BetweenTheLines

Sameer Arshad Khatlani Follow  on Facebook W hen Haider Qadir, the owner of a haveli Bollywood legend Prithviraj Kapoor’s father built in 1920 in Pakistan’s Peshawar, tried to demolish it, his neighbours intervened and had him arrested in January 2016. Qadir was granted bail a day later along with three other accused after cooling his heels overnight in prison. The four faced trial under antiquity law for damaging the three-storey mansion with arched windows and protruding balconies. Pakistan's provincial Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government in 2011 declared the haveli a heritage site along with that of another Peshawar-born actor Dilip Kumar’s ancestral house in Peshawar's Dhakki locality. The move recognised the emotional connect Peshawar has with several Bollywood legends, who were either born or have roots in the city. ALSO READ: Why Sufism Needs To Return To Its Essence Of Selfless Service Peshawar has been known as a cultural powerhouse and nursery for Bollywood. Perhaps no othe

  Sameer Arshad Khatlani Follow  on Facebook D ozens of Rohingya fleeing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar drowned when their boat hit a rock and capsized in heavy seas off the Bangladesh coast in September 2017. Among the dead were children as young as three, who had somehow evaded murderous mobs and the Myanmar military to flee. The visuals of dead babies and their grieving parents cradling, kissing them final goodbyes before lowering them in a mass grave fuelled outrage. The tragedy was the latest in the burgeoning humanitarian crisis that prompted the US to call out Myanmar authorities' actions against the Rohingya. At a UN Security Council (UNSC) meeting, it called them “a brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority”. But despite an untenable situation, China continued to defend Myanmar amid mounting global pressure on Naypyidaw to end the cleansing. ALSO READ: How Assad Weathered Storm In Arab Spring Aftermath China’s Rohingya stand was the latest in its