Daulat Ram Bhagat is a retired school teacher from Doda. He belongs to
the Scheduled Caste Megh community. In this interview he talks with
Yoginder Sikand about the Dalits of Doda and inter-community relations
in the district.

Q: What impact did the Partition have on inter-community relations

The British Broadcasting Corporation may still call them "Low cast Hindus" leaving the faith of their fathers, but for the 528 Hindu Dalits amongst almost ten thousand gathered in a central park in Nagpur on 14 October 2006, it was possibly the first, and so far only, real interrogation of India`s

Some persons come into this world to write a new chapter in human era. As Moses, they lead the leaderless mobs through the Red sea of a debasing journey of slavery to the land of freedoms. Mahatma Karamchand Gandhi is among such charismatic personalities. As the Moses of his times, Gandhi st

The Golden Jubilee of the conversion to Buddhism of Dr. Ambedkar and his followers, is a call to usher in a new era in religious tolerance, harmony and mutual respect in our beloved motherland. The significance and impact of this `Conversion` in Indian society, has to be assessed in a deep and compr

My dear Humphrey,
Greetings, love and peace from Karachi .
Thank you for your e-mail dated 3rd October 2006. At least you have broken the silence which we very much wanted from somebody representing the illegal and defunct Church of Pakistan and irrefutably who would be better than you purporting

A group of self-described "progressive" Christian evangelicals calling themselves "Red Letter Christians," and led by the left-oriented Sojourners magazine and left-oriented religious pundits like Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo, has recently emerged in the body politic. These self-proclaimed "progressi

9/11 terrorist attacks on US soil were remembered through out world. The peace activists condemned evil of terrorism and vowed to fight till end. The gatherings, vigils and prayers were organized to condole and express solidarity with families’ of victims of September 11, 2001.
The terror a

Released by the US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
This report is submitted to the Congress by the Department of State in compliance with Section 102(b) of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998. The law provides that the secretary of state, with the assistance of the a

Canadian history starts normally “with the French who came first as fishermen and later as explorers in the sixteenth century and stayed to settle,”1 though the Ojibway people have been in North America for centuries before them. The Ojibways are scattered now across Canada and the Un

APROPOS of Mr Z.A. Jalali’s letter ‘Islamiat and Pakistan Studies’ (Sept 11) I should like to say that he is wrong when he says that millions have been converted to Christianity. Muslims in rural areas may be ignorant about their religion but have not been converted because the l

We Salute you Shaheed-i-Balochistan, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti
You paid back with your blood whatever debts you owed

The Bhambore Hills is drenched in blood, silent, painted red
The Baloch cubs miss the roar of the Tiger of Balochistan

Dr Shazia mourns in London as rapist Captain Hammad dances,

Back in the early 90`s, there was a weekly program telecast on one of the Pakistani Channels called the "Darkside"
The introduction of which went like this:
"Man lives in a sunlit world
of what he believes to be reality
but â€" there is unseen by most
a place that is just as real
but not

I have devoted much of my life to arguing that religion is the finest vehicle for individuals and societies to become decent, good, moral (you choose the term you prefer). For example, in 2005, I devoted 24 columns to making the case for Judeo-Christian values as the finest system of values ever dev

The Islamic republic of Pakistan appeared on the world map on August 14, 1947. The struggle for independence started much earlier than official partition. The population of the country is about 148 million. The minorities form approximately 3% of the total population and the Christians const

Last week, unidentified gunmen shot at and critically injured Manzoorul Hassan, editor of the Urdu magazine Ishraq in Lahore. Ishraq is published by the Lahore-based Al-Mawrid Institute, brainchild of one of Pakistan`s few somewhat liberal Islamic scholars, Javed Ahmad Ghamidi. It is suspected, alth