Category Archives: Debates

Capitalism, Debates, Left watch, Politics

CPI(M) shelves class struggle in action: Sankar Ray

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Guest post by SANKAR RAY

[As the CPIM)’s 20th Congress began in Kozhikhode today, we bring two pieces marking the occasion. AN]

Unbelievable though it may seem even to the staunchest critic of CPI(M), ‘class struggle’ is totally missing in the 20950-plus word Draft Political Resolution (DPR) of the CPI(M), circulated and debated inside the party for over two months, that will be finalized with amendments, deletions and additions, at the 20th party Congress at Kozhikode between 4 and 9 April. The finalized political resolution is to be party’s tactical line until the 21st Congress four years later. The omission of ‘class struggle’ in the DPR, a basic document for committed struggle is stupefying as communists the world over frequently quote Marx that the history of mankind is “the history of class struggles”.

It’s not new as class struggle was omitted in the Political Resolution adopted at the 19th Congress ( Coimbatore, 29 March- 3 April 2008). But unlike at Coimbatore, the latest draft document talks of ‘people’s democracy’, CPI(M)’s main ideology, enshrined in the Updated Party Programme ( adopted at a special party conference in October 2000 at Thiruvananthapuram). But the pledge for moving forward to “a new, alternative path – towards people’s democracy and socialism” is vague.

Continue reading CPI(M) shelves class struggle in action: Sankar Ray →

Centre watch, Debates, Frontiers, Government, Mirror Worlds, Violence/Conflict

Who are the real stakeholders of Indo-Pak peace?: Ayesha Siddiqa

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This guest post by AYESHA SIDDIQA is the text of a speech delivered by her at a recent civil society review of the India-Pakistan peace process, organised by the Centre for Policy Analysis in Delhi.

This time it seems better then last time! I suppose this is what we said the last time as well. India–Pakistan relations have a cycle of ups and down: a crest followed by a trough and then a crest again. Although there is increased frustration on both sides for not being able to solve the ‘relationship’ mystery, the leadership and people in general remain eager to have peace rather than war. However, we also remain elusive regarding our threshold of peace, or what would be the cut-off point in settling for peace with each other. This cyclic peace of war and peace has remained primarily due to the peace process being elitist and confined to the strategic/security community. Therefore, I would like to argue three points: Continue reading Who are the real stakeholders of Indo-Pak peace?: Ayesha Siddiqa →

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Centre watch, Countryside, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Government, Identities, Metropolis, Politics, Theory

The Many Uses of a U.P Election

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I live in Noida, which is the child of an extra-legal union between Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. Noida is not-quite Delhi, not-quite U.P, not quite itself on most days. Living in a cusp has several advantages, however, the main one being that one can look either way, up at Delhi and right down over U.P’s scruffy head. I found myself doing both in the recently-concluded U.P election. Curiously it seemed, for Delhi people, U.P’s 2012 elections were flush with new meaning. For decades the favourite whipping boy of Delhi, U.P had overnight become its favourite gap-toothed angel. For Pratap Bhanu Mehta of the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, the U.P election was a historic battle between empowerment and patronage, the future and the past, performance and rhetoric, sincerity and cynicism, and (this is my favourite) ‘rootedness over disembodied charm’. Mehta believes that while voters ‘carefully assessed’ candidates through the ‘prism of local circumstances’, they were no longer prisoners of their identity. Most confounding is Mehta’s view of democracy, “In a democracy, where you are going should be more important than where you are coming from”. These U.P elections “redeemed that promise” according to Mehta, since they were “without a trace of community polarisation: no one felt on the edge or under siege, all could exercise options without being unduly burdened by the past.”

Continue reading The Many Uses of a U.P Election →

Debates, Everyday Life, Government, Politics, Theory

Politics, ‘Political Society’ and ‘the Everyday’

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Politics, ‘Political Society’ and ‘the Everyday’

 Book Review 

Lineages of Political Society, by Partha Chatterjee, Permanent Black, Ranikhet, 2011. Pages: 278, hardcover, Rs 750.

 

Lineages of Political Society

 Over a decade ago, political theorist Partha Chatterjee embarked on what was a novel journey in the history of political thought in India and perhaps, in the postcolonial, non-Western world. Bringing together the results of decades of his own intellectual engagement with Indian politics and the question of subalternity in particular, Chatterjee began articulating a concept that has now acquired wide currency: his concept of ‘political society’. ‘Political society’, in Chatterjee’s hands, was a way of recuperating a sphere of politics that had been a permanent source of anxiety for theorists of Indian (and postcolonial) modernity and democracy – the vast domain that existed outside the designated spheres of modern politics, where the untutored masses made claims on the state and formed their own associations and organizations, unmindful of the formal grammar of rights and citizenship. A crucial part of what defines activities in this domain is ‘illegality’, or, at any rate, non-legality, where the state itself places the law in suspension in order to recognize the claims of the governed. Thus for instance, squatting by the poor on government land that is strictly speaking, encroachment in legal terms and can never acquire the status of a ‘right’, is nevertheless allowed by governments to continue through the recognition of some kind of moral claim of the poor on governments and society at large.

Continue reading Politics, ‘Political Society’ and ‘the Everyday’ →

Bad ideas, Countryside, Debates, Law

Kerala and Kudankulam: The Media Sleeps

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It is amazing how the very same Malayalees and their media, which made Mount Everest out of that molehill of Mullaperiyar, remain sweetly calm in comparison at the events unfolding in Kudankulam. In fact the amnesia is so complete that it is as if few remember (except the anti-nuclear activists in Kerala who have been consistently supporting the struggles of the local people) that it was common knowledge in the late 1980s that the plant would affect both Tamil Nadu and Kerala.There was far greater awareness of the special problems of locating the plant in Kudankulam for Kerala, where natural radiation levels are already very high. The violence too had an early start, with the police firing on a people’s rally against the plant in 1989, which killed one person.

Continue reading Kerala and Kudankulam: The Media Sleeps →

Bad ideas, Countryside, Debates, Excavation, Government, Language

Let’s not count the poor (seriously)

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As someone recently commented on a Kafila post, we live in a post-fact world where there are no facts. Everyone believes what they want to. So depending on your  ideology, poverty in India has reduced or increased. But such is the debate on poverty that the definition of poverty itself is subject to debate. How poor do you have to be, so that the government will say you are poor? This poverty debate has been on around the same lines for about ten years now, with the economic left arguing that India isn’t shining, and the economic centre-right arguing that millions of people have been lifted out of poverty by India’s super-successful economic growth. The debate will go on forever, there will be no certainty in numbers, and perhaps there shouldn’t be – perhaps counting the poor cheapens the issue of poverty. Counting the poor leads us to ask, what about the only -slightly-better-than-the-poor? Counting the poor leads us to compare poverty numbers and give us relief. Ah, only 30% Indian poor now, as opposed to 50% in such and such decade, nice! Great job India! No, this is not what the poor deserve, whether they are 30% or 50%. Perhaps we should stop counting the poor. Continue reading Let’s not count the poor (seriously) →

Debates, Identities, Politics

Thinking through UP election results with numbers: Rahul Verma

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Guest post by RAHUL VERMA

Here’s a closer analysis of Uttar Pradesh 2012 election results

In an article the Times of India says the Samajwadi Party’s victory in Uttar Pradesh seems to be an even more impressive sweep than the BSP’s 2007 showing, but it’s actually a less comprehensive domination. According to the same article, the SP did not do well in western UP and Bundelkhand. They do not provide any reason for this.

My analysis of the election results data shows that average number of candidates per assembly constituency and average number of candidates per one lakh electorate in west UP and Bundelkhand, was slightly lower than other regions of the state. In west UP and Bundelkhand, the average number of candidates per one lakh electorate was approximately 8.5 and average number of candidates per assembly constituency was approximately 16. Whereas in other parts of the state average number of candidates per one lakh electors was approximately 9.5 and average number of candidates per assembly constituency was 17. This means that in other regions of the state votes were more divided and thus the SP got an edge in terms of winning seats. In the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system with multi-cornered contests, even such small gaps lead to big swings in terms of seats a party can win. Continue reading Thinking through UP election results with numbers: Rahul Verma →

Centre watch, Debates, Government, Politics

A Flawed Democracy – The Case for Proportional Representation in India: Srinivasan Ramani

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Guest post by SRINIVASAN RAMANI

Times of India graphic

For all the chest thumping and tomtoming about the Samajwadi Party’s emphatic victory – winning 224 seats out of 403 in the UP Assembly elections – a true reflection of the mandate is to be seen in the individual vote shares of the four main (“effective”) parties in the elections (the Bahujan Samaj Party – Bhartiya Janata Party, the Samajwadi Party, and the Congress – in alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Dal). Data from the Election Commission of India website shows the following in terms of vote shares:

Continue reading A Flawed Democracy – The Case for Proportional Representation in India: Srinivasan Ramani →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Debates, Government, Identities

The Unique Identity of a Standing Committee – The UID in Parliament: Taha Mehmood

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This long guest post by TAHA MEHMOOD, who has been independently  researching surveillence, biometrics and identification techonologies for a long time dissects the discussion and discourse around the Unique Identification Database scheme of the Government of India

  1.   The Discreet Charm of UID

The January 2012 issue of The Economist, a magazine published from London, has an article on India’s national ID card scheme, titled, The Magic Number. The article focuses on how UID is progressing. The  brave hero of the story is of course Nandan Nilekani and villain is ‘India’s stubborn home minister, P. Chidambaram,’ who ‘is now blocking a cabinet decision to extend the UID’s mandate, which is needed for the roll-out to continue’. According to the unnamed author of the article, ‘Indian politics hinge on patronage—the doling out of opportunities to rob one’s countrymen. UID would make this harder. That is why it faces such fierce opposition, and why it could transform India.’ This article appeared in The Economist days after the report of Standing Committee of Finance was released. What went on in the deliberations of this standing committee?

Continue reading The Unique Identity of a Standing Committee – The UID in Parliament: Taha Mehmood →

Debates, Excavation, Government, Law, Violence/Conflict

Defending Narendra Modi: An Exercise in Obfuscation

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In Outlook magazine last week, its web editor Sundeep Dougal asked 25 questions of Narendra Modi about the 2002 Gujarat pogrom and the subversion of justice since then. Predictably, the army of Narendra Modi Defenders began to spill outrage at such blatant compilation of true charges against Mr Modi. Doing the rounds of the internet is a point by point rebuttal to Dougal’s questions by a blogger, Shashi Shekhar, who goes by the name Offstumped, and is a known online Modi defender. Offstumped’s answers have been responded to by Dougal, and yet Offstumped’s rejoinder is being circulated all over the internet by Modi defenders in the hope of persuading public opinion that Mr Modi is a spotlessly clean man whose actions and inactions did not result in any loss of life, property or dignity of anyone in 2002 and later. The rather large army of Narendra Modi Fans on the internet hopes that by repeating their standard lies again and again, they will one day become accepted truth. Continue reading Defending Narendra Modi: An Exercise in Obfuscation →

Debates, Everyday Life, Genders

UGC’s point system – Why should we care? Pratiksha Baxi and Umesh O

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Guest post by PRATIKSHA BAXI and UMESH O

Is it really surprising that Jawaharlal Nehru University has implemented the controversial UGC guidelines on the Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) with effect from its date of announcement in 2008 (rather than date of notification in 2010, thereby benefiting Associate Professors rather than Assistant Professors? Is it really shocking that JNU did not register protest with the UGC about the case of CAS, dubbed by some as the Comic and Sad Guidelines? Perhaps not?

This scheme does not merely impact all academics already hired, especially at the rank of lecturers/assistant professors, but will also impact all those who will apply for the many vacancies now advertised, especially senior doctoral students, now looking for teaching jobs.

However there has been little concern about how does a scheme, which prolongs promotions for Assistant Professors from 5 years to 12 years (9 odd years in JNU), impact junior academics?

Continue reading UGC’s point system – Why should we care? Pratiksha Baxi and Umesh O →

Debates, Law, Media politics, Violence/Conflict

Batla House and the problem with the deluded journalist: Manisha Sethi

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This guest post by MANISHA SETHI is a response to “Congress and the Problem with the Deluded Liberals” by Mihir Srivastava in Open magazine

Mihir Srivastava is very upset that the debate on Batla House refuses to die down. In his view, his piece in India Today – “Inside the Mind of the Bombers – appearing soon after the ‘encounter’ should have settled the debate once and for all. But he was surprised that it wasn’t received as a resolution. He is even more upset that deluded liberals (read Arundhati Roy) are no longer on talking terms with him.

“In the Batla House case, which I reported much the same way I had reported so many of the cases they were happy with, it is just that the facts I saw and reported did not mesh with what they wanted to believe.”

This is simply not true. The many stories that deluded liberals approved of, according to, Mr. Srivastava, and which he cites to bolster his own reputation, are in fact very different from his India Today’s ‘story’. His expose on the Red Fort terror attack in Tehelka, for example, critically examined the evidence produced by the police, verified and cross checked the statements made by the accused in court and even brought out the discrepancies in the observations made by the court and its eventual judgement which upheld the death sentence of Md. Arif alias Ashfaq alias Abu Hamad. ‘Wrong Man to the Gallows’ is an example of good investigative journalism, not because it confirms our worst suspicions about the ways in which investigative agencies frame innocents, but because it painstakingly pieces together evidence and doesn’t get swamped under nationalist hyperbole spun by the mainstream media to take a cold, hard look at the evidence. Continue reading Batla House and the problem with the deluded journalist: Manisha Sethi →

Debates, Law, Movements, Politics

Understanding Indian human rights movements through the lives of two human rights defenders: Jinee Lokaneeta

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Guest post by JINEE LOKANEETA

Watching Advocate alongside Democracy Dialogues: a Tribute to Balagopal, both by Deepa Dhanraj, made for a powerful experience for its remarkable documentation of human rights movements in Andhra through the lives of these two human rights defenders and the collectives that they were a part of whether it was Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee, Human Rights Forum or People’s Union for Civil Liberties. There is of course a sharp sense of loss, since in the last few years we have lost both these incredible people but one was grateful for this effort to record and document their inspirational lives in such a beautiful manner. It also points to a further need for us to understand the connections of human rights groups to law, the relationship of human rights defenders to the courts, and their role in pushing for the realization of some of substantive aspects of the Indian Constitution in the process. Continue reading Understanding Indian human rights movements through the lives of two human rights defenders: Jinee Lokaneeta →

Capitalism, Debates, Everyday Life, Movements

Fuel Prices and Protesting Voices in Sri Lanka: Mahendran Thiruvarangan

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Guest post by MAHENDRAN THIRUVARANGAN

The United People’s Freedom Alliance government’s inability to put forward economic policies that address the grievances of the downtrodden sections of the Sri Lankan polity, outside the frameworks of neo-liberalism, has led to chaos in the country. The government’s move to privatize the higher education sector created a major uproar in the country last year. The academic staff attached to Sri Lanka’s universities began a trade union action demanding higher wages in 2011. In the Katunayake Free Trade Zone, garment sector workers took to the streets against a pension scheme introduced by the government much against the interest of the workers. These protests have brought to light the government’s ill-conceived economic policies, and its indifference to the concerns of the working people. Financial mismanagement, corruption at the various levels of the state, the escalating expenditure on the militarization of the North and East provinces, and the government’s sheer disregard for the fundamental needs of the people have created an atmosphere of economic instability. This situation might lead to political unrest in the future, if the Sri Lankan government continues to lack the will to salvage the economy from neo-liberalism and mismanagement. The government’s move to increase the prices of fuels has aggravated this situation.

Continue reading Fuel Prices and Protesting Voices in Sri Lanka: Mahendran Thiruvarangan →

Bad ideas, Debates, Media politics, Politics

Screening Jashn-e-Azadi at Presidency University, Kolkata: Waled Aadnan

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Guest post by Waled Aadnan

It can be said that 86/1 College Street, Calcutta, has seen a microcosm of the history of modern India unfold within its walls. Since 1874 when the already fifty-nine year old Presidency College shifted to its current address, future Presidents and Prime Ministers of  India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; Nobel Laureates, freedom fighters, an Academy Award winner, Bharat Ratnas; the leadership of the Naxalite movement of the 60s and 70s; and eminent judges, writers, journalists, scientists and actors, have spent their student days at 86/1.

Two years ago, soon after I joined the institution, the Left Front government upgraded Presidency College to the status of a state University in a last-gasp bid to hold on to the votes of the bhadralok intellectuals. 2012 dawned with no Student Union elections having been held the previous year, and it is in this backdrop that the following events unfold.

Salman Rushdie’s well-publicised ostracism from the Jaipur Literature Festival was met not with outrage in Presi’s canteen addas, but with the absence of even a poster put up in protest. News filtered in of a seminar in Symbiosis University being “threatened.” But little awareness existed among students who were more inclined to read tabloid-like, unputdownable newspapers than their relatively austere counterparts, including The Hindu which broke the story.

Continue reading Screening Jashn-e-Azadi at Presidency University, Kolkata: Waled Aadnan →

Culture, Debates, Identities, Language, Mirror Worlds

Rethinking Urdu Nationalism in Pakistan: Raza Rumi

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Guest post by RAZA RUMI

Urdu has been a controversial language in Pakistan despite its official and holy status. The Bengalis rejected it way back in the 1940s when Jinnah, advised by a bureaucracy, with imperial moorings declared in that it would be the official language. Subsequently, Sindhis, Baloch and Pashtuns have also resisted the one-size-fits-all Urdu formula. Yet, Urdu has emerged as the functional lingua franca that connects Pakistan’s federating units, and its conflation with Islam and Muslim ‘nationhood’ remains the paramount narrative in Pakistan.

It takes arduous scholarship and infinite courage to author a book like From Hindi to Urdu: A Social and Political History (Oxford University Press, 2011). Dr Tariq Rahman, ironically, has worked as the Director of the National Institute of Pakistan Studies at the Quaid-i-Azam University and therefore his challenge to the mythical dimensions of ‘Pakistan Studies’ comes from within and not as an outsider. Sixty-four years after the creation of Pakistan, we have not arrived at any conclusion about our ‘national’ or cultural identity. Dr Rahman’s book if anything shatters the myths that we have built around Urdu; and therefore presents a valid alternative to Goebbelsian tone of our official history. Continue reading Rethinking Urdu Nationalism in Pakistan: Raza Rumi →

Debates

Compounding the Error – Marks inflation at Delhi University: Shobhit Mahajan

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Guest post by SHOBHIT MAHAJAN

In politics, policy making or indeed any interaction with the larger world, one notices a distinct characteristic – one makes a decision, then facts or circumstances make it obvious that it was a wrong or bad one.  And what does one do? In most cases, one continues to take further decisions to bolster the impression that the original decision taken was correct and in the process, makes matters worse. This is relatively innocuous in normal social interaction but disastrous in the public sphere as we have witnessed in mishandling of the events related to the Lokpal movement. A very similar situation has recently emerged in the University of Delhi. Continue reading Compounding the Error – Marks inflation at Delhi University: Shobhit Mahajan →

Culture, Debates, Media politics, Mirror Worlds

Beyond the Four Corners of the Law and the Diggy Palace: Faiz Ullah

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Guest post by FAIZ ULLAH

I.

Highstreet Phoenix, an upscale shopping mall, rose from the ashes of Lower Parel’s semi-functional Phoenix Mills in the late nineties’ Bombay. It has since successfully emerged as one of the most popular shopping and leisure destinations for the city’s affluent set. Highstreet Phoenix is just one of the many mills in the South-Central Bombay’s Girangaon that have been leased, sold or redeveloped in contravention of industrial and land-use policies and court judgements especially in the last two decades. These large swathes of urban land, two thirds of which was meant for low-cost housing, civic amenities and open spaces, are being fast converted into exclusive housing societies, office complexes and recreation zones that only a few can access and afford. Such tensions, some like McKinsey & Company (of Vision Mumbai report fame) would say, are inevitable, even necessary, for the cities that aspire to be world class.

Continue reading Beyond the Four Corners of the Law and the Diggy Palace: Faiz Ullah →

Bad ideas, Debates, Media politics

The Place of Dissent in the Campus: Akshath Jitendranath

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This is a guest post by AKSHATH JITENDRANATH, student at Symbiosis International University, Pune, where a screening of ‘Jahsn-e-Azadi’ by Sanjay Kak was cancelled under pressure from right-wing groups and the Pune Police.

The university campus is where nascent opinion moulds itself into ideological shape. Care must be taken to surround the student with ideologies of different shades. This is a prerequisite for any educational ideology that aspires to be holistic. Pursuant to this end the Symbiosis International University is guided by an ideology that reads, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, meaning the whole world is one family. This is a high ideal to be guided by.

However, the events that transpired over the last few days have left this vision a little blinded. Following threats received from the Akhila Bharati Vidyarthi Parishad  (ABVP henceforth), the Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce have postponed indefinitely, ‘Voices of Kashmir’, a national symposium on Kashmir which was to be held with the support of the University Grants Commission. The ABVP’s major bone of contention was the screening of well known film maker Sanjay Kak’s film, Jashn-e-Azadi (This Is How We Celebrate Freedom). The ABVP claim that the film and the film maker represent an ideology that is anti-India. Further, they threatened violence if the film were to be screened. The administration of the Symbiosis International University, instead of being guided by their ideological vision, gave in to the ABVP threats. Continue reading The Place of Dissent in the Campus: Akshath Jitendranath →

Bad ideas, Debates, Everyday Life, Politics

Letter from the Stinkcity of Thiruvananthapuram

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Respected development tourists, leftists and scholars from the West who have been coming here seeking your heterotopia, welcome to the city of Thiruvananthapuram.

Yes, you are here to see that Kerala which gives you relief from the relentless decline of the left in your part of the world.You have been honouring us with such visits since the 1970s. We have been happy to oblige, cast and recast to suit your projections. When ‘social development’ was fashionable in the UN circles, Kerala was indeed the space where you found ‘social development’ thriving. But when ‘human development’, the theoretical and political provenances of which are quite different from those of ‘social development, became your preference, Kerala transmogrified itself most willingly into the paradise of ‘human development’. And then you came to be fascinated by ‘participatory development’, we diligently turned into the very fount of ‘participatory development’. Thank you very much for keeping us afloat in the imagination of Western left developmentalist intellectuals (though I do see that the oodles of ‘agency’ showered upon us by you may actually be your way of compensating for the shrinking of your own agency in the face of the triumphant march of neoliberal capitalism in your homelands) Continue reading Letter from the Stinkcity of Thiruvananthapuram →

Debates, Frontiers, Identities, Mirror Worlds, Violence/Conflict

Why Kashmiri Pandits May Never Return to Kashmir: Raju Moza

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Guest post by RAJU MOZA

It was in the month of January in 1990 that the onset of militancy in Kashmir resulted in the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits to Jammu, Delhi and elsewhere. Every year since then, January brings back the question of their return to their homes, in the press and increasingly on the internet.

There was something different about it this year. Several recent incidents have given the question of return a new impetus. Continue reading Why Kashmiri Pandits May Never Return to Kashmir: Raju Moza →