South Asia

Articles

• India: Statement Concerning the Clampdown in Jawaharlal Nehru University issued by Citizens Committee for the Defense of Democracy
  24 February 2016, by siawi3

  The right to dissent is fundamental to maintaining democracy and the recent developments have shaken the foundations of democracy.

• Bangladesh: Charging Editors Is Dramatic Backslide
  24 February 2016, by siawi3

  Bangladeshi authorities should immediately withdraw all criminal charges filed against the editors of the Daily Star and Prothom Alo, the country’s leading newspapers, Human Rights Watch said today. Bangladesh should repeal its criminal defamation and sedition laws, which violate international standards. The assault on speech affects not only the media, but also critical civil society. Journalists report engaging in self-censorship. Activists and human rights defenders have faced charges, arrest, and intimidation. Bloggers who have expressed atheist sentiments have been killed, yet others have faced charges of insulting religious feelings. A 2014 media policy banned speech that is “anti-state,” “ridicules the national ideology,” and “is inconsistent with Bangladesh’s culture,” and would restrict the reporting of “anarchy, rebellion, or violence.” The government is currently drafting an onerous and overly broad law on publishing in electronic media.

• Pakistan: Unpublished memoirs of Abdul Rahim Khan, a veteran journalist and Marxist
  23 November 2018, by siawi3

  There were some Hindu and Muslim families in the village. As a child I never heard anyone making a disrespectful remark against other religions. .../...By December all the cross-migration in Punjab – of the Hindus to India and of Muslims to Pakistan – was completed. We would never see our Hindu and Sikh friends again.

• India: Physical elimination of well known secularists, the new politics of Hindutva
  10 September 2017, by siawi3

  Lankesh came from the rational, secular and progressive tradition of India. After murders of anti-superstition activist Dabholkar, CPI member and trade unionist Govind Panasare, and Prof Kalburgi in the last four years, hers is the fourth one of a staunch secularist opposed to majority communalism being killed in open daylight. It is now clear that a terrorist conspiracy is underway to kill important public itellectuals who are part of secular campaigns. The purpose of this conspiracy is to instill fear, and create a public environment in which ordinary Indians hesitate to express any opposition to the Hidutva politics.

• India: Who are the Brokers of Hatred ?
  10 September 2017, by siawi3

  A series of murders of public intellectuals over the last four years has failed to shake the Centre out of its wilful stupor. The culprits remain undetected and scot-free. Yet, the voices of dissent refuse to be remain silent — not even at the risk of life. Such is the spirit of real democracy. On September 5, we lost a fire breathing, independent journalist writer, activist and friend. Gauri Lankesh. Some of these sick, vile minds who are even followed by India’s prime minister celebrated her death. On social media. Who are these hate mongers? Our exclusive investigation does just that. What every television news hour programme and newspaper should be doing. Profile the harbingers of Hatred, tell us where they come from, who follows them , encourages them. This investigation dedicated to Gauri Lankesh also hopes to strengthen democracy. And interrogate the role of the media.

• Why India should Awaken to The Brutal Murder of Secularism and Freedom of Speech?
  10 September 2017, by siawi3

  India has been termed as “Asia’s deadliest country for media personnel” by the global advocacy group Reporters Without Borders (RSF). The report said that India was ahead of both Pakistan and Afghanistan in this regard.

• Why India’s Leading University is Under Siege
  18 February 2016, by siawi3

  In the marrow of the Extreme Right is a demand for discipline enforced by violence. Anyone who strays from the authority of its world-view – Hindutva – is either anti-national or a terrorist. Political murders of well-regarded intellectuals and activists, such as Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, and MM Kalburgi, put the nation on alert.

• What is happening in India today is similar to the McCarthy era
  29 February 2016, by siawi3

  This is not the first time that freedom of thought and expression has been attacked in the Indian university. But there is something ominously new in the manner in which the attack has been launched this time. The unwritten rule that the police must not enter a university campus was observed in the early decades of independent India . Are we to accept that national loyalty must be so unquestioned that the origins and present status of the nation and its boundaries, the nature of the constitution and the laws, the mutual relations between different regions and cultures, the demands of oppressed peoples and minority groups, cannot even be discussed and debated among students and teachers? What has now been sanctioned by the highest political authorities of the country is a blanket licence to every Hindu right-wing vigilante group to target individuals belonging to the Left-Dalit-minority fraternity on university campuses. They can be identified as “anti-national” simply on the basis of their political convictions.

• India: How Hindutva Historiography is Rooted in the Colonial View of Indian History
  20 February 2016, by siawi3

  The idea of the greatness of the Aryans led to an uncritical admiration of the entire “Hindu” period, which was seen as a phase of affluence, social harmony and happiness. In the post-independence period serious historians have eschewed the notion of a golden age in the past but Hindutva scholars have continued to hold on to this obsolete and effete idea.

• India: Ideology spreading Hate is the Killer of Gauri Lankesh
  1 October 2017, by siawi3

  The Hindu nationalist ideology is the underlying ground on which such violence can stand. Rising sectarianism, intolerance and murders a sequence which one can discern in such murder.

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