Asad Ashraf

The flag that Indians salute today carries the trace of an argument Surayya Tyabji won. The Ashoka Chakra was not an obvious choice. It required someone to make the case for it, to work out its visual rendering, and to persuade a sceptical Gandhi that a two-thousand-year-old wheel could do what a spinning wheel could not. That someone was a Muslim woman from Hyderabad, working in the months before partition, in a country that was still becoming itself.

Bashir Badr did not write for scholars. He wrote for the person sitting alone at night, for the one who had loved badly, for those who found the world ugly and humanity worth salvaging. In a career spanning seven decades and more than 18,000 couplets, he did something that few poets in any language manage: he made an entire nation feel understood. The legendary Urdu poet and Padma Shri laureate passed away at his home in Bhopal on May 28, 2026. He was 91.

Iran’s endurance under decades of sanctions and isolation shows how societies can navigate prolonged adversity through patience, institutional strength and long term thinking. While the country has its own internal debates and challenges, its resilience offers a moment of reflection. For Indian Muslims, the lesson lies not in imitation but in cultivating confidence, strong institutions and economic empowerment while remaining mindful and steady in difficult times.