2008 March Archive at Asian Window

Monthly Archive for March, 2008

‘Moderate Islam is a contradiction’

Published

on March 31, 2008

. 0 Comments

Right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders wanted to provoke an international scandal with his anti-Islam film “Fitna.” He succeeded. Here he talks to SPIEGEL about his crusade against Islam.

SPIEGEL: Last Thursday, you released a long-awaited film that rails against the Koran. Heads of government across the EU are already discussing it and in Afghanistan Dutch flags are going up in flames. Have you achieved your goal: to provoke?

Wilders: The political elite has demonstrated with astonishing clarity that it learned nothing from the debate over the Muhammad cartoons. It bows to the Islamists. For example, our government has developed evacuation plans for our diplomatic missions abroad. That’s just an invitation to militant Muslims.

SPIEGEL: You invoke the right to freedom of opinion but you demand a prohibition of the Koran. Does that not contravene the principle of religious tolerance?

more

[Pic: In Karachi, a Wilders effigy is burned by angry crowds. DPA]

In the American Enterprise Institute, author of Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali says Fitna is an embarrassment to the Dutch Cabinet

The central thesis of Fitna is: the Koran commands Muslims to spread their faith throughout the entire world, by means of jihad and indoctrination. To show that some Muslims take these edicts literally, viewers are shown images of terror attacks in New York and Madrid. In the movie, you hear excerpts of sermons filled with hatred and Muslim crowds that cheer on the preachers.

In one scene, a girl of three is taught by rote that the Koran reveals that Jews are pigs and monkeys. At the end of the movie, suddenly one hears the sound of a page being ripped from a book followed by a message that this is a page from a telephone book, not the Qur’an, and that it is up to Muslims to deal with the intolerance in their Holy Book.

more

The Manga-ised story Afghanistan

Published

asianwindow

on March 31, 2008

in Art

. 0 Comments

Via boingboing:

Meet Afuganisu-tan, Kyrgyz-tan, Pakisu-tan, Meriken, Turkmenis-tan and Uzbekis-tan. They are all characters in Afghanis-tan — the story of Afghanistan and its neighbours, illustrated Manga-style.

And bit more on Wikipedia:

Eastern union

Published

asianwindow

on March 31, 2008

in Science

. 0 Comments

What will happen when the two most populous nations on Earth join scientific forces? Mara Hvistendahl in Seed Magazine:

In 1956, China started building a road through Aksai Chin, a remote region of the Himalayas claimed by India. When Indian leaders learned about the move-which, due to the area’s inaccessibility, didn’t happen until a couple of years later-they were incensed. By 1962, the two countries were battling it out between the peaks of the Himalayas in what’s now known as the Sino-Indian War. Today, though shelling has stopped, the border dispute persists. Every few years, there’s a diplomatic row that serves, more than anything else, to keep political and cultural exchanges between these two neighboring giants to a minimum.

There may be an opening, however, as both nations realize their mutual scientific ambitions. China and India both possess rich science-cultural legacies: Prior to the 15th century when the European renaissance surged, the Chinese were consistent technological and scientific innovators, while among other significant advances, Indian mathematicians invented the decimal system. Today, both China and India are focusing heavily on scientific investment-China in areas like stem cell research and nanoscience and India in information technology. As these two nations strive to develop and innovate, they have started to look across their fractious frontier and agree to work together for mutual scientific gain.

What Tibetans want

Published

asianwindow

on March 31, 2008

in Tibet

. 0 Comments

The most vigorous Tibetan protests in decades have been crushed by Chinese soldiers and police. In Foreign Policy, Tibet expert Robert Barnett explains why the most significant action is taking place outside Lhasa and what we can expect the Chinese to do next.

Foreign Policy: What does the average Tibetan want? Is it independence, or a greater share of Tibet’s modernization and economic growth, which has been dominated by Han Chinese?

Robert Barnett: Not really either of those things. We have to be very careful not to confuse exile politics, which is a demand for anti-China this and anti-China that, with internal politics, which is much more pragmatic, complex, and sophisticated.

A very important sector of Tibetans have become very wealthy because China has poured money into creating a middle class in Tibetan towns, though there hasn’t really been a dividend for the countryside and the underclass. So, we can’t explain this as just economic modernization. We could explain the violence against the [Han] Chinese in that way. It could have to do with that. But the violence is present in just one demonstration out of 50 in the past two weeks.

more

Can 200,000 hours of baby talk untie a robot’s tongue?

Published

asianwindow

on March 31, 2008

in Science

. 0 Comments

Deb Roy wants to make robots smarter by getting them to imitate his kid. From Scientific American:

When Deb Roy and his wife have overnight guests that might encounter their two-and-a-half-year-old son-the couple is withholding his name to protect his privacy-the first thing they do is ask their visitors to fill out a consent form. Unusual, for sure, but the couple is merely trying to make people aware that their actions and voices may be captured by the 11 fish-eye cameras and 14 microphones hidden around their Cambridge, Mass., home listening in on nearly every sound their son has ever uttered. The two main goals of the setup: to understand how children acquire language and use the intelligence gleaned to teach robots to talk.

Roy, 39, head of the cognitive machines group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, is documenting every parent-child “conversation” in what he calls the Human Speechome Project.

The Islamic republic of Harvard?

Published

asianwindow

on March 31, 2008

in Education

. 0 Comments

In The New Republic blog, Harvard undergrad Sahil K. Mahtani asks how far universities must bend to accommodate religious observance

The symbolism could not be more striking: Harvard College, an institution founded for men by men has, for the first time in its history, banned men. For six hours every week, only women will be allowed in one of the university’s three major gyms–a new policy implemented in response to a request by female Muslim students, who were uncomfortable exercising around men.

Since announcing the new policy, the university has been besieged by vitriolic criticism, with some commentators characterizing the decision as “appeasement” and “capitulation” to the demands of “radical Islam.” One blogger, in a post entitled “Slouching toward Constantinople,” compared the decision to the Turkish conquest of that city in 1453. One commentator called it Harvard’s “Islamofascist gym.” Even Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan lamented the onslaught of “Sharia at Harvard.”

Previously on AW:
Women only hours at Harvard gym

Jaguar’s new boss

Published

asianwindow

on March 31, 2008

in Leaders

. 0 Comments

In The Telegraph (UK), William Langley traces Ratan Tata’s lineage to discover a man of patrician bearing and why he is in such a hurry to leave his stamp on the world

It is tempting to look at Ratan Tata, the Indian tycoon whose company last week took over Land Rover and Jaguar, as a symbol of a nation’s headlong charge towards economic superpowerdom. This, we suspect, is how it tends to be with those pesky, nouveau riche Asians; one minute you’ve never heard of them, the next they are snaffling up all your best-known firms, and treating themselves to large, stucco-fronted mansions in Kensington.

Ratan, 70, and his faintly mysterious Bombay-based family, do not fit this caricature at all. Resoundingly non-nouveau, the Tatas have moved among India’s business aristocracy since Queen Victoria was on the throne, and while the last 150 years have seen a steady growth in their power, wealth and reach, the family is famed for never having done anything even remotely headlong.

more

Forman Christian College’s political clout

Published

asianwindow

on March 30, 2008

in Education

. 0 Comments

In All Things Pakistan, Adil Najam on the famous alumni of Forman Christian College

At the new Prime Minister’s oath-taking recently, the body language of Gen Pervez Musharraf as well as Yousuf Raza Gillani made it obvious that neither was comfortable being with the other. Each has deep reasons to distrust the motives of the other. One doubts, therefore, if they took any time to reminiscence about their college days. Both, after all, went to college at Lahore’s famed Forman Christian (FC) College; although at different times.

more

Shyam Benegal on his films, film-making and film-makers he admires

Published

asianwindow

on March 30, 2008

in Movies

. 0 Comments

From The Indian Express:

Q: Many actors chosen by you went on to become stars, like Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil. How did you spot their talent?

A: Some came from the National School of Drama and some from the Film & Television Institute of India. As for Shabana, I was looking for actors for Ankur. I asked Aparna Sen to do the role, but she said it would be difficult to master the accent as I wanted the film to be in Dakhani. A cousin suggested Kaifi Azmi’s daughter. I didn’t even know that Kaifi had a daughter! When Shabana walked into my office, I knew I had my Lakshmi, the main character of the film. There was something about her confidence, her totally unpretentious outlook – I didn’t even audition her. As she walked out, I told her that she would be doing my second film. She went home and told her mother, ‘There’s this fraud who says he is going to make his first film with me and his second one too. I don’t believe a word of what he said.’ But she did those two films and others too. I first saw Smita Patil on TV as a Doordarshan Marathi newsreader. I thought she had a very Indian look. A friend of mine knew her sister and sent her to me. When she met me, the first thing she said is, ‘I don’t want to act, so don’t offer me a role.’ I offered her one nonetheless, which she declined. It was her mother who persuaded her to accept. Until she acted in Bhumika and won a National Award, she didn’t want an acting career.

Karachi’s winter days

Published

asianwindow

on March 30, 2008

in Pakistan

. 0 Comments

Sehba Sarwar, the author of a novel, “Black Wings,” and founding director of Voices Breaking Boundaries, a nonprofit arts organization, in The New York Times Magazine:

I’ve been living in Houston for some time, but I often return to Pakistan to visit my parents. In December, when I arrived in Karachi with my 3-year-old daughter, Minal, the city was spinning with more than the usual winter weddings, parties and reunions. President Musharraf had issued emergency rule to hold back a possible Supreme Court ruling against him, and Benazir Bhutto had returned to Pakistan at her own risk. There had been suicide bombings, the lawyers were battling for restoration of an independent judiciary and parliamentary elections were a few weeks away. My husband, René, wanted me to postpone our trip, but my father wasn’t well, and it was important to go. I assured René I’d do my best to stay away from the political action.

Tibet is one thing, but India and China tensions spell bigger disaster

Published

asianwindow

on March 30, 2008

in Books

. 0 Comments

The Sunday Times, UK, carries an extract from “Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade” by Bill Emmott:

It recognised the fact that while Al-Qaeda and its cohorts pose the biggest short-term and perhaps medium-term challenge to America, in the long term it is the expected shift in the world’s economic and political balance towards Asia that promises to have the greatest significance.

That is why this month’s events in Tibet, as well as the purchase by India’s Tata Motors of Land Rover and Jaguar from Ford, need to be seen in a wider context.

Bush, meanwhile, has managed to cast aside 40 years of hostility and suspicion between America and India – and even agreed to start collaborating over nuclear energy – in the hope of strengthening India and its economy. And all for a special reason: the rise of China.

I’m proud to carry the Olympic torch despite Tibet

Published

asianwindow

on March 30, 2008

in Tibet

. 0 Comments

Duncan Mackay in The Observor, UK:

A few weeks ago, when my friends and colleagues found out I had been the only newspaper journalist to be asked to carry the Olympic torch when it comes to London on 6 April (a traditional treat for a writer), they were all pleased for me. Now the same people are asking me if I am going to pull out in protest at China’s human-rights record and the recent events in Tibet.

While I am appalled at the oppression imposed on Tibet by China, its support of the regime in Darfur and its sickening record on human rights, the answer is no. I respect people’s rights to protest peacefully along the route and I sincerely hope their valiant efforts pay off in forcing the Chinese government to change. But it is not the Olympics that have let them down – it is the world’s politicians.

Time runs out for islanders on global warming’s front line

Published

asianwindow

on March 30, 2008

in Bangladesh, environment and human rights

. 0 Comments

Rising sea levels threaten to flood the Ganges delta, leading to an environmental disaster and a refugee crisis for India and Bangladesh. In The Observer, UK, Douglas McDougall reports from the Sundarbans:

Dependra Das stretches out his arms to show his flaky skin, covered in raw saltwater sores. His fingers submerged in soft black clay for up to six hours a day, he spends his time frantically shoring up a crude sea dyke surrounding his remote island home in the Sundarbans, the world’s largest delta.

Alongside him, across the beach in long lines, the villagers of Ghoramara island, the women dressed in purple, orange and green saris, do the same, trying to hold back the tide.

For the islanders, each day begins and ends the same way. As dusk descends, the people file back to their thatched huts. By morning the dyke will be breached and work will begin again. Here in the vast, low-lying Sundarbans, the largest mangrove wilderness on the planet, Das, 70, is preparing to lose his third home to the sea in as many years; here global warming is a reality, not a prediction.

The reverse Raj: Indian businesses turn tables on imperial master

Published

asianwindow

on March 30, 2008

in India

. 0 Comments

Britain took commercial and cultural advantage of India as its imperial master. Now a new generation of wealthy Indians is reversing the roles. Dean Nelson in The Sunday Times, UK:

The assembled businessmen wore black ties and listened politely to a string quartet under crystal chandeliers in a magnificent ballroom. The room buzzed with talk of the old country, but more importantly with commercial speculation about their new domain. What was to be their next takeover target in the local economy?

It could have been a sepia print of the British East India Company, which effectively ruled India as a private colony for 100 years, but a closer look revealed a different kind of burra sahib. More Chandigarh than Cheam, the men gathered at the Grosvenor House hotel in Mayfair, central London, last year were the representatives of a new Indian raj, powerful men intent on buying up chunks of the homeland of their old imperial masters.

Is this the Indian century?

Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian, UK:

Shishir Bajoria is meant to be talking about India’s rise and the world economy, but first he wants to raise the really big stuff. “Have you seen the cricket?” he asks, and launches into an unkind description of the Australian player he saw whingeing on telly this morning about the bullying Indian cricket board. “A white man – a white man! – complaining about racism.” And he throws up his palms as if to say, how upside down can you get?

That’s not the only topsy-turvy thing around here. Take our location: the Bengal Club, the leading social club in Calcutta, former capital of British India. There was a time when it wouldn’t have let the likes of Bajoria through the door. “In the Bengal Club, they don’t allow dogs or Indians,” reported Somerset Maugham in 1938, “but in the Yacht Club in Bombay they don’t mind dogs; it’s only Indians they don’t allow.”

Pondicherry’s French connection

Published

asianwindow

on March 29, 2008

in Travel

. 0 Comments

In the colonial city of Pondicherry — or Puducherry, as it is officially known but rarely called — southern India meets the South of France. Matt Gross in The New York Times:

In the garden of the 33-room Promenade, Pondicherry’s second-newest boutique hotel, situated (surprise!) right on the promenade, well-heeled patrons – mostly Western, with a smattering of Indians – drank cocktails and dangled their feet in a small pool. It was a Tuesday in March, but it felt like a summer Friday.

North of the park sat the equally tranquil Pondicherry Museum, an old mansion full of relics from the past, both recent and distant. For 20 minutes, I was the only visitor, wandering alone among the carriages and cannonballs, ornate dining room sets and bronze statues of goddesses, until I found a display of 2,000-year-old Roman amphorae from the nearby archaeological dig at Arikamedu.

To be great, China needs to uphold Tibet’s culture

Published

asianwindow

on March 29, 2008

in Tibet

. 0 Comments

Manoj Joshi on China’s cynical game in Tibet

After being overwhelmed by the People’s Liberation Army in 1950, the Tibetans have broken out in open revolt thrice —in 1959, 1989 and now in 2008. Considering the herculean efforts that have been made by China to control the Tibetans, this is remarkable, and ought to serve as a warning of sorts to Beijing. The Chinese have played a cynical game in Tibet. They claimed that they entered it to liberate its people from serfdom and to protect its special status, but in fact they split Tibet into several provinces and what we call Tibet today comprises just half its traditional territory. Despite professing atheism, the Chinese have blatantly interfered in the religious practices of Tibet, including taking decisions on who is an incarnate lama.
No country in the world supports an independent Tibet. Yet, among the people in democratic countries, Chinese sovereignty over Tibet is only reluctantly conceded. Most Indians, barring the Communists, believe that Tibet is a colonial possession of China, held down by the force of the People’s Liberation Army. The reality is, of course, partly true though more complex.

more

Growing gulf divides China and Dalai Lama

Howard W. French in The New York Times:

Shanghai: Across much of the Western world, the Dalai Lama is known as the beatific spiritual leader of a humble community of Buddhists, beloved in Hollywood, Congress and the White House, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Chinese leaders cast him in a different light. They call him a separatist and a terrorist, bent on killing innocent Han Chinese and “splitting the motherland.” That gap in perception, which has grown immeasurably wider in the two weeks since violent unrest rocked Tibet, is breeding pessimism that Chinese leaders are willing – or perhaps even able – to embark on a new approach to Tibet even as it threatens to cast a long shadow over their role as hosts of the Olympic Games this summer.

The real uses of enchantment

Published

asianwindow

on March 29, 2008

in Books

. 0 Comments

Salman Rushdie’s sumptuous mixture of history and fable in The Enchantress of Florence (368 pp, Jonathan Cape) is magnificent, says Ursula K Le Guin in The Guardian

From the sea of stories our master fisherman has brought up two gleaming, intertwining prizes – a tale about three boys from Florence in the age of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and a story of Akbar, greatest of the Mughal emperors, who established both the wondrous and shortlived city Fatehpur Sikri and a wondrous and shortlived policy of religious tolerance. Both stories are about story itself, the power of history and fable, and why it is that we can seldom be sure which is which.

more

Previously in Asian Window:

Jodha and Akbar–the Rushdie story

Rushdie’s new novel out in June

Cricket stats: fastest triple hundreds

Published

asianwindow

on March 28, 2008

in Cricket

. 0 Comments

Virender Sehwag smashes the fastest triple century in Test history. Cricinfo has some stats.

Temple in UK sues RSPCA over cow

Published

asianwindow

on March 28, 2008

in Religion

. 0 Comments

From The Guardian, UK:

Monks from the largest Hindu temple in Europe, angered by the RSPCA’s slaughter of its sacred cow, will serve the charity with legal papers today. Gangotri, a 13-year-old Belgian blue-jersey cross, was put down on welfare grounds on December 13 last year by RSPCA vets.

But campaigners from the Bhaktivedanta Manor Hindu temple in Hertfordshire claim that the “mercy killing” was illegal and took place while monks were at worship. Radha Mohandas, a spokesman for the temple, says the RSPCA entered the temple illegally with a false warrant.

Pico Iyer: On ‘The Open Road’ and 30 years With the Dalai Lama

Published

asianwindow

on March 28, 2008

in Books

. 0 Comments

From World Hum:

World Hum: So it began with this first meeting that you had with your father and the Dalai Lama?

Pico Iyer: That’s right. That’s when I was 17, in 1974, and although, as you read, I wasn’t that excited about meeting [chuckles] a colleague of my father’s, I think that some seed was sown in that initial meeting, which meant that the very first time the Dalai Lama came to the U.S., which was five years later, in 1979, I made sure to go and see him.

Also by Pico Iyer on Asian Window: A Monk’s Struggle

Business in Bhutan: Financial forecasting mixed with karma

Published

asianwindow

on March 28, 2008

in Bhutan

. 0 Comments

From The Globe And Mail:

Tshering Jamtsho uncoils the burgundy robe from around his chin and smiles as the first light of a Himalayan dawn streams through the casement chiselled into a stone-cold cell at the Pangrizampa Monastery.

Twigs crunch outside, a voice calls out from the dark and an apprentice enters the chamber gripping the “Mopai.” The ancient 250-page goatskin volume provides human calculators, called “tsips,” with intricate mathematical and astronomical formulas to compute a client’s fate and fortune before birth, during life and in the afterlife.

“I am one of the 40 calculators,” Mr. Jamtsho says over cups of the pungent yak-butter tea his predecessors began serving clients here in the Kingdom of Bhutan more than 1,500 years ago.

Rare one-horned rhino bouncing back in Nepal

Published

asianwindow

on March 28, 2008

in Wildlife

. 0 Comments

From National Geographic News:

Recently, field observers counted 408 rhinos over two weeks in Royal Chitwan National Park, Nepal, one of the last remaining strongholds for the endangered animals. Preliminary numbers from the census suggest an increase from 2005, when observers reported seeing only 372 rhinos in the park.

The Indian rhino, also known as the great one-horned rhinoceros, once roamed through large parts of South Asia. Its horn is reputed to have aphrodisiac properties and can be worth thousands of dollars in China’s traditional-medicine market.

In Pakistan, U.S. swallows a bitter pill

Published

asianwindow

on March 28, 2008

in Pakistan

. 0 Comments

The U.S. deputy secretary of state bore the brunt of a range of complaints that Pakistanis now feel freer to air with the end of military rule. Jane Perlez from Islamabad in The New York Times:

If it was not yet clear to Washington that a new political order prevailed here, the three-day visit this week by America’s chief diplomat dealing with Pakistan should put any doubt to rest.

The visit by Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte turned out to be series of indignities and chilly, almost hostile, receptions as he bore the brunt of the full range of complaints that Pakistanis now feel freer to air with the end of military rule by Washington’s favored ally, President Pervez Musharraf.

Faced with a new democratic lineup that is demanding talks, not force, in the fight against terrorism, Mr. Negroponte publicly swallowed a bitter pill at his final news conference on Thursday, acknowledging that there would now be some real differences in strategy between the United States and Pakistan.

Putting faces on 5 victims of Tibetan riots

Published

asianwindow

on March 27, 2008

in Tibet

. 0 Comments

From The New York Times:

Shanghai: In life, the five young women who burned to death in a Chinese clothing store during rioting in Tibet on March 14 were not the types who would make headlines.

One received permission from her family to follow her fiancé to Lhasa; another sent home most of her wages to support 13 relatives; several sent text messages in the minutes before they died warning loved ones to stay indoors as violence erupted.

In death, though, the women are being treated as martyrs. The Chinese government has been using their deaths to support its version of what happened on “3/14,” when Tibet saw its worst day of violence in 20 years. In that version, broadcast by state-controlled media, ethnic Tibetans took to Lhasa’s streets, unprovoked, burning and looting shops that were owned by Han Chinese.

Human Rights Watch speaks up for Tibet

Human Rights Watch has asked the government of Nepal to stop its arbitrary detention and ‘intimidation tactics’ against peaceful Tibetan protestors, including threats to deport them to China. Read that report here.

Meanwhile, a note circulated by ’some Chinese intellectuals’, including dissidents and writers, has called for an independent United Nations investigation into Tibet. The note supports the Dalai Lama’s appeal for peace and includes 11 other suggestions for solving the Tibet situation.

Finally, HRW has called upon China to investigate its crackdown before the Olympic torch passes through Tibet. It has asked the government to account for those dead or missing and it wants Lhasa to be reopened to media and to monitors.

The Olympic torch, which was lit today in Olympia, Greece, should not go through Tibet unless the Chinese government agrees to an independent investigation into the recent unrest in Tibetan areas, Human Rights Watch said today.

The Olympic torch is set to pass through the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on June 20-21. Chinese government officials have confirmed their plans to continue despite the ongoing protests and crackdown across ethnic Tibetan areas.

more

For a backgrounder and a complete HRW list of Tibet reports, go here.

[PIC: Monks and protestors rally on a street in Labrang, Gansu province, March 14. Reuters]

International Committee of Compromise

Published

asianwindow

on March 27, 2008

in Cricket

. 0 Comments

The ICC has always been about expediency and the latest meeting of its executive in Dubai did nothing to prove otherwise, writes Sambit Bal in Cricinfo

Once again, a meeting of cricket’s decision-makers has yielded a series of half measures. Frankly, it would have been unreasonable to expect otherwise. The spirit of cricket has been much discussed recently; the ICC’s board can rarely be accused of lacking the spirit of accommodation. There is a good case in fact for adding a C to the ICC – for compromise.

Several of these were struck in Dubai in the previous week. IS Bindra, one of the principal satraps of the Indian board, wasn’t appointed the chief executive of the ICC, so a new post, principal advisor, was created specially for him. It was decided that the World Cup will feature fewer Associates, but will yet have more matches involving them than the previous edition did. “Serious irregularities” were found in the accounts of Zimbabwe Cricket – yet not apparently serious enough to warrant punitive action. Darrell Hair, the controversial umpire who is a stickler for the rules, was reinstated, yet it was clear he will not be standing in matches involving Pakistan – and possibly also Sri Lanka.

more

Real-life stories of gay Muslims

Published

asianwindow

on March 27, 2008

in Movies and Society

. 0 Comments

In The Times, UK, a review of A Jihad for Love, a film about gay Muslims by Parvez Sharma. Parvez was born and raised in India, and educated in India, the US, and the UK. He lives in New York.

Inevitably, Parvez Sharma filmed some moving testimonies in A Jihad for Love, a collection of real-life stories that show what it is like to be gay or lesbian and living within, or in the shadow, of Islam. The stories come from Iran, Turkey, India, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

Sharma isn’t your typical campaigning film-maker. He shows how tough life can be for his subjects though he believes strongly that gay activists have behaved arrogantly in their condemnation of Iran which is symptomatic of a larger phenomenon of “Iran-bashing”. He adds: “Around 70 per cent of Iran’s population is under 30: issues are being talked about, it’s a vibrant society. And don’t forget history: a long time ago the West looked to the East as a place where homosexuality was tolerated, sometimes celebrated.”

China and Tibet: The spin campaign

Published

asianwindow

on March 27, 2008

in China, Media and Tibet

. 0 Comments

From TIME:

Cyberspace in China is a rough-and-tumble place, where mobs of virtual vigilantes can single out an innocent victim for public humiliation in a way that isn’t common in other parts of the world. But in recent days the sights of China’s netizens have been trained not on a person but on an institution: the Western media, which is being vilified as unfair, uninformed and incompetent in its coverage of the uprisings over Chinese rule in Tibet. In blogs, chatrooms, bulletin boards and even by instant message, ordinary Chinese are excoriating the international press. There’s even a special website that has been launched to attack perceived media bias. Among other transgressions, the site’s home page displays mistakes by German TV stations in which Nepalese police, shown in videos rounding up Tibetan protesters in Kathmandu are identified as Chinese.

China needs the Dalai Lama

Robert Thurman, professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and President of Tibet House US, in the ‘On Faith’ section of The Washington Post:

If there ever was a social and political movement based on faith, on spirituality, it is the 50-year campaign of the Dalai Lama for the freedom of his people, and the present spontaneous uprising of the Tibetan people who want to be free to restore their spiritual life, in the closer presence of their spiritual and political leader. These acts of truth-the Dalai Lama’s long insistence on nonviolence and dialogue in responding to the genocidal acts of one of the world’s largest military powers, and the Tibetan people’s resistance in the face of overwhelming odds-may yet produce miraculous results, as one of the world’s greatest “lost causes” becomes a possible success.

Tata lands Rover and Jaguar

Published

asianwindow

on March 26, 2008

in Business

. 0 Comments

Ford on Wednesday confirmed that it has agreed to sell its luxury UK-based car brands Land Rover and Jaguar marques to Indian group Tata for $2.3bn (£1.15bn). In The Guardian, UK, Randeep Ramesh reports from Mumbai on how Tata has persevered – and largely succeeded:

When Italy’s L’Expresso magazine last month splashed with the news that Ratan Tata (photo), chairman of India’s Tata group, was going to buy up luxury car marque Ferrari the story made front page news across the world.

Although later denied, what was surprising was no one thought a bid from Mumbai’s Tata for Milan’s most wanted brand implausible. After all Tata had spent £6.7bn buying Anglo-Dutch rival Corus. It was certain to snap up Jaguar and Land Rover.

Few remember that Tata’s first car 10 years ago, the Indica, was little more than a noisy box on wheels. It was instantly dubbed “Ratan’s folly”.

Tata buys into 40 years of trouble

In Fortune, John Elliott has a word, or two, of warning for Ratan Tata

Ratan Tata, who runs the Tata Group, one of India’s two biggest conglomerates, is buying into a history of trouble with his $2.3 billion cash deal, announced today, to acquire the Jaguar and Land-Rover companies from Ford (F). Transfer of ownership to Tata Motors is due to be completed by the end of June, and the question is whether Tata can then break a cycle of decline.

It’s been 40 years since the British government, in a bid to rebuild the country’s automobile industry, cobbled together ailing car brands such as Jaguar, Rover, Austin, Morris and Riley into a giant called British Leyland. BL, as it became known, was a failure, mainly because of endemic labor problems, uninspired products and poor quality. Since 1968, there have been many rescue attempts, but only rare short bursts of success. Several of the once proud names are long forgotten and none is British-owned; the iconic MG brand was bought three years ago by China’s Nanjing Automobile to make sports cars in China and the U.K., and the Morris Mini cult car is with BMW.

more

Previously on Asian Window:

Beyond Bawa: Modern masterpieces of Monsoon Asia

Published

asianwindow

on March 26, 2008

in Design

. 0 Comments

In Spectator, Christopher Ondaatje reviews David Robson’s book on Sri Lankan born architect Geoffrey Bawa (with photographs by Richard Powers, Thames & Hudson, 224pp, £39.95)

Although there have been many architectural books featuring the works of Geoffrey Bawa, the Sri Lankan born architect, most notably a first monograph authored by David Robson a year before Bawa died in 2003, a second book, Beyond Bawa, also by Robson, is a biographical and artistic revelation. What is surprising and different about this new edition is that it reveals an extraordinary biographical account of the talented younger son of a wealthy Moslem lawyer and his Dutch burgher wife; and also illustrates the legacy of perhaps one of the most influential architects in south Asia in the 20th century, by discussing how his inspiration has continued in a number of younger architects who worked with Bawa in his practice and who have continued his creative force today known globally as ‘tropical modernism’. Examples of his genius can be found in Sri Lanka, Singapore and Bali, as well as in resorts and residences throughout Asia.

more

In Bangladesh: fears of a climatic Armageddon

Published

asianwindow

on March 26, 2008

in Bangladesh and environment

. 0 Comments

While the least developed countries suffer the worst effects of climate change, brought about by the actions of the rich, they have no voice in global warming talks. Now Bangladesh is leading a fightback, reports John Vidal in The Guardian

On September 27 last year, Fakhruddin Ahmed, chief adviser – or head – of the interim government of Bangladesh, stood in the UN general assembly in New York and appealed on behalf of all the most vulnerable countries in the world for help and justice to cope with climate change. “This year we in Bangladesh have witnessed one of the worst floods in recent times . . . there is little we can do to prevent significant damage . . . a one-metre sea level rise will submerge about one-third of Bangladesh, uprooting 25 million to 30 million people. I speak for Bangladesh and many other countries on the threshold of a climatic Armageddon,” he said.

more

[pic: women queue at a flood shelter in Dhaka after floods last August. Abir Abdullah]

Monthly Archive for March, 2008

Is this the Indian century?

Growing gulf divides China and Dalai Lama

Human Rights Watch speaks up for Tibet

China needs the Dalai Lama

Tata buys into 40 years of trouble

Recent Posts

Categories

Blogroll

Magazines

Newspapers