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US has demanded answers from Saudi Arabia over the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (Photo: File/AP)

Is the world now headed for a second Nuremberg?

Humanists have criticised President Trump for not censuring the Saudi leadership for suspected complicity in Khashoggi's...

30 Nov 2018 12:34 AM IST

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan visits the Prophets Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia (Photo: AP)

Imran Khan is on shaky ground with the Chinese

Few of our ministers of information have been as forthcoming as the late Altaf Gauhar, once the mouthpiece of President...

16 Nov 2018 12:05 AM IST

Chinese President Xi Jinping (Photo: AP/File)

Modernisation of China and what lessons it has for Pakistan

In a Xi'an market, a stall owner makes his money selling facsimile currency notes for use at schools.

5 Oct 2018 1:32 AM IST

Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Asad Durrani.

A candid record in 33 chapters: Some surprising, many incendiary

Dulat and Durrani closed off their book in March this year.

1 Jun 2018 1:06 AM IST

Aurangzeb: 400 yrs on, relook at a cruel bigot F S Aijazuddin Updated : Mar 8, 2018, 10:42 pm IST Aurangzeb was one of 14 children Shah Jahan sired from his beloved Mumtaz Mahal. The latest installation in the dark pantheon of Hindutvas anti-heroes is the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. Had he lived, he would have been exactly 400 years old this year. Dead, he has become the target of barbs poisoned with prejudice. Generations since Aurangzebs death in 1707 have been force-fed the stale gruel that Aurangzeb, the monarch was a narrow-minded, Hindu-hating bigot who wasted his Mughal inheritance in a foolhardy obsession with conquering the Deccan. Some go so far as to assert that he single-handedly rang the death knell of the Mughal Empire. A few even argue that had Dara Shukoh (Aurangzebs eldest brother and rival) not lost the battle for their fathers throne, a post-1947 India would have been one contiguous, homogenous political realm, in which Muslim rulers and their multi-religious subjects would have lived in communal harmony. Four hundred years is too long a time to sustain such wisps of conjecture. The fact is that Dara Shukoh lost and Aurangzeb won. History can be an impatient judge, often passing a hasty verdict disproportionate to the crime. That is why any biography of Aurangzeb, especially one as unbiased as Audrey Truschkes Aurangzeb: the Man and The Myth (2017) is a necessary, albeit overdue, corrective. Aurangzeb was one of 14 children Shah Jahan sired from his beloved Mumtaz Mahal. He and his eldest brother Dara Shukoh could not have been more dissimilar. Dara inherited the aesthetic sense of his forebears, Aurangzeb their martial prowess. Dara Shukoh was a man of letters, a Sufi, an ornamented prince with dreams; Aurangzeb a man of action, a soldier, a ruthless tactician. Had Aurangzeb possessed the literary flair of his ancestors, he might have left a fuller chronicle of his own reign, as detailed as the Baburnama, the Humayun-nama, the Akbarnama, the Tuzk-e-Jahangiri, or the equivalent of Shah Jahans Padshahnama. Instead, Aurangzebs personal reticence, like Cordelias, proved to be his undoing. The perfunctory Maasir-i-Alamgiri has been overtaken by less kindly legends. Aurangzebs 88-year-long life falls into four parts. Up to the age of 17, he was brought up in his fathers court and groomed in all the skills Mughal princes needed to govern.

Aurangzeb: 400 yrs on, relook at a cruel bigot'

Aurangzeb was one of 14 children Shah Jahan sired from his beloved Mumtaz Mahal.

9 March 2018 5:10 AM IST

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan (Photo: AP)

Of Jinnah & Imran: 2 love stories, just 100 yrs apart

Khan's detractors are having a field day mocking his latest attempt to find a suitable spouse.

23 Feb 2018 1:47 AM IST

President Donald Trump speaks during an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (Photo: AP)

The US-Pak marriage of convenience is in exit mode

Perhaps Trump's next tweet will not be about aid, but to Imran Khan, celebrating the triumph of hope over experience.

12 Jan 2018 12:14 AM IST

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. (Photo: AP)

2017: A year of unusual predicaments

The Kushner/Netanyahu collaboration has begun with the acknowledgement of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

29 Dec 2017 1:24 AM IST

Ousted Pak PM Nawaz Sharif waves to his supporters during a rally in Muridke, Pakistan. (Photo: AP)

Why Nawaz shouldn't really crave for 4th term

Nawaz Sharif's political oscillations remind one of the person who had a nightmare that he was making a public speech,...

9 Sept 2017 12:14 AM IST

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif leaves the premises of the JIT with son Hussain Nawaz in Islamabad. (Photo: AP)

Will Nawaz, the unburied lion, extract his revenge?

Imran Khan once boasted that he had been offered the prime minister-ship by Gen Musharraf.

11 Aug 2017 12:16 AM IST

Nawaz Sharif said that CPEC has emerged as core and flagship project of Chinas One Belt and One Road (OBOR). (Photo: AP)

Blood: The sixth river of Punjab

The river's banks are murder and mayhem. Pakistan's first PM Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated in Rawalpindi in 1951.

28 July 2017 1:00 AM IST

US President Donald Trump (Photo: AP)

Trump leaves a geopolitical gap; Russia & China filling it

China meanwhile is determined not to be distracted from its ambition to be the prime superpower by 2117.

2 Jun 2017 12:17 AM IST