This week in Himal
This week, Cyrus Naji unpacks newly released reports from the United Nations and Human Rights Watch, which critique the Awami League’s brutal crackdown on student protesters backed by law enforcement, but also pinpoint the interim government’s failure to stop abusive practices, including mob violence.
For our next Podcast of the Week, host of the Southasia Review of Books podcast Shwetha Srikanthan talks to historian Manan Ahmed Asif on his recent book Disrupted City: Walking the Pathways of Memory and History in Lahore, which compares the city’s cosmopolitan past and its fractured present to challenge the grand narratives of the Pakistani nation-state.
This week in Southasia
20-year-old student’s death sparks diplomatic tensions between India and Nepal
Over the past week, protests around the death of a 20-year-old Nepali student at the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology in Odisha, eastern India have led to heightened diplomatic tensions between India and Nepal. The 20-year-old student took her own life on 16 February, with initial reports suggesting her death was the result of harassment from an Indian student, who was later detained. Nepali students began to protest in relation to the case. In response, the university directed an estimated 500 Nepali students to leave campus, leaving many of them stranded. A video widely circulated on social media showed university staff members in a heated exchange with the students, with a professor saying that the university was “feeding and teaching over 40,000 students for free”, which another staff member pointed out was “equivalent to your country’s budget”.
The case drew the attention of Nepal’s prime minister, K P Sharma Oli, and Odisha’s higher education minister, Suryabanshi Suraj, among others, with lawmakers in both countries condemning the handling of the case. Under pressure, the university revoked the eviction order and the university staff members apologised for their comments. Three university officials and two security guards were arrested for manhandling student protesters. The student’s death has also sparked wider discussion about inaction on harassment in India’s college campuses, with students saying that a prior complaint lodged by the 20-year-old with the university’s International Relations Office did not result in formal action against her alleged harasser.
Elsewhere in Southasia
- US plans to ramp up weapons sales to India but cancels USD 21 million fund on voter turnout, plans to negotiate trade deficit with India after high level meeting between India’s prime minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump in Washington
- Around 150 students injured after a clash between the youth wing of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and campus members of Students Against Discrimination at the Khulna University of Engineering and Technology
- Myanmar junta frees nearly 1000 Rohingya from prison days after a court in Argentina issued international arrest warrants for the junta chief and 22 other military officials for crimes committed against the Rohingya in a 2017 crackdown
- Sri Lankan President Anura Dissanayake government unveils first national budget, eyeing 5% economic growth and a budget deficit of 6.7%, with significant allocations to the education sector, welfare and infrastructure development
- Ganemulla Sanjeewa, a suspect in organised crime, was shot inside Sri Lanka’s main court complex by a former soldier disguised as a lawyer who was later arrested, the second such shooting in two days
- 7000 people rescued from illegal call centre operations in Myanmar and transferred to Thailand, part of broader crackdown on cyber-scam operations
- Gunmen in Pakistan’s Balochistan province attacked a bus and killed 7 people, targeting passengers of Punjabi origin after demanding to see identification cards
- Bangladesh’s former prime minister Sheikh Hasina calls interim chief Muhammad Yunus a “mobster” and vows redressal upon her return on a Zoom call with widows of four policemen killed during last July’s student uprising
- Maldives faces medicine shortage of life-saving drugs due to cash flow constraints, price controls and regulatory issues, President’s Office announces 11 point plan to address the issue
- A Taliban delegation visits Japan to seek humanitarian support and discuss diplomatic ties with Japanese officials, a rarity for the group since regaining power in 2021
- India boosts security for the Dalai Lama, adding about 30 police commandos to protect the Tibetan spiritual leader amid Intelligence Bureau reports of potential security threats
Only in Southasia!
India’s government continues to be impressively thin-skinned. In the past week, popular Tamil-language weekly Ananda Vikatan said its website had been blocked after it published a satirical cartoon about Modi’s silence around the US deportation of Indian migrants, with many reports that those deported were handcuffed and shackled for the duration of their journey back to India. The cartoon in question showed Modi in handcuffs and shackles, sitting mutely before an ebullient Donald Trump, days before Modi departed to the US on an official visit. While India initially stayed mum on whether they had ordered the block, it was later confirmed that the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had blocked the Vikatan website after a complaint filed by BJP Tamil Nadu President K Annamalai. Unfortunately, the attempt to stop the distribution of the cartoon only amplified attention towards it, with netizens and journalists sharing the cartoon widely online. Oops!
From the archive
Dancing with Demons (December 2008)
Cartoons often reveal hidden truths, as the past week has made clear, with Indian media raising strong objections to the blocking of the Tamil weekly Vikatan’s website. This makes Manjula Padmanabhan’s article, first published in December 2008, relevant reading. Adapted from the keynote address at Himal’s own Cartoon Congress in Kathmandu, Padmanabhan discusses cartoonists' enduring focus on forbidden topics, as a way of discussing deep concerns around mortality and celebrating cheeky and pleasurable defiance.