Globalization
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.
Uncovering Multiracial South Asian America: A Review of Vivek Bald's Bengali Harlem
Seema Sohi reviews Vivek Bald's new book, Bengali Harlem and the Lost Hostories of South Asian America. She notes, "Bengali Harlem is more than an excavation of histories that have yet to receive their full due. By tracing the South Asian American presence in neighborhoods like Treme in New Orleans, Harlem in New York, and Black Bottom in Detroit, Bald focuses on the forging of multiracial communities in early South Asian America."
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.
Circles of Gender Justice
Dear Readers,
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.
Long-Distance Radicalism: In Conversation with SAMAR’s Virtual Editorial Collective
Anantha Sudhakar's "Long-Distance Radicalism: In Conversation with SAMAR’s Virtual Editorial Collective," provides a glimpse of SAMAR's volunteer editorial collective, which has sustained the magazine over the past 20 years and contextualizes SAMAR within South Asian Diasporic progressive activism.
Letters to a Desi Radical (in the Making): Review of Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today by Vijay Prashad
Junaid Rana gives his take on Vijay Prashad's latest text, Uncle Swami
Mazdoori and Azadi: A Portrait of Invisible Men in an Invisible City
The day-time bus ride from Bangalore to Chennai is one of those seemingly endless journeys; I picked up the book, Free Man, which I had begun to read a few days earlier. I was on my way back from a job interview with a mainstream newspaper, where I’d applied to work as a reporter, which coincidentally is also the author, Aman Sethi’s occupation.
Land Grabs and Corporate Steel
This new monthly column, contributed by members of the South Asia Solidarity Initiative, discusses current social justice issues in South Asia and the imperative of transnational solidarity. This month features a discussion of the Anti-POSCO campaign mobilized in Orissa, India to protect forest dwellers rights and resist the onslaught of unencumbered foreign direct investment.
Wrestling the Dinosaur: Reflections on the Post 9/11 Decade
American imperialism is like a dinosaur fighting extinction. There are two long term trajectories that have continuously intersected and are leading to its failure - the “super power” infrastructure of mass violence that gave rise to insurgents and the structural flaw in capitalism that will leave the current economic crisis unrecoverable.
Hunting the “Out-of-Place Muslim”
The Global War on Terror’s fixation on al-Qa‘ida as a roving band of "foreign fighters" allows the U.S. to claim that it is not fighting a war on Islam, but rather helping local Muslim populations rid themselves of narrow-minded interlopers seeking to impose a puritanical brand of the religion. This hunt for foreign fighters animates broader attempts to monitor and control Muslim diasporas outside the "west." At the same time, the legal impunity of other foreign fighters – namely, U.S. forces and their contractors – is pushed into the background.
