South Asia Citizens Web

The Bharatiya Janata Party might be out of power in Karnataka, but it does hold the reigns of power at the Centre. Naturally the state unit of the party is now more active and all pervasive than ever before. So when it heard of a new committee being set up by the state government to review the school textbooks (most of which were prepared during its rule) it began employing all sorts of tactics to put obstacles in the way.

The massacre of 23rd December 2014 where numerous people were severely injured, killed, houses set on fire leading to the displacement of a large number of Adivasi people mainly Santhals from their settlements, inflicted terror on the entire state. Women in Governance (WinG)-Assam and All Adivasi Women Association of Assam (AAWAA) conducted a fact finding intervention from 2nd January to 6th January 2015 on the 23rd December and subsequent incidents where more than 80 Adivasis were brutally massacred by the National Democratic Front of Bodoland belonging to the Songbijit faction NDFB (s) in the districts of Sontipur,Chirang and Kokrajhar.

Free India was born in a tumult of religious hatred. This, and the fact that this country is home to followers of almost every major religion, persuaded members of the Constituent Assembly to exercise great care to protect the freedom of religious belief in the Constitution.

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksha did not gracefully turn over power to Mr. Maithripala Sirisena after losing the election and step down peacefully as the President of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). Those claiming he did are dressing an autocrat in gentleman’s clothes and sanitizing the abuses of power by him and his regime—abuses unprecedented by any government since our independence from the colonial rule.

In another shocking and serious blow to the freedom of expression, Perumal Murugan, an influential Tamil writer at the peak of his creative powers, has been bullied, blackmailed and harassed by anonymous vested religious elements led by the Hindutva right, in collusion with the police and the state administration of Tamil Nadu, into helpless submission – so much so that he has, in pain and frustration, announced that he is giving up writing altogether.