South Asia Citizens Web

The League presents itself as a guardian of secular values, but that claim is wearing thin in the party’s meek response to the attacks blighting our country. The government’s failure to protect targets on public hitlists is bad enough. Its half-hearted pursuit of criminals after the event is worse. But its strategic failure shows most deeply after each terrible incident when some minister moans about the need not to offend “religious sentiment”.

Praful Bidwai, noted Indian journalist and author, who passed away in June 2015, was able to combine the qualities of being a public intellectual and activist with a rare distinction. For his many friends, admirers and readers, his premature death is a gap that is hard to fill. They continue to miss his incisive journalistic and scholarly observations on contemporary concerns, both in India and the world. His much acclaimed last book, ‘The Phoenix Moment’, is a magisterial look at the challenges confronting the Indian Left. We need to work together to keep that legacy alive and it is in that spirit that it has been decided to institute a Memorial Fund in his memory which will undertake, among other interventions, to institute an annual prize to recognize a promising scholar-journalist from the region, whose work is marked by a zest for investigation, a commitment to social justice and a capacity for critical analysis.

On October 26, a group of distinguished Indian historians issued a statement of concern about the damage being done in the current political climate to the traditions of tolerance, and freedom of speech, belief and practices, for which India was long applauded. We – historians and social scientists engaged in researching and teaching about the richness of Indian history and society in different locations overseas – write to express our solidarity with their statement. We share the deep concern over recent happenings in India, which are affecting freedom of artistic expression and historical and social science inquiry, and serving to produce a dangerously pervasive atmosphere of narrowness, intolerance and bigotry.

Dawn, 9 November 2015
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cow politics was put out to pasture on Sunday as the impoverished state of Bihar gave a resounding verdict against the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) campaign to pit Hindus against Muslims over beef eating.
The hefty score of 178 seats in the Bihar 243-member assembly for Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s grand alliance demolished virtually all poll predictions, including the highly acclaimed NDTV. The news channel was (…)

A wave of brutal killings has plunged Bangladesh into deep apprehension. Many fear endless political strife and economic exclusion will spur Islamic terrorism