South Asia Citizens Web

Blogging has become a dangerous profession in Bangladesh. In February, a Bangladeshi-American computer engineer and founder of the secularist website Mukto-Mona, Avijit Roy, was hacked to death in a Dhaka street. Then this week, an atheist blogger named Washiqur Rahman was murdered in a similarly bloody attack. Both were killed for their views on religion.

Full text of the B.G. Verghese Memorial Lecture by Gopalkrishna Gandhi was delivered on March 19, 2015 at the India International Center in New Delhi. Also link to the video recording of the full proceedings

India lost its pioneer anti-nuclear activist and eminent Gandhian Shri Narayan Desai last month. Narayan bhai founded ’Anumukti’ (freedom from nuclear) after Chernobyl which became India’s first anti-nuclear magazine.

Remember Rajeshwar Singh, the RSS functionary and president of the Dharm Jagran Samiti (DJS) who was at the forefront of the reconversion or ‘ghar wapsi’ programmes in Uttar Pradesh in which some Muslims and Christians were reportedly ‘reconverted’ to Hinduism. DJS in league with the Bajrang Dal was behind the reconversion of Muslims at Agra on 8 December 2014.

It is not enough to condemn the killings. We need to understand how our own intolerance of free-thinking and of questioning religious belief and thought contributed to a climate conducive to such an atrocity.