South Asia Citizens Web

Going by the charged reaction to the Mukhtar Mai verdict, it is clear that loopholes in the investigation mechanism and the law need to be fixed. Women victims of violence in Pakistan do not find redress whether through the courts or the country’s policing and investigation apparatus.

[T]oday, secularism is in jeopardy in India. The main threat comes from the rise of Hindu militancy and its consequences not only for electoral politics, but also for the judiciary and society at large. The core belief of the Hindu nationalist movement, whose key organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was founded in 1925, is that the Indian identity is embodied in Hinduism, the oldest and largest religion of India. For decades the RSS has worked at the grass roots level, recruiting children who are taught to fight religions founded outside India and forming new fronts (that include student, labour and peasant groups).

The accident in Fukushima showed that no reactor is immune to devastating accidents and that the highest price for a mishap is paid by local inhabitants. Does the Indian Government, which has worked so hard to protect the interests of the international and domestic nuclear industries, even care about them?

Reports on Workers rights in Gurgaon and Gorakhpur: For most of the 8 lakh migrant workers that live in Gurgaon, discrimination on the basis of place of birth is common; Workers in Gurgaon (Haryana) attacked by Police; stuggle of the workers after the 3 May firing and brutal police repression of workers in Gorakhpur (Uttar Pradesh)

Alarmed at the fears expressed by the Christian community in Mandla and indeed the rest of Jabalpur division, and the report of a fact-finding team which toured the Narmada valley areas in the district on the eve of the so-called Kumbh, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Madhya Pradesh petitioned the high court at Jabalpur even as the All India Christian Council approached the union government and the political spectrum in New Delhi and Bhopal to prevent the outbreak of violence against Christians. Faced with these developments, the state government withdrew its enthusiastic support for the Sangh’s plan and the police were eventually directed to ensure that there were no conversions of Christian tribals to Hinduism. These were obviously reluctant actions, as there was no effort to prevent the hate speech that dominated the Kumbh, emanating from a host of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal and Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram leaders.