India and Pakistan’s new education policies will push their respective religious minorities into a corner Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy ON July 29, Narendra Modi’s government unveiled what it calls a groundbreaking new national education policy (NEP 2020). The 65-page document’s wide range — from primary to university — forces me to consider here just a single issue: To what extent does …

Partition left many border people in the lurch. Dr Asim Sajjad Akhtar THE announcement by the prime minister earlier this week of a ‘new political map’ of the country in which India-occupied Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh are depicted as part of Pakistan is, on the surface, much ado about nothing. Designed to coincide with the first anniversary of the Modi regime’s decision …

In responding to Indian provocation, Pakistan abandoned its principled stand about who can legitimately decide on the fate of Kashmir, writes Farhatullah Babar by Farhatullah Babar Exactly a year after Prime Minister Modi annulled the special status of Kashmir and annexed the region into the Indian territory, Pakistan responded by unveiling with great fanfare its own new political map. The new …

UN-appointed independent human rights experts have called for urgent action in India’s Jammu and Kashmir, amid concerns of ongoing abuses against civilians there.

GB students are struggling to remain connected with digital world By Ramish Khan There seems to be no one to understand the traumatic situation the students like me have been passing through for the last three months. If I start to jot down the stressful moments I have been through and how badly I have lost my mental peace, it …

Covid-19 has exposed the myth of neoliberal free-market economic model Herald Report The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that the world is at breaking point, and the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the free market and deep divisions in society, calling for a new global deal to combat climate change, forced migration, diseases, patriarchy and racism. Inequality, an issue …

We must look at the roots of capitalism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and anti-Blackness to leave settler colonialism in the past.   by LEANNE BETASAMOSAKE SIMPSON I understand settler colonialism’s present structure as one that is formed and maintained by a series of processes for the purposes of dispossessing, that create scaffolding within which my relationship to the state is contained. I certainly do …

  News Desk The US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was backed by most countries in the region, who shared the goal of ousting the extremist Taliban regime and eliminating the allied Al-Qaeda terrorist network. The governments in Tehran, Moscow, and Islamabad readily helped the United States fight the extremist groups. Iran provided crucial intelligence to support US special forces …

‘The unfinished business of decolonisation is the original sin of the modern aid industry.’ by Paul Currion This year calls for reform of the humanitarian system are proliferating. What’s unusual is that they are not just calling for technocratic fixes but for urgent engagement with real-world issues: a new model for humanitarian aid that puts anti-racism at its centre. Two …

‘Most parts of the world are safer than ever before. But a few are probably the most violent that human history has ever seen, says a study. Modern tribes are more violent, and categorize people into four types: bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states, writes Charlie Sorrel in the Fast Company online magazine. In prehistoric times, bands and tribes were no more violent …