ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

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Politics of Memory

Partition's Post-Amnesias: 1947, 1971 and Modern South Asia by Ananya Jahanara Kabir (New Delhi: Women Unlimited) 2013; pp 216, Rs 400.

Unequal Citizens

In the militarised border regions of Rajouri and Poonch (Jammu and Kashmir), the boundaries are blurred. Violence had breached the security of people's homes, changing their lives forever. Despite the enormity of the violence done to their lives and livelihood, the cry for justice seems to be missing. The region appeared to have been enveloped in hopeless resignation.

Expanding the Middle Space in the Naga Peace Process

It is the new middle class in Naga society that is steadily reshaping the vision of an independent Naga nation that has been rooted in its tribal institutions. Many of the new ideas and initiatives for resolving the old problems of unity and integration are coming from the professional "middle class" women and men. Fourteen years of ceasefire have seen the expansion of a "non-partisan" middle space, the space of Naga social organisations, which holds the promise of nudging the political groups towards reconciliation and accountability.

Media-Mediated Public Discourse on 'Terrorism' and Suspect Communities

The media is intrinsic to our understanding of the discourse on the "war on terror". In these days of postmodern critical analysis, the orthodoxy about "objectivity" has long been eroded, but the deliberate blurring of distinction between "fact" and propaganda, reality and stereotype, and the discursive stringing together of sensational events, finds a new level in news media-mediated public discourse. The article critically interrogates the rhetorical clustering of four mediatised "events" - Madrid 3/11/2004, London 7/7/2005, Mumbai 11/7/2006 and 26/11/2008 - which raised the spectre of an interconnected and endless "war on terror" as a knee- jerk political and media response.

A Granddaughter's Tribute


drives of the bhadralok intelligentsia and their impact on the Santals.
The authors trace the theological lineages of Skrefsrud to reformed and institutionalised Protestant sects; they link his political leanings with the developing social- democratic values and movements in Europe in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. The suppressed heterodox sects of early modern Europe, such as the Anabaptists who stood for more radical programmes of redistributive justice, are not treated in the discussions on religious dissent. The anti-imperialists of the second international, who broke with the social imperialism of European social-democracy on the eve of the first world war, do not appear in the narrative either. One wonders then if Skrefsrud and Borresen, despite their marginal lives in Norway and Denmark, were not representative of the undigested and alienated poor who could be reconciled with and reabsorbed by the social mainstream of the metropole through various hegemonic ideologies, including the visions of a Scandinavian federation and saving the souls of

Gendered Narrative of Kashmir

Between Democracy and Nation: Gender and Militarisation in Kashmir by Seema Kazi

Waiting for 'Naya' Nepal

The April 2008 mandate notwithstanding, the Nepali people are still waiting for the formation of a government and the initiation of the process of constituting a "naya" Nepal. The forces of the status quo have rallied around G P Koirala and the Nepali Congress and are blocking the Maoists from taking over the reins of government. How long will the people have to wait for the agenda of a naya Nepal to get off the ground?

Making of a 'New Nepal'

The comprehensive peace treaty between Nepal's parliamentary forces and the Maoists is not simply historic; it has brought together disparate ideologies and ways of functioning. The challenge now before the "new Nepal" is to contain the fallout of the destruction of the old order and accommodate the aspirations of different groups seeking their place in the sun.

Women's Agency in Peace Building

Although there is a growing body of feminist discourse establishing that war and peace are gendered activities, and consequently women's experiences, responses and needs are different, this is often overlooked by national and international policy-makers. Studies making visible the centrality of women's agency in peace building and the need to have women participate at the peace table are ignored by the dominant conflict, peace and security discourses. This paper maps the complex and variegated picture of civilian and militarised women's agency in moments of violent social transformation and the peculiarities of their languages of resistance and empowerment.

Gender Conflict and Displacement

The experience of the refugee or the internally displaced person is one that is fundamentally disenfranchising. While women and children make up a majority of the forcibly displaced, international humanitarian discourses confer on them a presumed passivity that is naturalised in practice. Systems of care and protection even in UNHCR camps remain largely gender insensitive especially in south Asia where national laws reinforce gender discrimination. This paper uses a gender sensitive perspective, analysing the way a woman as a refugee subject is configured as a non-person so as to gain fresh insights on the 'infantilisation' and 'de-maturation' of the refugee experience. Moreover, it raises questions on the secondary status women occupy as citizens in south Asian polities.

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