South Asia Citizens Web

THE presumptuously titled Tahaffuz-i-Bunyad-i-Islam Bill that was adopted with undue haste by the Punjab Assembly some time ago continues to generate controversy at various forums with the objections that had persuaded the governor to withhold assent not being addressed.

Lahore, 13 August. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) calls on the Pakistani and Indian governments to renew their commitment to bilateral peace as they celebrate their national independence, by securing the release of over 300 fisherfolk languishing in each other’s jails.

A writer and illustrator known to generations of children both for her charming Mog picture-books and for her careful rendering of the life of a Jewish child fleeing Nazi Germany. Judith Kerr escaped with her family on the day the Nazis were elected. The following day, police turned up at the doorstep in a belated attempt to confiscate their passports. The Kerr family moved across Europe, trying to support themselves and escape from the nearing threat, until they eventually settled in England in 1936. The family stayed in London throughout the war; surviving the Blitz and in fear of invasion. Judith Kerr wrote an autobiographical trilogy about her experiences and the books - in particular When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit - have been used ever since as a way of explaining to children the horrors of the Nazi threat. Today, they are set texts in many German schools.

ON July 29, Narendra Modi’s government unveiled what it calls a groundbreaking new national education policy (NEP 2020). The 65-page document’s wide range — from primary to university — forces me to consider here just a single issue: To what extent does NEP reflect the BJP ideology of Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan? And how does it compare against Pakistan’s newly declared single national curriculum with logo: one nation, one curriculum?

We write to you today to express our grave concern over the passage of the ... Bill which empowers the Directorate General Public Relations (DGPR) to visit and inspect any printing press, publication house or book store and confiscate any book, before or after printing. The vesting of such immense arbitrary, unfettered and unilateral power in a single bureaucrat is in breach of even those reasonable restrictions that can be imposed on the right to freedom of expression under the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973