Main Vaapas Aunga

When Poison Enters the System: Impunity, Vigilantism and South Asia’s Internal Security Failure

Across South Asia, the difference between prejudice and collapse is not the existence of hate. Every society has it in varying shades.  The difference is whether the majoritarian state internalizes hate against the ‘other’,  whether FIRs get diluted, trials get delayed, mobs get garlanded  and impunity driven violence against minorities becomes low-cost. When that happens, the poison is not outside the system. It becomes the system.

In the Quiet Spaces Between Strangers, Sonia Bahl’s Eighteen Inches Apart

And perhaps this is precisely what many readers, particularly South Asian readers navigating fractured contemporary lives, have been missing without fully realising it: fiction willing to slow down long enough to notice the fragile, passing intimacies through which people continue surviving one another.

Robert A.F. Thurman, an academic with a Buddhist monk’s soul

Thurman said that Tibet was not an individual nation-state question but something that goes far beyond that. “It is not about a people yearning for freedom from an invading state. It is about a very valuable society struggling to keep its centuries-old tradition of intellectual evolution alive.” He said that while he was hopeful that the problem would be resolved soon, “and during His Holiness’ lifetime,” it was hard to put a timeframe to it.

A White Strip Exposes New Political Faultlines in Cosmopolitan Mumbai

The perceived push from a political leadership that has roots in Gujarat, the split in the locally rooted Shiv Sena that was engineered, the resentment it brewed among ordinary citizens and the history of Maharashtra -- which was born on May 1, 1960 after a bitter struggle that split the erstwhile Bombay State into two distinct linguistic states of Maharashtra and Gujarat -- are all complex and contributory factors to the evolving political unrest in middle-class Mumbai. 

More on Culture and Society

Humour flows unhindered across the India-Pakistan Line of Control

Digital age and Internet has helped in exchange of humour and creativity across the tense man-made borders of India and Pakistan

Much more needs to be written on Kashmir: Author-playwright Ashish Kaul

He always thought of his best-selling book 'Refugee Camp' as a celluloid spectacle, a story of Kashmir's living tragedy, but aware of the cinematic challenges, author Ashish Kaul first wanted to establish the validity and acceptance of the story

Pakistani bride flees wedding party to stop forced marriage, reports to police

A bride, who claimed she was already married and had a son, but was sold by her greedy paternal uncle for  700,000 rupees, slipped away from the wedding party and managed to report the matter to the police in Tangwani town of Kandhkot-Kashmore district in Sindh province of Pakistan

Restoration of Nepal’s Seto Machhindranath Temple begins with Indian grant

The reconstruction and conservation work on Nepal’s famous 10th century-old  Seto Machhindranath Temple began on Sunday with Indian grants

Art for a cause: Panting exhibition to support cancer patients in Nepal

An exhibition is being showcased at the Nepal Art Council in Kathmandu to support cancer patients

Karachi has the best food in South Asia: Bollywood actor Pooja Bhatt

Bollywood actor and producer Pooja Bhatt has rated Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, as having the best food in South Asia

Pakistani politician Maulana Salahuddin Ayubi marries 14-year-old girl

A Pakistani politician, who is believed to be aged in his mid-fifties, has married a 14-year-old Chitrali girl, triggering a row, media reports said

'World's largest' cricket stadium named after Indian PM Narendra Modi

The Sardar Patel Stadium in Motera near Ahmedabad, which has been dubbed the " world's largest cricket stadium" with a capacity of 110,000 people, was Wednesday renamed as the Narendra Modi Stadium

25 Indian priests in Kathmandu for 'Kshama Puja'

At least 25 special priests from various sacred temples of South India have reached Kathmandu to perform 'Kshama Puja' (forgiveness worship) at Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu as the authorities have started work to replace the existing silver jalhari of the temple with gold-plated jalhari

Digital concerts to the aid of folk musicians of Rajasthan

While the COVID-19 pandemic has left no sectors unscathed, not many are aware how it has affected the people practicing folk arts and crafts

Preserving and promoting Kashmiri language and culture

Kashmiri poets, young artists and language activists have gone hi-tech to preserve and promote Kashmiri language and also “sing songs of their own”

Hindi play depicts layered India-Nepal bonds

As a playwright and director, Chiranjit went beyond the usual entertainment quotient

Pakistani universities ban fitted jeans, impose strict dress codes

Two universities  in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan - the northwestern province bordering Afghanistan that is ruled by Prime Minister Imran Khan's PTI  party -   have issued strict dress code policies by banning tight-fitted jeans, tee-shirts, and makeup among other things for its students, faculty as well as for its other staff members

Delhi's Nizamuddin Dargah preserving 'tradition of spring' for 800 years

When the golden yellow colour envelopes the entire country on the occasion of Basant Panchami every year, sunflowers mesmerise people, new crops of wheat and oat spread happiness everywhere and butterflies sprinkle joy and smile, a silent tradition being followed at the Hazrat Nizamuddin Aullia Dargah in the Indian capital

Pakistani influencer of viral Pawri video over the moon after Bollywood recognition

Pakistani influencer Dananeer Mobeen's viral ‘Pawri Ho Rahi Hai’ video has taken over Bollywood too