South Asia Citizens Web

The SHRC has mostly limited itself to awarding compensation, usually an ex-gratia payment of one lakh rupees or an appointment to a government job. However, each case must be cleared by a district-level screening committee to ensure that the dead/disappeared person was not a militant and only about 30 per cent of the compensation reac­hes the victim’s family after all the bribes are paid. Had Rahul Gandhi talked to ordinary Kashmiris, he would have realised that while there may be a need for the army to man the frontier with Pakistan, the militarisation of Kashmir has led to citizens being viewed as enemies. He would have then judged the progress in Kashmir not by the growth in tourism or connectivity but by the rights enjoyed by the local citizens.

We as a nation have developed an unhealthy relationship with blasphemy and the laws used to prosecute it. There is no other crime that produces so much hatred or desire for vengeance. Our minorities live in fear of it being even whispered that they have committed blasphemy because they know that anyone accused of this crime walks with a bullseye on his forehead.

It doesn’t talk to it, or listen. Political initiatives are launched to tide over moments of crisis, to be abandoned as soon as they pass

The only way out of this morass is improvement in relations between India and Pakistan and their accord initially on some limited measures which relieve the tensions and raise the people’s morale. Of this there is, sadly, little sign - and militancy will not die unless and until India and Pakistan settle the Kashmir dispute.

E. Ilavarasan has killed himself, brutally underscoring the continuing tragedy of young married couples being wrenched apart by caste and political pressures. Indeed, India’s veneer of modernity comes apart each time an inter-caste marriage breaks. And when one half of the couple is Dalit, as in this case, mob fury comes as an inheritance.