Why do Pakistani lawyers want to ban the country’s favourite soft drink? (A clue: it’s made by minorities)
Generations of Pakistanis have grown up reaching out for the sweet and easy pleasures of Shezan soft drinks. Over five decades the company has cemented its reputation as a supplier not just to high street shops, but to hotels, airlines and the country’s armed forces.
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Tuesday, 21 February 2012 at 12:14 pm
India’s newspaper rivals do battle in ad war
In India, there is a jolly and very entertaining newspaper war going on between two of the country’s most established titles. Between them, they enjoy a circulation of more than 5m readers.
The Times of India (TOI) has always thought itself more lively than its rivals, and its usually breathless mix of showbusiness “news”, cricket gossip [...]
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Wednesday, 1 February 2012 at 11:30 am
Kashmir movie triggers new controversy
Indian filmmaker Ashvin Kumar is used to controversy. His previous documentary, Inshallah Football, about the conflict in Kashmir and its lingering ramifications, was refused a certificate by the censors. With the launch of his latest film, Inshallah Kashmir:Living Terror, he has sought to avoid that problem by putting the film directly online.
Kumar uploaded his film [...]
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Friday, 27 January 2012 at 12:48 pm
Breathing life into a dying language
The Andamans, a cluster of islands 700 miles east of the Indian mainland in the Bay of Bengal, are home to three highly endangered languages. One of them, Great Andamanese, has only five speakers.
Professor Anvita Abbi, a renowned linguist specialising in the minority languages of the Indian subcontinent, has spent many years researching the languages, [...]
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Wednesday, 16 November 2011 at 4:37 am
From Kathmandu to Peshawar by Beetle (and all for a good cause)
In the heady old days before war and conflict and other things got in the way, South Asia was paradise for cross-border travelers, making their way in beaten-down VW vans all the way from Kabul to India and beyond. Nowadays such journeys are rare.
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Friday, 4 November 2011 at 6:40 am
How India shut down the media over Burmese visit
Burma’s new president, a former general called Thein Sein, flew out of Delhi this past weekend, concluding a four-day visit which saw the relationship between the two countries further cemented with a series of new deals and written agreements. Among the highlights referred to in the joint statement issued by the countries, was an undertaking [...]
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Tuesday, 18 October 2011 at 8:53 am
Pakistan’s artists join effort to help schools in Swat Valley
Some of Pakistan’s leading artists have donated works to be auctioned as part of a fund-raising effort for schools in the Swat Valley. As part of a project that intends both to collect as much money as possible as well as raise the international profile of the country’s artists and their work, organisers appealed [...]
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Tuesday, 20 September 2011 at 1:01 pm
The secret and surprising world of Delhi’s Walled City
About 20 minutes harried walk from Old Delhi’s Turkman Gate, through alleyways and streets so crowded you have to breathe in as the cycle rickshaws push their way past, lies the home of the Jhinjhanvis, a Muslim family originally from Uttar Pradesh.
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Saturday, 10 September 2011 at 12:13 pm
Could you design a better school for Burma’s children?
There’s not a lot that can prepare you for both the sadness and optimism that surrounds the schools and shelters set up along the Thai border for the thousands of Burmese children forced to flee for their lives with their families. Their stories are pitiful, their future uncertain and yet it is difficult, when talking [...]
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Tuesday, 2 August 2011 at 5:52 am
Parachuting into Pakistan (and receiving a soft landing)
Three British skydivers claim to have become the first non-military parachutists to do their thing in Pakistan. Brothers Andrew and Michael Lovemore and Peter Huskins recently leapt from their plane over the Swat Valley as part of the Spirit of Swat festival.
“It was very, very good and we were looked after very well,” Andrew Lovemore [...]
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Friday, 22 July 2011 at 2:13 pm
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