Archive of South Asia Citizens Wire

  • Challenging Police Use of Pseudo Scientific Technologies in India: Selected Resources

    by Amar Jesani, Girish Shahane, P A Sebastian, PUDR, Sriram Lakshman, 26 February 2009

    1. Narco-analysis, Brain Mapping and other frauds
    by Girish Shahane (Shoot First, Mumble Later) (26 February 2009)
    News has just come in that S Malini, the Assistant Director of Bangalore’s Forensic Science Laboratory, has been sacked after it was found that her credentials were forged. I’m not surprised at all. I’ve written more than once about how the narco analysis and ’brain mapping’ pioneered by that facility were voodoo techniques. What’s shocking is how long the media swallowed (…)

  • Pakistan: Triumph of Taliban in Swat Likely to Stimulate Other Bigots in the Region

    by Susanne Koelbl, 26 February 2009

    Spiegel Online, 21 February 2009
    Islamists Triumph in Swat Valley Bowing Down to the Taliban
    By Susanne Koelbl
    Pakistan is capitulating to the Taliban in the picturesque Swat Valley, where the Islamists have introduced Sharia law. Now the militants’ triumph threatens to encourage radicals throughout the region.
    The defeat was celebrated as if it had been a victory. The chief minister of the North-West Frontier Province greeted a delegation from the local Taliban. The Taliban (…)

  • Call for Negotiated Ceasefire in Sri Lanka: A Petition to Indian Mission to U.N.

    by Qadri Ismail, 25 February 2009

    Source URL
    Stop the Humanitarian Catastrophe in Sri Lanka To: Indian Mission to U.N.
    February 25, 2009
    Hon Nirupam Sen, The Permanent Representative, Republic of India, to the United Nations.
    Dear Ambassador Sen,
    We, the undersigned Indian citizens and persons of Indian origin, are writing to insist on urgent and effective action by the Government of India to stop the unfolding humanitarian disaster in northern Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government’s indiscriminate military (…)

  • Partition and Bengal: A book review of Joya Chatterji’s ’The Spoils of Partition’

    by A G Noorani, 25 February 2009

    Frontline, February 28, 2009
    [Book review:]
    [The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947-67 by Joya Chatterji (Cambridge University Press, 342pp. ]
    Bengal’s sorrow
    In Bengal, Partition frustrated the plans and purposes of the very groups that had demanded it.
    One can count on Dr Asok Mitra to say things that very few dare to say and most do not even notice or perceive. Curzon’s partition of Bengal in 1905 is one of the legends of the freedom movement. Legends and myths arouse (…)

  • Pakistan: "If you give the Taliban an inch - they will take a mile"

    by Salman Ahmad, 24 February 2009

    washingtonpost.com
    Rescuing Pakistan from the Taliban
    In its 60-plus turbulent years as an independent country, Pakistan has been held together by its music, poetry, films, literature and sports. Pakistan is an overwhelmingly Muslim nation, but culture — not religion — is the glue that binds people in this critical U.S.-allied country.
    But now the Taliban are grafting an alien form of Islam onto Pakistan, with dire consequences for Pakistanis, the region and possibly the world. Earlier (…)

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