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October 2004 saw the launch of Simorgh’s bi-annual journal
– BAYAN. Aimed at initiating an academic forum on socio-legal
issues, the journal is geared to highlight the links between the
social – as represented by ground realities – and
the legal, and addressing issues from a rights based perspective.
It is also seen as a means to improve as well as present critiques
of judicial decisions by academics and activists from the legal
and socio-legal fields.
REVIEW
TFT's Fatima Raja reviewed the journal and the launching ceremony
in the November 5-18, 2004 issue.
"...launched in late October, with a small
gathering of activists and lawyers (and the odd journalist) at
Quaid-e-Azam Library in Lahore's Lawrence Garden. For the launch
Neelam Hussain and her co-workers at Simorgh had assembled an
impressive set of speakers: the environmental lawyer Parvez Hasan;
Justice (r) Nasir Aslam Zahid and Justice (r) Majida Rizvi, both
of the Supreme Court; Chief Justice (r) AM Ahmedi of the Indian
Supreme Court; and Justice Sabihuddin of the Sindh High Court...nearly
all spoke of the necessity of a forum such as Bayan, in which
controversial issues - honour killing, Islamisation, and a hundred
others - could be discussed and the fruits of research be presented."
Read
More Excerpts from Review
Proceedings
of the annual Simorgh Conference, 2002. The papers included in
this volume address the politics of cultural change and domination
in the sub-continent as they appear in language and in issues
relating to language. This is done in papers that examine the
vocabularies of individual texts as well as of cultural discourses.
Hema Raza argues that the explicit and implicit presence of the
mohajir in Shame allows Rushdie to engage with migration as a
phenomenon that can re-imagine the nation. Niaz Zaman’s
paper asks how we can avoid over-privileging English at the expense
of other languages, while at the same time making English available
to all so that the skills which are acquired through English may
not be the preserve only of the rich, only of a few. 
