Archive of South Asia Citizens Wire

  • Dress, Difference and Dissent in Darjeeling Hills

    by Swatahsiddha Sarkar, 21 December 2008

    Mainstream Weekly
    Recasting Tradition
    As a non-verbal mode of communication clothing often represents the cultural identity and cultural value premises of a group living in any society. Within its space biased and time biased limits of operation the clothing pattern is capable enough to negotiate between the distinctiveness of a cultural self, expressions of group conformity and individual status, and the malleability of individual taste and sense of aesthetics all at once. Furthermore, (…)

  • Handling Queries: Democratic Responses

    by Ram Puniyani, 21 December 2008

    The tragic terror attack on the city of Mumbai (Nov.2008) has shaken not only the people of city but also the whole nation. It is not the first time that terror attacks have taken place in this city. The first major one was seen in the aftermath of Mumbai carnage of 1992-93. The investigation of this blast showed that the terrorist took advantage of the gross injustices done to Muslim minority and lured a small section of them to execute their dastardly designs. Then in the aftermath of (…)

  • Why ’Sanatan Sanstha’ and ’Hindu Janajagruti Samity’ should be Banned

    by Subhash Gatade, 21 December 2008

    sacw.net, 21 December 2008 ’DESTRUCTION OF EVILDOERS’ AS ’SPIRITUAL PRATICE’!
    [It is really difficult to believe how an organisation which supposedly ‘aims to present religious mysticism in a scientific language for the curious and to guide-seekers’ and which ‘conducts weekly spiritual meetings, discourses, child guidance classes, workshops on spirituality, training in self-defence and campaigns to create awareness of righteousness’ to further these aims can double up as an organisation (…)

  • Towards a No-war pact between India and Pakistan

    by A G Noorani, 21 December 2008

    Dawn, 20 December 2008
    A NO-WAR pact between India and Pakistan is a good idea and Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif is very earnest about it. On Dec 11 he told a TV channel in Pakistan, “We should sign a no-war pact for peace.”
    Around the same time he said in an interview to Harinder Baweja of Tehelka, “I would say that there should be a no-first-attack pact, a no-war pact between the two countries and this includes both conventional and nuclear (weapons).”
    It bears recalling that he had (…)

  • Partition Still Casts Shadow On India-Pakistan Ties

    by sacw.net, 20 December 2008

    Listen Now [7 min 49 sec] add to playlist Historian Sugata Bose
    Professor Sugata Bose says the violence that accompanied partition of the Indian subcontinent was unprecedented. www.dongurewitzphotography.com
    “Partition may have been a question of conflict management, but it was certainly not conflict resolution.”
    Ayesha Jalal, professor of history at Tufts University
    Historian Ayesha Jalal says Britain could have done more to prevent the violence that followed the partition in (…)

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