South Asia Citizens Web

We welcome the reports that the Government of India and the CPI (Maoist) are agreeable to the idea of talks. In the present situation talks are the only way to come to a resolution of any problem, however difficult it may be.
We reiterate that the talks should be unconditional, and that they should be held at the central level. We propose the following steps to expedite the dialogue:
1. Security forces should not move forward and should cease all operations.
2. (…)

Justice Liberhan submitted its report to the Government of India. The
Commission was set up 10 days after the demolition of Babri Masjid and it
took 17 long years and 48 extensions before it submitted the report on June
30th of this year (2009). Babri Masjid–Ramjanambhoomi controversy dominated Indian politics for about a decade and became the main issue and it was so controversial and rooted in communal politics that it polarized Indian people along religious lines for the first time in post-independence India and since it was raised for riding to political power and BJP did rise to political power towards the end of nineties of the last century.

This a first fact-finding report about the terrible police firing that happened at the remote Narayanapatna police station in south Orissa on 20 November 2009. A leader of the Chasi Mulya Adivasi Sangha (Tribal Farmers’ association) was among the three killed. The CMAS has played a leading role in campaigns to prevent bauxite being mined from 2 or 3 mountains in south Orissa, understanding that when a mountain is mined for bauxite its water-holding capacity is killed and the land suffers an invasion of corporations that displaces tribal people from their land.

It is not an editor or a media house that is under threat. It is the right of free speech, the freedom to express one’s views, the freedom, within bounds of the law and decency, to cause offence.

Were dissent to die, democracy would be lifeless. Were free speech to end, the country would be akin to a prison. The very defence of the Shiv Sena speaks volumes. The tradition of trying to wrest the public space over to one group and deny others any voice at all is not new or novel to India or Maharashtra in particular.

The Indian political class of all religions including their caste categories is essentially lined up behind these two opposite types of Brahmins – secularists and supremacists.

At least this is what Mushrif’s book about Karkare’s mysterious death suggests in its core thesis.

Mushrif’s account of Karkare’s death on the first night of the gunbattle with terrorists hints at the possibility that the secular Brahmin had big enemies among Brahminist supremacists.