South Asia Citizens Web

Metals giant Vedanta Resources’ Indian subsidiary has launched an unprecedented attack on Survival International, apparently to drive its researchers out of an area where the company is planning to mine. The mining company has falsely accused Survival of ‘forcedly interacting’ with the Dongria Kondh tribe who live around the area earmarked for mining, and of causing ‘unrest.’

India, its Constitution asserts, is a socialist republic. Nobody loses sleep over that huge joke. The Constitution also claims India to be a secular republic. It is however a soft variety of secularism, the republic is secular to the extent ‘practical’ politics permits it to be so. Not merely that those who claim to defend the Constitution lack the courage of their conviction, the conviction itself, have no illusion, is greatly wobbly.

Pakistan’s supreme court has begun hearing challenges to a legal amnesty for senior politicians and has issued an order annuling the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO)

Full text of the affidavit filed by senior advocate Prashant Bhushan in response to the notice of contempt issued by the Supreme Court of India for his interview to the Tehelka news magazine levelling corruption charges against judges.

For the last few weeks Humanists, Rationalists and Human Rights activists have been waging a huge battle against the forces of fundamentalism in Andhra Pradesh. This is a battle where all sections of society, and in which the media, the police, the justice system, aggressive fundamentalists, the Dalai Lama as well as the Humanists and Rationalists are involved. It is a battle that is being watched with keen interest by millions of homes as it unfolds on live TV and through public (…)