As the Indian government cracks down on several prominent activists and writers across India, here are some readings from our archives on authoritarian tendencies in India’s body politic at present and in the past.

Anand Teltumbde on links between neoliberalism and Hindutva nationalism in India.

Salil Tripathi on the silencing of the argumentative Indian.

Historian Ramachandra Guha on Indira Gandhi’s Emergency.

“Is the Indian Constitution a guarantor of nationalism?” asks scholar Debaditya Bhattacharya.

Author Amitava Kumar‘s poem ‘India (for Safdar Hashni)‘.

Illustration: Marcin Bondarowicz

Photojournalist and activist Shahidul Alam was picked up by the Bangladeshi law enforcement earlier this week over remarks made on Facebook about the government crackdown on protesting students in Dhaka. Alam continues to be in custody under Section 57 (2) of the controversial Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act, a legislation that has attracted widespread criticism over its draconian nature. The act has been used to detain over 20 journalists in the recent past for, among other things, social media posts and comments critical of the government. Over the years, similar laws have been enforced in other countries of Southasia, with authorities abusing the provisions of these often hurriedly and arbitrarily passed laws to clamp down on any dissent.

Sarah Eleazar on how Pakistan’s Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act impinges on freedom of expression.

Lawrence Liang looks at how the strategic use of the law threatens investigative journalism in India.

Salil Tripathi explains how freedom of expression in Bangladesh is caught between the machete and the magistrate.

On 30 July 2018, the final draft of National Register of Citizens (NRC) of India’s northeastern state of Assam was released, which left out  around four million people living in the state, potentially stripping them of their citizenship rights. The NRC, compiled over a period five years at a staggering cost of INR 12.2 billion (USD 177.9 million), comprises only those who were able to prove they were in Assam before 1971, when Bangladesh became independent.

From our archives

Anindita Dasgupta on what is behind the unrelenting myth that Assam is overrun by Bangladeshi migrants. (August 2000).

David Ludden on using geographical history to locate social realities in Assam. ( November-December 2005 ).

Rafiul Ahmed looks at Assam’s disenfranchised voters  (May 2014).

Ever since Saarc was founded in 1985, it has been shadowed by the rocky relationships between two of its largest members – India and Pakistan. Other members have also affected scheduled Saarc summits, citing domestic reasons or a rocky relationship with either Pakistan or India. Probably, this is the first time that four members – India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan – have decided to boycott the Saarc summit, to be held in Islamabad, Pakistan between 9-10 November 2016. Despite existing as a collaborative platform for Southasian nations for 32 years and after 18 Saarc summits, the regional organisation has achieved little beyond empty rhetoric. Our archival articles trace its history and complexities that has hindered true regional cooperation under its aegis.

This is not the first time a Saarc summit has become the ‘collateral damage’ in the on-going and relentless rivalry between India and Pakistan. Dip into our archives to understand how petty politics have impacted Saarc and its mandate to promote regional cooperation over the decades.

From our Archives:

Anirudha Gupta on Saarc’s failure to resolve the issue of Bhutanese refugees in Nepal (July 1994);

S.D. Muni on possibilities of sub-regional cooperation within Saarc (May 1997);

Pratyoush Onta on the need to facilitate serious scholarship on realising the potential of the regional association (March 1998);

Himal Southasian’s commentary on the ninth Saarc summit (October 1998); After India postponed the eleventh summit in 1999, 

Praful Bidwai criticised the country for subjugating the priorities of the regional forum to fuel its bilateral rivalry (November 1999);

Kanti Bajpai asks if there is a collective regional life beyond the narrow confines of Saarc (January 2000);

Kanak Mani Dixit on the need for more people-to-people interaction to truly materialise the ambitions of Saarc (November 2005);

Imtiaz Ahmed laying out seven thorny issues between India and Bangladesh that Saarc could step in to mediate (March 2007);

Sukumar Murlidharan’s scepticism on the outcomes of 14^th Saarc summit (May 2007);

Saman Kelegama looks at how Saarc initiatives have failed to make any significant impact to improve people’s lives (August 2008);  SAARC’s former general secretary;

Nihal Rodrigo on the need for Saarc to expand the cooperation with China, East Asia and the West (August 2008);

Neera Chandhoke underlines the need for Saarc to discuss the human-rights situation in each of member states’ territories and to lay out a common charter of human rights for Southasia (August 2008);

Mahendra P Lama opines that besides the inter-governmental process, Saarc has opened many avenues for people-to-people interactions (August 2008);

Shamshad Ahmad on the need for Saarc to move from declaration to implementation (August 2008);

Puja Sen and Shubhanga Pandey on the media’s obsession with the India-Pakistan relationship during the SAARC Summit (November 2014);

Pratap Bhanu Mehta opines that Southasian integration is not possible without changing the understanding of ‘sovereignty’ (November 2015);

and on a funny side, a mock resolution of the eighteenth Southasian regional summit by Puja Sen and Shubhanga Pandey (27 NOVEMBER 2014).