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Image Description: LGBTQ+ victory parade 2018 in Calcutta, India, a sign reads: “Queers for Democracy not for Emergency” When I recently attended the hustings for the OULGBT society, there was a lot of talk about how marginalised students (people of colour and trans students) within the community felt as though they didn’t belong in the […]
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Image description: pride protest march at night Globally, 2020 has been a historic year for LGBTQ+ people. Alongside the Pope updating his stance on same-sex civil unions (something I wrote about earlier this term), we’ve also seen a ‘rainbow wave’ in the US, with more LGBTQ+ people elected than ever before. However, as queer people […]
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The Oxford Bangladesh Society, the Oxford Pakistan Society and the Oxford India Society are hosting an online zoom event to discuss partition. This is the first time that the societies have come together to discuss the historic event, which took place 74 years ago. The Zoom panel discussion, which will be held on Saturday 21st […]
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Image description: a dark hospital room. Morality has played a key role in the coronavirus crisis. Doctors were forced to choose who to save, public health officials were forced to weigh freedom against safety, whole societies were put on halt. All in the name of morality. After all, it would be criminal to stand aside […]
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Image description: K.K. Shailaja, Kerala’s health minister, smiling Kerala is a small state on India’s Malabar Coast – home to 35 million people and renowned for its peaceful backwaters and the tea-covered mountains of the Western Ghats. Despite being over 5,000 miles away from the UK, Kerala’s careful yet unrelenting response to the COVID-19 pandemic […]
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Image Description: figure doing a yoga pose (involving a handstand) against a colourful backdrop I am a Yoga with Adriene fanatic. Most days begin with rolling out my yoga mat and doing 30 minutes of stretching, deep breathing and being vaguely annoyed that my heels don’t touch the mat in downward-facing dog. I have, however, […]
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Image description: The famous Gandhara Buddha: a beautiful and moving fusion of Greek, Indian and Persian artistic motifs (Pakistan, 2nd century CE) Note: The author would like to clarify that the professor mentioned in this article is not an employee of Oxford University, nor is the summer school described one affiliated with the University. “Fancy […]
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Image description: Woman in Adhmedabad A few days ago I woke up to a headline which brought back the unforgivable discrepancy between how the majority and minorities are treated in India. This time, the place of divergence was a hospital: it was discovered that Civil Hospital, a public hospital in my hometown, Ahmedabad, had allegedly […]
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Image: Hijras in Laxman Jhula. Image credit: “Hijras in Laxman Jhula” by Quixosis is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 India has a complex relationship with the trans community. Historically, trans people have occupied a unique space in rituals; yet they still fight for basic human rights today. Many people in the West are not aware of India’s intersex and […]
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Image description:Police in Kashmir confronting violent protestors, December 2018 Few borders are as heavily militarised as the Line of Control, which separates Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan. The border sees frequent shelling and exchanges of fire between paramilitaries, killing almost 600 people and maiming hundreds more since 2018. It is a physical testament […]
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When I was thinking about my upcoming trip to India, I thought I would eat curry all the time. Saag aloo, chana masala, brinjal bhaji, kodo saag… I love my veggie curries. So when I got to India and lost my appetite for curry, I was disconcerted. Why did my taste buds suddenly betray me? […]
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On the 1st of October, Catalonia – one of Spain’s richest regions – had a referendum. It was quickly declared as ‘unconstitutional’ by Constitutional Court of Spain since the country’s 1978 Constitution affirms the ‘unity of the state’ – but this is hardly surprising. What is surprising, however, is that despite the initial excitement and commotion that it inspired, the referendum does […]
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Back in 2015, I subscribed to Dawn, Pakistan͛s biggest English language news magazine. It was an impulsive decision, prompted by a fascination with the lives of my ex-countrymen across the border – if one separated twin brothers at birth, brought one up as a Muslim and the other as a Hindu and set them loose […]
Continue ReadingA derisive critique of one of India’s greatest pastimes – cricket – and a powerful satire that deconstructs the deep-rooted ironies of India’s post-modern society, Selection Day is a fictional novel by Aravind Adiga, an Indo-Australian writer and journalist, appearing in paperback for the first time in September 2016. Through the story of two young […]
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Last week, an intriguing newsflash on Indian national television about an unplanned PM Modi address was followed by an announcement that left the country flabbergasted. Without warning, the Indian government decided to scrap the 500 Rupee (just under £6) and 1000 Rupee (just under £12) bills in a bid to clamp down on “black money” […]
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At one point in time, when beginning a conversation about flash-points in the world, one would turn immediately to Kashmir. That time is now gone. The conflict remains, but we don’t speak of it too much. It’s stale. The Line of Control (the result of the 1972 Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan) currently divides […]
Continue ReadingWhen the Aam Aadmi – Common Man’s – Party first stepped in to politics, you’d have been tempted to laugh at their prospects. An anti-corruption party, with no experience of governance, taking on the established big guns of the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), seemed unlikely to make headway in the quagmire-cum-minefield of Indian […]
Continue ReadingEngland once again have a seam attack to be feared Although still not the finished article, England’s bowling regained some of its old vigour and force under the masterly stewardship of James Anderson and Stuart Broad. Anderson, now just three wickets away from Ian Botham’s record of 383 test wickets, was back to his magical […]
Continue Reading354 days. The amount of time the English cricket team went without winning a test match. A painful period which saw them being completely blown away by Ashes rivals Australia in the winter, followed by a home series defeat at the hands of Sri Lanka at the start of this summer. The beginning of the […]
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