While in recent times the contribution of South African Indians in the struggle against colonial suppression and apartheid has become more widely known and understood, this does not extend to any great degree to the role of Indian women in this struggle. Little is known of their role in the Indian resistance movements, for example, [...]

India has come to our shores after a long and dry cultural boycott imposed by the Indian government against the apartheid regime. For over 50 years the local Indian community has been starved of its vernacular culture of indigenous music, drama and literature. In its absence they created within the context of Africa a hybrid [...]

The Kashmir discourse in the West always takes the form of an Indian discourse and a Pakistani discourse. Both are mainstream statist narratives.  A true independent Kashmiri narrative, a Kashmiri perspective has yet to take root and this is lamentable. Recognising the importance of such a discourse to the world, eight scholars in the US [...]

Currently in the media our attention is drawn to two disparate issues.
What does the early morning market saga in KwaZulu Natal have in common with the Iranian protests? Some may describe the former as a storm in a teacup, invisible to the world but not to the tea drinker. Others may describe the latter as [...]

I have become another statistic. As twilight set a burglar stealthily entered our house and stole my 18-caret solid gold omega watch, camera and other bits of valuables lying around. At first one is so grateful to be alive and then the value and sentimentality of the stolen items induces a sense of material loss. [...]

The culinary world is more powerful in some respects than politics. I recall in the bad old days when a certain mayor of Durban refused to allow his liberal minded daughter to invite her ‘non-white’ friends to her wedding, but was happy to serve Indian curry at the reception to an all white gathering. At [...]

Dr. Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal
All great imaginative literature is carved out of the highest emotional upheaval in the heart of the poet. A particular emotion catches the soul of the poet and the result is the outpouring of the excessively creative poetry. Poetry is nothing but the drainage/ exit/ gush of the excessive emotions in the [...]

South Africa lost one of its most treasured citizens when Dame Helen Suzman, the iconic advocate of liberalism and human rights, died peacefully on the 1st of January 2009. For those of us who knew her well it was not a happy start to the New Year. Knowing her as we did though, she probably [...]

By  Dr.Jagdish Sharma

While Britain progresses on the road to a culturally pluralistic society, a sense of ‘Britishness’ needs to be strengthened
Multiculturalism means different things to different people. In recent times it has come under attack as a failed idea and policy from different people in different contexts.  At a recent seminar hosted by the Royal [...]

Late last year, a whole day seminar on “India’s Tryst with Destiny” organised at the SOAS by the Tagoreans, the longest established Bengali cultural organisation in London, had participants and speakers leave the venue at the end of the day with no qualms over the difficult terrain that lay before the world’s largest democracy, in [...]