Archive of South Asia Citizens Wire

  • India: Illegal arrest and harassment of women and children at Village Kevadia of Narmada District on 28th March 2015 - Letter to NHRC

    by Trupti Shah, 30 March 2015

    Women and children in Kevadia village, Gujarat face atrocities by Gujarat state authorities on 28th March 2015. See the letter from Trupti Shah to NHRC

  • Tribute to Tahira Mazhar Ali (Omar Waraich)

    30 March 2015

    When Tahira Mazhar Ali, Pakistan’s pre-eminent women’s rights activist, was a teenager, she encountered the man who would go on to found the country. In 1941 Muhammad Ali Jinnah went to see her father Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, Prime Minister of the then undivided Punjab, at his office on the Upper Mall in Lahore. “I know all about you,” Jinnah said reproachfully when introduced to her. “You prefer Jawaharlal to me.”

  • Pakistan: Tahira Mazhar Ali - Torchbearer for a progressive politics

    by Beena Sarwar, 28 March 2015

    Tahira apa was one of the founders of the Communist Party-supported Democratic Women’s Association (DWA) in 1950, Pakistan’s first women’s rights organisation. DWA focused on mobilising women at the community level and was part of the umbrella group, Women’s Action Forum, formed in 1981 against Zia’s controversial laws imposed in the name of Islam. She was also a stalwart of the movement for peace between India and Pakistan.

  • Pakistan: Beware the rightward slide

    by I A Rehman, 28 March 2015

    AS Pakistan turns more and more towards a rightist agenda the most important question now is whether those who stand for a progressive, egalitarian order can protect the interests of disadvantaged sections of society that are likely to suffer the most.

  • Pakistan: Rethinking the Left

    28 March 2015

    At the Jamil Omar Memorial Lecture in Lahore on Wednesday, March 25th, Akbar Zaidi delivered a speech about the future of Pakistan’s Left movement.

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