Two years of Sapan, honouring Lyse Doucet, a music competition, and more

Posted on March 24, 2023 by beenasarwar

Can you believe Sapan has been at it for two years?

That’s the Southasia Peace Action Network, Sapan, ICYMI (‘in case you missed it’ for the uninitiated, helping you get with it, you’re welcome)

Excited for the second anniversary event up this Sunday, hosted by the amazing Khushi Kabir in Dhaka, taking forward the legacy of our late friend Kamla Bhasin at Sangat.

We’ll review what we’ve done over the past two years – the collaborations, the discussions, the film club and more. Taking up all kinds of cross-cutting and cutting-edge topics. It’s been thought-provoking, inspiring, and fun.

We will honour the inspiring journalist Lyse Doucet for her humanitarian reporting, an award initiated by Dr Tayyaba Hasan presenting it from the Sapan platform. Dr Hasan heads the Hasan Laboratory at Harvard Medical School – the bio at the link does not convey why she is doing this — you’ll have to tune in to find out.

Sapan honours Lyse Doucet: A lifetime of humanitarian reporting. Photo: Amanda Benson
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‘Can journalists be activists?’ – Razia Bhatti Memorial Lecture 2023 – II

Posted on March 24, 2023 by beenasarwar

Following up from my earlier post, here’s the video recording of the Razia Bhatti Memorial Lecture 2023 I delivered online recently for the Center of Excellence in Journalism at IBA, Karachi.

Text of my talk below with slides.

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Filed under: Freedom of expression, journalism, Media, Pakistan, Southasia | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

A Bollywood lyricist’s daughter in Pakistan and other stories

Posted on February 13, 2023 by beenasarwar

Some steps in a journey sparked by India and Pakistan’s nuclear tests in 1998

Screenshot from Sapan News site, designed by Aekta Kapoor.

Inspired by email updates from Isa Daudpota and Harsh Kapoor of South Asia Citizen’s Wire (SACW) after India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons, I too had begun a bcc email list. This developed into my beena-issues Yahoo-group in 1998 but I had begun to post more irregularly after 2009 when I started a WordPress blog, Journeys to Democracy. Yahoo shut down its Groups platform a couple of years ago.

Now, as I work on developing a new media entity, Sapan News Network syndicated features which emerged from Sapan, the Southasia Peace Action Network (thanks to Aekta Kapoor for the beautiful website), SubStack seems like a good place to revive something like the Yahoo-group community feel. But then there’s also Medium where I have over 2.4K subscribers. All very confusing. Welcome feedback and suggestions.

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May Day and Eid greetings: Solidarity with workers around the world and Southasia

Posted on May 2, 2022 by beenasarwar

It was activist friend Kavita Srivastava in Jaipur who suggested focusing on ‘Labour Rights and Democracy’ for our April event ahead of May Day. Like all Sapan events since launch in March 2022 – the Southasia Peace Action Network – this was also on the last Sunday of the month.

As usual, we live-streamed the discussion on FB – video at this link. We truly appreciate all the ‘likes’, comments and shares that help ensure that our voices are heard amidst the din.

Thanks to old friend and talented musician Arieb Azhar in Islamabad for agreeing to sing at the last minute. Dhonobad Khushi Kabir in Dhaka for transliterating the first verse of the workers’ anthem, The Internationale in Bangla for him. She knows them all by heart. Arieb also sang some of his own verses in Urdu, reflecting contemporary realities. He’s doing an English translation to add. Here’s the clip – thanks Priyanka Singh in Delhi for uploading it so fast.

Priyanka has a great affinity for music and poetry – she was reciting a poem at the online PIPFPD event in January 2021 where I first ‘met’ her. Not surprised she also took time out to post the extempore song by young Lucky Akter in Dhaka ended her presentation with. A former former student activist working with Bangladesh’s oldest and largest peasant organisation, Lucky’s stirring call for rights is lovely even if you don’t understand Bangla.

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RIP Saquib Hanif: A meticulous editor, generous friend, passionate cultural aficionado

Posted on February 8, 2022 by beenasarwar

Death brings people together. I had known Saquib Hanif and his wife Nadia Chundrigar for years in Karachi without really knowing them. We spent a lot of time together when they came to Boston 2015 for the funeral of Saquib’s childhood buddy, the brilliant Nasser Hussain, younger brother of one of my old school friends. Now, it is Saquib’s sudden death, aged just 57, that brings us together again.

Thanks to The News on Sunday for asking me to write his obituary, published on the same page as another obituary, of Tasneem Siddiqui, the top former ‘pro-people” bureaucrat and social activist who died recently from a cardiac arrest, aged 82. We had run into him at the Karachi Gymkhana just a couple of weeks earlier. He had attended a meeting on the morning he died.

Screenshots from The News on Sunday’s People page, 6 Feb. 2022. So many losses.
My 1991 piece in The Frontier Post about Tasneem Siddiqui’s groundbreaking affordable housing project Khuda Ki Basti, just being started at the time.

In the process of working on Saquib’s obituary, I talked to old friends Amra Ali and Salman Rashid – their contrasting views of Saquib would no doubt have amused him greatly. Also sharing Salman Rashid’s lovely video – he had talked to me about these aspects of Saquib the day before recording it.

I took the photos below the day Saquib and Nadia were leaving. There was intense grief, and yet we found it within ourselves to laugh.

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Chomsky among speakers at discussion on “9/11” and aftermath: Impact on SouthAsia and SouthAsians

Posted on September 26, 2021 by beenasarwar
Event banner

Marking two decades of the September 2001 attacks on New York City, global thought leaders and activists from across South Asia and the diaspora will meet across time zones this Sunday to discuss the impact of “9/11” on the region and its people.

The online event also commemorates the global International Peace Day, September 21.

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Filed under: 'War on terror', Afghanistan, History, Pakistan-India, Southasia, Terrorism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

#Goodnews update. And an upcoming event

Posted on August 26, 2021 by beenasarwar

Glad to report that Ajeet Kumar Nagdev and his children are on the train headed to Amritsar, and will hopefully cross the border on Saturday along with some 50 other Pakistanis who had been stranded in India due to the coronavirus pandemic. Thanks for all those who helped Nagdev and his family, especially Samir Gupta, Shishir Arya and others, including the helpful folks at the Pakistan High Commission, New Delhi, operating under stressful conditions. Salute to all of you.

Meanwhile, need help getting the word out about this upcoming regional event Sunday, on the rights of the incarcerated with legal experts and human rights activists from around the region. Pls subscribe, join, share, post, comment, like, tweet, whatever you can. Much appreciated.

Poster for the event. Thanks Vishal Sharma.

The main panel is coincidentally all women…. (Read more)

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The continuing trauma of Kashmir

Posted on August 6, 2021 by beenasarwar

Sharing below a press release rejecting India’s continued violations of the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the people of Jammu and Kashmir – from the Pakistan India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD), the region’s largest and oldest people-to-people organisation, launched in 1994.

Also below – a PDF of the just-released report by the Forum for Human Rights in Jammu and Kashmir, an informal group of concerned citizens including retired Indian judges and armed forces personnel. The Forum aims to ensure attention to continuing human rights violations in the disputed region that both India and Pakistan claim. This is its third report.

#WIthKashmir – courtesy PIPFPD
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Tribute to a nationalistic hawk-turned-peacemonger with a SouthAsian vision

Posted on March 28, 2020 by beenasarwar

Lahore, 1992: Dr Syeda Hameed with Dr Mubashir Hasan, uncle, comrade and mentor. Photo by Reza Kazim.

With the world in the grip of the novel coronavirus pandemic, it’s hard to find space for anything else. As horrors unfolded in country after country, exposing the hollowness behind military might, glittering capitalist facades, and exploitation, a gentle soul slipped into the hereafter at his house in Lahore. At 98, he had spent the last half of his life fighting for exactly the kind of egalitarian, people centered system that would have mitigated the ravages of Covid-19. There have been some wonderful tributes to Dr Mubashir Hasan. Two of the best I’ve seen are by his old friend I.A. Rehman and Indian journalist Nirupama Subramaniam in Indian Express, also published in Aman Ki Asha.

Below, my tribute to Dr M. in The News on Sunday last weekend, a follow up to my piece in The Wire earlier. Also below, two previously unpublished pieces I am honoured to present here — a powerful, poignant poem in Dr M’s memory by his niece in Delhi, and a lively little remembrance by a 12-year old based on her memories of the Chaukas collective meetings she attended with her mother, that led to A New Social Contract published by Dr M, 2016. Also linking here this tribute in Mainstream Weekly magazine, Kolkata, founded by Dr Mubashir’s friend Nikhil Chakravartty — “one of the greatest journalists of the subcontinent” as Dr M called him — now edited by his son Sumit Chakravartty.

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Journalism and “the lives and aspirations of the peoples of Jammu and Kashmir”

Posted on August 13, 2019 by beenasarwar

Facebook.com/IshtyaquesCartoons

The largest people-to-people group in the region, the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy has since its formation in the mid-1990s been calling for India and Pakistan to see Kashmir not as a territorial dispute but as a matter of the lives and aspirations of the peoples of Jammu and Kashmir, who must be involved in any dialogue about their future. That seems even further from the table now. Continue reading →

Filed under: democratic political process, Human rights, Kashmir, Pakistan-India | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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