Although Covid-19 pandemic badly affected the worker class in both Pakistan and India, the labour force in Pakistan remained better off than the labourers in India as the former did not opt for.
Veteran leftist leader Iqbal Alvi passes away
Karachi
May 13, 2021
Iqbal Alvi, a devoted left-wing activist associated with the Communist Party of Pakistan, passed away on Tuesday night. He was 90.
On Wednesday, his funeral prayers were offered at Abubakar Masjid in Clifton and he was buried at a Model Colony graveyard. He has been survived by two daughters and a son. A large number of intellectuals, social and political activists, and trade unionists attended the funeral.
Born in United Province, Ali had moved to Hyderabad Deccan where he was influenced by the trade union movement. After Partition, Ali came to Lahore to meet his maternal uncle - Syed NaqI Ali - who was a central leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami.
A SCREEN grab of the event. White Star
KARACHI: Colonial forces in India equated the communist struggle with anti-culture, anti-religion and anti-civilisation movements which harmed communist and progressive movements in the subcontinent. This was argued by Dr Ali Raza in his talk at a webinar titled ‘The Unsung Heroes: Genealogies of Progressive and Leftist Struggle against British Colonialism’ organised by the Irtiqa Institute of Social Sciences as part of its Hamza Wahid Memorial Lecture series on Monday evening.
Dr Raza, who is a historian and associate professor at LUMS, based his arguments on his book Revolutionary Pasts: Communist Internationalism in Colonial India.
Rebel with a cause
February 27, 2021
Those of us who believe in scientific reasoning as a core base of analysis in the development of human society and individuals, would not buy the general beliefs about ‘gifted people’. Yet we read about people in human history whose qualities, work, character and role leaves us wondering how they became the people they were.
For the past three weeks, besides mourning his tragic, untimely and unfair death, I have been thinking about who Zainul Abedin was – his conditioning, early influences on his life, the books, ideas, people and movements around him. Despite the fact that I had known him for the past 25 years, I am unable to explain this prodigy that senior editor Talat Aslam described as a “powerhouse of ideas”.