Southasia’s déjà vu

From Pakistan there is mixed news. Recent headlines on the country juxtaposed with news from India prompts the thought that the kind of fascism that Pakistanis have been fighting against is now erupting across India. The encouraging news from Pakistan includes its second award at the Oscars, the execution of convicted killer Mumtaz Qadri (arguments against the death penalty notwithstanding) despite the militant rightwing support for him, and the recovery of the kidnapped son of Qadri's victim Salmaan Taseer, killed for alleged blasphemy. The bad news includes the horrific suicide attack, allegedly by Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan Jamaatul Ahrar, on Gulshan-i-Iqbal Park in Lahore on 27 March 2016.

From India, the bad news includes a spate of attacks by the cultural rightwing on Muslims, Dalits, intellectuals and rationalists over recent months. As a result, dozens of Indian intellectuals have returned state-awards in protest against the government's silence – or complicity – in such attacks. These rightwing attacks on free speech sparked student protests across the country; the harassment of the Dalit students and the suicide of Rohith Vemula at Hyderabad Central University (HCU) fed into the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) crisis, where police, in February, arrested the President of the student union and five other students on charges of sedition. The current trend in India of sedition allegations and chest-thumping nationalism willing-to-kill for perceived dishonor to nationhood is particularly worrying for Southasians who believe in democratic values.