South Asia Citizens Web

The public and political responses to Supreme Court judgments in two instances — Sabarimala in India and the Asia Bibi case in Pakistan — bear striking similarities.

AN inflammatory video filmed just after the Aasia Bibi verdict has received well over five million views. Therein you can watch the TLP leadership calling for the murder of the three Supreme Court judges who dismissed blasphemy charges against Aasia; hear that officers of the Pakistan Army should revolt against COAS Gen Qamar Bajwa; see the country’s prime minister being called a “yehudi bacha” (‘Jewish child’); and listen to the call for overthrowing the PTI government.

The sudden indefinite postponement of the concert at which TM Krishna was to sing at the Nehru Park in New Delhi, has grossly violated and weakened the right of all Indian citizens to express themselves freely, as also our rights as citizens to listen to, and experience art in freedom and without fear.

Audio recording of the Third A. K. Ramanujan Lecture delivered by musician and public intellectual T.M. Krishna, on February 20, 2018 at Ramjas College, University of Delhi. The History Society, Ramjas College, instituted the A.K. Ramanujan Lecture in 2012, in defence of academic freedom. An essay ’Three Hundred Ramayanas’, by the scholar-folklorist A.K. Ramanujan was removed from the Delhi University History syllabus after it came under attack by a group of fundamentalists in 2008. [This recording part of sacw.net archive]

The religious right has so far not managed to win power at the ballot box, but its ability to rouse a rabble and paralyze the country has given it a disproportionate and vicious grip on what’s left of democracy in Pakistan.