South Asia Citizens Web

Will they bash up universities in Jakarta and other places for teaching different versions of the Ramayana?’ An interview with noted historian Romila Thapar

In case anyone has missed the point, the essay in question is not a pamphlet written by a provocateur: it is a scholarly essay published by a university press and aimed principally at an academic readership. Which makes it even harder to understand why the highest academic body of India’s most important liberal arts university, the University of Delhi, would choose to override expert opinion and remove it from an undergraduate syllabus. Especially when doing so would suggest, whether the academic council intended this or not, that the university had caved in to violent intimidation. [. . .] The reason Hindutva militants attacked this essay is not difficult to understand. Hindutva seeks to re-make the diversity of Hindu narratives and practices into a uniform faith based on standardized texts.

76 secularists and human rights campaigners, including Mina Ahadi, Nawal El Sadaawi, Marieme Helie Lucas, Hameeda Hussein, Ayesha Imam, Maryam Jamil, Maryam Namazie, Taslima Nasrin, Farida Shaheed, Fatou Sow, and Stasa Zajovic have signed on to a Manifesto for a Free and Secular Middle East and North Africa.

In light of the recent pronouncements of the unelected Libyan Transitional Council for ‘Sharia laws’, the signatories of the manifesto vehemently oppose the hijacking of the protests by Islamism or US-led militarism and unequivocally support the call for freedom and secularism made by citizens and particularly women in the region.

Pictures of placards and people at the 24 October 2011 protest march by teachers and students against the exclusion of AK Ramanujan’s essay from the History course at Delhi University. Pictures by Mukul Dube and Harsh Kapoor

Last Friday, 13 individuals who would be considered pillars of the establishment, including a former cabinet secretary, several retired secretary-level and state chief secretary-level officials, and many top-level scientists, did something stunningly unconventional. They joined ha­nds with two of India’s best-known non-government organisatio­ns, Common Cause and Centre for Public Interest Litigation, to file a writ petition in the Su­preme Court asking for “a safety reassessment of all nuclear facilities in India”, and “comprehensive long-term co­s­t-benefit analysis” of nucl­ear power, pending which there must be a stay “on all proposed nuclear plants”. They also ch­allenged the constitutional validity of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010.