By Zubeida Mustafa
IT IS now eighteen months that computerised Urdu nastaliq calligraphy has been in use in the country but it has yet to produce the impact on Urdu printing it could have been expected to. Only one machine is currently being used in Pakistan to bring out an Urdu daily from Lahore.
Why this delay in response? Not that the inventor, Mr Ahmed Mirza Jamil, has not Continue reading Slow acceptance of a major breakthrough: Computerised calligraphy
By Zubeida Mustafa
THE TWO major problems facing the printing industry in Pakistan are the high cost of production and the poor quality of service provided. Identifying these two factors which determine the state of the industry today, Mr Ahmad Mirza Jamil, the outgoing Chairman of the Pakistan Association of Printing and Graphic Arts Industry (PAPGAI) points out that if the industry is surviving in the country it is because printers are operating in a seller’s market. The dismally low literacy rate, the poor reading habits of the people and the scarcity of low-priced books and literature are key indicators of the state of the publishing and printing industries in Pakistan.
It is not surprising to find these industries in a poor state. In a society where education is at a discount, the elements which go into the making of education also tend to be ignored. As compared with the publishing sector, printing is better off because it c to multifarious needs other than those of the publishers and stationers. The printer gets a substantial part of his business from the orders he receives for the printing of labels, cartons, pharmaceutical literature (which the majority of consumers cannot read), invitation and greeting cards and calendars. There is urgent need to look into the Continue reading Woes of the printing industry: Need for duty cuts, cheap newsprint, incentives
By Zubeida Mustafa
IN 1978, the year for which full statistics are available, 642,000 titles were published in the world. Out of these Pakistan’s share was a meagre 1,317 titles, whereas Japan and West Germany, with smaller population produced over 43,000 and 50,000 titles respectively.
This projects a rather gloomy picture of the state of our book world. Things are said to Continue reading Publishing industry’s travail: Narrow market, poor technology inhibit expansion
By Zuhair Siddiqi, Viewpoint, September, 1977
Dr. Wahid Mirza died in Lahore on September 5.
MOHAMMAD WAHID MIRZA was already in his late seventies, and slowly wearing away, when the country observed the 700th death anniversary of his beau ideal, Amir Khusrau, earlier this year. For nearly forty years, Dr. Mirza had been a distinguished figure in the world of Oriental learning. But outside the limited circle of Orientalists, he was not much known — thanks largely to his own retiring disposition and his inherent dislike of self-projection. During the last year of his life, however, his valuable work on Amir Khusrau brought him much wider recognition among the lay intelligentsia. In their search for authentic material on the fascinating character and amazing achievements of that great savant, writers and journalists inevitably had to turn to Dr.Wahid Mirza’s classic contribution, and many of them acknowledged him as one of the greatest living authorities on the subject. The National Book Foundation published a new edition of his Life and Works of Amir Khusrau, which has held the field as a practically indispensable work of reference ever since it was first published in 1935. And at the request of the Foundation,he produced within a few days, in spite of his old age and failing health, an English translation of Khusrau’s Khazain-ul-Futuh — a short history of the reign of Alauddin Khilji. As wider recognition, and fresh bouquets of tribute came to Dr. Mirza during the last year of his life one was reminded of the touching lines of Robert Blair : Continue reading Memories of a great scholar
This article was sent to me by the writer’s daughter, Sarah Siddiqi. Zuhair Siddiqi was a senior journalist who died in a road accident in 1979
By Zuhair Siddiqi
It is not surprising that Pakistan, which has now completed 29 years of her life, should still be involved in a debate on the roots and character, the substance and orientation, of her culture.
Perhaps, no other newly liberated nation has experienced cultural problems of such complexity. The birth of Pakistan was not the mere emergence of a country from political slavery into sovereign independence. Nor was the partition that it involved a simple case of separation, like that of Burma from British India ten years earlier. The new State came into being as the result of a three-way partition — of the Indian sub-continent, of Muslim India, and of the two major Muslim provinces. Continue reading A nation in search of its culture