South Asia Citizens Web

Many great men sickened by the way the contemporary society behaves have been exasperated to give vent to their harshest feelings, Author Samuel Johnson remarked "Patriotism is the last refuge of a Scoundrel".

Pandita’s story is a deeply personal recounting of one family’s forced exile, and as such, it provides material for seekers of truth to engage with. It carries the sense of authentic experience, as much as do the stories of humiliated and bereaved Kashmiri Muslims; and in future no attempt at a truthful history of Kashmir can omit or gloss over the Pandit experience.

selected reports from The Daily Star, The Times of India, news24.com, Aljazeera, bdnews24.com, The New Age and Dhaka Tribune are compiled re the Hefajat-e-Islam rally in Dhaka and the violent turn of events on the 5th and 6th of May 2013

One of the most disastrous consequences of the strife in the tribal areas of central India is that thousands of adivasi men and women remain imprisoned as under-trials, often many years after being arrested, accused of ’Naxalite/ Maoist’ offences.

Today it might be the case that people in many of the Muslim majority countries are veering around the idea of giving more space to Islam in governance but it has not been the case earlier. In fact, during the 1960s, the predominant ideology within the Arab world was in fact pan-Arabism which deemphasized religion and emphasized the creation of socialist, secular states based on Arab nationalism rather than Islam. And in many other newly independent countries, with a significant population of Muslims which had their own genesis in leading anti-colonial struggles, there was still more space for running governments on secular principles.