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).
EDITORIAL: FAREWELL COMRADE CASTRO
Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir
By any measure relevant to a decent future for the world, November 2016 has been an extremely depressing month. In the United States, con-man Donald Trump was elected President on November 8, despite having lost the popular vote by over 2 million votes. Right-wingers across the world, including some in the Indian diaspora, are jubilant. Get ready for four years of unrelenting assaults on reproductive rights, minority rights, police brutality, health care and the reduction of public spending in the service of tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy. Read more…
TALLER THAN THE REST
Saeed Naqvi
An interview with Castro was a memorable experience on an epic scale.
AN itinerant journalist does in the course of his wanderings pick up an icon or two whom he values above others. Had I been old enough to have met Mahatma Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru, they too would be at the top of the list. Read more…
ARUNA ROY AND THE GRASSROOTS REVOLUTION IN INDIA
Jooneed Khan
In the “multiple Indias” where firebrand social activist Aruna Roy has earned herself a world-wide repu-tation for integrity and commitment, women of all castes, classes and creeds come together more easily than anyone else in the struggle for rights, justice and for constant deepening of democracy. Read more…
INDIA’S CRACKDOWN IN KASHMIR: IS THIS THE WORLD’S FIRST MASS BLINDING?
Mirza Waheed
A bloody summer of protest in Kashmir has been met with a ruthless response from Indian security forces, who fired hundreds of thousands of metal pellets into crowds of civilians, leaving hundreds blinded. Read more…
MONTREAL WOMEN RESIST OCCUPATION, MILITARIZATION AND WARS OF AGGRESSION
Women from diverse communities marched through downtown Montreal on Saturday 26 November, after hearing messages that brought life to global and local conflicts and the resistance of women here and around the world to protect the land, water, the air and our futures! Read more…
TARGETING NANDINI SUNDAR (VARIOUS NEWS STORIES)
Murder Charge Is Absurd, Top Cop’s Attempt To Harass Us: DU Professor Sundar
Hindustan Times 8 November 2016.
Delhi University professor Nandini Sundar, who has been booked along with Maoists on charges of murder of a tribal villager in insurgency-hit Sukma district, said on Tuesday the FIR against her was “patently absurd”. Read more…
DEMONETISATION: RURAL INDIA HIT HARD, FARMERS SKIP SEASON, NO WORK FOR DAILY WAGERS IN ORISSA
Basudev Mahapatra
BHUBANESHWAR: With the sowing season for the winter (Ravi) crop in full swing, Nabarathi Kuanr, 60, of Sudrukumpa village of Kandhamal district in Odisha has no option but to skip a cropping season as he is unable to get seeds and fertilisers from the government and the cooperatives because of the scarcity of lower denomination notes after the Indian government on November 8 declared that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes have been demonetized. Read more…
PRESS STATEMENT BY FREE SOFTWARE MOVEMENT OF INDIA
Free Software Movement of India (fsmi.in)
INDIA: DANGEROUS ORDER BY DISTRICT MAGISTRATE OF INDORE BANNING ANY CRITICISM ON SOCIAL MEDIA OF DE-MONETISATION BY GOVT. OF INDIA – PRESS STATEMENT BY FREE SOFTWARE MOVEMENT OF INDIA Read more…
DEMONETISATION: THE POOR DON’T MATTER EXCEPT TO BUY VOTES
Pratap Antony
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows that the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight was fixed: the poor stay poor, the rich get rich. That’s how it goes. Everybody knows. Leonard Cohen. Read more…
DEATH BY DEMONETISATION
Satya Sagar
The abrupt demonetisation of 500 and 1000 rupee notes by the Narendra Modi regime is a drastic move that is staggering in its scale, ambition and repurcussions. The only other figures in modern history one can think of, devious or stupid enough to attempt something similar, are the likes of Marcos, Suharto, Idi Amin and Pol Pot. Read more…
THE CHIEF OF COUNTERFEIT GRIEF
Apoorvanand
“We hear that governance now will have a different cadence
Tyranny will now be the protector
Cities will be without walls or doors
The sky will tremble with counterfeit grief
Executioners will be in charge of funerals,
Killers will organise mourning
Orphans and widows will find their hands and feet bound
The heads of the faith will be held aloft on spears.
If this be the realisation of India’s ancient dreams
Then soon, there will be no India, nor any of its connoisseurs.” Read more…
A COUNTRY FILLED WITH ANTI NATIONALS!
K P Sasi
I thought the Muslims were the only anti nationals in this country. But I was mistaken. Earlier, thousands of people including even women and children who were questioning Koodankulam nuclear plant were declared as anti nationals. They are not the only ones outside the community of Muslims. Read more…
PAKISTAN: THE ESTABLISHMENT’S DILEMMA
Pervez Hoodbhoy
THE oligarchy which runs Pakistan, often called the establishment, is in a quandary. The problem is that whatever it says through its diplomats abroad — and with however much energy — the world insists on perceiving Pakistan as an ideological state wedded to exporting jihad. This is undesirable, but so also is the idea of changing course. Read more…
BANGLADESH: THE SOUNDS OF MADNESS
Iffat Nawaz
There is no escaping it — the world is increasingly being divided by hatred
How fast does sound travel? Certainly not as fast as light. Under the bright sun, all sounds seem to dissolve into light, no residues, no gripes. But what about at night? Read more…
EDITORIAL: CULTURE POLITICS GETS UGLY
Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir
We begin by wishing our readers a Happy Deepavali. This festival is celebrated all over South Asia by lighting lamps, but this Deepavali, we remember Faiz’s forlorn poem Raushniyon ke Shehr (The City of Lights), where he articulates his worries about the prospect for peace:
Khair ho teri lailaon ki, in sab se keh do
Aaj ki shab jab diye jalaayen, oonchi rakhen lau
[May your nights remain safe, do tell them
When they light lamps tonight, keep the wicks high] Read more…
‘YOU ARE A REAL MAN’: AN INDIAN EDITOR’S AWKWARD INTERVIEW WITH DONALD TRUMP
Donald Trump seems to inspire weird reactions and awkwardness just about everywhere he goes. Saturday’s rally for the American presidential candidate in New Jersey, organised by the Republican Hindu Coalition, lived up to this promise, mixing Prabhu Deva and Anupam Kher with dancing light-saber wielding terrorists. And then Trump said, “I love Hindu.” Read more…
IS THE MISUSE OF RELIGION TAINTING INDIA’S ELECTORAL PROCESS?
Teesta Setalvad
The Supreme Court will, on Tuesday, October 18 begin final hearing on a batch of petitions that could, potentially have far reaching consequences on the purity of the electoral process and the interpretation of the Indian Constitution. Read more…
FAR FROM BEING ANTI-NATIONAL, IT IS A PATRIOTIC DUTY TO QUESTION THE MILITARY
Saikat Datta
On March 16, 1968, US Army soldiers from the Company C of the 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade of the 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division dropped in on two villages in South Vietnam, known as My Lai and My Khe. In the subsequent few hours, these soldiers of Charlie Company would go on to kill over 500 villagers – men, women, children and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated. Read more…
DON’T STOP THE MUSIC: SHARING CULTURE HUMANISES INDIA AND PAKISTAN — BANNING THIS PUSHES BOTH FROM PEACE TOWARDS WAR
Salman Ahmad
Despite the trauma of Partition, our history of conflict and the pain of the present moment, there still remains, miraculously, great love, friendship and deep spiritual harmony between Indians and Pakistanis. Read more…
A NEO-PATRIOTIC MOB IN INDIA
Salil Tripathi
In 1959, a Pakistani film-maker called Akhtar Kardar directed a film called Jago Hua Savera (The Day Shall Dawn), which brought together creative film-making talent across the Indian subcontinent the way it used to before Independence in 1947, and which is now fast becoming unimaginable. Read more…
HOW THE MEDIA IN INDIA AND PAKISTAN CREATED A WAR WHERE THERE WASN’T ONE
Haroon Khalid
At a time when Indians and Pakistanis – politicians, sportsmen, entertainers, media persons and regular civilians – are hurling abuses at each other, it probably renders me unpatriotic to say that Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru is one of my favorite books. Read more…
PATIALA COURT ACQUITS KOBAD GANDHY OF ALL CHARGES
Manish Sirhindi
The court of Additional Sessions and District Judge Mohammad Gulzar on Tuesday acquitted Kobad Ghandy, an alleged leader of banned CPI (Maoist), of all charges in a six-year-old case. He was booked by police in 2010 for delivering two “anti-national” speeches at Punjabi University. Read more…
A FILM CANCELLED, A TV INTERVIEW CANNED: COMPETITIVE NATIONALISM IS ERODING FREE EXPRESSION IN INDIA
Girish Shahane
As soon as I read that a previously obscure NGO was protesting the screening of a Pakistani film titled Jago Hua Savera at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, I knew the organisers would drop it from the schedule without a whimper. The festival is sponsored by Reliance Jio, never a firm associated with support of free expression, and one increasingly tied to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s agenda. Read more…
BANGLADESH: VIOLENCE IS A CULTURE NOW
Fardin Hasin
The hacking of Khadiza is not an isolated incident
Our society has a morbid fascination with violence Read more…
SRI LANKA: WHEN THE COURTS ARE SILENT…
Shashik Dhanushka and Andi Schubert
The injunction order handed down against the public screening of Prasanna Vithanage’s latest movie Silence in the Courts has opened up space to question the function of Justice in Sri Lanka. The movie is said to be based on a true story about a Magistrate suspected of sexually abusing a woman as a favour for releasing her husband from remand custody. Read more…
INDIA: LETTER BY CONCERNED ACADEMICS TO THE VICE CHANCELLOR, CENTRAL UNIVERSITY OF HARYANA, PROTESTING THE ATTACKS ON TEACHERS FOR THE PRODUCTION OF THE PLAY ’DRAUPADI’
To the Vice Chancellor,
Central University of Haryana Read more…
HINDU REPUBLIC: INDIA IS BEING RECREATED INTO A MAJORITARIAN STATE
Samar Halarnkar
“Humko iska badla chahiye and aur hum iska badla le kar rahenge. Hinduon ne chudiyan nahi pahan rakhi hain. In mullon ko jad se ukhaad phenke ge hum…We want revenge and we will achieve this vengeance. Hindus have not worn bangles. We will uproot these mullahs (Muslims) from the roots and throw them away.” Read more…
EDITORIAL: INDIA-PAKISTAN TENSIONS, AND THE FUTURE OF THE LEFT
Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir
All it took was four heavily armed terrorists. The rest of the script played out like an old tired farce. Seventeen Indian army personnel were killed. In light of the ongoing unrest in the Kashmir Valley, the dogs of war strained to be let out. Irresponsible statements by certain motivated politicians and the leisure class demanded war. Read more…
TO MAKE SENSE OF URI, INDIA MUST UNDERSTAND COURAGE, COWARDICE – AND ITS OWN BORDERS
Girish Shahane
On reading about the assault on the Army base in Uri, I thought of Ashwatthamma sneaking into the enemy camp under cover of darkness, setting tents alight, burning to death a generation of Pandava princes. Read more…
INDIA – PAKISTAN TENSIONS: JOINT STATEMENT BY PAKISTAN – INDIA PEOPLES’ FORUM FOR PEACE AND DEMOCRACY
PIPFPD expresses its concern over the growing tensions between India and Pakistan following militants’ attack on strategically important army base in Uri, Jammu & Kashmir. The leadership of both the countries needs to urgently act towards defusing the tense scenario rather than fuelling it. Read more…
CANADA: DEPLORE THE SILENCING OF JOURNALISTS
SANSAD strongly deplores the ongoing effort to censor journalists critical of the policies of the Indian government and to manipulate the media addressing the South Asian diaspora in Vancouver, BC. Read more…
BANGLADESH: THE PRICE OF FREE SPEECH
Ahsan Akbar
In February this year the authorities in Bangladesh took Shamsuzzoha Manik, a 73-year-old publisher, into custody for publishing a book titled “Islam Bitorko” (“Debate on Islam”). Read more…
SRI LANKA: TRAVAILS OF A WAR-TORN PEOPLE
Ahilan Kadirgamar
The Northern Provincial Council, which came to power three years ago, has been an abysmal failure. And Colombo has descended to business as usual. Read more…
INDIA – PAKISTAN TENSIONS: OUR PRESENT AND TERRIFYING DANGER
Darryl D’Monte
With the tension between India-Pakistan rising, Darryl D’Monte reports a recent discussion about the confrontation between these two nuclear states. Read more…
INDIA: A POOR JOB WITH SUMS – A CASE FOR DOUBLING THE OFFICIAL POVERTY LINE
Prabhat Patnaik
An important demand of the trade unions which had called for an all-India general strike on September 2 was that the minimum wage of unskilled workers should be raised to Rs 692 per day. Read more…
INDIA: ONLY THE CONSTITUTION – MUSLIM WOMEN MUST COUNT ON ITS GUARANTEES, NOT READINGS OF RELIGION
Razia Patel
Syeda Hameed has written an article titled ‘Just keep the faith’ (IE, August 30) regarding the Mumbai High Court’s judgement allowing the entry of women into the Haji Ali dargah. Read more…
NEPAL: LETTING NEPAL BE
Kanak Mani Dixit
It should be in India’s interest to leave Nepal free to sort out its own challenges. New Delhi should consider the need for economic growth in U.P. and Bihar when it sits down to strategise on Nepal. Read more…
THE RETURN OF SANSKRIT – HOW AN OLD LANGUAGE GOT CAUGHT UP IN INDIA’S NEW CULTURE WARS
Ananya Vajpeyi
Indian scholar Ananya Vajpeyi examines the way the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is using Sanskrit to advance a Hindu supremacist agenda. She argues that academics need to step out of the ivory tower and resist the government’s manipulation of this ancient language. Read more…
DOES THE LEFT HAVE A FUTURE?
John Harris
There is more than one spectre haunting modern Europe: terrorism, the revival of the far right, the instability of Turkey, the fracturing of the EU project. And in mainstream politics, all across the continent, the traditional parties of the left are in crisis. Read more…
EDITORIAL
Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir
Two discourses, both violent and toxic, have dominated the political scene in India recently. One is the topic of nationalism that has become a source of a vicious, undemocratic campaign directed against anyone who raises a voice against the RSS version of Indian nationalism that can be summarized by the slogan “Mera Bharat mahan (My India – great!). The latest victim of this campaign is the respected human-rights organization Amnesty International, which has been accused of sedition in a lawsuit filed in a court in Bangalore simply because Amnesty sponsored a meeting on Kashmir in which victims of violence by the Army and police recounted their stories. (A letter by Civil Society Organizations reproduced below addresses this issue). Read more…
PEOPLE OF INDIA HAVE LET DOWN IROM SHARMILA
Harsh Mander
As she licked honey from a fingertip, she could not hold back her tears. It was the first time in 16 years that any food or water had entered Irom Sharmila’s mouth. This tiny dab of honey ended the most extraordinary non-violent battle against injustice that India has seen in the last half-century. Read more…
MAHASWETA DEVI 1926-2016
Premankur Biswas
Hathighisa in Naxalbari is about 560 km from the south Kolkata nursing home where author and activist Mahasweta Devi spent her last few months. Yet, the Magsaysay award winner and Padma Vibhushan, who died on Thursday, is almost a local deity in the seat of the Naxalbari movement of the 1960s. Read more…
IN MAHASWETA DEVI’S FICTION, THE DISPOSSESSED TOLD THEIR OWN TRUTHS
Naveen Kishore
“A billion moons pass. A billion lunar years. Opening her eyes after a million light years, Draupadi, strangely enough, sees sky and moon. Slowly the bloodied nailheads shift from her brain. Trying to move, she feels her arms and legs still tied to four posts. Something sticky under her ass and waist. Her own blood. Only the gag has been removed. Incredible thirst. In case she says ‘water’ she catches her lower lip in her teeth. She senses that her vagina is bleeding. How many came to make her?” Read more…
KANDHAMAL: LONG WAIT FOR JUSTICE
Ram Puniyani
Today, nearly a decade later when we remember with pain the horrific violence of Kandhamal in 2008, many issues related to the state of affairs of communal violence, state of minorities, the state of justice delivery system come to one’s mind. Read more…
PRESS STATEMENT BY ALL INDIA SECULAR FORUM
All India Secular Forum extends solidarity with the Aazadi Kooch, a Pad Yatra organised by the Una Dalit Atyachar Ladat Samiti which started on 5th August 2016 and goes on till 15th August 2016. The yatra began in Ahmedabad on the 5th and is expected to complete 400 kms when it reaches Una on the 15th. Read more…
KASHMIR, AND THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS
Basharat Peer
SRINAGAR, Kashmir — On July 8, Burhan Wani, a 22-year-old rebel, was shot dead by Indian soldiers and police officers in a small village in the central part of Indian-controlled Kashmir. News of his killing spread as fast as the bullets that had hit him. Cellphones, emails, social media went wild: “They’ve killed Burhan! They’ve killed Burhan!” Everybody called Burhan by his first name. Read more…
INDIA’S TOP 1% OWNS MORE THAN 50% OF HER WEALTH
Bodapati Srujana
NEW DELHI: Today, wealth inequality in India is much sharper than ever before. The top 1% that owned a little more than a third of India’s wealth in 2000, now own more than half the wealth in the country. In this same period, the share of 99% of India’s population went down from almost two-third to less than half. Read more…
‘FOR BJP, THE COW IS A ‘SACRIFICIAL LAMB’ TO POLARISE VOTERS’
Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta
The former IPS officer is now part of the Dalit movement in Gujarat. In an interview he discusses the BJP’s implicit support of gau rakshaks, the condition of Dalits in India and where the Una movement is heading. Read more…
CASTE CAPITALISM IN PAKISTAN
Foqia Sadiq Khan
How the textiles sector in Pakistan came into the hands of Memons and Chiniotis after the Partition. Read more…
SRI LANKA: 10 YEARS SINCE AID WORKER MASSACRE
Human Rights Watch
Sri Lankan authorities have not brought to justice those responsible for the execution-style slaying of 17 aid workers a decade ago this week, Human Right Watch said today. On August 4, 2006, gunmen murdered local staff members from the Paris-based Action Contre La Faim (Action Against Hunger, ACF) at their compound in the town of Muttur, in eastern Trincomalee district. Read more…
BANGLADESH: BAULS UNDER ATTACK
Editorial: The Independent
By attacking these mystics minstrels, the militants have not only attacked the pluralistic foundation of our country but have also shamelessly shown their contempt for our culture and customs. Read more…
BANGLADESH: FALSE NUCLEAR HOPE
M V Ramana and Zia Mian
Plans to construct Bangladesh’s first nuclear power plant are moving forward fast. Read more…
FAST BREEDER REACTORS AND THE SLOW PROGRESS OF INDIA’S NUCLEAR PROGRAMME
M.V. Ramana
Breeder reactors have always underpinned the claims of India’s Department of Atomic Energy about generating large quantities of electricity. Read more…
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, INDIA
Dear Friends,
As you have no doubt been following in the news, there is a concerted campaign against Amnesty International India (AII) by the ABVP and some sections of the government after the filing of the FIR on charges of sedition against them by Bangalore police, following their event on Kashmir there. Read more…
EDITORIAL: VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN PAKISTAN, INDIA, BANGLADESH: SOUTH ASIA’S SHAMEFUL LEGACY
Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir
On July 15th, Qandeel Baloch, a popular social media celebrity in Pakistan was brutally murdered by her own brother in a horrific case of honor killing. According to the newspaper Dawn, in an unprecedented move by the state, the FIR registered against the killers under the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) made the offence unpardonable. Baloch, whose real name was Fauzia Azeem, was killed by her brother last week because she brought “dishonor” to the family. Physicist and rights activist (and member of the Insaf Bulletin collective) Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy who found Baloch a fearless young woman determined to “break taboos that shackle women in Pakistan’s patriarchal society”, believed she paid the ultimate price for her convictions — being strangled to death. Read more…
VALLEY VOICES IN KOLKATA – “WE AS KASHMIRIS REQUEST YOU”
Dolores Chew
On the night of 23 February 1991, soldiers of the 4 Rajputana Rifles of the Indian Army cordoned off the two villages Kunan and Poshpora in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district during a ‘crackdown’. They took the men away and held them in barns and then gang-raped the women. Read more…
AZADI: WHAT EXACTLY DOES AZADI MEAN TO KASHMIRIS? WHY CAN’T IT BE DISCUSSED? SINCE WHEN HAVE MAPS BEEN SACROSANCT?
Arundhati Roy
The people of Kashmir have made it clear once again, as they have done year upon year, decade upon decade, grave upon grave, that what they want is azadi. (The “people”, by the way, does not mean those who win elections conducted in the rifle sights of the army. It does not mean leaders who have to hide in their homes and not venture out in times like these.) Read more…
THE DISHONOURABLE KILLING OF QANDEEL BALOCH
Moni Mohsin
Qandeel Baloch, who was murdered last week by her brother, was Pakistan’s first genuine social media star. Despite her fame – she had over 1 million followers on Facebook – 26-year-old Baloch was an unlikely star. Still less did she have the makings of the political and social icon that she has rapidly become in the four days since her death. Read more…
CALIFORNIA PASSES TEXTBOOK STANDARDS INCLUDING ‘COMFORT WOMEN,’ SIKHS
Frances Kai-Hwa Wang
California’s State Board of Education approved a new History-Social Science Framework for California Public Schools Thursday, adding changes on a wide variety of topics, including “comfort women” in World War II, the Bataan Death March and the Battle of Manila, discrimination faced by Sikh Americans, and the roles of LGBTQ community in U.S. and California history, according to the California Department of Education. Read more…
POLICE, POWER, PATRIARCHY
Rahul Srivastav , Manini Srivastav
In two separate cases in different districts of Uttar Pradesh, sub-inspector (SI) rank officers were suspended after videos of their abusive behaviour with female complainants went viral on social media. One was a station officer (SO) and the other in- charge of an outpost. In one case, the officer on reaching the spot, after getting a call from Dial100, hurled abuses at the female complainant: “Kya 100 no tere baap ka hai?(Does 100 number belong to your father?”. Read more…
INDIA OUTRAGE AFTER GANG RAPE VICTIM ASSAULTED AGAIN ‘BY SAME MEN’
Geeta Pandey
There has been outrage in India after a student was allegedly gang-raped by five men who had also raped her three years ago. Read more…
‘A MODEST PROPOSAL’ IS A BETTER IDEA FOR KASHMIR
Sadanand Menon
Almost 300 years ago, Jonathan Swift made ‘a modest proposal’ to the British nation. Erroneously remembered today as a writer of tales for children, Swift was in fact a fierce political satirist and fabulist, with a touch of misanthropy. Himself an Irishman, he proposed that allowing thousands of Irish children to die of malnutrition and starvation due to prolonged conditions of famine induced by the feudal system and British taxation, made for silly economics and a waste of resources. Read more…
COUP D’ÉTAT ATTEMPT: TURKEY’S REICHSTAG FIRE?
Aye Kadiolu
On the evening of July 15, 2016, a friend called around 10:30pm and said that both bridges connecting the Asian and European sides of Istanbul were closed by military barricades. Moreover, military jets were flying over Ankara skies. As someone living on the European side of Istanbul and commuting to the Asian side to my university on a daily basis and spending many hours in traffic in order to do that, I immediately knew that the closure of both bridges was a sign of something very extraordinary taking place. Read more…
DHAKA TERROR ATTACK: BANGLADESH PAYS THE PRICE FOR ITS GOVERNMENT’S POLICY OF APPEASING ISLAMISTS
Ikhtisad Ahmed
At 8.45 pm on July 1, the last Friday before Eid ul Fitr, an Islamist attack broke out in Gulshan, the diplomatic, expatriate and upper-class heartland of Dhaka. It developed into a hostage situation, with the assailants exchanging gunfire with the police. Two of the first responders were fatally wounded, and many others injured and hospitalised. Rumours abound on social media as shocked and distressed citizens gave in to voyeurism, but ten hours into the attack, neither the Bangladesh prime minister nor her ministers had addressed the nation. Their deafening silence echoed the tepid response of the Awami League government to rising terrorism. Read more…
1,528 FAKE ENCOUNTERS IN MANIPUR ALONE: WHY THE SUPREME COURT JUDGEMENT ON AFSPA MATTERS
Saikat Datta
On the day the 19th battalion of the Army’s Rashtriya Rifles gunned down Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani in an encounter in South Kashmir, which led to massive protests in which at least 15 people have been killed, came an interim judgment of the Supreme Court that can have a profound impact on human rights in India’s numerous conflict zones. Read more…
ATROCITIES, DISCRIMINATION LED TO DALIT WAVE OF ANGER IN GUJARAT: MARTIN MACWAN
Vidya Venkat
“Gujarat has a mere 2.33 per cent of India’s Dalit population, but when it comes to atrocities, it ranks in the top half of the country”. Read more…
IN DEDICATION TO AMJAD SABRI & ALL QAWWALS
Jooneed J Khan
Qawwalis can be deadly. Case in point: the assassination of Pakistani Qawwal Amjad Sabri, brought down June 22 in a hail of bullets fired by two gunmen on a motor-bike as he drove with a friend in the ultra-violent city of Karachi. Read more…
MODI’S US TRIP – PERKS OF POWER AND COMPULSIONS OF EMPIRE
Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir
Modi’s recent trip to the White House and the many embraces he received from President Obama as well as the US Congress reminds us again of the nexus between empire and power. Hardly two years ago, Modi was a pariah in the eyes of the US Government that had refused to grant him a visa for nine long years on the grounds of violation of religious freedom. This denial was based on the pogrom of minority Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 when Modi was Chief Minister and directly in-charge of the police and the law and order machinery. The weakness of the Indian judicial system, which has rarely brought to justice anyone other than mere foot soldiers, in cases of communal violence, is well known. Despite mountains of evidence against Modi, amply documented in many reports, books, and proceedings, various official organs in India chose to issue “clean chits” to him on grounds that would strain the credulity of any impartial observer. However, the US State Department certainly recognized this reality when it opted to deny Modi a diplomatic A-2 visa in 2005 and continued to do so thereafter. Read more…
INDIA’S PATENT PROBLEMS: MODI AND THE END OF CHEAP MEDICINES
Sarah Asrar and Fran Quigley
When is a decision on a patent application not a decision at all? When it runs counter to the powerful commercial and diplomatic forces that protect massively profitable pharmaceutical monopolies. Or at least that is what many advocates for access to medicines are saying is the reason behind Indian patent officials last month reversing their own 2015 decision that denied United States-based Gilead Sciences a patent on its hepatitis C treatment sofosbuvir, commonly marketed as Sovaldi. The new decision holds that Sovaldi meets the Indian patenting requirements of novelty and inventiveness. But the earlier decision by the same agency came to the opposite conclusion, holding that Gilead’s drug was not a significant improvement over an already available compound. Read more…
RESIST MODI REGIME’S ASSAULT ON STUDENTS THROUGH SUBRAMANIAM PANEL REPORT ON STUDENT POLITICS
Shehla Rashid
The recent government constituted panel‘s (headed by former cabinet secretary T.S.R. Subramaniam) report on student politics is unconstitutional, highly regressive and politically motivated, and signals the upcoming onslaught of total commercialisation of education and imposition of Hindutva ideology in universities. The TSR Subramaniam Panel’s report is the logical follow up to the Birla Ambani report (which was submitted in 2000), following which student unions across the country were banned. The Birla Ambani report had lamented that student unions are not allowing commercialisation of education: we accept the charge and take pride in it! We believe that education should be a right of everyone, not a privilege of a handful of people. Read more…
NSG MEMBERSHIP PUSH “ILL-ADVISED, UNWARRANTED”: SRINIVASAN
The Padma Bhushan awardee said failure to get in NSG would not have adverse impact on India’s nuclear programme. Read more…
FIRST PRAFUL BIDWAI MEMORIAL AWARD GOES TO PEOPLE’S ARCHIVE OF RURAL INDIA (PARI)
Press Release
New Delhi, June 23: The first Praful Bidwai Memorial Award has gone to the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), which was set up in 2014 by noted Mumbai-based journalist and commentator, Palagummi Sainath. Read more…
INDIA: TWO YEARS OF HINDUTVA RULE
Mukul Dube
According to a report in the Hindu newspaper of 12 June 2016, Sanatan Sanstha spokesperson Abhay Vartak said that he is “sad to see that Hindu organizations [are] being targeted in spite of a Hindu government being in power”. He forgot that the law has no religion and that the law is above the government in power. A man who kills another human being is a murderer, plain and simple, and he is liable to the same punishment regardless of his religion. Most important, the Constitution of India requires the government of India to have no religion. Read more…
GULBARG SOCIETY CARNAGE: WHO CAST THE FIRST STONE?
Ram Puniyani
Communal violence is the big bane of Indian society. While on one hand the innocents are killed the guilty mostly get away without any punishment. The rate of prosecution of riot cases is very low. Even where punishments are meted out the big fish are let off while the foot soldiers get punished. Apart from these observations what is popularized and what has become part of the ‘social common sense’ is that ‘it is Muslims who begin the riot and then they get killed’. Read more…
FACT-FINDING REPORT ON THE ALLEGED EXODUS OF HINDUS FROM KAIRANA
A team of journalists and activists, deputed by The Milli Gazette, on 14 June 2016 visited the town of Kairana in Western Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli district which is in the national news due to the claim by the local BJP member of Parliament Hukum Singh that 346 Hindu families have been forced to flee Kairana town due to threats from the Muslim community. This claim aroused much media and political interest and focused lights on the law-and-order situation in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Read more…
PROF MAHESH GURU WALKS FREE TO FACE SUSPENSION FROM MYSORE UNIVERSITY
(SabrangIndia website)
Is Criticizing Prime Minister Modi Now A Crime?
B.P. Mahesh Chandra Guru walked out of the jail late on the evening of June 24 after getting bail only to receive a suspension order from the Mysore University administration that cities his ‘criticism of Prime Minister of India, HRD Minister and Vice Chancellor in foul and derogatory language” as the reasons for the action against him. Inquiries made by SabrangIndia reveal that this is the matter before a judicial enquiry that is pending. Read more…
PROTEST THE ONSLAUGHT ON DEMOCRACY!
Call for a People’s Convention, 25 June 2016
25 June 1975 is marked as a day of shame, a blot on the history of independent India – the day when democracy was formally suspended through the imposition of the emergency. Today, more than four decades later, the nightmare is playing out again. We are now faced with the stark reality of achhe din, saffron style: an upgraded, corporate friendly, tech savvy version of the Emergency, packaged as a Hindutva dream. Read more…
EDITORIAL: SOUTH ASIA AND FASCISM: DESCENDING FAST, DESCENDING SLOW
Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir
Two issues in South Asia have captured our attention this month. The first is the troubling regularity with which secularist bloggers and journalists are being murdered in Bangladesh. Several secularists including a professor were hacked to death by machete wielding goons in the months of April and May in a depressing “signature” modus operandi, along with a Christian doctor and a Hindu tailor. Likewise, the murder of secular anti-Shiaphobia activist Khurram Zaki in Pakistan in early May unfortunately echoes a similar incendiary mix of intolerance and impunity practiced by fascist goons pretending to be defenders off religiosity. The execution of Motiur Rahman Nizami head of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, by the Bangladesh state, is also an unfortunate development. Unsavory and murderous, he may have been, but a principled opposition to the death penalty, even for convicted murderers, should be our position as human rights activists. Read more…
BANGLADESH’S SLOW CAPITULATION TO ISLAMISM
Ikhtisad Ahmed
On April 25, Islamists butchered LGBTQ activists Xulhaz Mannan and Tonoy Mahbub in the presence of Xulhaz’s mother at Mannan’s home in Dhaka, for being “the pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh (sic)”. Two days before that, extremists hacked to death Rezaul Karim Siddique, a Muslim professor of English at Rajshahi University in northwest Bangladesh. His killers accused him of “calling to atheism”. Read more…
HAS BANGLADESH FINALLY BURIED THE GHOSTS OF 1971 WAR CRIMES ALONG WITH MOTIUR RAHMAN NIZAMI?
David Bergman
The beneficiary and then the victim of Bangladesh’s startling political turnarounds was hanged on May 11. Read more…
BANGLADESH: FASCISM FROM BELOW
Habib Khondker
A simple equation differentiates democracies from authoritarian systems. Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson, it can be said that, in a democracy, the government is fearful of the people, and in an authoritarian system, the people are scared of the government. Read more…
ASSAM GOES SAFFRON: FOUR INGREDIENTS THAT THE BJP GOT RIGHT IN THIS CAMPAIGN
Ipsita Chakravarty
This will go down as one of the big success stories in the annals of Indian election history. After 15 years of Congress rule, Assam voted decisively for the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP has gone from five seats in the assembly polls of 2011 to around 60 in 2016. Mission 64 is in the bag and the BJP alliance looks set to notch up more than 80 seats in the 126-member Assembly. Anti-incumbency does not adequately explain such a dramatic verdict. This was a campaign where the BJP got the ingredients just right. Read more…
INDIA: SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND THE CULTURE OF IMPUNITY IN NAGALAND
Dolly Kikon
Perpetrators of sexual violence escape justice, while their victims are trapped between exhortations by women’s advocacy groups not to ‘suffer quietly’ and the social stigma attached to sexual violence. Read more…
THE ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS DECODED: BEHIND THE PROPAGANDA, THE COLD, HARD FACTS
The Citizen Bureau
NEW DELHI: The bombast is over, at least one hopes it is. And now that the television media channels are almost over with their customary ‘rah rah BJP’, the cold, sober, hard facts that have emerged from the five Assembly elections should prevail. Read more…
“WHAT HAS BEEN HAPPENING IN RECENT TIMES COULD WELL DEVELOP INTO FASCISM”: AN INTERVIEW WITH ROMILA THAPAR
The Caravan
For over five decades, the historian Romila Thapar has been at the vanguard of research and writing about ancient India. The author of 20 books including seminal titles such as A History of India and Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Thapar is also the author of history textbooks for the National Council for Research and Education (NCERT), used widely in schools across the nation. Read more…
INDIA SLIDING TOWARDS FASCISM UNDER HINDUTVA
Indian Writer, Feminist and Social Activist Noor Zaheer in Montreal, Canada. Read more…
LOOKING BEYOND THE KOMAGATA MARU APOLOGY
Gurpreet Singh
On May 18, Canada finally apologized for the Komagata Maru episode. The Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood in the House of Commons to say sorry for the incident that happened more than 100 years ago. Read more…
“THINGS THE LEFT NEEDS TO DO RIGHT”
Prabhat Patnaik
Exactly a century ago around this time, Vladimir Lenin was in Zurich completing a manuscript that would go on to become perhaps the most consequential book of the twentieth century. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism may not be the most widely read of Lenin’s works, but it is certainly the most important. Read more…
AIDWA STATEMENT ON TRINAMOOL VIOLENCE AFTER BENGAL ELECTIONS
AIDWA strongly condemns the heinous attack unleashed by the winning Trinamul Congress activists on the women activists in West Bengal as part of post-poll result violence. Most of AIDWA activists are attacked and hundreds had to flee from the residence in village or city. Read more…
INSAF BULLETIN EXTENDS MAY 1 SALUTE TO THE WORKERS OF THE WORLD!
EDITORIAL: DROUGHT AND THE POLITICS IN SOUTH ASIA
Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir
Several events in South Asia this month warranted an editorial, be it the uncovering of the Panama Papers scam that implicated a variety of South Asian politicians, the continued violence against secularists in Bangladesh, in particular the shocking murder in broad daylight of a Professor at Rajshahi University, or the fact that the Modi government was able to channel pretty large sums of money (at first glance, perhaps thousands of times the money they are persecuting Teesta Setalvad for “misappropriating”) to fake companies in the “KG scam.” The last mentioned event should also raise questions on how much of the Gujarat economic miracle was just a public relations fantasy that Modi used to ride to victory in the parliamentary elections two years ago. Read more…
PAKISTAN: TEXTBOOKS OF HATE
Zubeida Mustafa
PAULO Freire, the Brazilian educator and author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, said education should aim at teaching students to think critically. They should work with the teacher in creating knowledge. Read more…
BANGLADESH: AUTHORITIES MUST ACT AS ANOTHER SECULAR ACTIVIST HACKED TO DEATH
The vicious killing of another secular activist in Bangladesh is a grave reminder that the authorities are failing to protect people exercising their right to freedom of expression, Amnesty International said. Read more…
ANOTHER MURDER IN BANGLADESH: PROFESSOR HACKED TO DEATH
Pen International
Bangladesh: University professor hacked to death 23 April 2016 – The tragic and brutal murder of university professor Rezaul Karim Siddique this morning in the northern Bangladesh district of Rajshahi, must be investigated immediately and thoroughly all perpetrators brought to justice, PEN International said today. Read more…
SWACCH BHARAT ABHIYAN INVISIBILISES CASTE AND GLAMOURISES THE BROOM
Bezwada Wilson
The 125 day Bhim Yatra which started from Dibrugarh and traversed 30 states and 500 districts to reach Delhi is now over. Sabrangindia.in has been following the yatra since its first steps to concientise Indians. Read more…
INDIA: HATE SPEECH; HATE CRIMES AND COMMUNAL POLARIZATION
Ram Puniyani
While addressing a Sadbhavna rally organized by RSS in Haryana (April, 2016) Baba Ramdev, the entrepreneur cum yoga guru, while referring to Muslims said “Some person wears a cap and stands up, and “… says I will not say ’Bharat Mata ki jai’ even if you decapitate me. Read more…
A DAILY PLEBISCITE – KASHMIR, THE NORTHEAST AND INDIA
Mukul Kesavan
Regarding Kashmir and the Northeast, mainstream Indian political opinion – with some exceptions – ignores or underplays the violence inflicted on people who are formally citizens of this republic. Read more…
WHY BUSINESSES LOVE CHHATTISGARH
Sudeep Chakravarti
For businesses, it is as if the war with the Maoists doesn’t exist. As if half of Chhattisgarh isn’t a walking, talking, shooting match that ought to keep away businesses with the fear of aiding and abetting conflict. Being made liable for such action by ethics watchdogs and outraged investors. For being at the forefront of corporate social irresponsibility. Read more…
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Zia Mian and M. V. Ramana
Nuclear Security Summits have yielded little by focussing on securing small amounts of nuclear material. Any real progress must entail the U.S. and Russia reducing stockpiles and India and Pakistan reining in competitive nuclearisation. Read more…
GODSE’S FINAL SPEECH SHOULD BE COMPARED WITH MODI’S FERVENT WORDS OF PATRIOTISM
UR Ananthamurthy
One of India’s greatest storytellers chose the manifesto as the genre for his swan song. One needs the speech of manifestos to cut to the very core of Indian politics, the heart of darkness we call the nation state. Read more…
THE NEW KG SCAM
Jairam Ramesh
To pretend to extract non-existent gas requires extraordinary skill and sleight. And to banish all of it into thin air later is even more masterful. This is what the KG scam is all about. Read more…
INDIA – HARYANA: SILENCE AND COVER-UP OF GANG RAPES IN MURTHAL DURING JAT AGITATION?
Unsafe In Murthal: February 22 gang rape survivors deserve better from the Haryana police and government (Times of India – Editorial April 18, 2016) Read more…
NO LOVE FOR AMBEDKAR
Shamsul Islam
It is heartening to see Ram Madhav, a seasoned RSS/ BJP leader committed to Hindutva politics, praising Indian democracy, begotten by the “architect of our Constitution”, Bhimrao Ambedkar (‘What Dalits want’, The Indian Express, April 14). Madhav also demands that today’s caste system “go lock, stock and barrel” because it is a “stumbling block in achieving fraternity in society”. It’s indeed very pious, coming from an important functionary of the present government led by RSS pracharaks. Read more…
‘I BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF THE PEN, NOT THE GUN’
Jyoti Punwani
Soni Sori doesn’t seek revenge for the torture she suffered at the hands of the Bastar police when branded a Naxal, her true victory will be to tell her story to the world. Read more…
ALLAHABAD HIGH COURT QUASHES DISMISSAL OF PROF. SANDEEP PANDEY
Sabrang India
In a landmark judgment that holds out of hope for free expression, and also quoting from Voltaire who famously said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it,” the Allahabad High Court today, ruled in favor of renowned Gandhian, professor and Magsaysay award winner, Dr Sandeep Pandey and quashed the decision of the IIT Banaras Hindu University (BHU) to prematurely terminate his contract. The fact that the professor was not given a chance to explain the serious charges leveled against him was also strongly rebuked by the High Court. Read more…
EDITORIAL: THE ASSAULT CONTINUES
Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir
The unrelenting attacks on Dalit, progressive, and minority students in universities all around the country by right-wing thugs in cahoots with the police, orchestrated by the Central government, continue unabated. The latest episode is taking place, once again, in the University of Hyderabad (UOH) with brutal attacks by police on students protesting the return of the Vice Chancellor Apparao who had been sent on leave pending an enquiry against him for his role in the death of Rohith Vemula in January. Vemula, a Dalit post-graduate scholar in the university, had been hounded and discriminated against by the university administration to the point where he took his own life, an act that has been labeled an “institutional murder.” Read more…
WITHDRAW POLICE, SUSPEND VC, ORDER PROBE: 300 ACADEMICS ON HCU
Sabrang India
Statement of Solidarity By Over 300 International Academics, Activists, Artists and Writers who stand with the students of University of Hyderabad (Hyderabad Central University-HCU) Read more…
DARKNESS AT NOON IN THE ‘LIBERATED ZONE’ OF BASTAR
Nandini Sundar
Sukma (Chhattisgarh): The forests of Bastar are teeming with people while the villages are deserted. The Maoists walk the forests, keeping watch on the security forces, who have now taken to camping in the jungles, ostensibly to keep watch on the Maoists. The villagers themselves spend sleepless nights wondering which direction the forces will take and who they will attack next. Across Bijapur, Sukma and Narayanpur, people have taken to sleeping in the jungle at night or migrating en masse to Telangana to escape dawn raids and the mass round-ups. It is freezing in the open; no one can light fires for fear of being found, and the few blankets they possess are really no protection. Most cover themselves only with a thin cotton lungi. If they don’t die in an ‘encounter’, many will surely fall ill with the cold. Read more…
“37 YRS IN INDIA AND I’VE NEVER FACED PUBLIC HOSTILITY, UNTIL NOW’
Jean Dreze
I was surprised to hear yesterday that some people had come to my partner Bela’s house near Jagdalpur and instigated her neighbours against her. They took out a procession in the neighbourhood, shouting slogans like “Bela Bhatia murdabad” and “Bela Bhatia Bastar chodo”. They also distributed a leaflet accusing both of us of being Naxalites who are trying to “tear the country apart” – nothing less. Some of them advised Bela’s landlady to evict her. Fortunately, Bela’s landlady and neighbours are very fond of her and they did not lose their nerve. Read more…
GERMAN BAKERY BLAST ACQUITTAL: THE ATS OWES US AN EXPLANATION
Vijay Hiremath
In a span of just two weeks, two investigating agencies in India – the Delhi Police’s Special Cell and Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad – suffered massive setbacks after courts dismissed the theories the agencies built up around two cases by discharging the accused in one, and acquitting another of all terrorism-related charges. Read more…
NAILING THE SANGH PARIVAR’S LIES: HOW THE NAUJAWAN BHARAT SABHA IS DOING IT
SabrangIndia
In Mankhurd, a Mumbai suburb, the RSS is faced with a grassroots problem. Undeterred by the local police’s attempt to act at Hindutva’s behest, activists of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha (NBS) in the area have been distributing leaflets in the area and in local trains exposing the fraudulent bid of the sangh parivar to claim Shaheed Bhagat Singh as their own. Read more…
BHAGAT SINGH AND SAVARKAR, TWO PETITIONS THAT TELL US THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HIND AND HINDUTVA
Eighty-five years ago, on March 23, 1931, Shaheed Bhagat Singh and his two comrades-in-arms, Shaheed Rajguru and Shaheed Sukhdev were hanged in Lahore by the British colonial government. At the time of his martyrdom, Bhagat Singh was barely 23 years old. Despite the fact that he had his whole life ahead of him, he refused to seek clemency from the British as some well-wishers and family members wanted him to do. In his last petition and testament, he demanded that the British be true to the charge they laid against him of waging war against the colonial state and that he be executed by firing squad and not by hanging. The document also lays out his vision for an India whose working people are free from exploitation by either British or Indian “parasites”. Read more…
#WOMENSDAY2016: IF BRAVERY HAS A NAME, IT IS SONI SORI
Shriya Mohan
It’s 7 PM on a Sunday evening and hardly a minute after introducing myself, Soni Sori offers me momos out of a packet she’s helping herself to. The sight is unusual. Here is a woman, once called the greatest internal security threat, falsely implicated to be a Naxalite, one of Chhattisgarh’s only human rights defenders, a survivor of countless police brutalities and attempts to silence her, the recent one being blacking her face with a tar like substance that caused intense chemical burns and required her to be flown to the capital to be hospitalised in Apollo Hospital’s burn ward. Read more…
PAKISTAN: EASTER MASSACRE
Mahir Ali
THERE are times when it is possible to be shocked and horrified without entirely being surprised. Sunday’s atrocity in Lahore falls into that category. The mass murder in a public park, evidently aimed primarily at Christians celebrating Easter, in the full knowledge that a large proportion of the victims would be children, epitomises the mindless brutality of forces unleashed almost four decades ago. Read more…
A CRISIS FOR MINORITIES IN PAKISTAN
Rozina Ali
When the bomb went off in Lahore’s Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park, on Sunday, families were settled into the lull of Easter celebrations. Picnics were out and children were scattered across the playground. The suicide bomber walked purposefully to the swings before blowing himself up, along with the kids around him. More than seventy people died in the attack, at least twenty-nine of them children, and more than three hundred people were wounded. One reporter who arrived at the scene told me that victims were rushed to the hospital in ambulances, taxis, private cars, and rickshaws, while surviving children were rounded up as security guards tried to find their families. Read more…
SUICIDE BOMBING IN LAHORE IS THE LATEST ATTEMPT TO SHUT PUBLIC SPACES AND SILENCE MINORITY VOICES
Rosita Armytage
Minorities are increasingly facing exclusion from Pakistan’s public realm; and it’s not only terrorists who are responsible. Read more…
LAHORE ATTACK — WHERE DO THE REAL FAULT LINES LIE?
Akhtar Abbas
Gulshan-e-Iqbal is a big public park situated in Lahore’s Allama Iqbal Town. The place has long stretches of grass where families spend their leisure time eating home-made food over a spread bedsheet, or go boating in the lake, or explore the maze of inner Lahore or take joy rides in electric gondolas. Read more…
IS THE PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT TURNING A BLIND EYE TO TALIBAN VIOLENCE?
Dawn
ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan announced that the government will clear the D-Chowk of protesters on Wednesday “at any cost”, if they don’t disperse by themselves in the night. Read more…
DR. DAYA VARMA AND PROF. HARI SHARMA: MEMORIAL MEETING
Rana Bose
This meeting has been organized as we all know by the West Bengal chapter of PIPFPD, to honour the memory of Daya Varma and Ved Bhasin. I will be talking about Daya and as well as, his close friend and comrade Hari Sharma. Both of who went to Canada some 55 years ago and have consistently fought for progressive values abroad. In 2015 we lost Daya Varma. In 2010 we had already lost Hari Sharma. Both to cancer. Read more…
INDIA TODAY: FOLLOWING THE NAZI PATH
Editors
A form of fascism reminiscent of Nazi Germany is being enacted in India today. While the analogy is only partial it is nonetheless highly suggestive. Of course there are bound to be many differences between two countries a century and a continent apart. But if one recalls the praise showered on the racial policies of the Nazis by none other than Guru Golwalkar, one of the founders of the RSS, the similarities become clearer. Read more…
BE WARNED, THE ASSAULT ON JNU IS PART OF A PATTERN
Romila Thapar
There is by now little doubt that we are currently being governed by those that seem to have an anti-intellectual mind-set. This spells trouble for universities that are concerned with high standards of teaching and research. Read more…
WHAT IT MEANS TO BE ‘NATIONAL’
Prabhat Patnaik
Nationalism that developed in India during the anti-colonial struggle was sui generis, an altogether new phenomenon the like of which the world had not seen earlier. It was essentially a democratic and egalitarian nationalism, as opposed to the aggrandising European form. Read more…
INDIA’S ANGST
Irfan Husain
“PATRIOTISM”, said Samuel Johnson in 1775, “is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”
Over the intervening years, this famous quote may have become a cliché, but has lost none of its sting. This is because patriotism continues to be used to whip up virulent nationalism and fierce religious extremism. Governments and demagogues constantly appeal to this base sentiment to control and direct citizens and mobs. Read more…
THE COMING OF NIGHT – INDIA’S DESCENT INTO MUSCLE POWER
Rudrangshu Mukherjee
The famous declaration of Gopal Krishna Gokhale about what Bengal thinks today India thinks tomorrow has become an irrelevant cliché. No one seriously thinks of Bengal today as the harbinger of the future in the world of ideas or in any other sphere. But the time is upon us to revive and retrieve that declaration not with pride but in shame. Read more…
GOD, HOLY TEMPLES AND UNHOLY WOMEN
Neha Dabhade
The news is abuzz with the protests led by women to enter holy shrines – be it the temple of Sabarimala, Shani Shingnapur or Haji Ali. These women have one very fundamental and seemingly simple demand – entry to the shrines. Read more…
BAN RSS, INDIA’S NO 1 TERROR ORGANIZATION: FORMER MAHARASHTRA COP
Hindustan Times, Feb. 23, 2016
Maharashtra’s former inspector general of police SM Mushrif on Tuesday accused the Intelligence Bureau (IB) of being hand-in-glove with right-wing extremists, and called for a ban on the RSS describing it as India’s No.1 terror organisation. Read more…
EDITORIAL: HINDUTVA IN THE UNIVERSITY
Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir
On the 17th of January 2016, Rohith Vemula, a PhD student from the University of Hyderabad, committed suicide. The first ten pieces of this bulletin are devoted to examining Rohith’s suicide, but in this editorial, we wish to point out fact that this event shone an uncomfortable light on the shocking casteism that pervades Indian university hostels. Even in places like JNU, Dalit students are routinely subjected to social boycotts in hostels. Read more…
THEY CALL US ANTI-NATIONAL
Anand Patwardhan
Their founding fathers came from the most conservative Brahmin castes, with enormous faith in the culture that empowered them. Read more…
SUICIDE OF THE DALIT STUDENT ACTIVIST ROHITH VERMULA
Academics, Scholars and Concerned Citizens
The following is a compilation of responses by Academics, Scholars and Concerned Citizens to the suicide of the PhD student of University of Hyderabad in January 2016. Read more…
ROHITH VEMULA, DEATH OF A PHILOSOPHER TO PURIFY HIGHER EDUCATION
Kancha Ilaiah
The Dalit student whose suicide has generated political waves was a brilliant man. His letter to Prof Appa Rao, the newly appointed vice-chancellor of the university who was once believed to be anti-Dalit by the government, shows that at the time of his suicide, he was angry, upset and depressed. Read more…
ANCIENT PREJUDICE, MODERN INEQUALITY
Ananya Vajpeyi
If Ekalavya’s dismembered digit has haunted the Hindu schoolyard from time immemorial, Rohith Vemula’s tragic suicide lays bare the deep inequality undergirding the modern state and its institutions of higher learning. Read more…
A NEW DALIT IDENTITY
Apoorvanand
The RSS has taken upon itself to define who is a pure Dalit and who a nationalist. Read more…
MESSAGE ABOUT ROHITH VEMULA
Susie Tharu
Dear Friends
Some of you may recall that three years ago there were a spate of students suicides—once again mostly dalits. At that time the AP High Court had passed an order suggesting administrative measures and safeguards in universities. Barring a few desultory and soon abandoned moves to set up counselling centres neither the UGC nor the universities acted on the order. Read more…
END THE SYSTEMIC VIOLENCE AGAINST DALIT SCHOLARS IN INDIA
SANSAD News Release On Rohith Vemula
SANSAD mourns the suicide of Dalit PhD student, Rohit Vemula at the University of Hyderabad on January 17 and joins the students, academics, civil society organizations, and politicians across India in condemning the persistent and increasing violence against Dalits in India and the systemic discrimination in its institutes of higher education, of which Rohith’s tragic death is a consequence. Read more…
BEFORE I SPEAK OF THE STARS…
Ravi Sinha
Let me speak first of Rohith Chakravarthi Vemula. I never met him. I wish I had, although that would have made me hardly any worthier of speaking about him. Had I met him, I would have come to know that I shared with him a passion for science, nature and stars. I would like to think that he would have found in me, despite my being from another generation, a comrade-in-arms and a fellow campaigner for a better world. Perhaps I would have also recognized a few of the scars left over from a childhood spent in poverty. But, there, the similarities would have ended. Read more…
STATEMENT ON ROHITH VEMULA
Irfan Engineer
Dear friends, Hope by now you came to know about the unfortunate incident that took place in the University of Hyderabad. Read more…
WHO KILLED AT BATHANI TOLA?
Anand Chakravarti
Two decades after the massacre, the families of victims wait for justice. Read more…
WHO WILL SPEAK FOR THE HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS?
Pushkar Raj
The Bombay high court judgment cancelling Prof. Sai Baba’s bail and initiating contempt proceedings against the writer Arundhati Roy is a major blow to the human rights defenders in the country. Read more…
THE IDEA OF INDIA
Ram Puniyani
As we welcome the New Year (2016) with hope and optimism, the events of the year gone by flash to our mind; those events which are going to have influences in the times to come. We saw that the politics of the BJP led NDA government was practically marked by the controlling agenda of Hindu nationalism dictated by RSS. With the statements of the Sadhvis, Sakhis and Yogis the atmosphere of hate towards minorities saw a peak of sorts. Be it the issue of beef eating, love jihad or rational thinking; these elements came down heavily on the values of Indian democracy, principles of Indian Constitution and atmosphere of amity nurtured by Indian ethos for centuries. Read more…
THE RSS IS CONSPIRING TO GAIN A HOLD OF ALL ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS
Sandeep Pandey/Mayak Jain
On December 21, Banaras Hindu University convened a board meeting and decided to show the door to Magsaysay award winner and visiting professor Sandeep Pandey, allegedly for his “anti-national activities”. Pandey had been teaching at the Indian Institute of Technology-BHU for two-and-a half years. He sparked a storm in the academic community with his allegation that his political ideology had him a target of the Narendra Modi government. Read more…
BANGLADESH’S ISLAMIST CHALLENGE
The death sentence handed out to two students last week for the murder of a secular blogger in Bangladesh marks the first major verdict in a string of cases related to the killings of writers in the South Asian nation. Read more…
PAKISTAN: TEXTBOOKS AND MILITANCY
Fawad Ali Shah
They killed university students this time. Brutally. Who is responsible for this massacre? The elected government or the security establishment? Could the government have taken any steps to prevent this tragedy? Did it fulfill its promises made under the National Action Plan (NAP)? Read more…
COMMUNAL VIOLENCE IN 2015: A GLIMPSE INTO UP, BIHAR AND HARYANA
Neha Dabhade
North India has reported highest number of instances of communal violence in the year 2015. Some news reports went as far as calling the cow belt of India a tinderbox of communal violence. Some characteristics were discerned to have beset the violence all over northern India and particularly in Uttar Pradesh. Read more…
EDITORIAL: HINDUTVA TARGETING BOLLYWOOD
Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir
For better or for worse, the Indian film industry, sometimes referred to as Bollywood, remains an important marker of the Indian identity. Bollywood is truly a contested terrain where forces of neoliberalism clash with socialism, where communalism engages secularism, where rampant sexism meets the forces of feminism and caste ideology is reinforced and contested. Read more…
REVISITING P.C. JOSHI IN TODAY’S CONTEXT
Sobhanlal Datta Gupta
It is an irony of history that P.C. Joshi, the architect of united front politics in pre-independence India, is a much-maligned, almost forgotten, figure in today’s Left circles, although it is precisely his idea of forging unity with the secular, nationalist forces under the slogan “Left-democratic unity” that is the key issue which now engages the Left. Read more…
INSTITUTIONAL RIOT SYSTEM AND CULPABILITY IN COMMUNAL VIOLENCE
Irfan Engineer and Neha Dabhade
Whenever confronted by increasing intolerance and increase in incidences of communal violence in the country, the standard response of the BJP leaders and spokespersons is that incidences of communal violence took place even during UPA regime in particular and Congress regimes in general. They point out the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 in Delhi and other states; and various communal incidences that took place when Congress Party was in power. Besides the fact that incidences of communal violence have actually increased in the year 2015 to 650 from 644 in 2014, it would be simplistic equate the incidences of violence merely on the basis of statistics. Read more…
FIRST PERSON: A POLICE OFFICER’S ACCOUNT OF BEING HARASSED FOR STOPPING A RIOT IN RAJASTHAN
Ajaz Ashraf
Superintendent of Police Pankaj Choudhary stopped a riot, but got a call from the Inspector General in the Chief Minister’s Office to release Sangh activists arrested for triggering it. Read more…
WORMS FOUND IN BABA RAMDEV’S PATANJALI ATTA NOODLES
Ajay Kumar
Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Atta noodles, which were set to raise competition in the market, seem to be falling prey to controversies with worms being found in a packet in Narwana city of Jind district in One Vinod Kumar bought the Patanjali atta noodles packet containing worms from an authorised shop selling Patanjali products which was situated in Model Town road area of Narwana on Thursday. “I had gone to purchase half kg of ghee from the shop. Read more…
BANGLADESH: EXECUTIONS POLARIZE BANGLA ALONG LIBERAL & RADICAL LINES
Jaideep Mazumdar
DHAKA: Last week’s executions of two war criminals, convicted of genocide during the 1971liberation war that led to Bangladesh’s creation, have polarised the country along liberal and radical lines. Liberals say Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) functionary Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury and Jamaat-e-Islami secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed’s hangings were necessary to defeat forces opposed to secular and progressive ideals the country was founded on. Read more…
INDIA, PAKISTAN TO RESUME DIALOGUE, BUT NO CRICKET YET
Amitabh Pashupati Revi
Sushma Swaraj, who went to Islamabad on Tuesday to attend a meeting on Afghanistan, today met Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Read more…
TETE A TETE WITH HISTORIAN IRFAN HABIB
Manjula Sen
The Yamuna Expressway scoops up the car from Noida, on the outskirts of Delhi, and deposits you at the other end where a forked market-lined road eventually leads to Aligarh. There the 138-year-old Aligarh Muslim University’s sparkling campus sits picture perfect. Read more…
JOINT STATEMENT CALLING ON THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF PAKISTAN TO VOTE AGAINST THE PREVENTION OF ELECTRONIC CRIMES BILL IN ITS CURRENT FORM
Article 19, Digital Rights Foundation, Human Rights Watch, Privacy International, the Association for Progressive Communications and other organisations remain seriously concerned by the proposed Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill in Pakistan. Read more…
WILL A SRI LANKAN WOMAN BE STONED TO DEATH IN SAUDI ARABIA?
Faizer Shaheid
A verdict of death has once again been delivered in the great Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and this time it was rather a question of morality than that of murder. The unnamed Sri Lankan woman has been found guilty of fornication and has therefore been sentenced to be stoned to death. Such is the infamous Shari’a law applied in Saudi Arabia. Read more…
I WORRY ABOUT MUSLIMS
Mohammed Hanif
KARACHI, Pakistan — I worry about Muslims. Islam teaches me to care about all human beings, and animals too, but life is short and I can’t even find enough time to worry about all the Muslims. Read more…
INDIA UNDER MODI IS LIVING THROUGH A DARK AGE: PROFESSOR DN JHA
Teesta Setalvad, of Communalism Combat interviews Professor DN Jha on Dietary Traditions in Early India, the calculated mis-representation of Early Indian and Medieval History by the present government under the direct control of the Sangh Parivar and the ‘dark age ‘ of Superstition and un-Reason being promoted by the current political dispensation. Read more…
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