South Asia Citizens Web

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 (…)

Stand up to the mullahs
If you have missed the controversy that led to the arrest of the editor of The Statesman in Calcutta for offending religious sentiments — which you might have, because the national media downplayed the issue — then here’s what it is about.
The Statesman reproduced an article by Johann Hari, the young liberal British commentator, from The Independent. Hari’s politics are clear: he stands up for secularism (for which he has won awards), tolerance (he has defended (…)

Victor Kiernan: Marxist historian, writer and linguist who challenged the tenets of Imperialism
Kiernan pictured at Cambridge in 1935 with the Indian communists Savitri and Somnath Chibber
Victor Kiernan, professor emeritus of Modern History at Edinburgh University, was an erudite Marxist historian with wide-ranging interests that spanned virtually every continent. His passion for history and radical politics, classical languages and world literature was evenly divided.
His interest (…)