South Asia Citizens Web

We, the participants of People’s SAARC Convergence met in Kathmandu on 22-24 November 2014 to reaffirm our solemn commitments to justice, peace, security, human rights, and democracy in the region for equality for all and to eliminate all forms of discrimination.

Hundreds of villagers from Doddaullarthi and other villages surrounding the massive expanse of Ullarthi Amrit Mahal Kaval of Challakere Taluk, Chitradurga district, entered the grasslands which were fenced by Bhabha Atomic Research Centre braving the might of the police and district authorities today.

federalisation, the main stumbling block in the constitution, they decided to say nothing. The tragedy in all this, of course, is that federalism was never a demand of the Nepali people. It was imposed first by the Maoists for want of a better people-oriented agenda, and then a section of Madhesi leaders who seem to be striving to drive a wedge between the Madhesi people and the rest of the country. Both have been at a loss of words to explain how federalism would benefit Nepal’s underserved.

In both cases an entrenched secular-nationalist elite had been dislodged by a coalition that explicitly embraced the religion of a demographic majority.

A November 2014 television debate in Hindi on India’s state run Rajya Sabha TV with : Siddharth Varadarajan (Senior Journalist & Sr. Fellow, Centre for Public Affairs & Critical Theory) ; Zoya Hasan (Former Professor of Political Science, JNU & National Fellow, ICSSR) ; Mridula Mukherjee (Historian, JNU) ; Sambit Patra (National Spokesperson) ; Manoj Kumar Jha (National Spokesperson, RJD)