South Asia Citizens Web

The author explores how suggestions for expansion of the majoritarian religious moorings of tolerance, or for adopting a more political conception of tolerance, are still unable to displace dominant understandings of culture or disrupt normative sexuality. Instead, sexual subalterns are still treated as a ‘perversion’ to be tolerated within the framework of liberal democracy, and where tolerance is deployed to deal with the excess that formal equality has failed to accommodate.

The year 2009 also did not witness major riots and this pattern is continuing since Gujarat riots of 2002. However, no year so far has been riot-free year. Communal violence erupts on smaller scale in different places throughout India. It is interesting to note that since Mumbai riots of 1992-93 there was no major communal riot until Gujarat riots in 2002 except in Coimbatore in 1998 in which about 40 persons were killed. Similarly since Gujarat riots of 2002 there has been no major communal riots except in Kandhamal, Orissa, in which also around 40 persons were killed.

In 2006 I attended a discussion on Naxalism that included a retired police officer and a Maoist spokesman. The policeman called for soul-searching from the political class, whom he blamed for the rise of left-extremism. He defended the Salwa Judum, a force funded by corporates and supported by both Congress and BJP, whose atrocities are documented and whose existence was questioned by India’s chief justice.
The Maoist spokesman denounced the despotism of the Indian state — ironic, (…)

In Goa, a local politician has implied rape victims are to blame for assaults, exploiting concern about the impact of tourism

The institutionalized militarism Sri Lankans have experienced under Tamil militants, the JVP, and the State is incidental to the extent that it is a culmination of the way we as individuals and collectives think and act under ‘normal’ circumstances. Demilitarization does not end with the military withdrawal, rather entails fundamental changes in society’s governance at all levels. The narrow focus on the ‘terrorists’ ‘military’ ‘politicians’ ‘and ‘ethno nationalists’ as the culprits of militarization overlooks and depoliticize society’s experiences of dispossession and disempowerment, and the aggression and violence evident in the education, religion, memory, media, clothing, sports, entertainment etc, which are the root causes of militarization.