What next after #MeToo?
It is important to use this moment to craft a new, more effective framework for due process
By: Ruchi Gupta Sometimes to upend entrenched power structures, a revolution is required. Naming and shaming powerful men in the #MeToo campaign is in many ways a revolutionary act. The truth about most was known, spoken in whispers, but not to their face. But now that omerta has been broken by some intrepid women, there’s […]
The Supreme Court remains a beacon of hope for a just Ayodhya settlement
As the sangh parivar ratchets up the Ram temple issue, it is important to revisit their perfidy in the early 1990s
By: Manini Chatterjee t takes a particular kind of diabolic genius for perpetrators of a crime to portray themselves as victims. Over the last one week, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its two principal satellites — the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bharatiya Janata Party — have indulged in just such an exercise. On October […]
CPEC shifts gears
The visit to Beijing was a sobering moment for Imran Khan, whose body language appeared fidgety and nervous.
By: Khurram Husain THE joint statement released at the end of the visit by Prime Minister Imran Khan to China last week was one of the most detailed and comprehensive such statements that I have seen in this relationship, at least since CPEC got going. This is not necessarily a mark of success for the […]
Pakistan’s dangerous compromise in the Asia Bibi case
If the government can’t establish the writ of the State, it should just step aside and ask religious extremists to take over
BY: Mehmal Sarfraz I can’t believe what I am hearing, will I go out now? Will they let me out, really?” These were the words spoken by Asia Bibi when AFP called her in prison after a landmark verdict on October 31, 2018. After almost a decade in jail, Asia Bibi was finally free. In […]
Do we need an overhaul?
BY: Javid Rather Everyone would probably second me if I say that no system here is systematic. Coherence and symmetry seems to be missing from the very DNA’s of our systems. Almost every second person of the overall populace here sheds tears and wails loud at the malfunctioning of the systems & every soul wants […]
How a meeting with Junaid Mattu changed the course of my life
By: Khalid Shah Junaid Mattu is an outsider in politics. The conventional politics cannot own him, for many reasons. One, he is a non-conformist — a dissident on every table, in every conversation. But that is not what makes him an outsider in the politics of Jammu and Kashmir. Mattu is an intellectual — that is his best strength […]
Where prejudice is crime
Hashimpura verdict highlights the bias within police against religious minorities.
By: Vrinda Grover It is a chilling coincidence that on October 31, a date that marks the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 and the unleashing of state-engineered violence against the Sikhs, the Delhi High Court held 16 policemen of the 41st Battalion of UP Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) guilty of “the targeted […]
Islam promises redemption, growth, and deliverance
Progressive interpretations of Islam guarantee women substantial rights. This needs to be underscored by responsible scholarship, judicial processes, and social work
BY: Dr Nyla Ali Khan The acquittal of Asia Bibi, who, several years ago, was accused of having committed blasphemy, portends well for civil society in Pakistan and paves the way for human rights. This judgment of the Supreme Court of Pakistan could, potentially, diminish the potency of militarised interventions. I emphasise that I have […]
India joins the club
In South Asia, regimes are destroying democratic institutions to push illiberal ideologies.
BY: Latha Jishnu SOME decades ago, as an expatriate journalist in West Asia, I found the newsrooms from which the two leading English dailies of the region were published to be an ideological melting pot, an excellent index of the politics of South Asia. Most of the editorial staff came from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and […]
Saudi brutality and imperialist hypocracy
Khashoggi evidently suspected he might be detained although he never expected to be murdered on site
By: Lal Khan The murder of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul’s Saudi Consulate at Istanbul has intensified the diplomatic rows on a world scale due to capitalism’s protracted crisis internationally. After repeated denials the kingdom finally confessed that Khashoggi ‘died’ in a “fist-fight” inside the consulate, without disclosing the whereabouts of his body. Bruce Riedel, a […]
