South Asia Citizens Web

Urvashi Butalia, the writer and publisher shares her views on why both India and Pakistan find it difficult to confront the horrors of 1947.

senseless and brutal attack on civilians which according to the Balochistan Bar Association, has killed 97 persons which includes 63 lawyers and injured more than 120 persons including women and children. The attack preceded the assassination of the President of the Bar Association of Balochistan, Mr Bilal Anwar Kansi who called for a boycott of the Balochistan Courts, in solidarity of another lawyer who was assassinated two days before.

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.