South Asia Citizens Web

The Hindu, 26 October 2008
When the Third Shivaji speaks
Mavericks like Bal Thackeray create no dynasties; worse, they leave behind a greater chaos than they were able to create.
How this same rabble-rousing rhetoric found a resonance in the hearts of the jobless youth, the discontented lower middle class, the working class and the lumpen is a mystery.
Aging and ailing: Thackeray’s public appearances have become rare.
It is the evening of the Dussehra Day. I am watching the Marathi (…)

The News, November 06, 2008
Habit of dishonesty
Throughout his nearly nine years in office, former president Pervez Musharraf spoke of eradicating corruption and loudly proclaimed his own honesty at every available occasion.
The report is now surfacing that hundreds of acres of military land in Dera Ismail Khan were quietly allocated to two key leaders of the MMA, Maulana Fazlur Rehman of the JUI-F and then NWFP chief minister Akram Durrani, as a bribe to ensure the silence of the (…)

counterpunch.org, November 7 / 9, 2008
Barack Obama has appointed John Podesta to run his transition. During the lean years of the Bush administration, Podesta, native of Chicago, ran a shadow cabinet for the Democrats. Since 2003, the home of this government-in-exile has been the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank set-up to rival the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. The money, about $10 million per year, came from George Soros, Peter Lewis, (…)

New Statesman, 6 November 2008
Mutiny in the mountains
In Kashmir, a wave of peaceful mass protests against Indian rule has been put down with ferocity. The capital city of Srinagar has now become an open prison to its citizens
An open prison: a policeman guards Dal Lake during a strict curfew imposed at the start of October as a reaction to the resumption of protests after Ramadan
One afternoon in August this year, I left a magazine office near the East Village in New York after an (…)

The Guardian, October 15 2008
God’s thugs
Religious vigilante groups intent on rooting out ’vulgarity’ are causing fear among Lahore’s traders
First, they went after the barber shops and video stores, razing to the ground those outlets they deemed inimical to their obscurantist interests.
Then came the girls’ schools: well over 50 in the past year alone, further hampering the cause of women’s rights (not to mention literacy) in an already avowedly patriarchal society. In the (…)