-The Hindu Any state intervention inspired by Islamophobic views will only help deepen Majoritarianism The Uttar Pradesh government’s decision to undertake a survey of madrasas has raised serious concerns not just over the fate of these institutions but also on the future of Muslim identity. Other BJP-ruled States have also expressed concerns about madrasas. In May, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the word ‘madrasa’ should cease to exist. In September,...

-The Telegraph A Truth Commission for the Northeast This essay is a letter to my fellow Indians. It’s a prayer, a plea, a proposal for a project, a moral experiment. It was triggered by the emptiness of Independence Day, when a majoritarian, mediocre India confronted the vacuity of its political self. These feelings increased upon reading reports on December 4 of the massacre of several civilians in Nagaland. They were waiting at...

-TheWire.in "Such mass targeting of Muslim women in public spaces, whether online or offline, that treats them as objects in the political discourse of Hindutva is simply unacceptable." New Delhi: A group of more than 800 women’s rights organisations and concerned individuals have issued a statement condemning the recent online targeting and harassment of Muslim women on GitHub, through an app called ‘Sulli Deals’ that sought to ‘auction’ these women. Photos of over...

-NDTV.com Two BJP chief ministers, UP's Yogi Adityanath and Assam's Himanta Biswa Sarma, both of them young by the standards of Indian politics, do not owe their political strength to either Narendra Modi or the RSS. As chief mahant or priest of Gorakhpur's influential religious math and as head of Gorakhpur's Hindu Vahini (a youth organization run in his name), 49-year-old Adityanath was championing Hindu nationalism independently of the BJP far...

-CaravanMagazine.in The South Asia Collective, a group of human-rights activists and organisations, recently published “The South Asia State of Minorities Report 2020: Minorities and Shrinking Civic Space” by the South Asia Collective. The report examines minority rights and the narrowing of space for human-rights defenders in light of increasing Majoritarianism across the region. Its chapters, on Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, conclude that three basic freedoms—the constitutional...