Uzma was born on the terrifying night when her father was shot dead on the banks of a canal by paramilitary soldiers, about 50-odd km from Delhi. This was in the summer of 1987.
In the early hours of a midsummer morning, at the outskirts of Ahmedabad near the city’s waterworks, on June 15, 2004, the Gujarat police shot dead four occupants of a car. One of those killed was a young 19-year-old woman. Her name was Ishrat Jahan.
I did not know him when he lived. But in his death, in the way he died, I mourn him like a son.
His dreams were unfamiliar to my agnostic world.
Uzma was born on the terrifying night when her father was shot dead on the banks of a canal by paramilitary soldiers, about 50-odd km from Delhi. This was in the summer of 1987.
The epic, heroic legal battle fought by the barely lettered wife of a small Gujarati cattle trader has caught the imagination of many in the country. The judgement of the Bombay High Court on Thursday – which upheld the life sentence awarded to 11 men convicted by a lower court of raping her and killing 14 members of her family…
Karwan e Mohabbat began its journey of solidarity, atonement and conscience from Assam on September 4. There, we met four families, each still weighed down by the heaviest of burdens any parent can be called upon to carry – that of the bodies of their children.
In these troubled times, the world’s two largest democracies – India and the US – are increasingly becoming hostile, threatening places for people with Muslim names.
In the summer of 2016, many students sat on a hunger strike in the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. They were protesting the punishment meted out to them by the university authorities for having demonstrated against the hanging of Afzal Guru.
On a bumpy bus journey from Giridih to Ramgarh in Jharkhand, trying to type my short update for today. My heart very weighed down in a day with many reminders of why this Karwan was important to attempt.
On September 7 2013, a gale of hate violence hit districts of western Uttar Pradesh, destroying and displacing thousands. Three years later, the large majority of these hate refugees remain exiled permanently from the villages of their birth, painfully rebuilding their lives in small makeshift colonies.