South Asia Citizens Web

The composition of the negotiating teams by the government and the TTP and the TTP’s declared agenda require reflection. First, the composition: there is no woman member. As the exclusion in the TTP team is predictable, why does the government team not include even a symbolic representative of 48 per cent of the country’s population (as per the 1998 census)? The presence of a woman would have actually been more than symbolic. Women have suffered even more than men due to the atrocities perpetrated by terrorists who use the sacred name of Islam as a cloak for their barbarity and their nefarious real aims?

Tragically, after 42 years as an independent nation state, our democratic aspirations still remain frustrated

Rare have been occasions in recent times that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), with all its affiliated organisations on their toes, is engaged in dousing the fire in which it has caught itself unawares. Reason being the ’interview’ of one of its own wholetimer turned terrorist named Swami Aseemanand which was published in a leading magazine of our times.

The sole aim of Jamaat-e-Islami, a politico-religious party, wherever it exists, is to establish an Islamic state premised on a particular understanding of the Quran and the Islamic history. To put it another way, JIH seeks to bring theocracy or in Maududi’s word ‘theo-democracy’, a blend of religion and politics.