“No-one can take away your human rights,” asserts the photo montage by Kate Holt. Our birthright from life. But they can torture them, rape them, and murder them. 2018 is the 70thanniversary of the signing of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The preamble to the Declaration begins thus: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and […]
We, The Founding Mothers of India…
Activists in the US talk of the Founding Fathers and the betrayal of their ideals by Trump and his administration. Let’s remember India also had it’s Founding Fathers – and its Founding Mothers too. Women who struggled and sacrificed for India’s freedom; who spilled their blood, were beaten and killed. From the Rani […]
Love, Shakespeare and War
As Britain’s prime minister convenes a ‘War Cabinet’ and moves British submarines within missile range of Syria, I would like to take a moment. To talk about love, Shakespeare and Emma Rice, whose role as Artistic Director of the Globe will end this month. I was riveted by Emma Rice’s introduction to the Globe Theatre’s […]
‘Prison? I Can do Prison,’ said The Reverend
I want to end 2017, and begin 2018, on an upbeat and positive note. So here’s a story about two men cutting their way through a security fence, carrying hammers, intent on causing millions of pounds worth of damage. It’s a freezing winter’s night, the date is 29th January 2017, and the place is Warton, […]
1984 India’s Guilty Secret
For more than thirty years Pav Singh tried to figure out what had happened. As had Sikhs in India and across the diaspora. Churasee, the Punjabi word for 1984, is a deep wound in the Sikh psyche. People were aware of the barbaric horrors, brutality and violence visited upon Sikhs – men, women and […]
Once, This Dust Was Ours…
A true story arising from the Partition Many decades later, the third son, now a grown man with grey sprinkling his beard, stood on the land, the sun shimmering on him, feeling the grains of soil beneath his feet. Eyes slowly taking in the fields around him. As he turned a little, the village came […]
Udham Singh: The Lonely Revolutionary
On 31st July 1940, Udham Singh was hanged at Pentonville Prison, in London. On 29th July 2017, I went to see the poignant and heart-breaking documentary about the partition ‘Rabba Hun Ki Kariye – Thus Departed Our Neighbours.’ In one of its early scenes letters are being read, from a prisoner who was […]
The Dangerous Rise of Gender Segregation in Faith Schools
da.azadiradio This is precisely why I have no faith in faith schools. Religion is one thing and social convention another, but in faith schools the two are practised as being interdependent. This is most often true of ‘revealed religions,’ such as Judeo-Christian and Islam. As if ideas of the religion, rely on replicating the […]