South Asia Citizens Web

The Chhattisgarh police seem to have lost all sense of decency, legality, and even sanity. The Supreme Court’s recent judgment ordering the disbanding of the state-sponsored anti-Maoist (Naxalite) Salwa Judum militia has had no effect on their obsession with crushing the Maoist movement by force. Last month, they arrested a young Adivasi (tribal), Lingaram Kodopi, in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district. Last week they raided the house of Kavita Srivastava, the national general secretary of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), in Jaipur.

We congratulate the activists and people of Tamilnadu for waging a sustained protest against the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project. A delegation of activists from Koodankulam met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the 7th September [read 7th October]. . . .After the Prime Minister’s volt face, 7000 people observed a token fast on 9th September and are going to intensify the struggle.

All of the main political parties in Karachi shoulder considerable blame for their consistent and prolonged failure to prevent the loss of human life and of property.

Domestic worker women power made history today in Jaipur when they took to the streets of Jaipur and demanded their rights from the State and society. We are not “naukranis” they said. We are workers in free India and want the dignity of being a worker. We run two homes, yours and ours, can any of you in society do without our labour, they asked boldly. Ninety percent were Bengally with abotu ten percent from who had come from different parts of Rajasthan.

Anti-communalism crusader, Dawoodi Bohra reformer and liberal Islamic scholar Asghar Ali Engineer has crossed swords with many within the Muslim community - and outside it. Having analysed and opposed communalism from the 1960s onwards, Engineer spoke with Mohammed Wajihuddin on factors still driving divisiveness: