South Asia Citizens Web

In the backdrop of intesifying assaults on people’s movements and freedom of expression, people of grassroots struggles, eminent intellectuals and academicians, and civil society activists are converging in New Delhi this weekend to highlight and discuss the challenges to the Indian democracy.

WAF reminds the dharna democrats that democracy is a long term, incremental process, and not the result of a particular election. Street Spectacles while legitimate for protesting grievances can never be a substitute for Parliamentary representation with its built-in self-correctives. The many Islamist militant and sectarian groups in Pakistan are evidence of the difference between street power and parliamentary representation and the worth of both.

This article seeks to raise certain questions essentially by examining the geographical implications of certain statements made in, as academically reputed a work as a Memoir of the Geological Society of India, under the title Vedic Sarasvati: Evolutionary History of a Lost River of North Western India, Bangalore, 1999. Basically the article is concerned only with the claims made relating to the Holocene, beginning c. 8000 BC, within which the Vedic corpus is placed by all whose contributions were published in that volume, including the late V S Vakankar, who would push the Rigveda back to 8000 BC. Secondly, the implications are examined only in regard to (a) the possibility of the higher Himalayas feeding any river between the Sutlej and the Yamuna during the Holocene; and (b) the topographical possibilities of either the Yamuna or Sutlej feeding streams in the upper part of the Indus-Gangetic divide.

CHTC condemns attack on its Coordinator in Bandarban allegedly by Somo Odhikar Andolon members; calls for investigation and prosecution and punishment of culprits

Every year, hundreds of young men and women fall in love in India. They defy their parents, caste and religious considerations and traditions. Many of them elope and get married; some others also give in to family pressures and fall back into traditionally more acceptable roles. The bollywood film industry thrives on such stories. We have laughed and cried with these couples on screens. The Supreme Court of India has repeatedly come to the protection and aid of just such couples. We would like to appeal to all those who believe that, love is natural & not a mission, those who value love, gender equality, peace and humanity above the man-made differences of faith, caste, region, sex, language etc. to join us to voice against all such attempts of building an exclusive society by the communal forces.