Pakistan’s military authoritarianism - again – Southasia Weekly #93

I’m writing with exciting news this week. Himal Southasian is up for an award at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference taking place in Kuala Lumpur. Our magazine has been nominated for a Global Shining Light Award for M Rajshekhar’s reporting on Reliance Industries’ large wildlife centre, raising questions around sourcing of its animals and broader questions on India’s wildlife management. We’re the only Southasian media outlet to be nominated in the Small and Medium Outlets category. 

This is huge news, especially given the constraints that we operate under as an independent magazine, but also because of the blowbacks in the form of legal threats and other attempts to suppress the story online that we had to withstand. This is one of the reasons investigative stories are rare in the region, given dwindling funding, censorship and other threats. But we plan on being a space for stories that won’t easily find a home elsewhere. That’s only possible when readers like you support our work, so that we can keep bringing you more investigative stories that hold power to account. 

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This week in Himal

Salman Rafi Sheikh writes about Pakistan’s 27th constitutional amendment, which expands the military’s authority and allows for control of the judiciary, even as the country grapples with political instability.

On the Saffron Siege podcast series in collaboration with Karwan-e-Mohabbat, anthropologist Thomas Blom Hansen and journalist Qurban Ali join Harsh Mander to unpack how the RSS has enabled and executed communal violence over the years.

Coming up on the State of Southasia podcast hosted by Nayantara Narayanan, a conversation with Indian transparency activist Anjali Bhardwaj on the big questions around recent elections in India including electoral revisions, and over the credibility of India’s Election Commission.