Archive of South Asia Citizens Wire | feeds from sacw.net | @sacw

  • A Flood of Draconian Laws in India’s North East

    by Praful Bidwai, 16 August 2004
    Northeast In Deep Crisis
    In the Northeast, they tell you, usually bluntly: “You Indians have the same attitude to us as the West has to the Third World. Normally, you ignore us completely. Our existence figures as a blip on your radar only when there is a disaster or calamity: massacres, serious ethnic clashes, floods, something bad. Otherwise, we are dead for you…†I first heard these words in Nagaland and Mizoram more than 20 years ago. They greeted me again on my visit to the Northeast in  (...)

  • Andhra Pradesh: Beyond Media Images

    by K Balagopal, 10 July 2004

    Chandrababu Naidu’s defeat is the kind of event that lends itself so well to
    analysis by hindsight that the effort would be too tiresome. In any case,
    analysts attached to the Left parties have done that as ably as hindsight
    alone permits, and there is no need to add to their wisdom (by which it is
    not intended that they are altogether wrong). In fact, Naidu (or ‘Babu’ as
    he is known to his admirers in the State) is a classic instance of a
    phenomenon that the West is probably already very familiar with, but we are only just waking up to: a pervasive media creates a celebrity out of almost nothing, and then calls in experts to explain why its creation turned out to be nothing.

  • India: Price of Honour - Caste Panchayats as Instruments of Terror

    by Brinda Karat, 15 April 2004

    There is an increasing number of "missing girls" in villages in north India, their deaths unreported, killed often by male relatives or by members of her caste; their crime, like Geeta’s, being their relationship with a man from a lower caste. Ironically, such violence is described as honour violence or killings. In this view of "honour", the caste honour is vested in the chastity of a woman. If she transgresses caste-dictated norms in the expression of her sexuality she shames the entire community. There are no official statistics on the number of cases of violence against young people who choose their own partners in opposition to the wishes of their families/caste or religious community. But information gathered by the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) shows a definite increase in states like Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh.

  • Book Review: Across Time and Continents - A Tribute to Victor G. Kiernan

    by Mushirul Hasan, 21 January 2004

    Victor G. Kiernan, historian and translator of Iqbal and Faiz turned ninety recently. MUSHIRUL HASAN reviews a commemorative collection of his essays.

  • What should minorities do

    by M B Naqvi, 24 November 2003

    For minorities, including smaller sects of Islam, should not organise themselves communally. Instead of being protected, they may only help set up a cycle of revenge violence. Their best chance lies in the liberals in the given majority being mobilised for promoting tolerance and peaceful conditions. Counter violence, in the name of either defence (deterrence) or revenge is to step on a slippery slope, which is sure to promote even greater counter mobilisation by the majority. When a minority organizes a militia, it does so at its own peril. For, the majority is sure to ask: they are organizing (uniting) against whom? Its extremists are sure to magnify the danger from the minority and intensify their mobilization, making it more effective or murderous.

0 | ... | 8475 | 8480 | 8485 | 8490 | 8495 | 8500 | 8505 | 8510 | 8515 | 8520

elsewhere on the web