South Asia Citizens Web

The Alliance of Media Organizations is disturbed by the recent wave of hate speeches and slanderous personal attacks directed against media personnel and human rights activists in the country, in the aftermath of the United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution on Sri Lanka.

Recent votes by India in the UN, censuring first Syria and then Sri Lanka for human rights violations, seem to indicate a new willingness to join initiatives by the international community supporting democracy in other countries. This is a welcome move. While it is entirely justifiable to oppose military aggression against another country, or to oppose sanctions except in cases where the oppressed population calls for them, condemning a regime that is repressing its people is the least the international community can do to defend the human rights of citizens of the world when those rights are being violated. However, to avoid the charge of double standards, governments involved in such votes should be able to show that they respect the same rights in their own countries. Scrutiny of India’s domestic record does not support such a conclusion.

(Hindustan Times, March 17, 2012)
In scarred country
by Chetan Chauhan
Illegal mining in India could be a much bigger game than the headline-grabbing 2G scam. In just two states — Goa and Karnataka, the government lost about Rs 36,000 crore — money that could feed half the country’s 400 million poor for a year — because of illegally extracted iron ore. "Annual illegal mining should be worth over Rs 1 lakh crore," says a former mining secretary, on the condition of anonymity.
In 2010, (…)

An exhibition by photographer-artist Sunil Gupta, which got discontinued at the Alliance Française in New Delhi after an individual complained of being offended by it, Gupta talks to Susmita Saha about creative freedom and the multifarious ways in which it repeatedly get stifled in India and his sheer ’perplexity’ about Alliance Française’s attitude over the incident.

Photographer-artist Sunil Gupta

Full text of the 1969 report of Commission of Inquiry in to Conspiracy to Murder Mahatma Gandhi. Published in 1970 by India’s Ministry of Home Affairs, the report is now not so widely known since its has been out of print. This two part report has been now been digitised and uploaded on the internet in public interest with the intent to permanently keep it in the public domain. - sacw.net