By upholding the fundamental right of adults to chose their life-partner, the court has dealt a blow to all those who would use and misuse religion and tradition to keep lovers apart. In India, that includes intercaste marriage, interfaith marriage and the current Hindu social panic about a (...)
In abolishing Muslim mens’ right to instant (‘triple talaq’) divorce, India’s Supreme Court failed to consider the ramifications for the wives and children concerned. Some find themselves in a legal limbo. Can they demand financial support? Are they now married, separated, abandoned? Women’s groups (...)
Indian secularism is under attack. The BJP government cuts subsidies to minorities in the name of secularism but spends massively on Hindu shrines and ceremonies. Courts have tolerated this discrimination, recognising ‘Hindutva’ as a way of life. Progressive and liberal Indians forget how (...)
New Delhi, India - On a cold winter afternoon in the Indian capital, scores of writers, activists and students gathered under a poster of a blood-splattered pair of sandals on Wednesday, holding up placards that said, “Not In My Name”.
The protest came in response to the brutal murder of (...)
Mohammad Afrazul, from Malda’s Sayadpur village, worked as a labour contractor and lived with twenty-four other labourers in a four roomed, single storey house in Rajsamand’s Dhoinda, some 300 kilometres from Jaipur. He was first attacked with an axe, then burnt to death, and the entire process (...)
Twenty five years after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, The Wire, through a series of articles and videos captures how the act of destruction changed India forever.
The demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 and the deadly riots in the weeks that followed changed India. (...)
Extract from part three of The Rise of Hindu Authoritarianism, Achin Vanaik’s proposed framework for evaluating contemporary authoritarianism and nationalism
Only the most rudimentary outlines of an alternative paradigm will be attempted here. From the end of the third quarter of the twentieth century, in all major zones — formerly the First, Second, and Third Worlds — there has been a dramatic rise in the politics of cultural exclusivism and xenophobia. Ethnic separatism or hatred have been (...)
We Won’t Allow India to Be Turned Into a Republic of Fear: Indians in London Write to President Kovind of Human Rights Emergency.
LONDON: Indian organisations based in the UK have expressed their “distress and concern” to President of India Ram Nath Kovind in a letter this Independence Day, about (...)
Writer and activist Amrit Wilson talks to Counterfire’s Shabbir Lakha about the BJP’s violence and the growing protest movement against the Hindu supremacists. Shabbir Lakha – We’ve seen a rise in human rights abuses and ethnic violence in India in recent years. Could you give us an idea of what’s (...)
NEW DELHI: When it gets unbearably hot in parts of India a cloudburst ends the long spells of suffocation and suffering.
The rain clouds visited Delhi all too briefly on Wednesday but they may have presaged the end of suffocation of another kind. Liberal intellectuals, worried teachers, (...)
There is a difference between Hindu and Hindutva just like there is a difference between Islam and jihadists.
This is in response to Rajesh Rajamani’s piece in TNM, The Savarna redemption: Why ’Not In My Name’ campaign is a part of the problem .
Rajesh Rajamani’s thoughtless, smug and (...)
A government that strips people of their dignity, what else is left to say," Saba Dewan told teleSUR. A new campaign #Notinmyname is sweeping India and some major international cities, with protests set for Wednesday, against the recent streak of Muslim killings near the Indian capital.
The (...)
The irresistible urge to mix politics and religion usually comes at the expense of secularism, tolerance and vulnerable minorities. We saw this recently in Asia with extremist Islamic groups spewing anti-Chinese hate speech to defeat the incumbent governor of Jakarta, the ebbing tide of (...)
Regulations banning most livestock from being sold for slaughter at markets criticised as attack on ‘the essence of India’.
India’s Hindu nationalist government has announced the tightest restrictions yet on the country’s multibillion dollar meat industry, drawing fierce protests from some states (...)
In Gorakhpur, the power base of a firebrand monk, religious tension grows with Uttar Pradesh’s 40 million Muslims.
Pastor Ritesh Joshua had just called a tea break when he saw the men in the saffron scarves. More than a hundred, some wielding sticks, had massed outside his white stucco church (...)
Secular manifesto for change: Here’s how secularism must be reinvented to credibly challenge the Hindutva narrative
A Yogi Adityanath could not have been elevated to CM of the country’s largest state had there not been a complete hollowing out of secular values. For those of us who still have (...)
The central-government committee holds the activist ‘culpable for hatred-filled, disharmony-spreading, ill-will generating, enmity-creating explosive writings’.
The surgical strikes on Teesta Setalvad continue with the Bari report, and we should all be ashamed
Teesta Setalvad is under attack (...)
Capturing young minds by inflicting political ideology through textbooks.
History textbooks have often been at the centre of controversies, having had to carry the incredible burden of inculcating patriotism in students. Post independence, the project of nation-building all but spilled over (...)
In the current attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University one crucial aspect related to Indian mythology and its current interpretation came up to the fore. MHRD Minister Smriti Irani, while defending the actions of her government said that JNU is the den of anti national activities. Adding weight (...)
Text of statement calling for People’s March in Defence of the Republic - 30 January 2016 Call to All Secular Groups, People’s Movements People’s March in Defence of the Republic गणतंत्र की हिफाज़त में अवामी जुलूस
MANDI HOUSE TO JANTAR MANTAR [New Delhi]
Assemble at 11 am; January 30, 2016
Call to All (...)
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