Voices Behind the Veil: The Human Cost of Karnataka’s Hijab Ban
Death threats, lost friendships and a bleak academic future — victims of Karnataka’s hijab ban continue to suffer.
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Editor: Dr. G.G. Parikh | Associate Editor: Neeraj Jain | Managing Editor: Guddi
Death threats, lost friendships and a bleak academic future — victims of Karnataka’s hijab ban continue to suffer.
The project to change the memory of the history of a nation is a big one. Hate-filled prime-time TV debates and WhatsApp messages with a singular focus on anything that divides Indians on religious lines are finding a perfect resonance in official statements and actions.
The deeper reasons behind the Sri Lankan crisis are Sinhalese Buddhist majoritarianism, authoritarianism of the Gotabaya regime, violent targeting of minorities, brutal methods adopted to curb press freedom and deliberate curbing of the culture of scrutiny of public policies.
As journalists face punitive action for fact-checking and reporting hate speech by those allied with India’s ruling party, citizens are stepping into the breach, taking enormous risks to document rising instances of hate speech and hate crimes in the country.
‘For a common Indian like me, you are the embodiment of courage and strength. You give me hope because your pursuance of justice, despite the odds, has been exemplary.’; Also – ‘The Hard Hearted State’ by Sankara Narayanan.
New anti-caste writers and film-makers are setting a radical agenda in mass culture in Karnataka and beyond. Will their challenge to Hindutva hegemony travel north?
Current demographic trends do not threaten national well-being, nor is the Muslim population exploding. The annual gung-ho about population explosion is political, not factual. It is a ploy to shroud the failure of the governments on the socio-economic front.
If Uddhav Thackeray is able to broaden the ideological base of the Shiv Sena, it can help the party register electoral successes and start another era of inclusive politics. This of course means that Thackeray must walk on the razor’s edge, never tilting towards nativism and away from inclusivity.
There is growing conviction that the nation, language, and religion are one. Hindi ideologues see only Hindi as authentically Indian and Hindu. The current rhetoric is reminiscent of the ‘Hindi-wallahs’ in the early 20th century.
The unprecedented globalization and monopoly concentration of capital that characterises capitalism today is driven by the inherent contradictions in the capitalist system itself.
Janata Weekly is India’s oldest independent socialist weekly.
Ever since its founding in 1946, Janata has voiced its principled dissent against all conduct and practice that is detrimental to the cherished values of nationalism, democracy, secularism and socialism, while upholding the integrity and the ethical norms of healthy journalism. For more than seventy years now, week after week, it has continued to analyse the changes taking place in the country and the world from a socialist standpoint, and thus promote the spread of socialist ideology in the country.
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