South Asia Citizens Web

Romila Thapar on history and politics of India. Professor Romila Thapar, 83, needs no introduction. She is known among intellectuals of the world for her path-breaking work on Indian ancient history. She has memories of old Lahore where her grandfather used to live at Lawrence Road. It was her father, a doctor in the Indian army, who made her go through old manuscripts, thus developing in her an interest for history.

R.K. Laxman the celebrated Indian cartoonist who worked for the Times of India died in Pune, on 26 January 2015. He was 93. He cartoon character ’Common Man’ lives on in the imagination all who grew up in post independent India. His ’You said it’ daily cartoon was awaited by all everyday.

In 1994 the ‘Cartoons Against Communalism’ exhibition organised by the artists platform SAHMAT was attached by the goons of Hindutva right wing RSS in Pune who were mad at cartoons of L.K. Advani by R.K. Laxman.

The 48-page report, “‘Stop Reporting or We’ll Kill Your Family’: Threats to Media Freedom in Afghanistan,” documents harassment, intimidation, and attacks on journalists and the Afghan government’s failure to investigate and prosecute those responsible. The failure to protect journalistic freedom has emboldened those determined to suppress criticism of the government, the security forces, and other powerful entities in Afghan society.

The Taliban gunmen who shot their targets, unarmed children, on their heads did so at "point blank range". The heinousness of that act, accompanied by that description of the range, took me back to when, a child myself, I wanted to know what "point blank range" meant. The term had been used almost mechanically, without sufficient explanation, to describe the assassination of M.K. Gandhi and was taken generally to mean "from up close".

The January 2015 terror attack on the Paris satirical weekly and its gross misinterpretation by people of Left liberal sensibilities in India and much of the world.