South Asia Citizens Web

“If the wave has become a tsunami, why is the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate playing safe by polarising voters along communal lines?”

CSDS Rajni Kothari Lecture by Shahid Amin, 6 February 2013
Difference is seen today not as impeding the development of the democratic process, but rather as a key characteristic of the Indian polity. Problems generally arise when we try to narrate the conflicts of the past as anything other than the life histories of segregated groupings. This is specially the case with the ’fact’ and ’memory’ of the Turkic conquest of Northern India, epitomized most notably in the figure of Mahmud of Ghazni. The lecture takes up the career of a ’fictional’ nephew of the Sultan to illustrate the process of difference-based community formation (of devotes) across denominational divides over the past seven centuries.

Following scattered defiance of the Taliban earlier, a new wave of students is now heading for education in schools and colleges across the troubled north of Pakistan.