South Asia Citizens Web

We, the community of artists, musicians, actors, writers, academics and cultural acticists are in full solidarity with the clear stand taken by Shah Rukh Khan in facing up to the recent threats against him by the Shiv Sena. This threat issued by the Shiv Sena is only the latest in a series of campaigns by many sections of the Hindu right against actors, artists and writers.

Injustice has been done to the Pakistani cricketers in the IPL 3. The controversy has pushed India-Pakistan relations to a low again. In the sub-continent, where cricket is a religion and cricketers are treated as demi gods, the cricket authorities and governments have to be more serious and sensitive.

No, I am not referring to Slumdog Millionaire but to Avatar, whose action supposedly takes place not in India, not even on this earth, but on the distant planet Pandora.

Dark clouds are gathering over Pakistan’s universities, portending a conflict that is likely to be long, bitter, and uncertain in outcome. On one side are those who say that those to be given PhD degrees must have, at the very minimum, undergraduate level knowledge in the relevant discipline. On the other side are PhD aspirants, together with their supervisors, who demand unearned degrees. They hold that passing examinations and taking courses is unnecessary and an affront to their dignity.

We have all been witness to a long and continuing war of words between New Delhi and Islamabad ever since the Mumbai terrorist strike of November 2008 disrupted the India-Pakistan "peace process" and "composite dialogue" which had kept going until then despite smaller problems and provocations. These statements and counter-statements, however, do not constitute the exchange that should cause the most serious concern over peace in South Asia. A larger and direr threat is what a strangely less-noticed debate between the military establishments of the two countries presents. The chiefs of the two armies and security experts on both sides, besides others in either distinguished uniform or defense-related positions of prominence, have been engaged in the debate where a nuclear war is treated in mind-numbingly matter-of-fact terms.