South Asia Citizens Web

We write to you today as longstanding admirers of EPW and as proud members of the “EPW community” that has benefited from the existence of this unique and high-quality journal. We wish to express our concern at what we have heard of the unusual circumstances in which the incumbent Editor of the Economic and Political Weekly, Dr. Rammanohar Reddy, who had decided to step down in April 2016 but had agreed to continue as Editor-in-Chief or in some other position as requested by the Board of Trustees, has chosen to formally announce that he is resigning from his position as Editor and severing all links with the institution.

A 1947 pamphlet on the British Cabinet Mission to India and the politics of its dealings with the then princely rulers of India. It was written by Romesh Chandra an intellectual associated with the Communist Party of India, in the context of the coming partition of India. [This document has long been out of print, it was recently obtained by the Delhi Historian Prof Dilip Simeon. It has been digitised as part of sacw.net rare document archive]

On New Year’s Eve 2015, simultaneous coordinated sexual attacks took place against women in public space in about 10 cities, mostly in Germany, but also in Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, and Finland… Several hundred women, to this day, filed a case for sexual attack, robbery, and rape. These attacks were perpetrated by young men of migrant descent (be they immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees, or other) from North Africa and the Middle East.

We also believe that a connectivity agenda must respect the right of all to equally access, receive, and impart information. For this reason, we are concerned about Facebook’s recent attacks on the millions of internet users in India and around the world who have fought, and who continue to fight, for Net Neutrality.

Let me begin by wishing us all a happier New Year than the past year has been. Last year, we had to watch a series of events that attacked our democratic right of freedom of expression and our culture of secularism. It was a dangerous trend that we could not ignore, and we did not ignore it. Many of us took action against it, and the general public reaction against this trend sounded a note of warning to those who were responsible for it. But the danger is by no means over.