South Asia Citizens Web

For an estimated 8,000 women in the UK every year, their wedding isn’t the happiest day of their lives – quite the opposite. These women, usually from Indian and Pakistani families, are forced into marriages to ensure that the groom ticks the cultural, religious and socioeconomic boxes of the parents’ choosing. Those who dare to rebel might find themselves the victims of an "honour killing" (could there be a bigger misnomer for such a horrific crime?).

Peace in Balochistan is meaningful, even possible, only if an end to violence is accompanied by justice in terms of a change in the status quo by establishing fair power relationships between the civil and military authorities, the centre and the province, and the elite and ordinary people.

On 13th May 2011, a nasty fire in the Defence Colony Flyover Market in Delhi gutted about 58 shops and along with that, our Saheli office with 30 years of our belongings, files, records, documents, publications, etc. The devastation has been incredible, but if anything could give us the strength to move on, it has been your overwhelming support, your presence, offers of help and solidarity - we are extremely touched and humbled by it. We hope you understand that we’ve been unable to write back to all of you individually, but here is the brief collective update:

Sri Lanka has now called upon its “friends” to shield it from an international investigation into alleged human rights violations. The international community largely stood by while the bloodbath took place and as the Sri Lankan government refused to investigate the war crimes allegations. It is crucial for Sri Lanka’s friends to speak up and join other governments to press for an international investigation that can bring genuine justice.
In particular, it is important for India, China and Japan to speak out. These countries have been Sri Lanka’s faithful allies and are supporting the post-conflict reconstruction efforts; and that is precisely why they should speak up.

Gyan Prakash’s Mumbai Fables is a thing of beauty. Trawling the archives as flâneur and walking the city’s past as historian, Prakash reads the city as palimpsest. He pays homage to the seductive power of myths about Mumbai and its earlier avatar Bombay—the city of free enterprise, the efficient city, the cosmopolitan city, the liberal city, the modern city—while illuminating the troubled histories and lowly origins from which the myths emerge. What is it, Prakash asks, that is silenced in mythic characterisations of the city? Whose histories are submerged? Whose suffering is ignored?