Discover Ranjit Hoskote's curated selection of 150 couplets from Urdu poet Mir Taqi Mir in 'The Homeland's an Ocean.' ...

Who does Urdu belong to? India's right-wing seems to think it's a foreign import, forced upon by so-called Islamic invaders. The latest fracas happened in April when a reporter from a far-right ...

Discover some surprising facts about Urdu, including how much it has in common with other languages. Also available in Urdu with audio.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or ...

Reflections on building work in the late 1970s in Covent Garden, central London, taking in the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and Bommi Baumann. By David Wise 2023-4.

From a typeface designer taking people around the bylanes of Bengaluru to Carnatic vocalists immersing visitors in sacred hymns at temples in South India and an archaeologist recreating the WWII era ...

Wikipedia tells us that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has been banning pornographic websites in the thousands since 2011. I remembered all the horror stories when the Kasur scandal ...

Sparsh noticed the elderly man would jot down notes in Urdu. But Urdu was the official language of Pakistan. He knew his grandfather had originated from what became Pakistan, but little more.

This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting.

and Ghazals by Mir Taqi Mir from Urdu, by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi. To echo a phrase from the text, each segment celebrates “an entire civilisational moment” with brevity and elegance.