Main Vaapas Aunga

When Poison Enters the System: Impunity, Vigilantism and South Asia’s Internal Security Failure

Across South Asia, the difference between prejudice and collapse is not the existence of hate. Every society has it in varying shades.  The difference is whether the majoritarian state internalizes hate against the ‘other’,  whether FIRs get diluted, trials get delayed, mobs get garlanded  and impunity driven violence against minorities becomes low-cost. When that happens, the poison is not outside the system. It becomes the system.

In the Quiet Spaces Between Strangers, Sonia Bahl’s Eighteen Inches Apart

And perhaps this is precisely what many readers, particularly South Asian readers navigating fractured contemporary lives, have been missing without fully realising it: fiction willing to slow down long enough to notice the fragile, passing intimacies through which people continue surviving one another.

Robert A.F. Thurman, an academic with a Buddhist monk’s soul

Thurman said that Tibet was not an individual nation-state question but something that goes far beyond that. “It is not about a people yearning for freedom from an invading state. It is about a very valuable society struggling to keep its centuries-old tradition of intellectual evolution alive.” He said that while he was hopeful that the problem would be resolved soon, “and during His Holiness’ lifetime,” it was hard to put a timeframe to it.

A White Strip Exposes New Political Faultlines in Cosmopolitan Mumbai

The perceived push from a political leadership that has roots in Gujarat, the split in the locally rooted Shiv Sena that was engineered, the resentment it brewed among ordinary citizens and the history of Maharashtra -- which was born on May 1, 1960 after a bitter struggle that split the erstwhile Bombay State into two distinct linguistic states of Maharashtra and Gujarat -- are all complex and contributory factors to the evolving political unrest in middle-class Mumbai. 

More on Culture and Society

Ten-year salary plus generous compensation: Pakistani business community rises in support of lynched Sri Lankan manager's family

In a laudable gesture of restitution for a heinous act of their compatriots, Pakistan’s business community has come forward to assist the widow of the Sri Lankan manager who was lynched last year in Sialkot's industrial area

In emotional reunion, Indian and Pakistani brothers meet after 74 years

Some India-Pakistan stories do have a happy ending. Two brothers, one Indian and one Pakistani, who were separated during the India-Pakistan partition of the subcontinent in 1947, were reunited after 74 years in Kartarpur, the Sikh pilgrim center in Pakistan, local media reported

Murals in the dead of night: Afghan women resist Taliban’s imposition of dark days

For Kabul, murals aren’t just paintings. It is also a general expression of protest, resentment against both their past and present rulers

Kashmiri girl turns reporter to highlight poor road conditions

An undated video of a little girl from Jammu and Kashmir who turned reporter to show the poor condition of roads, especially those leading to her home, has created a storm on the internet, with people complimenting her for her coverage

Indian Army provides food to migrant labourers in Jammu and Kashmir amid heavy snowfall; evacuates pregnant women

In a widely appreciated gesture, hundreds of migrant labourers were provided cooked food and winter clothing by the Indian Army amid biting cold and heavy snowfall in the Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir

Supreme Court of Pakistan to get its first female judge

The Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP) has confirmed the appointment of Justice Ayesha Malik to the country’s top court amid strong protest by lawyers who have been opposing her elevation as it supersedes several senior judges

Sri Lanka to cultivate more rubber plantations to enhance forest cover to 30 percent

Sri Lanka plans to increase forest cover from currently 29.3 percent to 30 percent by 2025 by cultivating rubber plants over an area of 500 hectares

South Asia’s first hybrid school with online classes and on-ground sports

Since the pandemic began in early 2020, much has changed in the education sector across the world

Pakistan struggles to appoint first female judge in top court amid protests by lawyers

Lawyers in Pakistan are gearing up to resist the appointment of Ayesha Malik, currently a judge in Lahore High Court, to the Supreme Court

Tourists throng snowbound Kashmir, as administration opens up more scenic places for swelling visitors

After two dismal summer seasons for tourism in Kashmir due to the pandemic, winter has brought cheer back to the valley

Church and temple share Christmas joy in Kerala

In times of social disharmony in inter-community ties, a church and a temple in Kerala are epitomising the traditional 'idea of India'

Thirty years on, prayers fill 125-year-old St Luke's Church in Kashmir

Prayers were held on Wednesday in the oldest church in Srinagar for the first time in over 30 years, with the St. Luke's Church seeing worshippers standing and praying just days ahead of Christmas

Cricketers get all the attention, rues Pakistan's title-winning boxer

Pakistan's champion pugilist Muhammad Waseem, nicknamed 'Falcon' for his speedy and sharp boxing style, has topped the World Boxing Association's (WBA) flyweight division list for the first time in four years

Yohani, Sri Lanka’s 28-year-old music sensation, to be gifted land in Colombo by the government

The Sri Lankan government is gifting a plot of land to Yohani, the 28-year old singing sensation who rose to international fame - particularly in South Asia and in the Arab world - with her super hit Manike Mange Hithe song

Kashmiri paper mache products are much in demand in Christmas

If it is Christmas, it has to be Kashmir's famed paper mache products made by Iqbal Hussain Khan.  National Award winner Iqbal Khan, 60, is busy dispatching thousands of paper mache art and craft items for customers in India and Europe ahead of December 25