South Asia Citizens Web

As elections in Uttar Pradesh are nearing, so is the number of travels by spiritual gurus. These gurus are giving their discourses against corruption. (November 2011). The major ones amongst them are Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (Sri Sri). Sri Sri has shared space with Anna and played a considerable role when the government had arrested Anna. Sri Sri came to play the role of an interlocutor between Anna and his followers, during his prison stint. As if by a divine design, yoga guru Ramdev and Sri Sri have suddenly realised this menace of corruption and have plunged themselves head long into the anti corruption movement.

Church groups in Meghalaya want followers to pray, and not play music on Sunday. From politics to the arts, religious leaders want to control all spheres of public life. But people are fighting back equally hard.

An event in Bangalore aimed at exploring the role of art and literature in a conflict zone is cancelled after Hindu right-wing group calls it anti-national and incites people to disrupt meet

India’s former President APJ Abdul Kalam brought himself no credit by visiting the Koodankulam nuclear power project in Tamil Nadu, and declaring it "100 percent safe". The idea that any technology, especially a complex hazard-prone one like a nuclear power, is "100 percent safe" is patently unscientific. All technologies carry finite risks. The more complicated, energy-dense, and dependent on high-pressure high-temperature systems they are, the higher the risk.

The CNDP deeply condoles the untimely death of J. Sri Raman (in Kochi on 7th November), a distinguished founder member who remained a frontranking campaigner until the very end. An eminent journalist and highly felicitous writer, he will be remembered above all as a pre-eminent peace activist in the Sub-Continent who viewed communal harmony at home as key to India-Pakistan friendship as well as the elimination of the region’s nuclear weapons. Little wonder then that Sri Raman should have waged the many battles for peace simultaneously on several fronts.