South Asia Citizens Web

IIC Quarterly
BOOK REVIEW
Rajmohan Gandhi
PUNJAB: BLOODIED, PARTITIONED AND CLEANSED Author: Ishtiaq Ahmed Publisher: Rupa, Delhi, 2011 Details: pp. 808, Price: ` 995
In our subcontinent’s book of violence, some chapters are gorier than the rest. Of those dealing with the 20th century, none are more bloodstained than ‘Punjab 1947’ and ‘East Bengal 1971–72’. While the latter has yet to find its adequate historian, it would seem that Ishtiaq Ahmed’s study has finally done justice to (…)

We strongly condemn India’s recent acquisition of a nuclear-propelled submarine close on the heels of the recent flight-test of another nuclear-capable missile. Brandishing these tools of mass destruction as guarantees of national security while ignoring the issues of real safety, security and well-being of the Indian people demonstrates a perverse pathology.

Though it was not possible to imagine at the time of Partition that separatists would work within the Hindu community, the BJP today functions like the Muslim League of pre-partition days. We must be on guard, lest the aggressiveness of the majority turns into fascism

Intellectuals who are quite enamoured about the tolerance inherent in ’our great culture’ and the sense of inclusiveness would rather be shell-shocked to find that how the ordinary, peace-loving people themselves are ready to ’metamorphose overnight’ into murderers and rapists of their own neighbours on a small pretext. All the orgy of violence and their ’joyous participation’ in it is then followed by a conspiracy of silence where nobody is then ready to talk the truth. Bhagalpur in Bihar which had become such a site of violence in 1989 where officially over a thousand people had been slain

“It is beyond belief that a judiciary could be so insensitive to deny even the basic humanitarian ground of bail for a few days to Soni Sori, to allow her to make arrangements for her three young children after the death of their father,” said Kalpana Mehta, convener of Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression.