South Asia Citizens Web

COMMUNALISM, a twisted offshoot of religion, breeds in a fertile manmade atmosphere of strife. But it also thrives in natural calamities such as earthquakes, floods and cyclones. The current rain-induced havoc in Uttarakhand, host to several Hindu pilgrimages in India’s Himalayan foothills, spurred Narendra Modi to hog the limelight. The human tragedy was thus deftly converted into a political windfall with an eye on the bilious politician’s religio-fascist agenda. The aim is to win the 2014 Indian elections by whatever means.

Today, 27 June, 2013, the International Commission for Labor Rights (ICLR) released the report entitled, “Merchants of Menace: Repressing workers in India’s new industrial belt, Violations of workers’ and trade union rights at Maruti Suzuki India Ltd.”

The Government of India must end human rights abuses tied to its project with South Korean steel giant POSCO, and must immediately cease illegal seizures of land which threaten to forcibly displace as many as 22,000 people in India’s eastern state of Odisha, said rights groups in a new report released today.

Far right religious nationalism is growing in South Asia.

Recording from Indian television programme one on one.