Pakistan’s General Election Is a Generals’
Election

Since the Country’s Founding, the Military Has Ruled Over Civilian Affairs—This Vote Won’t Change That

Maybe it’s best to ask if Pakistan’s 2024 election is to be called a general election, or a generals’ election.

As a lawyer and rule of law consultant for different development and non-government organizations, I think that despite the country’s robust court system, its elections exert rule by generals’ rule—not law.

Since Pakistan’s inception in 1947, rarely has an election result here truly conveyed the people’s will. The establishment—comprising of military higher-ups and the occasional inclusion of a few top officials from the civil bureaucracy—has already stolen the people’s mandate to elect …

Afghans Built This City

Laborers From Across the Border Have Left an Indelible Mark on Urban Pakistan

Rahimullah waits. In order to get picked for a day’s work, it’s best to get started early. He’s said his morning prayers. Had breakfast. Eggs, bread, and tea. He’s walked …

How Modern India Was Built on the Legacy of British Institutions

Indians Have Drawn From a Dark Colonial Past to Create a More Liberal and Open Society

In the years after India’s independence in 1947, Britons tended to congratulate themselves on their legacy to the subcontinent.

Although the empire’s successor states, India and Pakistan, had been born amid …

How a Pakistani Novelist and Translator Learned to Love Dictionaries

The Books He Once Saw as ‘Villainous’ and ‘Unwieldy’ Helped Him Introduce Children to Urdu Classical Literature

An image from a winter morning in Hyderabad, Pakistan, when I was four, forms my earliest memory of literacy.

Bundled up in layers of sweaters, I am reciting from an …