South Asia Citizens Web

Dear Prime Minister, Home Minister and Sonia Gandhi,

We have noticed a striking anomaly in the way the armed forces and the state treats the people of Kashmir and the Northeast. When contemplating the use of the armed forces in the forest belt, the armed forces and the state concluded (quite correctly, in our opinion) that they should not be used against the people of this region, including the Maoists, since ’they are our people’. Yet the very same armed forces have no compunction about being deployed against the people of Kashmir and the Northeast, and the state agrees! Worse still, the armed forces insist that they cannot carry out their duties without AFSPA, which allows them to rape, torture and kill with impunity.

So what is happening here? Are the people of Kashmir and the Northeast not ’our people’? This is indeed the message that comes across. And if these people feel that they are not regarded or treated as ’our people’ by the state and armed forces of India, is it surprising that many of them do not want to belong to India?

A reform plan for higher education, both college and university, must focus largely upon faculty development, institute credible national level university entrance examinations, check faculty for adequate subject knowledge before hiring, crack down on widespread academic fraud and plagiarism, and use innovative educational technologies. The bottom line is: how you spend matters much more than how much you spend. Those in charge of higher education must now learn to think more maturely and use finite resources more intelligently.

“Freedom” represents many things across rural and urban spaces in India-ruled Kashmir. These divergent meanings are steadfastly united in that freedom always signifies an end to India’s authoritarian governance.

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man.
Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But, man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man - state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the (…)

A documentary produced by Harsh Dobhal, Human Rights Law Network and ANHAD