South Asia Citizens Web

The Shahbag protests in Dhaka, which were held recently to condemn Bengali Islamists’ collaboration with the Pakistani Army in 1971, have found both allies and critics in India’s West Bengal region. Ironically, the Indian state is exploiting the anti-Shahbag narrative - led by Islamist forces within India - to earn brownie points with what it sees as a valuable minority. But at what cost? By Garga Chatterjee

Posters and badges released at a protest on 23 April 2013 by Delhi university teachers against the undemocratic ways of Delhi university . . . .

Talk by Romila Thapar on 18 April 2013 at the Delhi conference ’India’s Descent into Fascism’.

I seek to highlight the mounting evidence available [see annexures] regarding the fears expressed in countless forums, about safety and in particular, allegations of corruption associated with the shoddy manufacture and supply of sub standard materials by the Russian suppliers to the KKNPP over a period of time publicly articulated in a newspaper article by Dr AK Gopalakrishnan, a former head of the AERB. This is shocking to say the least. Even worse however, is the studied silence from the highest office in the land – namely the PMO.

In the early and middle decades of the twentieth century it was always dictators who embarked on policy and legislation which liberated and empowered women in both family and society. Ataturk started the process in Turkey, followed by Reza Shah in Iran a model followed less boldly by some Arab leaders in later decades. And they did so against strong popular opposition, religious, conservative and patriarchal. It is unlikely that such reforms would have passed electoral ‘democratic’ processes. In societies based on communal, kinship and patronage allegiances ‘democracy’ is never liberalism. Are we witnessing the effects of this principle in present day situations? Agitation/revolution initiated by movements for liberty and social justice by the urban young usher in elections, in which the vast hinterlands of populations to whom these concepts are alien or secondary then vote for patriarchal and conservative forces. It is never too often repeated that Tahrir Square is not Egypt.