South Asia Citizens Web

within days of the Centre appointing Pahlaj Nihalani as the chief of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), he commented on the unfairness of censoring only films and videos while the Internet roamed free. He wanted to control the Internet too. Soon a diktat went out — Mumbai could not be allowed to be called Bombay, no cuss words, family values only... He went further to say that if films avoided controversy, there would be no need for censorship. Obviously the desire to control thought and morality was at the back of this desire to avoid controversy.

On 6 April 2015, many gathered at Jantar Mantar, Delhi, to demand land rights for the people and symbolically to burn pages of the ordinance promulgated again by the NDA government led by Mr Modi. The photos posted here were taken by Mukul Dube.

January 25, 1999: On the eve of Republic Day, at about 8.30pm, an armed mob attacked Shankarbigha, an impoverished Dalit village in Bihar. They butchered 23 men, women and children. The police registered an FIR naming 24 accused persons on the basis of information provided by a survivor, Pragash Rajvanshi, who had lost six members of his family, including his wife, in the massacre. Citing the slogans raised by the mob, Rajvanshi alleged that Shankarbigha was part of a series of massacres in Bihar organized by Ranvir Sena, a private army of landlords drawn mainly from the upper-caste bhumihars.

It was the British who introduced communal historiography in India; this historiography is a way of looking at the historical phenomenon through the lens of religion.

Is it simply a coincidence that in the past few months, there has been a spate of violence against Christians, attacks on churches, a belligerent insistence on reconversion or “Ghar Wapsi” and similar events, in other words a new resurgence in the activities of the RSS/VHP? This has obviously caused embarrassment to the government at the Centre, which, nonetheless chose to remain quiet about it for a long time. How are all these events to be understood? Should one dismiss them as small unconnected episodes of little consequence? Or is there a larger pattern or a design behind it?