It was only as an adult long after 1971 that I learnt about the internment camps where Bengalis in then West Pakistan had been detained. My source was an essay titled ‘Crossing Borders on the Wings of Language’, by Hafiza Nilofar Khan, in Borderlines, Vol. 1 (2014), an anthology published by Voices Breaking Boundaries, my sister Sehba Sarwar’s nonprofit in Houston (now archived at the University of Houston).
The ten-year-old Hafiza whose father is in the Pakistan Air Force and proud of her prowess in Urdu suddenly finds herself and her family in the situation that Lahore-based historian Ilyas Chatta details in his recently published book Citizens to Traitors: Bengali Internment in Pakistan 1971-1974 (Cambridge University Press, 2025).
Sharing a report about a lovely event to benefit Sapan News, started on a voluntary basis in August 2021. Since becoming a member of professional journalist bodies like INN since2023, Sapan News is eligible to join NewsMatch, a fund that supports 475+ nonprofit newsrooms across the USA. Generous guests that evening contributed for a total of $6K. We need $1,500 moreby ‘Giving Tuesday’, Dec. 2, to reach $7,500. The year-end goalis $15K. To help out, please go to this link or click the button below.
Fundraiser for a Southasian nonprofit newsroom at a Boston photography museum
BOSTON: The third Sapan News year-end fundraiser kicked off in the Boston area with a gathering over drinks, dinner, art and music at the quaint Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester MA, the hometown of the event host Tasneem Chipty.
The Griffin Museum of Photography: A picturesque venue. Photo: Beena Sarwar
Chipty, a well-regarded antitrust economist, has hosted house parties at her own home over the past two years to raise support for Sapan News when the Southasia-focused syndicated features service first began fundraising in 2023.
What drew her to the cause, she said in her introductory remarks, was the organization’s commitment to building bridges in a fractured world. To elevate the fundraising event, she chose the Griffin, founded by Arthur Griffin, a 1930s’ photographer for the Boston Globe and photojournalist for Life and Time magazines.
Sapan News began as a voluntary media outlet in August 2021, sending out syndicated features to other media outlets around the globe in an effort to amplify the cause of peace, dialogue and collaboration.
“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” ― Howard Zinn
This quote at the end of an email from the great broadcaster David Barsamian of Alternative Radio is from Howard Zinn’s collection of essays published in, ‘A Power Governments Cannot Suppress’(City Lights Books, 2007) and also published on ZNet as “The Optimism of Uncertainty.”.
Thought to share here. Salute, Howard Zinn. Salute, David ji. And revisiting my precious meeting with Howard Zinn in Cambridge MA some years ago, thanks to the wonderful filmmaker B.J. Bullert in Seattle WA.
Among the insights gained duringthe panel discussion after the exhibition walkthrough and documentary screening was the similarity between the creative arts and good journalism: Both involve masses of research, and are rooted in being exploratory, observational, and non-judgmental, rather than agenda-driven.
The idea of a ‘Young Southasian Artists’ exhibition struck a chord when acclaimed Lahore-based artist and educator Salima Hashmi mentioned it some years ago, after writer and curator Manmeet K. Walia from New Delhi approached her about it.
Salima Hashmi, known for her creativity and longstanding commitment to peace, democracy and human rights, is also a founder member and advisor for the Southasia Peace Action Network which nearly 90 of us launched online in March 2021. Her lifetime of hard work, struggle, and consistency stand apart from the legacy she inherited from her illustrious father, the celebrated poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
When Prof. Hashmi and Ms. Walia presented their then under-production show at the Faiz Festival in Lahore, 2024, what stood out was the creativity and courage they were showcasing.
Our Pulitzer Center-supported documentary ‘Democracy in Debt: SriLanka Beyond the Headlines’ has just been selected by the Pune Short Film Festival 2025, June 2. It has also been selected for the Asian Talent International Film Fest 2025, Oct. 5, in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, and was earlier screened at the Fifth Kerala Short Film Festival 2025, held in March.
Trailer: ‘Democracy in Debt: Sri Lanka Beyond the Headlines’
More good news
Our peace appeal for India and Pakistan to Stop Hostilities posted by the Southasia Peace Action Network or Sapan just after the war broke out reached more than 5,000 signatures in the first 48 hours. It had reached nearly 7,500 signatories but the number inexplicably dropped so now we are just over 7,000. In this vitiated atmosphere where jingoism dominates the airwaves and social media, this is no small number. Let’s keep on the pressure for these two nuclear-powered neighbours to talk.
It has been a decade since we lost Sabeen Mahmud to a targeted attack in Karachi and since we lost Shayan “Poppy” Afzal Khan to cancer. It is also 20 years since the pioneering environmental journalist Saneeya Hussain died in Brazil. Their peacemongering legacies live on.
Personal Political Beena Sarwar / Sapan News
On 24 April 2015, a valiant crusader for peace, social justice, creativity and human dignity was killed in Karachi. That tragedy ten years ago deprived a mother of her only child, and many of us of a dear friend.
Social entrepreneur Sabeen Mahmud, 40, was driving home with her mother Mahenaz next to her. A motorcyclist approached while they were stopped at a red light, and shot Sabeen at point blank range. She died on the spot.
Sabeen. Photo by Zaheer Alam Kidvai.
Mahenaz at Creative Karachi Festival 2016: Sabeen would hate for any of us to give up. Photo: Beena Sarwar
A poster with Sabeen’s photo at Creative Karachi Festival, 2016, Alliance Francaise. Photo: Beena Sarwar
Pakistan: Countrywide demonstrations for Sabeen, 2015
Protest for Sabeen in Delhi, 2015. File photo
I had known Sabeen since she was a teenager. We were comrades together in several peace initiatives – part of a large, cross-border tribe of ‘peacemongers’ as I call our community.
Dimantha looking at the calm ocean that once took his “everything” as he puts it. Photo by Flavion Moses
The first time I met Dimantha D. Thenuwara was almost exactly two years ago, in 2023, when he caught a bus overnight across Sri Lanka to meet me and Aisha Gazdar at Ramani Corea‘s beach house in the north-west. He climbed up a tree branch and napped there in the mid-day heat, and offered to show us how he could eat bugs (no thanks, we said).
This man from the tropics had recently determined to climb K2 – the ‘savage mountain’ in northern Pakistan – and wanted to meet some Pakistanis. We’ve been in touch since. He has visited Pakistan and is even learning Urdu (search sapannews.com for ‘Dimantha’).
Next week, he’s headed to Nepal to summit the spectacular Mt. Ama Dablam, one of the world’s most challenging peaks. Sri Lankans have summitted Himalayan mountains before but Dimantha will also carry the Southasia Peace Action Networkhashtag#Sapan logo on the flag he hoists, to highlight a mission he supports, to amplify the narrative of peace, dialogue, and regional cooperation and connectivity.
“What’s in a name?” – veteran journalist, civic and political rights advocate Kanak Mani Dixit from Kathmandu Valley challenges diaspora scholars and academics to deeply study the issue of ‘Southasia’ in a way that has not yet been attempted
Nepali journalist and founder of Himal Southasia, Kanak Mani Dixit speaking at the Annual Indu Bhatt Memorial Lecture on What’s in the Name ‘South Asia’? January 2025.jpg. Photo by Pragyan Srivastava.
By Pragyan Srivastava and Beena Sarwar / Sapan News
“Southasia,” declares Kanak Mani Dixit, “is about creating space for empathy and compassion.”
The well-known Nepali journalist, writer, civic and political rights activist based in Kathmandu believes that “to address the reality and challenges of a region containing a quarter of humanity, there must first be an agreed name for it”.
The term Southasia serves the purpose — a neutral, inclusive term free of the colonial baggage carried by labels like Indian Subcontinent or Hindustan.
Some thoughts emerging from a chance encounter with one of Pakistan’s most respected and iconic progressive poets.
Indian and Pakistani writers and a filmmaker at the Faiz Festival, Lahore: (l-r) Dr Saif Mahmood, Atul Tiwari, Dr Arfa Sayeda Zehra, Dr Arvinder Chaman, Nandita Das and Zehra Nigah. Photo by Zarminae Ansari / The Joy of Urdu
“It’s the girls that give me hope,” says the celebrated poet and writer Zehra Nigah.
She leads a quiet life at her home in Karachi, without a mobile phone or email. Yet those who seek her are able to find her. Besides the school and college students who look to her for guidance, there are advertising companies looking for classy jingles. And there are organisers of literary festivals wanting to invite her.
These include Jashn-e-Rekhta, the three-day annual festival that celebrates Urdu — subtly countering the rightwing narrative that Urdu is a ‘Muslim’ language while Hindi is for ‘Hindus’.
When it started in 2015, Rekhta invited several prominent Pakistani poets and writers to participate. Its third edition in 2017 was the first time that there was no Pakistani participation in its sessions – due to the “prevailing atmosphere” in India, the organisers took “a considered decision” to not invite Pakistanis as “participants” but only as “guests”, reported Anita Joshua in the Telegraph, India.
“Some see in this an instance of self-censorship to avoid trouble of the sort that has recently beset Bollywood films starring Pakistani actors,” commented Joshua.
The only Pakistani who accepted the invitation was Kishwar Naheed, then 77, another iconic Pakistani poet, for whom being invited as a ‘guest’ meant that she would at least be able to recite at the ‘mushaira’, the poetry recital session addressed by several poets, as she told me later.
Wrote this piece a couple of weeks ago, on one of Pakistan’s most versatile composers who continues to produce a genre embedded in Southasian traditional music, to get the younger generation to appreciate classical poetry and music — and provide a platform for new talent. A Sapan News syndicated feature also published in other outlets.
Personal Political By Beena Sarwar / Sapan News
Arshad Mahmud in Such Gup, PTV, 1970s. Screenshot.
Will there be singing In dark times? Yes, there will be singing About dark times
— Bertolt Brecht, Germany, 1939
Arshad Mahmud is one of Pakistan’s most prolific and talented composers, the man whose music launched singing sensations like Nayyar Noor and Tina Sani.
He made his debut with the children’s television show Akkar Bakkar, 1972, along with Nayyara Noor and the pioneering puppeteer Farooq Qaiser, produced by Shoaib Hashmi, then an economics professor at Government College (now University) Lahore.
Behind the ustad (teacher) Hashmi’s booming voice, gruff manner and handlebar moustache was a brilliant writer and satirist who went on to write and produce the groundbreaking, now legendary satirical television shows Such Gup and Tal Matol. We would use these as the titles of Shoaib Hashmi’s columns for The Frontier Post later and The News on Sunday that I edited in Lahore, starting in the 1990s. His daughter Mira Hashmi has uploaded many of the videos to her YouTube channel.
Journeys to democracy 