South Asia Citizens Web

Please join the Rationalist Association (UK) in condemning the misuse of Indian law by several Catholic organisations to silence a campaigner against superstition. In March 2012, following his exposure of a supposed miracle at a Catholic Church in Mumbai as nothing more than the result of a leak, a complaint was lodged against Sanal Edamaruku by local Catholic organisations with the Mumbai police, who are now able to arrest him. He has been denied ’anticipatory’ bail which means if arrested he faces a long term in prison merely for explaining the science behind an apparent mystery.

The Sri Lankan government must immediately cease its assault on the independence of the judiciary, the ICJ said in a new report released today.
The 150-page report, Authority without Accountability: The Crisis of Impunity in Sri Lanka, documents how, and why, it has become nearly impossible for people who have suffered serious violations of their human rights to receive justice in Sri Lanka. Recent attacks on judicial officers and judges only highlight the systematic erosion of accountability mechanisms.

India’s celebrated playwright Girish Karnad made spirited secular critique of Nobel laureate V S Naipaul being awarded the Landmark and Literature Alive’s Lifetime Achievement Award on October 31 [2012]

. . . exceptionally striking chapter of the Baloch movement was written in the early 1970s when a group of five scions of Pakistani non-Baloch elite joined Balochistan’s guerilla war against the Pakistan army’s occupation of the Baloch land. Popularly known as the London Group, the members of this study circle left the comforts of wealthy life, education in London and joined the Balochs in their battle against the Pakistan army in the Marri hills. In their early twenties, these comrades adopted Balochi names, learned the language, explored the terrain, faced hunger and fought on the frontline in their commitment for the Balochs.

Put forth sometimes as nuggets of profound wisdom, at others as political weaponry, these anti-women diatribes have become ’legitimate and respectable’ conversation at the high table. Often they have passed unnoticed, but during unpredictable and fractious times as these, the terrible utterances are ratcheted up and dissected the way they deserve to be. We, however, can only be thankful for that much-needed critical attention, however brief its span.