South Asia Citizens Web

The violence in Dhule Maharashtra seems to be the new face of communal violence in India. As per the report of a major national daily (Jan 26, 2013), the evidence with the newspaper shows the evidence of police looting and destroying the property. The video clips in possession of the civil society groups also show one police official exhorting the rioting mob to move on. So far even if it was there it was not so blatantly clear. One sensed the partisan nature of police as discerned through different inquiry commission reports, but this type of role of police is a new and downhill chapter in the history of communal violence in India.

Unless the Verma panel report really singes the conscience of the of the legislators into making a change in election law where a candidate if charge-sheeted with cognisable offence six months before the date is debarred from contesting the elections, I am afraid criminality in politics would continue and this would make a mockery of Verma panel’s recommendation of changes in a electoral law, a very strong component of the recommendations. The demand is therefore that all the recommendations along with that of electoral law should be carried out simultaneously.

A review of The Nation and its Margins: Reading Gender and the Politics of Sovereignty in India’s Northeast, by Papori Bora.

In the wake of news and rumors regarding leaks and technical problems in Koodankulam leading to delays, 50 eminent citizens from different walks of life have signed the following statement calling for an independent review of safety in Koodankulam reactor. The signatories include former Chief of Naval Staff L Ramdas, former Planning Commission member SP Shukla, scientists PM Bhargava, MV Ramana and Vineeta Bal, social scientists Romila Thapar, Sumit and Tanika Sarkar, Rajeev Bhargav, Manoranjan Mohanty, Achin Vanaik, Zoya Hasan and Manisha Sethi, artist Vivan Sundaram and Sheba Chhachhi, and many other scholars and social activists.

Investigations confirmed the suspicion; evidence at the trial court all but proved his [Savarkars] complicity. He, however, escaped with an acquittal. . . . Many years later, the BJP had his portrait hung in Parliament House.