South Asia Citizens Web

FIRA, the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations is a Member Organisation of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Prof. Nayak plays a signal role in spreading the scientific temper in India and is its President.

This appeal was made in 1986 to the India’s National Integration Council by the Movement Against Communalism (Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan). It was published in Mainstream weekly on 26 April 1986.

First anniversary of Rana Plaza building collapse, the worst industrial accident in the history of textile sector of South Asia in which around 1100 workers lost their lives and 2500 garments and textile workers got injured, was also observed in Karachi Pakistan to express solidarity with the victims’ families and the survivors of the building collapse incident happened a year on 24th April.

Finally, the cat is out of the bag. That has been now said in so many words which the weltanshauung of the rightwing Hindutva election campaign has been remorselessly leading upto, namely that those who are inimical to a likely Narendra Modi-led government are anti-national, and "have no place in India and should go to Pakistan." Thus, what has been a consistently insinuated sub-text of the Modi campaign has found articulation as actually the main plank of the RSS-mentored push for state power.

In this remarkable and courageous book, Manoj Mitta (senior editor with the Times of India who writes on legal, human rights and public policy issues) mounts a devastating critique of the final report of the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by RK Raghavan, the reports of the amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran, the Chief Minister and aspiring prime minister Narendra Modi, the Gujarat judiciary and by implication the state and central governments too for failing to deliver justice to the over 2000 victims of organised violence in the Gujarat pogrom, 2002, which caused extensive destruction of property as well. The author goes into the voluminous new material produced by the SIT on the violence based on the complaint by Zakia Jafri, widow of Ehsan Jafri, who alleged, among other things, that Chief Minister Narendra Modi and 62 top police and administrative officials of the state were behind the conspiracy to commit massive collective violence against Muslims in the Gulberg Society area of Ahmedabad, resulting in the massacre of 69 persons including her husband.