South Asia Citizens Web

NEW DELHI — On a recent evening I was watching the video of a news feature a Hindi language television network broadcast about Yogi Adityanath, who was elected chief minister of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, last month. [ . . . ] Until he became chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mr. Adityanath, 45, was primarily known as a firebrand Hindu leader who had created a volunteer force, the Hindu Yuva Vahini, or Vehicle for Hindu Youth, a group repeatedly accused of stoking and participating in religious violence.

In recent times, backed by the formidable power of the state, Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan have vigorously injected religion into both politics and society. The result is their rapid re-tribalisation through ‘meme transmission’ of primal values. A concept invented by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, the meme is a ‘piece of thought’ transferrable from person to person by imitation. Like computer viruses, memes can jump from mind to mind.

Achin Vanaik on 2017 regional elections in India that handed Modi’s BJP important new majorities. How can it be stopped?

Well known Indian journalist Bharat Bhushan interviews the sociologist Dipankar Gupta on the question of identity politics. A video by Catch News

The Visthapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolan (VVJVA) strongly condemns the home ministry’s move to suppress resistance against forced displacement and corporate land grab by terming peoples movements like Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti and VVJVA Jharkhand unit as Maoist party front organizations which must be crushed. This is a calculated strategy of the home ministry to create an atmosphere that will enable the repression of not just these movements but also many others who are putting up a strong resistance against the anti- people agenda of the corporate and the government.