After two decades of refusing to honour the results of the last elections, held back in 1990, the recent electoral exercise in Burma gave plenty of lead-up time for
It is a striking phenomenon, but also a fairly well-engrained one. When they migrate overseas, many first-generation Southasians become more overtly nationalistic than their homebound friends and families,
Words do not always liberate
Sometimes they also imprison
I am in search of such a line
That will set me free
From the web of suffocating sentences.
– Punjabi poet
The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimates conservatively that at least 650,000 people in India are currently considered internally displaced persons (IDPs), as a result of armed conflict, ethnic or
Arundhati Roy is in trouble (yes, again). Much has been said, printed, ranted and blogged about her supposedly seditious (oooooh!) statements in Kashmir in October. While the Indian media went
Since the beginning of the 'talkies', a select group of feature films have had the power to express a vision of national identity that appeals to both the
In the early 19th century, the Southasian diasporas remained actively engaged with political struggles in their lands of origin. Today this has morphed into an obsession with economic returns.
The nature of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid debate shows how much certain parts of Indic society are now prisoners of a historical mode of thinking.
News channels in Pakistan really need to get their fact-checking departments in order – and they need to stop the spooks of the country from playing with the citizenry'
REGION
Poverty inflation?
Come November, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has announced that it will be changing the way it measures global poverty. Since 1997, its country-wise Human
