South Asia Citizens Web

While there is no magic wand, confidence-building measures (CBMs) continue to be important for managing the Pakistan-India conflict and bringing down the decibel level of mutual rhetoric. To be sure, CBMs can be easily disparaged as palliatives that do not address the underlying causes of a conflict. Nevertheless, looking at those initiated over the years shows that they have held up even in adverse circumstances. More are needed.

The reason for India to want a rapprochement with Pakistan, and vice versa, has nothing to do with feelings of friendship or goodwill. It has only to do with survival. For us in Pakistan, this is even more critical.

Instead of taking concrete steps to guarantee the human rights of dalits granted to them under constituion, the administration has preferred to remain silent or at best supportive of the interests of the dominant castes only. One can easily see why Madhya Pradesh happens to be the state which tops the list of atrocities on tribals and stands second when it comes to cases of atrocities against dalits.

The Babri demolition simply betrayed a fascist communal mindset which emerged soon after India’s partition in the wake of transfer of power and led to worst kind of communal holocaust. It was this mindset and the same forces which joined hands to demolish Babri mosque and along with it the country’s secular character, which was responsible for Gandhiji’s assassination in January 1948. By failing to act strongly on the basis of the Liberhan Commission report, both by banning the communal outfits and severely punishing those indicted by the Commission, the Congress government at the Centre will only expose its credentials as a party which lacks faith in secularism and has a soft corner for Hindutva forces.

‘Modern Hindi was created by weeding out Persian and Arabic words and using only the Devanagari script for writing. These new languages, Sanskritised Hindi and Persianised Urdu, drifted apart from each other and still serve as identity markers for Hindu and Muslim nationalism in South Asia.’

The 26/11 attacks were certainly the most dramatic in our recent history — especially since they played for almost three days on live television, and happened largely in luxury hotels, shocking the privileged classes into the realisation that they too are vulnerable. But the attacks were in no way an isolated event — these belonged to a larger terrorscape that took shape over two decades as sectarian polarisation laid us open to hate attacks and counterattacks and plunged us into a murderous cycle of violence. And this week we are revisiting perhaps the biggest fountainhead of that religious polarisation, with the Liberhan Commission’s report being tabled in Parliament.