South Asia Citizens Web

We, the undersigned journalists, activists and academics, condemn in the strongest terms, the brazen attack launched by RSS organizations and individuals on journalist Neha Dixit and Outlook magazine for a thorough investigative report by Dixit based on three months of field work. This report revealed how different Sangh outfits trafficked 31 tribal girls, some as young as three years, from tribal areas of Assam, to Punjab and Gujarat. Orders were issued to these organizations by the Assam State Commission for the Protection of Child Rights, the Child Welfare Committee (Kokrajhar), the State Child Protection Society, and Childline (Delhi and Patiala), to return the children to Assam. These orders were violated with impunity by Sangh-run institutions with the help of the Gujarat and Punjab governments.

The Narmada Bachao Andolan started its work 30 years ago. Today, it is a moral force, and its most important contribution to India and the world is its continuance as a bastion of Gandhian truth and non-violence in an increasingly violent world. By S.G. VOMBATKERE

The ouster of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, first Muslim Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and my maternal grandfather, on August 9, 1953, at the behest of the Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, and his subsequent arrest, was an event that alienated the Kashmiri masses and cast his next of kin as personae non grata.

Dancer and activist Chandralekha talks to Sunil Sethi about dispensing with convention in both her art and her life, her roots as an exponent of traditional Bharatnatyam, her association with poet Harindranath Chattopadhyay, and being a cultural icon.

The lifestyle of Baghdadi Jews under the Ottoman rulers was much like that of the Jews of Calcutta, discovers Jael Silliman