Asia

In five-star hotels on Mumbai's seafront, children of the rich squeal joyfully as they play hide and seek. Nearby, at the National Theatre for the Performing Arts, people arrive for the Mumbai Literary Festival: famous authors and notables drawn from India's Raj class. They step deftly over a woman lying across the pavement, her birch brooms laid out for sale, …

(Courtesy: The Trend, Nov 2012)   In the wake of the recently concluded peace agreement between the Filipino government and MILF, several eyebrows have been raised as to what is the result of MILF’s struggle for a separate state.    I remember having met Ustaz Salamat Hashim, founder of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in a youth camp where I …

Six children were attacked in Afghanistan and Pakistan this past week. Three of them, teenaged girls on a school bus in Peshawar, in the tribal region of western Pakistan, were shot and gravely wounded by two Taliban gunmen who were after Malala Yousufzai, a 14-year-old girl who has been bravely demanding the right of girls to an education. After taking …

Ninety seven Muslims were massacred and hundreds of Muslim women were gang raped in one day by Hindu fascists in the poverty stricken Muslim area of Naroda Patia in Gujarat during the 28 February 2002 genocide of Muslims.    Two of the people who led the gang in the massacre of Muslims were leader of Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, and …

The United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, during her recent eight-day visit to Asia was acting more like a matron than the chief diplomat of her country. Her aim, obviously, was to thrust a US-centric world view — that serves the US interest — on the countries she visited    Her matron-like behaviour was evident when she advised Bangladesh’s …