If we are going to confront rape effectively we’ll have to deal, seriously, with how it has come to be an everyday horror – a horror that festers within our society, at all its levels, rather than being visited on it from the outside.
If we are going to confront rape effectively we’ll have to deal, seriously, with how it has come to be an everyday horror – a horror that festers within our society, at all its levels, rather than being visited on it from the outside.
Shahbag Square — where’s that? Abdul Kader Mullah — who’s he? A bunch of university students in Islamabad, with whom I was informally conversing yesterday, hadn’t heard of either. Of course, they knew of Tahrir Square and Afzal Guru’s recent execution. But they showed little interest upon learning that Shahbag Square was in Dhaka . . . Even as they agonise about ‘losing’ the East, many Pakistanis still believe that 1971 was a military defeat rather than a political one. Dr AQ Khan, who met with Jamaat-e-Islami chief Syed Munawar Hasan this week, writes that nuclear bombs could have kept Pakistan intact: “If we had had nuclear capability before 1971, we would not have lost half of our country — present-day Bangladesh — after disgraceful defeat.â€
A poem by Shamsul Islam to protestors at the Shahbag Square in Dhaka.
The near-exclusive pre-occupation of political parties with electoral politics tends to render values like secularism and social justice into mere vote-gathering gimmicks and people begin to lose faith in all claims in respect of them. Particularly when they see secular parties joining hands with parties and groups they declare communal as happened in 1967, 1977, 1989 and 1991. Or when avowedly secular parties are seen to adopt the communal agenda, as the Congress did between 1977 and 1996.
Ishita Dutta provides a comprehensive overview of the forms of discrimination practised and ways to remedy the situation.
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