Journeys to Democracy

Articles

• Peace, like democracy, is a process, not an event

              
  15 April, by beenasarwar
  My video interview with an Indian journalist about the Islamabad peace talks - before they collapsed - and a visit to ancient archaelogical sites in Sindh.

• Analysis without agenda: Creating spaces for understanding and empathy

          
  1 March, by beenasarwar
  Sapan is a cross-border, cross-regional, and cross-diaspora initiative that aims to create spaces for understanding and empathy. We provide analysis without agenda; the documentary is a testament to Sapan’s ability to represent local communities authentically.

• INDIA/PAKISTAN: Peaceful Pink Panties to Tame Right-Wing Goons – InterPress Service, 2009

    
  14 February, by beenasarwar
  Wrote this in 2009, at a time when rightwing groups in India had begun attacking people celebrating V-Day, while Saudi Arabia’s Ministry for the Protection of Virtue and Prevention of Vice had banned the sale of Valentine’s Day materials

• ‘Silences within silences’ around 1971. Plus a ‘South Asia Bound’ documentary. And Arundhati Roy

     
  16 December 2025, by beenasarwar
  It was only as an adult long after 1971 that I learnt about the internment camps where Bengalis in then West Pakistan had been detained. My source was an essay titled ‘Crossing Borders on the Wings of Language’, by Hafiza Nilofar Khan, in Borderlines, Vol. 1 (2014), an anthology published by (…)