The Maktaba branch at Urdu Bazaar in old Delhi is one of the oldest and has served generations of Urdu writers and lovers. I registered a protest against the closure of iconic Maktaba’s old Delhi branch through FB post which subsequently went to my blog
October 30 is the first death anniversary of noted economist, former head and chairman of the Department of Economics at McMaster University, Canada, Prof Syed Ahmad. An alumnus of Jamia Millia, Patna University, Aligarh Muslim University and London School of Economics, Ahmad taught at universities in Aligarh, Khartoum (Sudan), Kent (England) and McMaster (Canada), was visiting professor at many other institutions and has left a legion of students and admirers across the globe.
The seminars, workshops, elocution and essay competitions and poetry recitation sessions Dr Bedar held at KBL provided fuel to the minds in an atmosphere which was redolent with communalisation and criminalisation of politics and politicisation of crime. The library kept us informed, engaged and entertained too.
In the areas where war is waged or which the Japanese occupy or where they infiltrate, the foreigner’s civil rule will weaken or come to an end. In these areas we must establish a Swaraj Government. In the name of this Government we must appeal to retreating units of the Indian Army to stay behind and become the people’s army.
He stayed in America for nearly eight years and studied at five different Universities. He started as a student of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry and then devoted years to the study of Biology, Psychology, Economics and Sociology. He had several times interrupted his studies in order to earn enough to carry on at his University for a term or two. He had worked as a farm labourer for ten hours a day, as a packer in a jam factory, as a mechanic in an iron concern, as a waiter in a restaurant. He had tried his hand as a salesman. When, therefore, he returned to India in 1929, it was not as a raw student looking forward to a comfortable life, but as one who had seen life at close quarters and was fully determined to devote himself to public life.
The machine (EVM) could also eliminate booth-capturing as it would become possible for the Election Commission to introduce mobile polling stations to take the machines to the doorsteps of the people, especially the weaker sections.
Akbar Allahabadi was senior to Iqbal and he wrote a reply to Sare Jahan Se Achcha in form of another poem.
The idea of reservation to OBCs (Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs) came about in 1990 after the Mandal Commission recommendations were implemented. The reservation under article 341 defined only SC community and most of these Pasmanda castes don’t come under this identification.
“This is the Congress radio calling on 42.34 meters from somewhere in India,” spoke Usha Mehta after the Quit India Movement had been silenced by the Britishers.
Bollywood actress Sara Ali Khan plays Usha Mehta in her movie Ae Watan Mere Watan.
Read our special feature about India’s bravest Radio Jockey ,fondly known as Radio Ben
CAPTAIN LAKSHMI SAHGAL – Doctor by Job, Freedom Fighter by Will
During the Bengal famine, Sahir Ludhianvi wrote a poem which has a couplet:
In 1839, Samuel Morse, reputed as the telegraph pioneer, laid the first telegraph lines connecting Washington to Baltimore. In India, the same year, O’Shaughnessy completed 21 miles of a telegraph line wrapped around trees and vast stretches which included a river crossing of 4 miles as an experiment.
