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

Pori Moni only Bangladeshi on Forbes Asia’s ‘100 Digital Stars’ list

Popular Bangladeshi actor Pori Moni has been included in Forbes Asia magazine's '100 Digital Stars' list

Roshni Nadar Malhotra: Backing wildlife conservation financially

When India underwent a national lockdown due to the pandemic, frequent sightings of wild animals in urban areas led to the misleading assumption that our natural biodiversity had begun to reclaim lost ground and getting restored due to reduced human interference

Taiwanese president praises Swara Bhasker’s Bhaag Beanie Bhaag series

Swara Bhasker starrer Bhaag Beanie Bhaag, the latest Netflix original, has found a big fan in the Taiwan president who complimented the web series for “bringing laughter and courage in these challenging times.”

Namrata Shrestha crowned Miss Nepal World 2020

Namrata Shrestha has been declared the winner of Miss Nepal 2020. Shrestha, a teacher, was crowned Miss Nepal World 2020 in the grand finale of the event held in Kathmandu on Saturday

Pakistani lecturer ranked among world’s top 1% computer science researchers

A Pakistani lecturer has been ranked among the top 1 per cent of most influential researchers worldwide in the field of computer science

Migrant worker's son from Bihar village wins gold medal at IIT, Roorkee

Rahul Kumar, 22, the son of a migrant worker from Sosandi, a village in Bihar's Nalanda district, has graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee, one of the premier educational institutes in the country

Indo-Canadian filmmaker Richie Mehta: Wanted to dispel myths with Emmy-winning 'Delhi Crime'

Indo-Canadian filmmaker Richie Mehta does not seek validation from his International Emmy win for his web series Delhi Crime, but by audience response

Afghanistan’s first female surgeon general is no more

Suhaila Siddiq, the first female lieutenant general in the Afghan army and a former minister in the Afghan government,  passed away on Friday morning at a hospital in Kabul, reported TOLOnews

No spectators at Lanka Premier League matches

Spectators have been barred from entering the Sooriyawewa International Cricket Stadium to witness Lanka Premier League matches, health authorities have reiterated

Afghan journalist wins Transparency International 2020 award

Zaki Daryabi, an Afghan journalist, has been awarded the International Anti Corruption 2020 Award by the global anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International

Bollywood movies are a 'fundamental reason' why we watch cinema: Hollywood's Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan feels Hindi films happen to retain the fundamental reasons due to which we enjoy cinema, and that Hollywood has lost some of that essence

Bangladesh PM Hasina comes to the rescue of rickshaw-puller family

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has taken the family of Shampa Khatun, a child in Jamalpur who was compelled to work as a rickshaw-van puller, under her wing

The sound of Indian music at the Grammys

Amid all the noise about snubs and transparency, there are a few Indian tunes that have struck the right note at the Grammy Award nominations this year

First-of-its-kind museum to conserve sacred trees of Sikhism

Punjab Governor V.P. Singh Badnore on Monday virtually inaugurated the first-of-its-kind Museum of Trees -- a unique environmental project here for conservation of sacred trees of Sikhism after which many Sikh gurudwaras are named

‘World’s loneliest elephant’ in Pakistan finds a new life

For years no one cared for his fate; he lived a lonely life, much in chains, for 35 years in a Pakistani zoo, where he had come as a gift from Sri Lanka