South Asia Citizens Web

Editorial commentary from newspapers in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan on the continued target killings by fundamentalist groups in Bangladesh.

India has a lasting infrastructure of public support that can, in principle, be expanded in drought years to provide relief. But business as usual seems to be the motto

The Islamists in Pakistan are not impressed by sympathetic scholars’ defence of their politics over the last decade. These religious groups refuse to comply with the scholarly renditions of them as moderate, reformist and rational.

The growth of nationalism or an autonomous Kashmiri identity certainly doesn’t involve supporting obscurantism or deliberately preventing the growth of knowledge and information. The identity of a state or a nation cannot be built on unquenchable hate and certainly not on cashing in on the pain and grief of other people, some of whom will not have the luxury of closure.

J & K is a palimpsest that has been inscribed upon two or three times, yet the previous texts have been imperfectly erased and, therefore, remain partially visible. A history of unfulfilled pledges, broken promises, political deception, military oppression, illegal political detentions, a scathing human rights record, sterile political alliances, mass exodus, and New Delhi’s malignant interference have created a gangrenous body politic, which hasn’t even started to heal. The various political, religious, and cultural discourses written on the palimpsest of the state may have created alternative epistemologies but without an epicenter.