Three recent books demonstrate how dancers negotiate individuality and collective identity through their work, and how their gender and sexuality is controlled and reproduced by caste mechanisms in modern Indian society
In exile from Sri Lanka and marginalised abroad, women who once fought in the country’s civil war are almost completely silenced – but through poetry some have found a way to speak out, to remember, to protest, to mourn and to heal
New Delhi has earned goodwill in Colombo, but the end of Indian pluralism can embolden Sinhala extremists while Katchatheevu and fishing conflicts risk inflaming nationalist passions
India’s ruling BJP claims to have overcome the “tyranny of distance” that has plagued the Northeast but its politics have created greater division within the region, as the Manipur crisis shows
Couples in inter-caste and inter-faith relationships continue to battle discriminatory societal attitudes and legislation – and the Uniform Civil Code could make things worse
The Canadian documentary chronicles the fight for justice after a 13-year-old girl was gang-raped in Jharkhand, but its reckless approach violates India’s Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act
Political monks have been clamouring for a blasphemy law, and the sacral component of the oppressive Online Safety Act gives the Sinhala Buddhist clergy the weapon it wanted
Many in Southasia earlier saw Indian secularism as an example for their own countries – but Narendra Modi’s mixing of Hinduism and politics has crushed India’s singular standing
Documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan discusses his 1992 film that captured the first attack on the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya and why it is still relevant more than 30 years later
Pakistan’s military is obviously backing Nawaz Sharif and the PML–N, at the cost of Imran Khan and his PTI, but how long until it again falls out with an elected government it once supported?
Pakistan’s prisons remain terribly overcrowded and under-resourced, and nascent efforts at progressive reform are stymied by ingrained attitudes of discrimination, including against religious and ethnic minorities
