South Asia Citizens Web

People’s Union for Civil Liberties is shocked at the lodging of an FIR against the Lawyers Collective, its President and senior lawyer, Anand Grover and other office bearers by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). We condemn this vindictive and utterly unjustified act against this well known human rights and legal aid organization with a long history of fighting for the rights of ordinary people. PUCL deplores this undisguised attempt to intimidate and silence Mr Grover, as well as legal luminary and co-founder of Lawyers Collective, Ms Indira Jaising, and office bearers of the organization.

Modi 2.0 very much presents us with the looming threat of the dismantling of the "India" - embodying the values of "democracy", "pluralism" and "egalitarianism", that had been wrought out in the crucible of the epic freedom struggle and, in the process, finally emerged on the 15th August 1947 - in pursuance of a project to supplant it with a "Hindu Rashtra" (Hindu nation state) - by mobilising the Hindus of India as "Hindus", drowning out all other identities linked to language, culture, gender, caste, class etc., constantly stoking hatred and violence against the constructed inimical "others".

Greetings! May I bring your kind attention to the Indian State’s systematic violation of my fundamental and Constitutionally-guaranteed rights and entitlements and request your immediate intervention in this matter please. My name is S. P. Udayakumar and I am from the southernmost tip of India, Kanyakumari. Losing three of my loving grandparents to the cruel disease of cancer, I took an early dislike for sea-sand mining, nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons and other such projects that give rise to radiation and cause cancers. As a result, I became an avowed anti-nuclear activist.

54th Jnanpith Award Ceremony was held at the Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre in New Delhi on the 12th of June 2019. Former administrator, diplomat, Governor and teacher Gopalkrishna Gandhi presented the Jnanpith Award to renowned author Amitav Ghosh. There are two recordings from the awards ceremony. There is a short extract from Amitav Ghosh’s acceptance speech and the full recording of the speech by Gopalkrishna Gandhi. These recordings were made by sacw.net audio archive.

Today, at around 7:15 am, an eight-member team of the Maharashtra police once again raided the Bagaicha campus in Namkum near Ranchi, the residence of 83-year old Stan Swamy, a well-known activist of Jharkhand. The police searched Stan Swamy’s belongings for about 3.5 hours. It took Stan Swamy’s hard disk and internet modem and forced him to give his email and Facebook passwords. Thereafter, they changed the passwords and seized these accounts. The Maharashtra police had raided Stan Swamy’s residence last year as well on 28 August 2018 as well.