South Asia Citizens Web

London Review of Books, 1 January 2009
Enemy Citizens The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan by Yasmin Khan Buy this book The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories by Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar
’Toba Tek Singh’ is one of a number of stories about Partition by Saadat Hasan Manto, a brilliant, alcoholic Urdu writer who himself moved from Bombay to Lahore in 1948. It is set in a Lahore asylum whose inmates are about to be (…)

Herald, 20 February 2009
When journalist Johann Hari wrote an opinion article in The Independent, UK, titled ‘Why should I respect these oppressive religions?’, lamenting the ever-shrinking freedom to discuss religion openly and critically, he could hardly have imagined that his article would itself become an example of the suppression of this freedom, but that is exactly what happened. The Statesman, Calcutta, reprinted this article a week after its original appearance in the UK. Taking (…)

This Op-Ed. appeared in The Telegraph, 22 February 2009
Illusion of an Epoch
The death of Victor Kiernan at the age of 95 a few days ago probably represents the passing of an era. This is not because he lived well beyond the biblical three score and ten, but because he was among the few survivors from a group of intellectuals who formed the Historians Group of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Most members of that group believed that he was the most erudite and widely read among them (…)

Thinking big
Successive governments in Pakistan have been obsessed with mega development projects despite their potential to create controversies
During a briefing to the federal secretary for Housing in the first week of February on development projects in Rawalpindi, it was decided that Sheikh Rashid Expressway (now re-named as Leh Expressway) will be built. It was also agreed that the idea of an elevated expressway in Rawalpindi will be revisited due to various reasons, including its (…)

Kashmir Times, February 22, 2009
Dam(n)ed Symbols of False Pride
A naked man exhibiting his pride by wearing a colorful turban is as absurd as projecting the big dams of the country as a measure of progress of the country when the crude reality of the enormous casualty of these big projects is something that everyone would conveniently like to ignore. In the recent past we have heard gory stories pouring in from Narmada valley, of displacements, death and destruction that these symbols (…)