Screen Sifar has been going places in the social network.
She had to leave the India network to join the Bangladesh network.
She can only change networks twice in every 60 days.
She does’nt feel displaced.Why do you have to leave one place to be somewhere else?
Cyber café’s are places all over the world and in South Asia where people go to use the Internet. It is one’s gateway to the world. These are places in the flat world where negotiations happen between the real and the virtual communities that one is a part of.
People in the sub-continent use the Internet for various purposes, and what this project seeks to do is to use the Internet to connect locales that already have had a shared common culture in the past.
But what we don’t know is what has changed, and we don’t know what could be possible in terms of cultural exchange through technology. We also don’t know the structure and texture of this Internet technology.
What do you use it for, what do you look at, what do you seek?
It is understood that livelihood drives the chunk of operations on the Internet. E-business is an emerging trend in India, so also is e-governance. I’m not that aware about Pakistan and Bangladesh.
In this sense, what is the citizen of this new combined culture and ‘State’ going to be like? In what ways is s/he going to be different? What are the economic and financial opportunities that are going to open up for her and him with the dissolution of this painful border? How is s/he going to think of her/himself?
What forms of the public are s/he going to part of, where and how will she participate to engage in discourses about her rights, her freedom and her life in general?
These are some of the questions that we will ask people.
a.Where do you use the Internet from?
b.Tell us where your nearest cyber-café is.
c.How much does it charge you per hour to use the Internet?
d.Is Internet free, or does it come with censorship?
e.What are the sites that you would usually use or look at?
f.What has the Internet done for you?
g.Most importantly how has the Internet helped you create, hone or channelise your identity?
While setting up a goal as big as a One State Solution seems suicidal to many people, I gather that there are also others out there who think that this possible and worth doing.
While we are all harrowed by the erosion of the secular fabric within the subcontinent, bringing our energies together will give us the momentum we need to see this through.
Do you need convincing? Do you need to be nudged out your and our dormancy?
Among the tasks that I envision us performing are sustaining the blog, and organising diverse initiatives under White Ribbon in order to strenghten and sustain your own idea of what it means to be tolerant, secular and plural.
Where is the place for looking at space defining interventions within identity politics in South Asia?
One often finds that the Indian political landscape or to put it largely, the South Asian Political landscape ridden with extremely tight notions of identity.Understandably because of the region’s history with the idea of religion and politics that grew around it.
As a consequence of this, people that want to speak of these ideas find themselves on a no man’s land between tight lipped conservationists and sometimes tighter liberationists.
If you don’t want speak of a revolution then where might be the space to speak in ways that are new and innovative? What is the language in which you are going to pitch your discourse of identity if you do not draw from existing discourses?
Somehow, No one wants to listen.
Read between my lines.Please.
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Image thanks to my new best friend.
The hopeful: But this is a good start. If we can have this every year or twice in a year, we can get some people thinking about the idea and maybe this will catch on, who knows. 
So let us give it a try, eh? (Sounds good for me)
The hopeless: Borders have been drawn in blood. Mighty presumptuous or stupidly naive of us to ask for a ‘United India’. One should think of peaceful co-existence, rather than dominate and swallow the neighbour under the thinly veiled pretext of ‘Unity’.
The idea is to draw from a pool of writings and and create a platform where these voices can come together, in the form of a web-site or a wikipedia entry.The writings need to be about what you, with your locusts stand I feel about the idea.If you can draw from historical, political, literary or artistic discourses, or better still create your own artistic material, then it would be great.
For non-bloggers:Send your write-ups (original and not longer than 1500 words).Send them in at onestatesolution@gmail.com.
For bloggers: Blog your thoughts.Please keep them original, concise and crisp.Tag them OSSW’07 so that your post will be traceable.
‘Na jaane kaun si mitti vatan ki mitti thi’.( We never knew which soil was the soil of our land)
– ‘Hazaar Baar ruke’, from the film Mammo.
‘How many deaths will it take to be noticed that too many people have died?’
– Bob Dylan, Blowing in the Wind.
As long as there will India and Pakistan, this fight will never stop. Too many times has this been said.
More than 2000 people were killed, slaughtered, burnt in all the violence in 2002 in Gujarat. The mainstream in Gujarat is still in denial.
About half a million people died when the subcontinent was torn apart into Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.
Bomb blasts continue to claim innumerable lives. People from each side are hurt. The real reasons behind these blasts are still elusive. We all guess: terrorism, creating communal unrest…Perhaps all these are true.
For the Hindu, Muslim and Christian Sikh, Parsi and whatever person of faith caught in the middle it is just a matter of living with dignity, with the ability to practice your faith and go on with your life which matters.
For as long as these borders remain, our psyche will always be divided, although we are not divided in our history, culture and consciousness.
We need to do away with these borders, and let us start dreaming now. Because politicians are people and it is people who create opinion. It is people like us who can put an end to communal violence.
September 10 to September 16th ,2007 is the week to blog for a united India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Voices from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh coming together to say why and how a One State Solution is possible within this subcontinent.Whether and how one State can and should be created.
Here is what you have to do:
Blog about why you want or don’t want an undivided subcontinent.How you think that the creation of One State could solve problems of religious intolerance and security in the subcontinent. And how you think this is possible. What the future holds in store for an undivided subcontinent, what could be possible…
Let us create a coalition to take these voices far and wide. The One State Solution Week. September 10 to 16th, 2007.
This is a collaborative event. If you want to design posters, hand-outs, invites…the more the merrier…
Suggestions and queries welcome.
