South Asia Citizens Web

I will be 30 years old soon. I am an independent and educated woman and I have made all my choices regarding my life by my own free will — a right granted and guaranteed to every citizen of this country by the Constitution of India. The Constitution gives me a right as an adult individual to choose my life partner. I have married Syed Murtaza Agha because I love him. There is absolutely no other reason. The accusation that I have been “lured” or “coerced” by anybody is an insult to my ability to think for myself. The Ladakh Buddhist Association and random strangers are trying to objectify me by demanding my return as if I am their property and not a human being.

This is a report on a public meeting organised in New Delhi by the Delhi Solidarity Group and the National Alliance of People’s Movements titled ‘The Fallacy of Sardar Sarovar Dam and Development Debate Today’. The meeting was addressed by Usha Ramanathan, legal researcher, Sanjay Parikh, Senior Advocate of Supreme Court, Prof K B Saxena, former Secretary, Govt of India, and Medha Patkar, SaraswatiBai, and GokhruBhai of the Narmada Bachao Andolan.

When there is an area of political discussion or a concept that seemingly cannot be discussed it is often useful to start from there, or at the very least to investigate why this is the case. That would seem to be an important way step out of any ‘radical moralism’ – even if holding on to a sense of ethics at the same time. This particular book started coming out of experiences of the anti-globalization or global justice movement of the 1990s and early 2000s. In particular it starts from ideas around employing a diversity of tactics, which was quite useful in terms of bringing together quite different often disparate approaches for common protests and projects. But for me that also raised the question of how one would even go about thinking or working through strategic directions for movement organizing.

We, the members of People’s SAARC met in Kathmandu on 13-14 September 2017 to reaffirm our commitment to human rights, freedom of expression, justice, peace, security, and democracy in the region, for equity for all and to eliminate all forms of discrimination.

No sooner had the celebratory lights of Independence Day been extinguished that Delhi was plunged into the darkness of unprecedented communal violence.