Filed under: Blasphemy Laws, fascism, Health, Kashmir, Progressive politics, Resistance, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: #MashalKhan, #MusicForHope, #RememberingMashalKhan, Baisakhi, covid-19, Jallianwalla Bagh, Kashmir, Live performance, lockdown, Mashal Khan, Vaisakhi | Leave a comment »
Published in Cambridge Chronicle, September 24, 2019.
Sunday, 22 September, Cambridge MA: “Resist to exist” proclaimed a placard on the steps of MIT. The placard featured the picture of a woman in a red pheran, the long woolen tunic traditionally worn by Kashmiris from the Himalayan region in India’s north-west tip.
The woman holding the placard also wore a red pheran, her mouth taped shut like the others in the pheran-clad group she stood with to symbolize the communications blackout in her home state since 5 August this year. The pheran reflects an iconic image that has become integral to the Kashmiris’ resistance movement, as covered by NPR news recently (Finding resistance in fashion, Kashmiri creator turns to the pheran).
The color red, taken up by thousands in their social media profile images, has come to symbolize the Kashmiris’ spirit of resistance and defiance.
The woman and her companions stood with other peace-loving South Asians and friends on the steps of MIT this past Sunday at noon, to demand that the Indian government “immediately restore communication in Kashmir, remove the draconian measures enforced in the name of security and order, and respect Kashmiris’ right of self-determination”.
The next day, Monday 23 September, marked Day 50 of “the unprecedented and total communications blackout for 8 million Kashmiris enforced on them by the Indian government. Kashmiris, living in the most militarized region on earth, now fear that the present communications blackout is part of a larger plan to ‘ethnically cleanse’ Kashmir,” according to the statement read out at the event.
The event at MIT was part of a series of peaceful protests that weekend in solidarity with the Kashmiri people, coordinated by a small coalition called the Global Standout for Peace in South Asia.
Besides Boston, the Standouts took place in the San Francisco Bay area, Kolkata (India), Gotenburg (Sweden), Islamabad (Pakistan), and Kathmandu (Nepal), on the same weekend as Indian Prime Minister Modi shared the stage with U.S. President Trump in Houston. Solidarity with Kashmir protests took place in Houston also, as well as Seattle WA.
Nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan both lay claim to Kashmir. The Global Standout protestors showed their rejection of these territorial claims by not carrying the flags of any nation or state.
Supporting organizations in Boston included Massachusetts Peace Action, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, MIT Students Against War, Stand With Kashmir, Coalition for Democratic India, Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia, and Boston University Students for Justice in Palestine.
Addressing the participants, Cambridge City Councillor Sumbul Siddiqui encouraged them to keep ‘speaking out for justice’.
The event ended with a drum sounding 50 beats, one for each day since the communications lockdown up to that point.
(ends)
Filed under: fascism, Freedom of expression, Human rights, Kashmir, Peace | Tagged: #StandwithKashmir, Activism, Global solidarity, Kashmir, women | 1 Comment »
Prof. Higgins haranguing Eliza in My Fair Lady
We raised eyebrows when Higgins asked
“why can’t a woman be more like a man?”
Look how whole nations now build upon
That thought in the Professor’s brain. Continue reading
Filed under: Culture, fascism, Freedom of expression | Tagged: democracy, equality, fascism, Gender, gender equality, Human rights, India, lynching, Middle East, poetry, racism, usa | Leave a comment »
Got this email and image from Avaaz, subject line, “We’ve been hijacked”, that feels too important not to share. Here’s my biggest takeaway from it:
During Brazil’s election, Avaaz ran an experiment — just six people were given basic training to investigate the propaganda networks, and they shut down online fake news factories that reached *16 million* people. Imagine what ten times as many could do!
Filed under: fascism, Freedom of expression, Media | Tagged: Activism, democracy, disinformation, elections, fake news, Media, propaganda, social media | Leave a comment »
“…In a coordinated operation… several well known academics, lawyers, writers, poets, priests and journalists have been arrested and their homes raided by the police”…
(Note, 31 August 2018: added video below)
This extract from a statement titled ‘Fascism at our doorstep‘ by Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS) against the ongoing raids in India against democracy and rights activists applies elsewhere too. So do the words of Prof. Badri Raina in Delhi who writes in The Wire, “the grave fault of the human rights activists who have just been arrested is that they share knowledge of the provisions of the constitution of India with Indian citizens who, despite seven decades of practicing democracy, have remained disenfranchised from the promises of constitutional democracy”.
Below, an update from friends of Shahidul Alam, the detained photojournalist languishing in prison in Dhaka about whom I’ve written before. He is still denied the legal procedures and rights that he has fought for all his life. This is not a time to be silent.
Filed under: enforced disappearances, fascism, Freedom of expression, Human rights | Tagged: Anala, Arun Ferreira, Channel 4, Dr. Anand Teltumbde, Father Stan Swamy, Gautam Navlakha, Kranthi Tekula, Kranti Tekula, Kurmanath, Pavana, Politics, Prof. K. Satyanarayana, Shahidul Alam, Sudha Bharadwaj, Varavara Rao, Vernon Gonsalves, Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS) | 1 Comment »
Image courtesy Arkansas Times
We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.
We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.
From progressive.org, forwarded by Isa Daudpota. So relevant not just to USA and the time it was written, but today and elsewhere too.
4-5 min read
Editor’s Note: The late historian and Progressive columnist Howard Zinn shared these words with us back in 2006. His message is still just as compelling A World War II bombardier, Zinn was the author of the best-selling book A People’s History of the United States.
On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.
Is not nationalism—that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder—one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?
These ways of thinking—cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on— have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.
Filed under: Education, fascism, History, Human rights, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: history, Howard Zinn, indigenous people, July 4, massacre, US foreign policy | Leave a comment »
Raza Khan with a copy of the One Million Signature Campaign against violence against women, Pakistan
On Saturday, peace activist Raza Khan, 37, went “missing” in Lahore shortly after he had organised a public discussion about the recent ‘dharna’ (sit-in) on the country’s capital that ended in ignominious surrender to those seeking power in the guise of religion. He is a law-abiding, passionate campaigner for peace in the region particularly India, for gender equality and interfaith harmony — all of these are anathema to the keepers of Pakistan’s ‘ideology’. Please sign the online petition urging the government of Pakistan to find him. Share your thoughts on social media using the hashtag #FindRaza. A twitter campaign for Raza is planned at 4 p.m. (Pakistan time today, Dec 5), hashtag #FindRaza. More case details below. Continue reading
Filed under: Art and activism, Blasphemy Laws, democratic political process, fascism, Freedom of expression, Human rights, Pakistan, Pakistan-India, Peace, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: #FindRaza, Aaghaz-e-Dosti, dharna, disappeared, Faizabad, India, missing person, Pakistan, Peace activist, rule of law | 1 Comment »
Residents say they keep a 24-hour vigil during disturbances to prevent any mischief by ‘outsiders’
Talking about the #NotInMyName campaign in India against lynch mobs that forced PM Modi to break his near-silence on the vigilante violence, my friend Jaspal Singh in an email also discusses the model of citizens’ “defence committees” against communal violence, as seen in Canada and in India. He gives the example of Ram Rahim Nagar (population over 20,000), Ahmedabad, cared for by a welfare society formed by two security guards in 1974. “It is to their great honour that to this day not a single communal incident has taken place there, even when Gujarat was burning,” added Jaspal when I probed him further about it. An earlier piece, Islands of Sanity (PUCL, Feb 2006), examines more such examples. Do these examples still hold true? Have more islands of sanity emerged? How do we expand such islands of sanity? Another journalist friend, Shivam Vij, argues for shifting the focus from “Keyword Beef (which only furthers Hindutva) to Keywords Farmer, OBC, unemployment, demonetisation, economic slowdown” in his piece taking a critical look at the Not in My Name protests. Jaspal Singh’s ‘Reflections’ below. Continue reading
Filed under: Blasphemy Laws, Communalism, fascism, Gujarat 2002, Interfaith, Pakistan-India | Tagged: #NotInMyName, blasphemy, dalits, demonetisation, economic slowdown, farmer suicide, lynching, Ram Rahim Nagar, unemployment | Leave a comment »
My piece published in The Wire today. Also posted below.
Image by graphic artist Orijit Sen.
Catalysed by the mob murder of a teenager in India on June 24, followed by a Facebook post on June 24 by filmmaker Saba Dewan, a #NotInMyName campaign is taking off across India with simultaneous protests in several cities on Wednesday, June 28, 2017, against the ongoing mob lynchings and vigilante violence targeting Muslims and Dalits. Continue reading
Filed under: fascism, Human rights, Islam, Pakistan-India, Uncategorized | Tagged: #NotInMyName, beef ban, blasphemy, India, Junaid Khan, lynching, Mashal Khan, mob violence, teenager killed | Leave a comment »
Cambridge Public Library park: Unlikely scene of hatespeech. File photo by Harsh V.
My column Personal Political published in the Cambridge Chronicle, June 8, 2017
Beena Sarwar
“You don’t even speak English,” comes a male voice across the fading evening light.
We glance past Cambridge Public Library’s main entrance. The man is bending close to someone sitting on a bench on the other side. A couple of homeless guys slightly drunk, ribbing each other?
The voice breaks through the dusk again. “This is not your country. Why don’t you go back?”
I jump up and walk purposefully towards them, suppressing a reminder that I’m a small brown woman heading towards an unknown situation.
Filed under: fascism, Human rights, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: bystanders, Deborah Bial, hatespeech, Islam, Islamophobia, Muslims, Portland stabbing, racism, Vassar | 1 Comment »
Journeys to democracy 