South Asia Citizens Web

Tariq Banuri of dismissal as chairman Higher Education Commission - The reason? Why no charge sheet? What is Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman’s role in Pakistan’s higher education system? This points to corruption at deep level.

The ostensible reason for the recent protests was Indian PM Narendra Modi’s latest visit. The real reason was to signal that Hefajat-e-Islam (HI) under its new leadership was not the same party as it was under its former chief Shah Ahmad Shafi and his immediate followers and to announce that HI was ready to emerge as a new political force under the guise of protecting the majority faith. It is also a signal that the government’s policy of appeasement has totally failed and the compromises and concessions so generously and unthinkingly given have only helped make them stronger and more determined to challenge the fundamental character of the country. The situation stands as a testimony to the follies of a politics of power and arrogance that has led the ruling party to cripple all its political allies representing secular and democratic forces.

2nd April, 2020: National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) condemns in the strongest possible terms the high-handed manner of ‘raids’ by the National Investigative Agency (NIA) at the homes of over 16 activists of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, acting on dubious FIRs registered a couple of months back. We express our solidarity with all these activists and advocates who are long standing members of human rights, civil liberties and mass organizations and have been striving to work for the welfare and rights of the most disenfranchised peoples including adivasis, dalits, workers, farmers, minorities and women.

2021 paper by Matthew Shutzer on the historical context for contemporary struggles over mining claims in India’s coal region today in Comparative Studies in Society and History

In the Name of the Nation thus could not be timelier. In just under two hundred pages, Baruah distills decades of research to offer a powerful overview of the overlapping mechanisms that have made Northeast India “an exceptional example of the shortcomings and failures of the territorially circumscribed post-colonial nation-state” (p. 3). Over six chapters, each rich in individual insights yet echoing one another, Baruah takes on the dynamics of region-building (chapter 1), the vexed issue of citizenship and belonging (chapter 2), the politics of development (chapter 3), the Naga conflict (chapter 4), and the entrenchment of the “security state” (chapters 5 and 6).