South Asia Citizens Web

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 (…)

The Nizam-i-Adl Regulation 2009 ( NAR) ( Justice System) for Malakand Division of the North West Frontier Province ( NWFP), which includes the state of Swat, is a hugely controversial system of so-called Islamic laws of justice that is based on a highly dubious “peace accord” between the NWFP government of the Awami National Party (ANP) and a small religious outfit ( Tehreek-i-Nifaz Shariat Mohammad ( TNSM) led by an aging warrior (Sufi Mohammad).
There is bitter controversy over what is (…)

An all-too familiar affair
Women had been fighting fundamentalism on the streets of London for years before The Satanic Verses
The 20th anniversary of the fatwa against Rushdie has been publicly debated by almost the same chorus of voices, now a little older and with some welcome recantations, that was heard then.
Dissenting women’s voices are little in evidence although it is women who are the first to feel the chill of religious fundamentalism when their precarious freedoms begin to (…)

South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR)
Media Release
The modern history of relations between India and Pakistan has been clouded from time to time by the politics of war and violence. Mumbai terror attacks of 26/11 seemed to have washed away the whole peace process.
In troubled times, it is the members of the civil society and the practitioners of culture – artists, painters, actors, singers, musicians, film-makers, writers, poets – who recall for us truths that are universal, of love (…)

The main reason why the language movement could not be subdued was that it was pro-people and secular. Though initiated by students it escalated into a movement for people’s rights. It also proved that decisions affecting millions of people cannot be foisted on them from above, writes Zakeria Shirazi
Fifty Seven years ago, on this day the campus area of the city of Dhaka, witnessed the first sparks of resistance against the colonial move to snuff out with bullets the hopes and aspirations (…)