Punjab's Chief Minister

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

Thanks to the three on average traffic jams caused by the Punjab government that an average person encounters on the way back from office, one has endless time on one’s hands with nothing to do. I like to pass the time by observing motorcyclists making their way between cars, in flagrant disregard of all traffic laws. Now I do not wish to sit in judgment on our bi-wheelers as many laws are broken by almost all kinds of vehicle. A profound lack of respect for authority and law is what characterises us as a nation.

Partition of Punjab I

To my mind, it is an extraordinary waste of important public space to engage in tit for tat kind of back and forth comments through columns in national newspapers. I did not want to respond to Ishtiaq Ahmed’s rebuttal article last week (Daily Times, July 22, 2012) through this space and therefore, responded to it through a blog in some detail. Unfortunately, my blog elicited a response in the comments section by one Mr Shakil Chaudhry, who wrote an article in this newspaper. Be that as it may, I am forced to write a three-part response and the readers will just have to bear with me.

Everyone has the right to his own opinion and I would like the counterparties to realise that I too have the right to my opinion about Ishtiaq Ahmed’s work. Nevertheless, I still think that his recent book is a drastic improvement upon his earlier work. It is precisely for this reason the book needs to be highlighted. Coming as it is from a certain one-sided point of view, the content of the book shows that the violence in Punjab was caused by the insistence of Congress to partition Punjab at the insistence of the Sikhs.