How a partisan media fuels and communalises the ethnic conflict in India’s Northeast, wonders Aijaz Zaka Syed

Most editors are failed writers, argued TS Eliot.  By the same logic, television hosts must be failed politicians and activists, I guess.  Every time I watch folks like Bill O’ Reilly of Fox News and Arnab Goswami of Times Now, I am reminded of the Spanish inquisition.

While O’ Reilly has spawned around himself...

Indian American Muslim Council, an advocacy group dedicated to safeguarding India’s pluralist and tolerant ethos, on July 26 strongly condemned the violence in Bareilly (Uttar Pradesh) and areas of Assam, and appealed to members of each community to respect life and the rule of law.

The violence in Assam has claimed over 44 lives and displaced over 200,000 people from 400 villages. The conflagration has led to the largest exodus of people in the state’s recent history.&nbs...

Expressing grace concern over the recent communal flare-ups in Uttar Pradesh and Assam, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind has asked both the state governments to end violence and restore peace. In a press statement, JIH Secretary General, Mr. Nusrat Ali expressed his deep sadness and sorrow over the pitiful state of Muslims in the holy month of Ramadhan in the two large states of India. Because of the inability of the government to curb anti-social activities of communal forces, Muslims are bearing the br...

Welfare Party of India asked Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi to step down on moral grounds and if he not willing, the Congress leadership should remove him from the chief ministership as he has totally failed to control the communal violence in Kokrajhar district and adjoining areas that took the lives of around 60 people, swallowed more than 400 villages, caused properties worth crores destroyed and lakhs of people displaced. It is nothing but cruel that the Chief Minister put the entire bl...

Md. Shams Ahmed, State Convenor of WPI, Assam Chapter, in a memorandum submitted to Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, has sought the PM’s “kind intervention on the ongoing continuous and unabated ethnics clashes between the Bodos and Muslims particularly in the districts of Kokrajhar, Chirang, part of Dhubri for the last one week which has shocked the conscience of the nation”.

The memorandum demands immediate dissolution of the Assam Government headed by Tarun Gogo...