South Asia Citizens Web

I have an interest to declare. The government of my country, Hungary, is—along with the Bavarian provincial government (provincial in more senses than one)—the strongest foreign supporter of Jörg Haider’s Austria. The right-wing cabinet in Budapest, besides other misdeeds, is attempting to suppress parliamentary governance, penalizing local authorities of a different political hue than itself, and busily creating and imposing a novel state ideology, with the help of a number of lumpen (…)

We are living in times when the interpretation of events has taken a sharp turn from the earlier decades. Currently most of the political phenomenon is going on in the garb of religion. The language of religion and other identities has come to the fore of social affairs. The issues related to the needs of the people, the issues related to the rights of people and the concept of human rights, has taken a step back in the face of dominance of identity politics.

Punishing rape, even gangrape, with death will not deter the crime, whose roots lie in masculinity and male aggression, which is built into the culture of patriarchal violence. Apart from the numerous persuasive arguments that have been made against capital punishment-including its failure to deter, and its cruel, degrading nature-the death penalty for rape will only lead to more murders.

Families in the militancy-stricken FATA, a hotbed of violence, blame the Pakistan military and the Taliban in equal measure for reducing the education system here to rubble.

If Pakistan is to be at peace with itself, the army must stop seeing everything through the prism of competition and war with India. To prosper, Pakistan must overcome its hatred for India and leave Kashmir as a problem to be solved by Kashmiris. Muddled thinking has left Pakistan exhausted and indifferent to its own suffering. The notion in army circles that Pakistan’s civil war is transient, and will disappear if unnamed string-pullers stop their mischief, is delusional — this war will be long and bitter. The military must limit itself to defending the people of Pakistan from violence and to ensuring that their constitutional and civil rights are protected. It must cease posturing as the defender of ideological frontiers. Our army must become Pakistan’s army, not an army of God.