Archive

This issue of SAMAR explores identity and the state . Considering two specific locales, Sri Lanka and the US, the pieces in this issue look at state repression and policing  of citizens, and the practice of identity and identification. Although narratives of social and political progress mark each site—a decades-long civil war ends in Sri Lanka and the U.S. opens to black political leadership in its highest office—minority communities are increasingly terrorized and patrolled via state-backing and strategic blind-eye.

Gendered violence plays a pervasive and significant role in the lives of modern women around the globe. In that vein, we present a special issue on women’s responses and activism against gender-based violence in South Asian and South Asian diasporic communities.

As Kashmir is perhaps the lynchpin in unraveling the convoluted landscape of South Asian geopolitics, the articles in this special issue of SAMAR address how varying levels of violence manifest on Kashmiri bodies.  The authors - all Kashmiri diasporic writers - draw on recent research and work experiences in Srinagar, looking at how Indian occupation shapes everyday life.

Reform, organizing, tackling old notions of identity, creating our own discourses and advocating for our own solutions...one hundred days into the Obama administration...and it is time for some spring cleaning all around. It has been heartening to learn that health care is clearly one of the current administration's top priorities. But to address the problems of the healthcare industry so that the reforms can adequately serve all communities in the U.S., we must unpack the racist and classist elements that guide decision-making.

We all shared the horror of the attacks on Mumbai. Some of us thought of family and friends there, the places we had visited, some of us immediately began thinking about what was in store for Pakistan. We all wondered whether the city would be the same again. That weekend, SAMAR published a response by Biju Mathew that circulated on mailing lists around the world.

Now that the election is over, we can all take a collective sigh of relief and relax...or can we?

Electoral seasons are in full swing across the subcontinent and in the United States. These campaigns have made or have the potential to make history. In the United States, Bobby Jindal was elected the country's first South Asian-American governor in October 2007. Barack Obama could become the first non-white president or Hillary Clinton could become the first female president in American history. This April, the Maoists could finally become part of Nepal's political fabric and put an end to a decade-long civil war.

In our struggles for peace, workers’ rights, racial justice, queer and gender rights, we often overlook basic issues of health and access to affordable and effective health care. Although these issues are often deemed less important or vital than others, they are integral aspects of these movements.

October 6, 2002 marked the first anniversary of the day when the U.S., responding to an attack by 19 hijackers on their soil, began bombing Afghanistan. October 2002 is also touted as the month when the US will begin a second assault on Iraq, ostensibly for the crime of possessing weapons of "mass destruction."

The relationship between the Indian subcontinent and the African continent has always been one of political solidarity. India and Pakistan were among the earliest nations to voice the need for boycotting the apartheid regime of South Africa. The South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) was accorded the status of a sovereign nation in South Asia way before Namibian independence influence. The death of Patrice Lumumba was mourned in the streets of Dhaka, Calcutta and Karachi.