South Asia Citizens Web

From Independent sources:
As a reaction to the death in Delhi of a young man from Arunachal Pradesh [North East India], groups and individuals gathered at a spot across the road from the samadhi of M.K. Gandhi on 2 February 2014 [New Delhi]. See Photos by Mukul Dube in the portfolio below.
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Media Coverage:
Delhi: NE students protest Arunachal boy’s death
HT Correspondent & Agencies New Delhi, February 01, 2014 (…)

The distance between Delhi and Islamabad could be longer than anyone’s imagination, especially if you decide to reject the Wagah border crossing option. With Air India having stopped its flights and Pakistan International Airlines reducing the sorties to just once a week, which too are cancelled frequently due to stringent visa regimes and thus less number of passengers, it’s a long road via Dubai. The absurdity of it all and the inadequacy of the resumption of peace process between the two countries dawned during last week’s travel to Islamabad. Soon after the plane takes off from Delhi westwards, it flies somewhere between Lahore and Islamabad, goes all the 3000 kilometers westwards to land in Dubai and then another flight back the same distance to a place closer to the starting point. A distance of 600 plus kilometres covered by travelling about 6000 kilometres! And if you please, confidence building measures was one of the main agendas at the conference organized in Islamabad.

This is a winter of sorrow. A few hundred kilometres from the country’s Capital, children are dying in the cold, neglected and humiliated by an uncaring government, and in mortal fear of neighbours with whom they lived peacefully for generations. Several thousand hate refugees in
Muzaffarnagar survive under makeshift tents without clean water, elementary sanitation, healthcare and schooling. They are victims of communal misinformation which hinges on a myth so implausible and fanciful that it would be funny if it was not so dangerous.

Swami Aseemanand, the Hindu firebrand accused of plotting several terrorist attacks on civilian targets across the country between 2006 and 2008 . . . RSS launched its most vehement public protest (and one of the largest in its history) a week and a half before Aseemanand was arrested, in November 2010—on behalf of Indresh Kumar, whose name had begun cropping up in media reports about the investigations. The Sangh’s chiefs marshalled a nationwide protest. According to Organiser, more than a million people participated in over 700 dharnas across the country; virtually the entire leadership of the RSS and the VHP appeared on stage at the rallies.

Democracy involves subjecting ourselves to a difficult discipline. We are often tempted to equate democracy with the simple will of the majority. The problem with this was demonstrated in Athens, the birthplace of democracy, when a majority of citizens voted to execute Socrates. To guard against such miscarriages of justice the political thinker Montesquieu recommended separating the judiciary, the executive and the legislature, a principle incorporated into all modern democracies. What Montesquieu could not anticipate is the way media, especially social media, would come to dominate public opinion.