Founding Editor: Daya Varma (1929-2015)
Editors: Vinod Mubayi (New York) and Raza Mir (New Jersey).
Editorial Board: Ram Puniyani and Irfan Engineer (Mumbai); Pervez Hoodbhoy (Islamabad); Dolores Chew (Montreal); Vamsi Vakulabharanam (Amherst); Ajay Bhardwaj (Vancouver).
Circulation/website: Feroz Mehdi (On behalf of Alternatives, Montreal).
EDITORIAL: HYPOCRISY, DECEIT, AND DIVISIVENESS: HALLMARKS OF THE REGIME RULING INDIA TODAY. WHERE IS THE NATION HEADED?
Vinod Mubayi
It is a measure of the insanity of our time that Narendra D. Modi is hailed as a vishwaguru (world-guru) and embraced unconditionally and unabashedly by the leaders of the United States and France at a time when the state of Manipur is on the verge of civil war, minorities, in particular Muslims but to an increasing extent Christians as well, are randomly assaulted and butchered by uniformed policemen, no less, spouting Hindutva slogans exalting Modi and his henchman Yogi, all while Modi maintains a strategic silence on the crimes perpetrated by his enthusiastic followers and supporters.
Read more…HAS POLICE INACTION AND ADMINISTRATIVE FAILURE FUELLED THE COMMUNAL CLASHES IN HARYANA’S NUH?
Ismat Ara
As the sun dawns over Haryana’s Nuh on August 1, the lanes seem deserted. An eerie silence has befallen the district’s once-bustling villages. The markets are shut, and the quiet is only punctured by the presence of the police personnel, who are swarmed everywhere in thousands.
Read more…REMEMBERING RANA PLAZA: POLITICS ON SOUTH ASIA’S FACTORY FLOOR
The Jamhoor Collective and Guest Editor Mihika Chatterjee
On April 24th 2013, the eight-storeyed Rana Plaza building housing multiple garment factories in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapsed to the ground. Over 1,000 workers, the majority of them women between the ages of 18 to 25, were trapped, burned, or crushed as the building turned to rubble. Thousands more, both factory workers and rescue personnel, experienced damaging injuries and trauma that devastated their lives irreversibly.
Read more…PAKISTAN’S IMF BAILOUT IS NOT WITHOUT POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES
Salman Rafi Sheikh
The deal enhances the IMF’s economic and also political footprint, but leaves civil-military relations untouched and widens the gap between the elites and the masses.
Read more…BAJRANG DAL: THE AGGRESSIVE ARM OF HINDUTVA
Nistula Hebbar
The recent violence in Haryana’s Nuh, following the Brij Mandal Jalabhishek Yatra, sometimes referred to as Shobha Yatra, in which six people were killed and 70 others injured, has shifted the spotlight, once again, on the Bajrang Dal, an offshoot of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).
Read more…IMRAN KHAN SENTENCED TO PRISON, LIKELY DASHING HOPES OF POLITICAL COMEBACK
Salman Masood and Christina Goldbaum
The former prime minister of Pakistan was taken into custody, sentenced to three years after a court found him guilty of illegally selling state gifts and concealing the assets.
Read more…LONG READ: FIRE AND BLOOD: HOW THE BJP IS ENABLING ETHNIC CLEANSING IN MANIPUR
Greeshma Kuthar
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“I DIDN’T shut up. I asked them how they can behave like this with another woman,” an 18-year-old Kuki woman told me, recalling her abduction and assault, in which Meira Paibis had played a major part. The Meira Paibis—the name translates to “torch-bearing women”—are a Meitei civil-society movement that rose to prominence through their protests against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, which grants the military sweeping powers. In the ethnic violence that has engulfed Manipur over the past three months, pitting the majority Meitei community against members of Kuki tribes, who constitute a quarter of the population, the Meira Paibis have helped Meitei mobs target Kukis throughout the Imphal Valley and its surrounding foothills.
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