There is much that India can learn from Germany’s remembrance of the Holocaust, though the insensitivity towards the Palestinians is a smear. Germany too can learn from India, for while India has been brutal in its oppressions of caste and gender, it has been most comfortable in embracing diversity. Speaking to American philosopher Susan…
Over the decades, each episode of violence has spurred Muslims further to seek the safety of the ghetto, exacerbating their demographic segregation. Muslim men sit along a road in a riot-affected area in New Delhi in 2020. | Sajjad Hussain/AFP An inescapable feature of India’s urban geography is the Muslim ghetto: densely crowded habitations…
On Martyrs’ Day, people in Ajmer marched for peace to the iconic dargah, driven by three stories that span centuries. Sadbhavna yatra in Ajmer. Photo: Author provided Seventy-seven years have passed since Gandhi was martyred in the inferno of India’s Partition. Pakistan had separated as a Muslim nation. In these months, Gandhi fought his…
Walking again on the soil of Auschwitz mixed with the ashes of millions killed there, a human rights defender from India shares his dread at the capacity of human beings – “ordinary people like you and me” – for unspeakable cruelty towards ‘othered’ human beings, and his hope. “It happened, so it can happen again…,”…
Shamim went days without food, water or sleep. Daily phone calls to his family is what kept him going.
आज, ऐसा क्यों है कि मुसलमान प्रार्थना यानी नमाज़ का एक साधारण क्रियाकलाप कई लोगों को शिकायत और हिंसा के लिए उकसाता है और पुलिस को उनकी आपराधिक जवाबदेही तय करने के लिए प्रेरित करता है? (इलस्ट्रेशन: परिप्लब चक्रवर्ती/द वायर) 2022 की शरद ऋतु में उत्तर प्रदेश के प्रयागराज, जिसका पुराना नाम इलाहाबाद है |…
The films may not have spoken directly to the politics of hate, inequality, oligarchy and unfreedoms of our age. But most did speak incandescently of love, of friendship and of kindness in ways that were defiant. Screengrabs from some of Harsh Mander’s picks. As he does every year, peace activist Harsh Mander offers…
Mander’s picks chronicle the worst and best of India. Harsh Mander The year that we have left behind was a testing time for the Indian republic. Under unremitting assault was everything I hold most dear – love, freedom, justice, kindness. In troubled times like these, where do I turn? I turn to people I love,…
As long as Indian courts are allowed to defy the spirit of the Places of Worship Act, 1991, bloodshed will follow the reopening of the wounds of history. Harsh Mander Dec 03, 2024 · 09:41 am Police personnel outside the Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal on November 25. | AFP In Sambhal, a Muslim-majority medieval…
Muslims have faced investigation, assault and noisy disruptions as a vast majority of Indians is complicit in this persecution with their silence. A devotee prays on the first Friday of Ramzan, outside a mosque in Chennai in March. | AFP In the autumn of 2022, a woman laid out a prayer mat outside the…