The victims of the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat are still to get justice but are determined to continue the fight. SAIRABEN SANDHI and Rupa Mody sit quietly on the back benches at the Metropolitan Magistrate's Court in Ahmedabad watching the proceedings in the Zakia Jafri case. Both the women have witnessed immense tragedy. One saw her son killed, while the other has been searching for her missing son for the...
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In the light of day, questions about midnight encounter by Ajai Sreevatsan
Five suspected bank robbers die at the hands of police Five men suspected to be involved in two recent bank robberies in the city were gunned down by the police at a Velachery apartment in the small hours of Thursday. But rather than bringing the curtains down on the daring heists that shook the city, the “encounter” itself looks set to move centre-stage, with the police claim of firing in self-defence...
More »The myth of Dalit capitalism by Akshay Deshmane
Till recently, I did not know of a single movie, let alone documentary, which could persuade a viewer to sit under the open sky on an unusually wintry night for over three hours. On Monday night, I was in an audience of about 200 for one such documentary, Jai Bheem Comrade, by activist-filmmaker Anand Patwardhan. It was with much curiosity and anticipation that I went for the first Indian public screening...
More »Ramanujan’s Three Hundred Ramayanas: Transmission, Interpretation And Dialogue In Indian Traditions by R Mahalakshmi
A.K. Ramanujan, while referring to the diversity and apparently contradictory element of unity in the Indian traditions, refers to an Irish joke about whether to classify trousers as singular or plural: singular from the top, plural from the bottom.1 A Concurrent Discipline Course in the University of Delhi for Second Year Honours students not doing History was introduced in 2005 on ‘Culture in India—Ancient’, and had sought to very sensitively...
More »‘Mother begged for her life... she died, half her clothes pulled out’ by Ujjwalanayudu
It's 10 years since he saw his parents and 10 others being burnt and electrocuted in front of him in Sardarpura, but the horror hasn’t left Gulam Ali Akbar Sheikh. Like the other victims, he migrated from his native village to Satnagar in Mehsana district following the massacre, but the fear has stayed with him. Sheikh remembers that they had just finished their dinner when the riot started around 9.30 pm....
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