Neoliberalism
Stop Urban Shield, Stop Violence Against Our Communities
If there is anything that Urban Shield and the racist history of policing in the U.S. teaches us, it is that the police and military are two faces of the same system of global repression and racism.
Special Issue: The 2014 Indian elections
In response to the recent swearing in of Narenda Modi as India’s 15th prime minister, SAMAR releases this special issue which takes a deeper look at the differences between rhetoric and reality, and the connections between communalism and neoliberalism.
Book Review: The State of Islam: Culture And Cold War Politics In Pakistan by Saadia Toor
Hamzah Saif reviews Saadia Toor's The State of Islam, "a forceful corrective to the dialogue on Pakistan."
Lean Left: Young Radical Voices
Flash back to the first time you met another Desi lefty. Can you remember the quickening of your heart? Your excitement at finding someone who cared about the same issues and communities? For most of us, the moment we realized we weren’t alone in the world, struggling against the conservative expectations of our parents, aunties and uncles - when we realized that we had sisters and brothers in the cause who understand where we come from and where we wanted this world to go - was life-changing.
Drifting Across Desi Youth: Youth Activists Reflect on Social Justice, Resistance and Solidarity
Over one weekend in August 2015, three South Asian American youth camps took place across the US: Bay Area Solidarity Summer (BASS) in Oakland, CA, Chicago Desi Youth Rising (CDYR) in Chicago, IL and East Coast Solidarity Summer (ECSS) in New York City, NY. In an effort to collaborate long-distance, camp organizers asked the youth participants to collectively define three key concepts at the beginning and end of their camp expereinces. Below is a summary along with reflections on the camp experience.
Making Sense of Incoherent Math: The Indian Election and Diasporic Politics
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
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.
On 9/11 and the War on "Terror": Names, Numbers and Events
Categories and names are often misleading, even for those of us who are often wary of the dominant rhetoric. As much as we want to escape it, dominant discourse is only there to shape our ideas and reactions, as is the case of the rhetoric surrounding 9/11; of good and evil, of war, liberation, and of spreading democracy. Here, we write to challenge these slogans and policies hoping that one day they will go away.
