South Asia Citizens Web

This was an essay written after reading Venkat Dhulipala’s fascinating book (’Creating a New Medina’, Cambridge University Press) on how Pakistan came to be. After sending this essay to a few editors in mainstream press, from none of who I heard back, I abandoned the idea of getting this published.

The process of nationalist self-imagining in India is likely to remain in a nebulous state so long as the destiny of regional politicians is etched by the calligrapher in New Delhi and determined by maneuvers in the murky den of centralized federalism.

Indian fishing communities and farmers first filed their lawsuit in 2015, challenging the International Finance Corporation, the private lending arm of the World Bank Group, for its role in funding the controversial Tata Mundra coal-fired power plant in Gujarat.

an exhibit poster at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum

On April 9, 2018, Bangladesh listed its new Digital Security Bill in parliament, which was then sent to a parliamentary standing committee for review. The proposed law is in part intended to replace section 57 of the Information and Communication Technology Act (ICT Act) 2006, which has been widely criticized for restricting freedom of expression and has resulted in scores of arrests since 2013. However, the current draft of the Bill replicates, and even enhances, existing strictures of the ICT Act. This report documents abuses under section 57 of the ICT Act to warn that any new law should protect rights, not be used to crack down on critics.