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Memory as Guide: Iam.lk and personal narratives of Sri Lanka
Ahalya Satkunaratnam | September 21, 2014

Ahalya Satkunaratnam reflects on how the stories of elders in the website, Iam.lk assist in complicating identity in Sri Lanka and how this site provides a discussion of national history and personal belonging that circumvents hostility that often accompanies web-based discussions of identity, the nation and the war.

Glimpses of a Muslim Childhood
Noor Hasan | September 21, 2014

Sajda

On the morning of my sixth or seventh Eid,
My mother dressed me in white Pakistani robes,

Holding my hand gently
As we walked through the bright wooden gates
Of the Islamic Community Center by our house.
I had not yet learned how to pray.

But my mother taught me how to bow in sajda,
The devotion of pressing one’s forehead
To the ground to feel smaller than God
has made you,
to feel as grounded
as feet.

As I lifted my forehead
from the carpeted floor of the mosque,

Untitled
Shireen Hamza | April 17, 2015

You are not meeting my eyes. They are beneath the cloth I wear on my head, actually.

No, I am from America.

Yes, it is called a hijab.

No, this cloth is not hijab.

Hijab is not a covering, a hiding-away, a flinching-back. It is a coming-out, a blazing-through.

Hijab is not here for you to fetishize taking it off with your fingers/armies/democracy.

Hijab is suffering for democracy.

Recent Articles

Making Sense of Incoherent Math: The Indian Election and Diasporic Politics
By: Biju Matthew | From: Issue 43: Special Issue: The 2014 Indian elections (6/18/2014)

How can an event be at once ordinary and extraordinary, simultaneously decisive and indecisive?  The victory of Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Indian parliamentary elections of 2014 is indeed a watershed moment; for the first time in the history of independent India, it will be ruled exclusively by a Hindu supremacist party. And yet, a careful look at the way the Modi/BJP campaign produced this victory yields a picture that can only be characterized as simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary, decisive and indecisive.

To the Hindu middle-class: Why “wait and see” won’t cut it
By: Deepa Panchang | From: Issue 43: Special Issue: The 2014 Indian elections (6/18/2014)

In 2006 and 2007, I spent several months in Ahmedabad while on a fellowship from my university in the US. During my time in Ahmedabad, I interacted with the mostly-Hindu NGO staff where I was based, residents of the largely Hindu shantytown where the NGO was working, and professors at Gujarat University. Less than five years had passed since the city had gone through its nightmare: vicious riots involving saffron-clad men entering urban neighborhoods and brutalizing, gang-raping, and burning other human beings. Some 1,500 Muslims were killed.

Policing Sex
By: The SAMAR Collective | From: Issue 42: Policing Sex (3/24/2014)

This issue on Policing Sex explores the wider context of the criminalization of homosexuality in India, as well as visions put forth to challenge heterosexism, the police state, and misogyny. 

insh'allah & airport ode #1
By: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha | From: Issue 42: Policing Sex (3/24/2014)

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's poems evoke borders of bodies and nation.

 

Pride: There is no going back
By: Sabelo Narasimhan | From: Issue 42: Policing Sex (3/24/2014)

Sabelo Narasimhan reflects on this year's Gay Pride parade in Bombay, India. In the wake of the recent judgement criminalizing homosexuality, the images in this photoessay reveal the unbounded spirit of rebellion and resistance of the community.

Radio Samar

Tracks Back Home
Naazneen Diwan, Taz Ahmed

Live reading of poem developed for the South Asians for Justice event "Gujarat Genocide and US Solidarity" in Los Angeles, April 2012

History of Communalism in India
Yasmin Qureshi

History and context of how communalism grew in India (part of SAJ-LA's Gujarat Genocide event)

Book Review: Corona by Bushra Rehman (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013)
Zohra Saed | Oct 24, 2013

This fragmented, musical novel breaks the prettiness of memory, brings irreverent humor where it should, shows the crisscross of ethnic neighborhoods in New York City, and celebrates love in the midst of violence. 

Cartoon

Khalil Bendib
Click on the cartoon for a larger version.

Visit Our Friends

Pass the Roti Group blog covering issues pertaining largely to South Asia and the South Asian diaspora.

Apex Express is an Asian Pacific Islander community radio show on KPFA 94.1 FM in the Bay Area.

South Asian Forum A website of resources and storytelling, includes a directory of South Asian organizations, history of organizing, census information and an extensive bibliography.
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Random Five from the Archive

On the Erasure of Violence and the Violence of Erasure
Aisha Ghani

I have just characterized the killing of our lifetime’s Public Enemy Number 1, as an act of violence. The association is disconcerting. It does not readily compute. But what else does one call an act that requires the raiding of a home, and the shooting of an unarmed man, and others, until they are dead?

May 31, 2011
The Organizer's Corner
The SAMAR Collective | Issue 18: Overture to a Long Tomorrow (11/3/2004)

Questions for Saru Jayaraman of Restaurant Opportunities Center - New York (ROC-NY)

Jan 28, 2011
Seeing the Disappeared
Chitra Ganesh, Mariam Ghani | Issue 19: Relief in a Time of Crisis (1/24/2005)

Two visual artists seek out new ways of engaging with the post-9/11 disappearances in the US

Jan 28, 2011
From Kabul to Kanda
Rupali Ghosh | Issue 18: Overture to a Long Tomorrow (11/3/2004)

Afghan Refugees Struggle for Justice in Japan

Jan 28, 2011
Passports and Pink Slips
Manu Vimalassery | Issue 15: Dogmas of War (//)

Immigration and Labor After 9/11

Jan 28, 2011
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