James Traub in the New York Times Magazine
In April, on the highway outside the little Punjabi town of Renala Khurd, Aitzaz Ahsan was waylaid by a crowd of seemingly deranged lawyers. The advocates, who wore black suits, white shirts and black ties, were not actually insane; they just seemed that way because they were so overcome with excitement at greeting the mastermind of Pakistan’s lawyers’ movement, perhaps the most consequential outpouring of liberal, democratic energy in the Islamic world in recent years. The 62-year-old Ahsan was on his way to address the bar association of Okara, 10 miles away, but the lawyers, and the farmers and shopkeepers gathered with them, were not about to let him leave. They boiled around the car, shouting slogans. “Who should our leaders be like?” they cried. “Like Aitzaz!” And, “How many are prepared to die for you?” “Countless! Countless!”
more
The Prospect/Foreign Policy magazine’s list of the world’s top 100 “public intellectuals” — “the thinkers who are shaping the tenor of our time” — has nine from this part of the world.
The criteria to make the list, says FP, could not be more simple: Candidates must be living and still active in public life. They must have shown distinction in their particular field as well as an ability to influence wider debate, often far beyond the borders of their own country.
India:
1: Historian Ramachandra Guha
2: Political psychologist Ashis Nandy
3: Environmentalist Sunita Narain
4: Economist-Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen
5: Journalist author Fareed Zakaria
6: Novelist Salman Rushdie
7: San Diego-based neuroscientist VS Ramachandran
Pakistan: Lawyer-politician Aitzaz Ahsan
Bangladesh: Microfinance guru Mohammed Yunus
China has four.
Click here for the full list, to vote your selection or to add a candidate.
Himal Southasian
Kanak Mani Dixit on Taslima Nasrin, Aitzaz Ahsan and the politics of exile
There will be serious doubts about how Southasian we are if we cannot care for those who are suffering, and then rise to do something about it. In particular, there is a serious empathy deficit among the countries of our region today, where we seem unable to put ourselves in the sandals of someone across the frontier. We are made remote, of course, firstly by the borders that separate us, and the media that largely concentrates on news within those borders. But we also fail the test of rationality, each of us, because our vision is affected by ideological blinkers. Lastly, perhaps we keep quiet because, on many an occasion, we lack the courage of our convictions.
Continue reading ‘Taslima and Aitzaz’
