Articles by Kanak Mani Dixit
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July 2012 - Featured articles
Lady Liberty and the Ethnic Cauldron – II Un-learning from Southasia: Will Aung San Suu Kyi help Burma rise above the region’s dismal record on ethnic issues? |
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June 2012 - Featured articles
Lady liberty and the ethnic cauldron – I As the applause for her singular democratic struggle subsides, Aung San Suu Kyi will have to tackle the challenge of defining a viable nation-state while responding to the multiple assertions of identity and autonomy within Burma. |
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April 2012 - Featured articles
The Pentagon’s Southasia A new web portal run by the US military could herald an interventionist rather than home-grown regionalism. |
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October 2011 - On the way up
Adventures with a Nepali Frog Some things have changed in Nepal for a writer revising a work 15 years later. Other things, the nicer ones, remain the same. |
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September 2011 - Featured articles
Tectonic Tension Did the Subcontinent shake enough to get us prepared for the next big one? |
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July 2005 - Cover
Magic pipeline Will peace in our times be achieved because methane from Iran is allowed to enter India via Pakistan? Is it as simple as that? It is beginning to look as if it is. |
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February 2011 - Cover
Connectivity: The India-Bangladesh land bridge Can a formal bilateral communiqué be a ‘game changer’, foretell a ‘paradigm shift’, in a Southasian relationship? If India and Bangladesh manage to follow through on promises to open up their economies for transit and trade as set out in a memorandum of January 2010, a new era could dawn across the land borders of Southasia. The challenges are bureaucratic inertia in New Delhi and ultra-nationalist politics in Dhaka. |
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December 2010 - On the way up
Lumbini with Romila Didi Details about a place having the power to evoke history,Lumbini by Romila didi. |
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July 2010 - Featured articles
Nepal moves on Nepal moves on by Kanak Mani Dixit Will the prime minister´s resignation break the political stalemate? |
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May 2010 - Cover
Suntali's strange travels The last time we saw her, Suntali the Jogging Buffaloe had abandoned her calf in the hands of relations in the western Nepal midhills, and followed her heart’s desire – that of running the mountain tracks. She was spotted heading up to the Changtang Plateau of western Tibet, where the high, open desert allowed much opportunity to trot. |
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March 2010 - Featured articles
Girija Prasad Koirala (1925-2010): Southasian democrat dies at the helm Girija Prasad Koirala, (1925-2010), four-time prime minister of Nepal, died just after noon on 20 March after a protracted illness. Credited with sculpting the peace deal that ended the decade-long Maoist insurgency, GP Koirala’s political career spanning more than 60 years is also a history of the movement for democracy in Nepal. Read Kanak Mani Dixit´s Obit: ´Southasian democrat dies at the helm´ Plus: Read ´GP: Man of the Moment´, the introduction to Koirala´s Simple Convictions: My Struggle for Peace and Democracy on the life, politics and legacy of GP Koirala |
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March 2010 - Featured articles
Girija Prasad Koirala: Simple Convictions Girija Prasad Koirala, 85, four-time prime minister of Nepal, died just after noon on 20 March after a protracted illness. Credited with sculpting the peace deal that ended the decade-long Maoist insurgency, GP Koirala’s political career spanning more than 60 years is also a history of the movement for democracy in Nepal. In his introduction to GP Koirala´s Simple Convictions: My Struggle for Peace and Democracy, Kanak Mani Dixit highlights his achievements not only as the President of the Nepali Congress, but also Girija Babu´s broader legacy as a widely respected national figure. |
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February 2010 - Analysis
Letter to the whole-timer emThe future of the ‘new Nepal’ is in the hands of the Maoist ex-combatants./em |
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April 2009 - Special Report
Keeping devolution alive It is clear that without power-sharing and the recognition of the rights of all communities, Rajapkse´s regime will only further alienate Sri Lanka’s minorities. |
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January 2000 - Opinion
A new royal role King Birendra of Nepal, who just turned 55, should be more actively involved in the development concerns of his long-suffering subjects. His constitutional position would allow such a role. |
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January 1997 - Profile
Cloth Merchant Who Knows His Ropes When Harish Kapadia´s businessmen friends think he is attending a dealers´ conference in Kanpur, he may well be melting ice for tea on a pass up at 18,000 feet in Kashmir. |
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January 1997 - Cover
Lowly Labour in the Lowlands It does not seem to shame nor needlessly bother Kathmandu´s ruling classes that highland peasants by the hundreds of thousands leave the country every year to work the most wretched jobs in the plains of India. |
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March 2009 - On the way up
Longest muddy beach The longest, undivided, fully-clothed, shark-free mud-beach in the world. |
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August 2007 - Cover
A tryst with Nepali destiny Everyone agrees on the importance of holding Nepal’s Constituent Assembly elections on 22 November, and it’s beginning to look like we’ll get there |
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October 2007 - Analysis
And the people be damned The very party that injected the Constituent Assembly into the Nepali national agenda has now developed cold feet. Postponement of the 22 November elections for the Assembly would create a nation-wide crisis of confidence, but the political process must be kept within control of the eight-party alliance, including the CPN (Maoist). |
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July 2006 - Analysis
The fuzzy logic of Maoist transformation Nepal´s Maoist rebels are headed towards becoming a part of the political mainstream, but they´re not there yet. It might just happen if they show some respect for the power of peaceful change. |
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October 2008 - Report
A river at disequilibrium This ongoing crisis is a man-made humanitarian tragedy first and foremost. |
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August 2008 - Cover
An existential matter The future of pan-regionalism is through a strengthening of the sub-national regions. |
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May 2008 - Cover
The Maobaadi triumph, seeking explanation How did the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) win so many seats in the Constituent Assembly? More importantly, can they now prove to the Nepali people and the world that they can be the vanguard of pluralism and progress? |
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March 2007 - Cover
India realising Southasia Finally, South Block seems enthusiastic about the region. |
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November 2005 - Cover
SAARC: The inevitability of bilateral multilateralism emThe Southasian regionalism of SAARC is locked into the seven-or-nothing formula. If the seven member states are to make regionalism work for the sake of the people rather than the national establishments, alternate visions are necessary. One formula for peace and prosperity is to promote openness in the areas where the neighbours and India meet on their borders. When they convene in Dhaka for the 13th Southasian Summit, will it be too much to expect the SAARC summiteers to address this most practical step towards regionalism? We need more cross-border flows in place, instead of the strictly inter-capital communication that has thus far been the Association’s stagnant formula./em |
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April 2001 - LastPage
Blasting Buddhas It was in the northern plains of present-day ‘Islamic’ Bangladesh that Buddhism had its first flowering, in viharas that extended all the way here from Nalanda. And amidst Dhaka’s educated classes today, one can sense a genuine attachment to the Sakyamuni and his teachings. This being a floodplain, however, there is almost nothing other than a couple of overgrown brick mounds to prove that historical link to the Buddha. And because this is rockless deltaic country, in terms of statuary, you do not get more than a few terracotta relics. |
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March 2001 - LastPage
Do you know what your child is watching? Ernie is the prankster who loves to play with his rubber ducky in the bathtub. Bert is the whining pinhead, his character a bit like R2D2’s. Big Bird is young, innocent and bumbling, and Cookie monster devours, well, cookies. Ernie, Bert, Big Bird and Cookie Monster all speak Urdu. These innovative creations of the master puppeteer Jim Henson (1936-1990), probably the furthest advance anywhere in children’s television programming, is now available in South Asia to all who understand simple Urdu, Hindustani or Hindi. The only problem is that the Sesame Street in Urdu airs on Pakistani Television, one of the least-watched channels in the rest of the Subcontinent outside Pakistan. Besides, it is not publicised. |
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October 1999 - Cover
Gods in exile Every piece of ancient religious statuary from Kathmandu Valley that sits today in the West is stolen property. The gods must be returned from their exile, and until such time, those who presently hold them are merely custodians. For 900 years, a sculpture of Uma-Maheshwar, showing Shiva- Parvati and attendant deities in Mount Kailas, had stood in a shrine at the Wotol locality of Dhulikhel town, east of Kathmandu. The grey limestone statue standing 20 inches was stolen in 1982 and today sits on a lonely pedestal at the Museum fur Indische Kunst in Berlin. |
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March 1999 - Interview
The economic imperative for South Asia The new Secretary General of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) spoke to himial editor Kanak Mani Dixit soon after assuming office. • Do you feel confident about taking up this new South Asian assignment? |
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September 1998 - Interview
'Why should school children need visas for India, Pakistan, Bangladesh?' I A Rehman is journalist and chair of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan as well as of the Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy. He was interviewed by Kanak Mani Dixit. |
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Featured Articles
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Cinema as politics, politics as cinema 14 February 2014
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A new book on Telugu film shows that the cultural industry was tied up with caste and regional politics.
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The art of statelessness 10 February 2014
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Fragments of the lives of the Rohingya refugees in Jammu
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Reconstructing the North and democratising Sri Lanka 7 February 2014
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A recent talk on the need for democratic mobilisation of resources and a politics of self-reflexivity in rebuilding Sri Lanka’s...
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A room of his own 4 February 2014
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In conversation with Goa-based poet Manohar Shetty
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Musharraf’s last stand 30 January 2014
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A look at the difficulties and implications of trying a military ruler in Pakistan as Musharraf prepares to leave the country....
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There are many ways to destroy a city 23 January 2014
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Reflections on the recent attack targetting a Kabul institution, the Taverna du Liban restaurant.
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Inside and Out 17 January 2014
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New queer writing from Southasia suggests shifts in attitudes since 2009.
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Archives of Southasia 14 January 2014
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In celebrating the reissue of Himal’s first print quarterly, we offer a series of articles on the state of archiving in...
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The life and letters of Elizabeth Draper 13 January 2014
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The world celebrated the tercentenary of writer Laurence Sterne (1713- 1768) in 2013. A tribute to the woman who inflamed...
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Courting prospects 9 January 2014
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Despite state overtures, localised identities provide a powerful argument against Baltistan’s coarsely wrought borders....
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Autonomy under siege 7 January 2014
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Three women in the militarised spaces of Kashmir describe traumatic accounts of sexual violence and their struggles to gain...
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Seeding the future 31 December 2013
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The use of modern seeds stands to erode the genetic diversity of local seed varieties in Nepal
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Announcement
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Himal Southasian is relaunched in print! |
The archive: 25 years of Southasia
Image: Penguin India
Penguin India withdraws The Hindus
On 11 February 2014, Penguin India decided to recall and destroy all remaining copies of Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: An Alternative History. The decision was part of an agreement between them and Shiksha Bachao Andolan, a Hindu campaign group that filed a case against the publishers in 2010, arguing that the book was insulting to Hindus and contained “heresies”.
From our archive:
Diwas Kc reviews The Hindus: An Alternative History. (March 2010)
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