in the West as a politically and socially volatile nation, it has been fostering a vibrant yet low-profile contemporary art scene for the past two decades.
The Asia Society Museum in New York City is proud to present this work in the first major exhibition of contemporary Pakistani art in the United States.

Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art From Pakistan will explore the seeming contradiction of Pakistan’s flourishing art scene within the struggling nation.
Hanging Fire is curated for the Asia Society by the distinguished Salima Hashmi, one of Pakistan’s most important writers and curators, and the daughter of Pakistan’s most renowned poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

The exhibition will showcase 55 works by 15 artists, comprising installation art, video, photography, painting and sculpture. A number of the works have never been exhibited, including a large-scale site-specific painting by Imran Qureshi.

On the inspiration for the show, Asia Society Museum Director, Dr. Melissa Chiu, comments:
“The idea for Hanging Fire came from a recognition that over the past decade, a new generation of artists in Pakistan have created compelling works that have largely gone unnoticed outside their country. The exhibition includes artists for whom the highly charged socio-political context in which they live and work is critical to understanding their art.”

The exhibition’s title, Hanging Fire, refers to an idiom that means “to delay decision.” In the context of the exhibition, the title invites the audience to delay judgment, particularly about contemporary society and artistic expression in Pakistan. It also alludes to the modern economic, social, and political tensions––both local and global––from which the featured artists find their creative inspiration.

Pakistan: Current politiks

Remembering Faraz

Continuing the unfortunate tradition of forgetting the national heroes, the first death anniversary of renowned Urdu poet Ahmad Faraz largely went unnoticed on Tuesday, excluding single ceremony was organised by BIAZ for remembering and paying tribute to the legend of Urdu literature. TV Channels also showed special programmes .A floral wreath was laid on the grave of Ahmed Faraz and prayers were offered for the poetry legend on his first death anniversary, organized by Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL).

Hindko-speaking Ahmad Faraz was born on January 14, 1931 in Kohat in Pathan family and died in Chicago on August 25 last year. Faraz adopted profound style but converted his thoughts and dreams in a simple language commonly spoken by an ordinary people. Faraz produced maximum literature against dictatorship saying that he would not die before the closure of dictatorship in his beloved country. Surprisingly former president Musharraf resigned on August 18 and Faraz died on August 25 last year. The great revolutionist of literature even refused to accept the presidential Sitara-e Imtiaz award from former dictator Pervez Musharraf. “I am working according to my conscience as I cannot stay a silent spectator of the pensive happenings around us,” Faraz once said. Ahmad Faraz was exiled during the Zia-ul Haq regime after his arrest for reciting certain revolutionary poems at various Mushairas criticising hard the military rule. Faraz spent a long time of six years outside Pakistan, in the UK, Canada and Europe before his return to Pakistan where he was initially appointed as the chairman of the Academy of Letters and later Chairman of the National Book Foundation for several years. Presiding the ceremony organised by BIAZ at his home, a renowned Urdu poet Khalid Ahmad said that Ahmad Faraz was a real advocator for the poor and downtrodden. He said that Faraz, the master artist, is more alive today than his life time, adding his works are closer to hearts than the closure of his life chapter. His political stand is a beacon to all Pakistani writers to come, he added.The other speakers including poets and writers said Faraz presented a beautiful imagery in his poetry of love and protest. His romantic poems and Ghazals have turned Faraz a beloved celebrity by the youth. A young poet Arshad Shaheen recited a beautiful couplet of Ahmad Faraz and made the participants sad saying:

Silsilay Tour Gaya Wo Sabhi Jatay Jatay Warna Itnay Tu Marasim Thay Keh Atay Jatay

hide-and-seek with history

It is tempting to dismiss the furore over Jaswant Singh’s expulsion from the BJP as a matter of no great consequence. After all, the BJP is a party that is out of power and seemingly in terminal decline. Jaswant Singh is at the end of his career and even if the BJP does manage to recapture power in five years’ time, he would probably have been too old to play an active role in the next government.
But as tempting as it would be to treat this episode as yet another saga of yesterday’s people fighting over yesterday’s issues because they know that they have no tomorrow, the fracas is more significant than we may think at first.
First of all, the Jaswant controversy is only partly about Jinnah. It is also about the BJP’s attitude to Indian Muslims. For instance, in the last days of the Vajpayee government L.K. Advani declared that Muslims would vote for the BJP because it had improved relations with Pakistan.
The sub-text to this bizarre claim was that Advani regarded Indian Muslims as being sympathetic, if not loyal, to Pakistan and therefore inclined to support anyone who was pro-Pakistan. Naturally, Indian Muslims were outraged and an uproar resulted.
But Advani did not learn his lesson. Eager to cast himself in the Vajpayee mould and advised by a coterie of dimwits, he flew off to Pakistan to pose as a great sub-continental liberal. He believed that if he was perceived as being friendly towards Pakistan, he would gain moderate support in India along with a share of the elusive Muslim vote. His whole trip and the foolish remarks he made praising M.A. Jinnah only make sense when seen in that context.
As the writer Javed Akhtar said at the time, “Mr Advani thinks that Indian Muslims are all deeply loyal to Pakistan and put up pictures of Jinnah on their walls. He doesn’t realise that Indian Muslims don’t care at all about Jinnah.”

Advani’s Pakistan adventure nearly ended his political career. But, when it measured the outrage that emanated from its solidly Hindu vote base, the BJP also realised that Jinnah was a hot potato.

The attempt to whitewash Jinnah’s role in the history of the independence movement — partly as an attempt to criticise Jawaharlal Nehru — had backfired badly.
Some of the negative reaction to Jaswant Singh’s book emerges from the fall-out of Advani’s Pakistan fiasco. Jinnah is now a dirty word in the BJP and the party will not risk alienating its Hindu base with any suggestion that Jinnah has been judged too harshly. As for winning Muslim votes, that dream evaporated a long time ago....

The central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee has sight the Ramadan moon, making the first fasting day to fall on 23rd Aug 2009, Sunday.

Muslims in Qatar, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, Algeria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Lebanon, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Palestine as well as France will also celebrate the beginning of Ramadan on Saturday. During the month of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, Muslims abstain from eating, drinking and smoking from dawn to dusk.

BJP ejects leader over Pakistan founder praise

INDIA'S Hindu nationalist movement has been thrown into disarray by the publication of a book about a Muslim leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah who died more than 60 years ago.

Jaswant Singh, a senior leader in the Bharatiya Janata Party, the main opposition party, has been expelled after writing a book praising Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of the country's rival neighbour Pakistan.

The book Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence, published this week, describes Mr Jinnah as a ''great man'' who has been misunderstood in India.

The partition that separated Pakistan from India in 1947 remains a controversial issue in the region. Mr Singh's glowing assessment of Mr Jinnah, who is blamed by many Indians for unnecessarily dividing the subcontinent into nations based on religion, was unacceptable to many BJP leaders.

A party spokesman said Mr Singh had been expelled because his book went against its ''core ideology''.

Jaswant Singh, 71, was one of the BJP's top parliamentary performers, having served as foreign minister and finance minister in the former BJP government, which held power from 1998 to 2004.

Mr Singh said he was saddened at being expelled for writing a book.
''You can dispute what I write, but the day India starts questioning thought we are entering a very dark alley.''

It is not the first time that praising Jinnah has landed a BJP leader in trouble.
The political career of its leader, Mr Advani, was almost destroyed when he made favourable comments about Pakistan's first national leader in 2005.

Remembering Nazia Hassan

Thursday 13th August marks the 9th death anniversary of Pakistani musician Nazia Hassan, a pop icon who endeared herself to millions across the Indian subcontinent.

Nazia Hassan was the most influential and popular female singer and probably the only real pop singer of the 80’s and 90’s in both India and Pakistan.
Nazia Hassan was born in Karachi and from an early age showed interest in music, her professional career started at the age of fifteen when she provided the lead vocals for the song 'Aap Jaisa Koi' from a film Qurbani made her a legend and pop icon in Pakistan and all of South Asia in the 80s.
Nazia shot into limelight with the PTV’s program ‘Sung Sung’. This program also featured her brother Zhoaib. Nazia and Zoheb’s television interviews were shown on TV in India, Pakistan, Dubai, UK and many other countries.
Her music led to a redefinition of pop music in the country and Pakistan’s contemporary music scene owes a huge debt to the talented singer. She completed her education in the UK, got a law degree and then worked in the United Nations in the Security Council. Nazia continued her social work even in New York and worked for children from the UN platform.
She is known to be the 'Sweetheart of Pakistan' and 'The Nightingale of East'. Nazia Hassan is still the symbol of grace, sacred beauty and innocence and is frequently compared to Princess Diana.
Nazia and Zhoaib received not only their education at London, but also studied singing and music there. Although singers such as Alamgir and Mohammad Ali Shehky were already in the popular singing, it was Nazia who really popularized the pop music in Pakistan.
Nazia’s album ‘Disco Deewany’ became highly popular and it made a record sale. She also worked on an important United Nations post. The shining light that was Nazia Hassan died in August 13, 2000 in London after a prolonged battle with lung cancer at the young age of 35.
The Government of Pakistan has conferred upon Nazia Hassan the highest civil award - the Pride of Performance.

The secrets of Pakistan's survival

Pakistan has seen rapid change in its 62 years of existence. At partition, the population of what was then West Pakistan (the people of East Pakistan took matters into their own hands in 1971 and created Bangladesh) was around 30 million. Today it is closer to 180 million. Pakistanis have been struggling to cope with the demographic explosion ever since.
The 33 long years of direct military rule and numerous wars have not helped, though Pakistanis have never lacked courage or a desire for genuine democracy. Each decade has seen its special dilemmas and surprises, none more frightening than the Talibanisation of the Pakhtun frontier and, possibly, beyond. From bulwark against communism to terrorist menace, the army has received a massive injection of American arms.
But no front line, real or imagined, has been more fateful than the state's foundational moments. In 1940 the idea of Pakistan, a separate state for the subcontinent's Muslims, was formally adopted by its leadership under the Lahore Resolution. Significantly, the resolution spoke of "mandatory safeguards ... in the constitution for minorities ... for the protection of their religious, cultural, economic, political, administrative and other rights".
Mohammad Ali Jinnah, known as the father of Pakistan, championed this pluralism. In 1946 he remarked: "Religion is dear to us. All the worldly goods are nothing when we talk of religion. But there are other things which are very vital – our social life and our economic life, and without political power how can you defend your faith and your economic life?"
A year later, on 14 August 1947 – 62 years ago today – Pakistan was born.
Not all of colonial India's Muslims accepted the notion of a separate Muslim state, but around 7 million, including an equal number of Hindus and Sikhs who were moving in the opposite direction, left their homes to join those already living in what is now Pakistan. Paradoxically, these peoples, now drawn upon sectarian lines, fell victim to communal violence at the very moment their new nations promised liberation.
"Pakistan was created on the basis of the two-nation theory," explains Pervez Hoodbhoy from Qaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, "a belief that Muslims and Hindus were separate peoples who could never live together".
He adds: "The unstated assumption was that Muslims – by virtue of sharing a common faith – naturally constituted a nation and could live together harmoniously by virtue of that."
But events since then – the civil war that created Bangladesh and the current Taliban insurgency to name just two – place that assumption under serious doubt.
History is not merely written by the great individual, no matter how much the powerful might think otherwise. But Mohammad Ali Jinnah holds a special place in the development of Pakistan. As ZH Zaidi wrote, "What distinguished Jinnah from his great contemporaries is that he was quite self-consciously a modern man – one who valued, above all, reason, discipline, organisation, and economy ... [who] differed from other Muslim leaders in so far as he was uncompromisingly committed to substance rather than symbol, reason rather than emotion, modernity rather than tradition."
It has proven difficult for Jinnah's successors to live up to his credentials, though all invoke his name and image. "His ideals have been overlooked," says historian Ayesha Jalal, "particularly the rule of law of which he was a fervent advocate."
In any country, politics is rarely about the rule of law. In Pakistan, it has the added vice of being held hostage to individuals whose personal alliances shift so rapidly that recent events soon become historical footnotes leading to some of the most ironic displays of political drama – like the use, by one-time political prisoner President Asif Ali Zardari, of authoritarian laws from the British Raj to stifle public protest, or opposition leader Nawaz Sharif's apparent championing of the recently reinstated chief justice despite his overt intimidation of the higher courts while prime minister in the 1990s.
"In such circumstances," writes the historian Ian Talbot, "patronage alone can secure party cohesion and stability." That may explain why the current executive has an unwieldy 60 cabinet ministers.
It is in opposition that Pakistani politics is at its best. Opposition transformed the Bhuttos into brave, virtuoso statesmen and women. When not in power, each political movement, even the Taliban, has looked to the abundance of ills that plague the nation to garner popular support. Once incumbent, however, all have been guilty of perpetuating the same vices. As a result, intrigues prevail while inequality and poverty remain entrenched.
"Pakistan is beset by conspiracy theories," one analyst wrote derisively about the country recently. But western commentators tend to ignore the extent to which their own governments, especially those of the United Kingdom and United States, have stunted the development of democratic politics by favouring centres of concentrated power.
Pakistanis are deeply aware of this. According to an al-Jazeera poll, a staggering 59% of Pakistanis consider the US the greatest threat to the country. Pakistanis may too-readily look to the US to explain their country's problems, but the world's only superpower has never trusted them much either.
No postwar nation has been written off more regularly than Pakistan. That it survives remains a profound mystery to outside observers. That may partly explain the constant warnings about its impending collapse. The forecasts reflect a tendency to assume the worst about Pakistan, but its survival is a testament to the resilience of its people.

Pakistan celebrates 62nd Independence Day with Zeal, Fervor

The nation celebrated 62nd Independence Day of Pakistan Friday with great zeal and fervor renewing commitment to make the fabulous homeland – Pakistan strong, progressive and prosperous. It was a public holiday.

The day dawned with special prayers in mosques for peace, progress and prosperity of the country.The Independence Day celebrations, which kicked off midnight Thursday rose to it height this morning, which continued for the whole day, as the ruling Pakistan People’s Party as well as other major political parties were all set to celebrate the historic day in a dignified manner by hoisting national and party flags.

Independence day cartoon.

Shadow of the Crescent

As Pakistan atrophies in its existential crisis, a fundamental question about the nature of the country is coming to the fore: Are the country’s citizens Pakistanis who happen to be Muslims, or are they Muslims who happen to be Pakistanis? Which comes first, flag or faith?

It is not a question that many Pakistanis can readily answer. The vast majority of the country’s so-called “educated elite seem to have no qualms about identifying themselves as Muslims first and Pakistanis second. Some feel that their religion is the most important thing to them, and that that’s where their first loyalty will always lie. Others admit to having scant regard for religion, but say that Pakistan has come to mean so little to them that their religion supersedes their loyalty to the country.

This willingness to subordinate state to God, even among the highly educated, lies at the heart of Pakistan’s crisis. How can a country be expected to prosper if the majority of its citizens harbor only a secondary allegiance to the state? How can it progress if, as the noted author M.J. Akbar wrote, “the idea of Pakistan is weaker than the Pakistani.

But what is the idea of Pakistan?

Back in the heady days of the 1940’s, Mohammed Ali Jinnah rallied a people to nationhood. Despite his Anglophone status and Victorian manners, he carved out a separate homeland for India’s Muslims. But, today, an erudite, westernized lawyer like Jinnah who isn’t a wadhera or a jagirdar would find it impossible to win a popular election in Pakistan.

For the real Jinnah is now irrelevant in the country that reveres him as “Quaid-e-Azam, or founder of the nation. Few Pakistanis have the time or inclination to think about their founder’s ideas. Jinnah’s idea of Pakistan – South Asian Muslim nationalism – has been overrun by the dogma of Islamic universalism.

The modern Pakistani identity is shaped largely by the negation of an Indian-Hindu identity and the adoption of a global pan-Islamic charter. Economic advancement is taken to mean Westernization or worse, Indianization. At every turn, Pakistanis seem more likely to unite as brothers in Islam than as sons of the same soil.

Moreover, Pakistan’s fear of vilification and failure has given birth to an increasingly paranoid brand of Islam that seeks to impose stricter controls – on education, women’s rights, dancing, beardlessness, and sex – and close society to all forms of modernity. This paranoid Islam, represented by hard-line outfits like the Tablighi Jamaat, is Pakistan’s fastest-growing brand of faith.

Pakistan is now at a crossroads, facing an uneasy moment of truth. To survive, its citizens must act in unison or risk seeing every moderate tendency in the country purged by a clamor of illiberal, religious voices.

Today’s crisis calls for every thinking Pakistani to ask serious questions of themselves: What should be the idea of Pakistan? Are you Pakistanis who happen to be Muslims, Christians, or Hindus? Or are you members of a global Islamic ummah who just happen to live in Karachi or Lahore?

The real challenge, and the ultimate solution, is to get people to think and talk about these questions. But this must be a debate between people, and within people. Nothing will be solved by searching for the “true Islam or by quoting the Koran.

The point is that eventually, despite strong regional loyalties and various cultural and religious differences, the majority can identify as being simply “Pakistani – even though they may harbor radical differences about what this might mean. The real idea of Pakistan, ultimately, must be multiplicity.

Today, we have come to understand ourselves as composites; often contradictory and internally incompatible. In the Babarnama , for example, we see the internal contradictions in the personality of the founder of the Mughal Empire. When describing his conquest of Chanderi in 1528, Babar offers gruesome details of the gory slaughter of many “infidels but just a few sentences later he talks at length about Chanderi’s lakes, flowing streams, and sweet water. So who was Babar, bloodthirsty tyrant, humanist poet, or both – and not necessarily at odds with each other?

Pakistan’s selfhood must be expanded ad maximum and made so capacious that it accommodates its Punjabis, Sindhis, Pathans, and Balochis, and their religions – Sunni, Shia, Hindu, Christian, Parsi, Qadhianis – until it is possible to call them all equally “Pakistani.That must be the ultimate goal, and step one in the long, winding battle to save Pakistan. That is a national idea worth striving for – and Pakistan’s intellectuals, its elite, and its youth must be at the forefront of the battle.

The Crescent has cast a seemingly interminable shadow across the length of Pakistan. Its tragedies and failings are a result of what is happening in God’s name, not Jinnah’s. To save Pakistan, Jinnah’s spirit, his moth-eaten ideals, must be renewed, and Pakistanis must ask themselves what Pakistan really means.

This article was written in conjunction with Zehra Ahmed and was published by Project Syndicate in May 2009