Founding Editor: Daya Varma (1929-2015)
Editors: Vinod Mubayi (New York) and Raza Mir (New Jersey).
Editorial Board: Ram Puniyani and Irfan Engineer (Mumbai); Pervez Hoodbhoy (Islamabad); Dolores Chew (Montreal); Vamsi Vakulabharanam (Amherst); Ajay Bhardwaj (Vancouver).
Circulation/website: Feroz Mehdi (On behalf of Alternatives, Montreal).
SOUTH ASIA AND UNLAWFUL GOVERNANCE
Daya Varma and Vinod Mubayi
Arbitrary arrests, prolonged detention without trial, torture in custody, murder in fake encounters and indiscriminate firing on legitimate protests are such a common feature in South Asia that often enough reportage of any of these is hardly noticed by the citizenry with any degree of concern. The official responses, especially to some secessionist movements, such as the ones in Sri Lanka, Baluchistan, Punjab, Kashmir or the containment and repression of movements of the minority communities like the Chakmas of Bangladesh or the Adivasis of India were achieved and are being achieved by use of force which is illegal according to the laws of the land. Read more…
IN INDIA, 11-YEAR HUNGER STRIKE OVER MILITARY VIOLENCE IS WAGED IN SHADOWS
Lydia Polgreen
Irom Chanu Sharmila has been on hunger strike for 11 years. Her demands are simple – to get the central government to revoke the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which gives immunity to soldiers no matter what they do. Read more…
LESSONS FROM MALEGAON: Punish those guilty of misleading probes; Compensate the victims!
(Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association, September 13, 2011, Supplied by Manisha Sethi)
The NIA has finally put the official seal on what many activists, the families of the accused and the people of Malegaon had been saying for long: that the arrest of nine Muslim men for the 2008 Malegaon blast was a result of a communal witch-hunt, which passes for investigations into terror charges. As a consequence of the investigating agencies’ hubris and prejudice, nine innocent men had to spend five long years in jail, while their families suffered and they were stigmatized. Read more…
ALL INDIA MUSLIM MAJLIS-E-MUSHAWARAT ON DELHI BLAST
New Delhi, 8 September 2011: Dr. Zafarul-Islam Khan, Working President of the All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat, the umbrella body of Indian Muslim organizations, forcefully condemned the terrorist and criminal attack outside the Delhi High Court on 7 September which resulted in so many innocent casualties. Read more…
JAN LOKPAL: AN ALTERNATE VIEW
K.N.Panikkar
After forty two years of hesitation and uncertainty an institutional mechanism for dealing with the all pervasive incidence of corruption is now within sight. What apparently moved the state machinery was the agitation spearheaded by Anna Hazare, which drew spontaneous support primarily in metropolitan cities. Read more…
THE COMMUNAL CHARACTER OF ANNA HAZARE’S MOVEMENT
Bhanwar Meghwanshi
It has now been confirmed that the Anna Hazare-led so-called ‘second freedom struggle’—as some sections of the media have mistakenly chosen to call it—has close links with the RSS. Read more…
ANNA HAZARE MOVEMENT – A SKEPTIC’S VIEW
Asghar Ali Engineer
Lot has already been written on Anna Hazare’s fast both for and against but more for than against. Why then need for another article? Every article has a perspective and I have mine on and also each article for or against throws light on some new facts not covered by earlier ones. I had written earlier also from Gandhian perspective but more needs to be written. This was, whether one agrees with or not, is a very major movement having lot of implications for our democracy. Read more…
ANNATIONALISM
Shekhar Gupta
“Mahatma Gandhi never used portraits of a tiger-riding Bharat Mata, and Bhagat Singh’s battle-cry was not Vande Mataram.” Read more…
UNRESTRAINED MEDIA, A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY
V.K.Tripathi
In the just concluded fast by Anna Hazare, the Indian media went berserk projecting Hazare’s Lokpal Bill as a major tussle between the civil society and the government. Read more…
HAREN PANDYA MURDER JUDGMENT
Yogi Sikand
As you might have heard the Gujarat High Court yesterday acquitted all the 12 accused, including main accused Ashgar Ali, in the Haren Pandya murder case. The high court lambasted the investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) saying the agency had botched up the investigations leading to enormous waste of time. Some years ago, I did a detailed interview with Haren Pandya’s father, Vithalbhai Pandya, on Haren Pandya’s murder. I am sending it to you below as it provides important points about this case. Read more…
WEST BENGAL: THE CLASS STRUGGLE IS NOT OVER
Radical Socialist September 10, 2011
For a long time, the CPI(M) had been mistakenly identified with class struggle. As a result, there was much elation on the Right after 13 May 2011, when it was evident that Mamata Banerjee would head a rightwing government in the province of West Bengal, earlier ruled for 34 years by the CPI(M). A totally stunned CPI(M) has been in no position to wage any kind of struggle, since this party and its cadres all the way to the village panchayat level had become accustomed to police protection and government support whenever it wanted to wage a “struggle”. But the working class found new channels to express itself. Read more…
MANMOHAN, MUSHARRAF HAD STRUCK KASHMIR DEAL
New Delhi, Sep 3: A US diplomatic cable, leaked by WikiLeaks, has revealed that India and Pakistan had in 2007 reached a deal on the Kashmir issue when Parvez Musharraf was the President. Read more…
DALIT RIGHTS GROUP SLAMS MODI GOVERNMENT’S STAND ON CHILD RIGHTS
Yoginder Sikand
Gujarat under Narendra Modi is touted about as Hindutva’s most successful laboratory. The corporate world and influential sections of the ‘mainstream’ Indian media never tire of singing paeans to Modi’s ‘developmental model’, which they uphold as eminently worthy of emulation by the rest of the country. Scores of middle-class Hindus passionately advocate Modi as India’s next Prime Minister, who, they fondly hope, will propel the country into the league of the economic and military ‘super-powers’. Read more…
URDU AND I
Noted filmmaker MAHESH BHATT makes an impassioned plea to save Urdu from extinction. Man is memory, and memory is sound. The first sound that resonates in my heart is the Urdu word “Shireen”, meaning sweet; the name of my mother, who was by birth a Shia Muslim and remained one till the end of her days. Read more…
FILM REVIEW: THE LEGEND OF FAT MAMA
“The Legend of Fat Mama” is a bittersweet story of the Chinese community in Kolkata, India, intertwined with the nostalgic journey in search of a woman who once made the most delicious noodles in the city’s Chinatown district. Kolkata once had a thriving community in its Chinatown, engaged in different trades, like medicine shops, food and shoemaking. Read more…
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