· December, 2006

Stories about India from December, 2006

India: Going back to Cochin

  27 December 2006

Pooja Malpani goes home to Kerala after a year and a half, and already, things are a little difference. “The whole scenario seems so chaotic with a 2 laner being used as a 1-5 laner and I’d feel really scared in a car when a bus was next to us...

India: Music Season in Chennai

  26 December 2006

Suraj is in Chennai (Madras) as the music season peaks in the city. “What expectations would you develop if your first day of the music season starts off with a casual dinner and chat with your favourite artist? :)”

Guadeloupe, India: 152nd Anniversary of Tamul Hindus’ Arrival

  26 December 2006

Atout Guadeloupe announces (Fr) that Guadeloupeans of Hindu Tamul origin celebrated the 152nd anniversary of their ancestors’ arrival in Guadeloupe on Dec. 24. Says the feed: “Hindus arrived after the second abolition of slavery.” The ceremony which took place in capital Pointe-a-Pitre included offerings of flowers to the ocean and...

India: Community Video Unit and Dalits

  25 December 2006

Reflections in a window pane on the power of video and overcoming oppression. “When the use of Video by a team of six Dalits, working for a Community Video Unit, set up by Navsarjan, Drishti and Video Volunteers transcended all barriers of caste, it brought upon relief for an entire...

India: The day MGR died

  25 December 2006

Metroblogging Chennai remembers the Christmas Eve of 1987, when a famous politician died. “The size of the crowd was unimaginable – hundreds of thousands of people. The driver had to inch along. People peered in, saw us foreigners and the wreath, and parted to let us pass.”

India: Compulsory HIV Testing

  23 December 2006

The Life and Times on compulsory pre-marital HIV testing. “Andra Pradesh just called for compulsory HIV testing before marriage and everyone seems to agree that this is a violation of individual rights.”

“India Should Become a Model for Africa”

  22 December 2006

At Le Blog de PKJ Agency, Frederic Kingue Johnson reports (Fr) the thoughts of Cameroonian Jacques Bonjawo, a former senior manager at Microsoft and CEO of Genesis Futuristic Technologies: “Bonjawo is convinced that there are lots of similarities between India and Africa and that it is imperative that the black...

India: The glory of strikes

  21 December 2006

Random thoughts of a demented mind on enjoying a Bandh (strike) in West Bengal. “Postponing a bandh? What kind of lunacy is that? Don’t people understand that the bandh needed to be on 21st (Thursday), 22nd (Friday) so that with the weekend (23rd and 24th) and Christmas (25th) we would...

India: The Martial Race

  20 December 2006

Amardeep Singh on the myth of martial races in colonial India. “And recently I've been reading a book on the Gurkha regiments, (Byron Farwell's The Gurkhas), and after reading a number of chapters I'm ready to throw out the designation entirely. “

India: Reservations and Muslims

  20 December 2006

Indian Muslims on exclusive spaces in Higher Education for minorities. “I do not support exclusive schools and colleges for a particular community because they just are a blow to the secular ethics of this country.”

India: A monastery in Zanskar

  18 December 2006

It isn't has wonderful photographs from Zanskar of a monastery called Phuktal. “The monastery, which belongs to the Yellow Hat Sect of Tibetan Buddhism, has a history which dates back to 15th century. It is carved out of the lime stone mountain wall, with a walled frontage.”

India, Haiti: Matrimonials

  18 December 2006

India-based Haitian blogger NatifNatal ponders (Fr) India's matrimonials. Whereas in the West, she says, people fall in love and then marry, “here you marry the one your parents chose along many parameters such as caste, religion, income, dowry etc… and then, after many years of joint living, you just can't...

GV Summit Delhi '06 Session Four: Tools and Technology

  18 December 2006

The room is alive with post-coffee buzz, as this session, led by Salam Adil and Preetam Rai, tries to get under the skin of the tools and technology that would broaden out the range of people writing and reading blogs worldwide. In Salam’s twist on GV’s tagline, The world is...

GV Summit Delhi ‘06 Session Three: Language and Translation

  17 December 2006

David Sasaki has put together a remarkable session on translation at the Global Voices conference. It begins with a conversation led by John “Feng 37″ Kennedy in Chinese between the half dozen Chinese speakers in the room, then a five-person conversation in Swahili, led by Ndesanjo Macha, then a lively...

GV Summit Delhi '06 Session One: GV's Past, Present, & Future

  16 December 2006

In the first session of the Global Voices '06 summit, co-founders Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman looked back at where Global Voices has been and forward to where it is going. Where We've Been Global Voices Online was born out of a meeting of a small group of bloggers from...

India: Surviving Budget Airlines

  14 December 2006

Dateline Bombay has a post with tips on surviving India's budget airlines. “And its not the time factor only. Be ready to confront bawling babies, stressed out mothers, countless parents scurrying after restless children, family members shouting for each other and minor bruising from baggage trollies as they brush past...

Madagascar: Samoosa? Sambosa? Sambos?

  13 December 2006

Mad de Madagascar delves (Fr) into the history that brought samoosas (however spelt and prounouced in the region) to the Indian Ocean (Reunion, Madagascar, Mauritius) from India. The blogger then offers a video of a French chef's recipe and adds that in Reunion, cousins have emerged made with cheese or...

South Asia : People, Prayers, Movies and Politics

  13 December 2006

The latest buzz from different blogs from South Asia: Bangladesh: - Mezba of a Bengali in TO, a Bangladeshi expat living in Canada describes why is it beneficial to sacrifice an animal back to his country during Eid-ul-Azha. - Rumi of Drishtipat predicts the fate of Bangladesh's future if the...

India: Free drugs for the HIV positive

  12 December 2006

myHimachal on steps taken by the government in Himachal Pradesh to combat HIV/ AIDS. “The Himachal Pradesh Government would be providing free medicine to the HIV affected people, besides reimbursing the traveling charges of the patient alongwith an attendant to visit antiretroviral centre for checkup and treatment and also provide...