Sri Lanka’s ex-president in the hot seat over torture site - Southasia Weekly #58
This week in Himal
This week, Frances Harrison revisits the Batalanda Commission Report detailing human rights abuses at the torture site in Sri Lanka during the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna uprisings in the 1980s, after a recent scathing interview with former president Ranil Wickremesinghe on Al Jazeera which revived questions of his role in alleged human rights abuses.
For the next episode of the Southasia Review of Books podcast, host Shwetha Srikanthan speaks with Sri Lankan-Pākehā writer Saraid de Silva on her debut novel Amma, which explores trauma, displacement and queerness over three generations and three continents.
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This week in Southasia
Communal violence in Nagpur sparked over the tomb of a 17th-century Mughal emperor
Around 69 people have been arrested in connection with communal violence in Nagpur, Maharashtra that sparked over calls to demolish the gravesite of Mughal emperor Muhi al-Din Muhammad (better known as Aurangzeb) from Hindu nationalist groups Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal. The Maharashtra state cyber department said social media accounts had shared inflammatory content, including unverified rumours that a Quran had been burned and that a statue of Aurangzeb burned by the Hindu groups was wrapped in a cloth that had Quranic messages written on it, escalating tensions. Vehicles were set on fire and stones were thrown, and around 33 policemen were injured in a standoff. A police report claimed that a man accused of participating in the violence had allegedly molested a woman police officer on duty.
The Mughal-era emperor Aurangzeb has become a flashpoint after Hindu nationalists claim the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi was built on the site of Vishwanath temple, a 16th-century Hindu shrine that was destroyed on Aurangzeb’s orders. The recently released Bollywood film Chaava, which follows the life of Sambhaji Maharaj, the second Chhatrapati (king) of the Maratha empire and depicts his torture at the hands of Aurangzeb, has also been used by Hindu nationalist groups, members of the BJP and Maharashtra’s ruling Mahayuti alilance to spread communal rhetoric while commenting on the film, which has also been praised by India’s prime minister Narendra Modi.