South Asia Citizens Web

The past week recorded the 22nd anniversary of a cruel, inhuman episode in the history of Tamil–Muslim relations in Sri Lanka. In October 1990, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) organisation forcibly expelled the Tamil speaking Muslim people from the Northern Province in an atrocious act amounting to ethnic cleansing. Within a few days the Muslims were chased out of their homeland where they had lived for many centuries.

This is with reference to the unseemly controversy created during the Tata Literature Live festival in Mumbai. We stand by Girish Karnad, actor and playwright, and extend our solidarity. In condemning the Lifetime Achievement Award to V. S Naipaul by the organisers of the Festival, Karnad has articulated in no unequivocal terms his condemnation of a writer who has consistently displayed a rabid antipathy towards the Indian Muslims.

Dr Shashank Shekhar Sinha tells Pawanpreet Kaur that witch-hunting in India has a complex relationship with the socio-political experience of adivasis through history.

For those of us who prefer to take refuge in comfortable illusions that this Presidency only hides a velvet hand in an iron glove (to mischievously twist that proverbial saying around), the motion of impeachment of the Chief Justice of Sri Lanka presented by 117 government MPs to the Speaker this week should dispel all such arrant foolishness. Whether the government goes ahead with the impeachment or not, let it be clearly said that the final nail in the metaphorical coffin of the institution of the judiciary in Sri Lanka is already hammered in.

In their attempt to assassinate girl-activist, Malala Yousufzai, has the Taliban inadvertently rescued the narrative of violence against women? Over the last three decades, Pakistan has been at the receiving end of donor-assisted campaigns and gender-empowerment awareness programmes on violence. These projects were sub-contracted to NGOs that had been set up by feminists who themselves, in the 1980s, had been involved in direct action activism on cases of violence. With the sponsorship of international development assistance, “women’s NGOs” have steadily embraced the concept and become advocates of linking VAW to neo-liberal development agendas. This has re-directed analysis and activism from its primary focus on survivors and perpetrators of violence. Instead, increasing attention and funding has led to a change that is more in tune with the UN and donor-preferred approach known as ‘Gender-Based Violence’ (GBV).