South Asia Citizens Web

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.

Communalism has wreaked havoc in Lanka. It is embedded in our prejudices and our backwardness. The Sri Lankan political establishment’s complicity in violence against a minority is a scandal that would impede us for years to come, particularly in view of the lack of will to do away with impunity and hold the armed forces to account. Equally culpable are the Tamil leaders who have inflamed passions where a little sympathy and restraint could have cooled them and hindered communalism putting down institutional roots.