Journeys to Democracy

Articles

• Stop Hazara killings #BostonWithHazara

        
  9 January, by beenasarwar
  PERSONAL POLITICAL Even as media attention focused on the goings on at America’s capital where protestors shocked the world by storming the Capitol Building (nothing shocking for Pakistanis used to such attempts to subvert democracy) another drama — tragedy rather — unfolded in Quetta, Pakistan. (...)

• Merry Christmas… my dear

     
  24 December 2020, by beenasarwar
  There have been over 300,000 Covid-related deaths this year in the USA alone, and the numbers are still rising as many deniers refuse to take basic precautions like wearing masks. Asymptomatic carriers — no signs of illness — can be infected and infect others. The second wave is well under way. (...)

• Farewell Saleem Asmi

                   
  11 November 2020, by beenasarwar
  A quiet warrior slips into the night Saleem Asmi, Nov. 29, 1934 – Oct. 30, 2020 First published in The News on Sunday, Nov. 8, 2020. Reposted here with more photos. By Beena Sarwar His old friend S. M. Shahid termed Saleem Asmi a ‘Marxist Sufi’ in his compilation of biographical essays, ‘Living (...)

• The outrage culture about rape masks a landscape of pervasive child abuse

      
  15 October 2020, by beenasarwar
  Behind each case that causes what activist Farieha Aziz terms as “self-gratifying outrage” is the widespread phenomenon of child sexual abuse, enabled by the linked notions of rape, shame, honour, and silence, and the idea that women are not full (...)

• Reflections: Baba Bujha Singh, revolution, poetry, and democracy

         
  27 July 2020, by beenasarwar
  Sharing below an informative, moving and insightful piece by friend Jaspal Singh in Cambridge commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Baba Bujha Singh’s extrajudicial murder in Punjab, India. The story is reflected in other instances of police brutality elsewhere too. And so is his comment on (...)

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