South Asia Citizens Web

[In India] Public spaces are increasingly usurped by unscrupulous entrepreneurs to build shrines. And we know from experience that once gods and religious figures get installed in a place, they cannot be dislodged

Despite having a secular Constitution originally, successive governments after 1975 chipped away the secular edifice, to make the country more Islamic

A lesson which Kashmir policy-makers must learn from Punjab is that negotiation with the agitating outfits—unexceptionable in principle and quite necessary to settle grievances, genuine or perceived—do great harm if they are undertaken at a wrong time, i.e. when the signal given would be that the government is yielding and may agree to their separatist objective in one form or another.

In this gloomy situation when majoritarianism is masquerading as democracy and a defacto Hindu Rashtra seems to be coming into existence - albeit in slow motion - question of resistane becomes important. How to envisage it in such a context and how to break new grounds in strategising it remains a key question

Interview with Karamat Ali conducted by Deneb Sumbul for Newsline Magazine [Pakistan]