SAJAforum

CONFLICT: Tracking India's separatist rebels, in the Virginia Quarterly Review

Jason Motlagh, a roving journalist who covers South Asia, has written an extensive piece for The Virginia Quarterly Review on insurgencies that persist across India, despite the country's record economic growth. Motlagh's 9,562 word piece (you read that right) involved months of reporting, and took him to remote areas of Assam, Chhatisgarh, Orissa and Kashmir. His work--including the photographs he took--was funded by a grant from the Pulitzer Center.

In response to a few questions I had, Jason emailed me about what motivated him to undertake this project:

My editor for the VQR piece was Ted Genoways, who heads it up and is based in Charlottesville, Virginia. As for the coverage of the Maoists, I decided to dig deeper upon realizing the striking dearth of coverage -- both in the Indian and international media. To date there's a lot of vague assertions and sensationalism in the Indian media on the Maoist issue, and I think the reluctance of local journalists to go the extra mile on the story is troubling. Kashmir and Islamist terror still dominates coverage, as far as internal conflicts go. The rest of the mainstream press, with some notable exceptions such as Tehelka, are more willing to feed the hype surrounding India's rise as an economic power. When leftist extremism does make the news, scant attention is given to the root causes of the insurgency. It is this sort of narrow vision--among media and the government--that the Maoists are trying to exploit.

From "Maoists in the Forest: Tracking India's Separatist Rebels":

AFGHANISTAN: The Trouble with Translators

Without translators, foreign troops in Afghanistan would only be able to communicate with locals by pointing to simple pictures on brightly colored cartoon cards. Translators are indispensable, and yet they rarely appear in media coverage of the conflict.

A remarkable 8-minute video report by John D McHugh on The Guardian’s website, "Afghanistan: Lost in Translation," highlights the extent of the problem by following some American soldiers whose work is hampered and whose lives are in danger because their Afghan interpreter literally lies to them. [Readers should be warned that the soldiers’ language is a bit salty.] As McHugh notes, “The translators have become unexpected powerbrokers…, and sometimes they just don’t translate everything they hear.” [photo by John D McHugh]

Of course, the media have often pointed out the fact that there aren’t enough trained interpreters who know the languages spoken in Afghanistan, but this 8 minute long report breaks new ground by showing what the stakes are for a soldier in a battlezone to be able to communicate with local people. This is my summary of the video:

An American position in Khost Province is hit by rockets launched from somewhere near a village. Soldiers from Charlie Company of the 173^rd Airborne Division go to the village to find out if the inhabitants know anything about the attack. They arrive to find the place deserted—“This is just like every other town, everybody disappeared,” says the American commander.

A lone, frightened-looking man carrying a shovel appears on the road. The translator asks where the elders are. The conversation is a bit confused but the man seems to be saying that they are in their houses. Here it becomes clear that the translator himself does not speak particularly good English. The commander snaps at the translator. “They’re in their house? Are they sick? What did he just say?” The translator tells the man to fetch the elders but he walks off seemingly in the wrong direction. Time passes.

MOVES: Jyoti Thottam named Time's South Asia bureau chief

UPDATE: Listen to a recording of a webcast with Jyoti Thottam a week before her big move. She discussed her appointment; the current state of newsweeklies; some of what she'd like to cover; and her career.

Jyoti Thottam, former SAJA president and Time magazine senior editor, has been named the magazine's South Asia bureau chief. From a memo by Rick Stengel, managing editor, and Michael Elliott, editor of Time International (see below for the full memo):

Next month, Jyoti Thottam will leave New York and relocate to New Delhi as our bureau chief there. Jyoti was born in India, but raised mostly in suburban Houston. She now lives with her husband and daughter in Brooklyn. She came to TIME from On magazine/Time Digital, and before that was a newspaper reporter in Queens and in Jacksonville, Florida. (She is the co-author of a play, Interrogations, based partly on her crime reporting in Queens.) Jyoti got her start as an intern at the Wall Street Journal, and her writing has also appeared in the Believer and the Village Voice. She graduated from Yale, where she studied religion and economics, and she also has a master's degree from Columbia, where she studied international affairs and learned Hindi. All those skills were indispensable during the year she spent as a freelancer traveling around India after grad school, and she's looking forward to using them again covering South Asia for TIME.

Asked why this move now, Thottam told SAJAforum: “South Asia is one of the most exciting places in the world right now, and after 10 years in New York City, I was ready to try something new. I can’t imagine a better place to be a journalist, and I’m looking forward to covering the region's stories, big and small.”

She and her family leave in mid-June. Press queries can be sent via saja[at]columbia.edu (subject="for Jyoti Thottam") - click on the photo for a high-rez version.

While at Time, her most high-profile story was her March 1, 2004, cover story on outsourcing, "Is Your Job Going Abroad." She appeared on the PBS show "Charlie Rose" that week to discuss the issue, along with Columbia University professor Jagdish Bhagwati.

Time HQ has been a very hospitable home for South Asians. Here are just some of the folks there now:

• Romesh Ratnesar, is one of two deputy managing editors, under Rick Stengel
• Bobby Ghosh, world (foreign) editor
• Ratu Kamlani, chief of reporters

Thottam replaces Simon Robinson, who was the South Asia bureau chief since 2006. He now moves to the  London office to be a senior editor there. The memo below also notes that Zoher Abdoolcarim is the new Asia editor of Time International.

REQUEST: Advice for American journalists going to South Asia for the first time

[UPDATE, June 1: Check out the more than 40 sets of tips and advice posted from journalists and others in the comments section. Among those added most recently, tips from Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes and Peter Bhatia, executive editor of The Oregonian.]

This summer, many more American (desis and non-desis) journalists and journalism students are going to South Asia for internships, short reporting stints, etc., than ever before. I am tracking several such folks and wanted to tap SAJAforum readers and SAJA friends for tips, advice, websites, etc.

Please answer the following questions in the comments section below: What advice would you give to journalists going to the subcontinent for the first time? A para or two is all that's needed - bullet-points welcome. Feel free to share story ideas, web resources, blog links, people-to-know, books, etc. Be specific when you can, please. If you want to let the journos contact you, you must put your e-mail address into the body of the comment - otherwise, it won't show up.

This is your chance to have your ideas seen by American journalists before they get there and get caught in the whirlwind of reporting, writing, producing.

Check back to see what answers show up - am sure some of the thoughts will be contradictory, some redundant, some counterintuitive. That's part of the fun. We'll make sure this gets seen by those South Asia-bound folks.

Here are a couple of resources to start you off:

• SAJA South Asia Self-Study Guide for Journalists
  http://www.saja.org/resources/selfstudy.html
  Created in 2002 by Bruce C. Robertson and Anandashankar Mazumdar, this is a good starting point for everything from geography to history to arts, culture and politics.
  It needs updating and if you'd like to volunteer to help out, please e-mail saja[at]columbia.edu (subject line = "Self-study Guide"). Unless we get reliable folks who are able to take on this project in a major way, we will not be able to update this.
• SAJA Stylebook for Covering South Asia and the Diaspora
  http://www.saja.org/resources/stylebook.html
  Created in 1998 by a team led by Krishnan Anantharaman of the Wall Street Journal, this stylebook is meant to provide quick, easy to understand info. From Krishnan's foreword: "It's important to understand that just as South Asia is not monolithic, neither is any one ethnic, racial, religious or other community in South Asia." Amen. It needs updating and if you'd like to volunteer to help out, please e-mail saja[at]columbia.edu (subject line = "Stylebook"). Unless we get reliable folks who are able to take on this project in a major way, we will not be able to update this.
• SAJA Freelance Forum
  http://saja.org/resources/freeforum.html
  See list of hundreds of freelance reporters, producers, etc, in dozens of cities in South Asia.

What suggestions do you have? Post them in the comments section below.

BOOKS: "Foreign Correspondent: Fifty Years of Reporting on South Asia"

A new book, published in India, looks at the work of foreign correspondents in South Asia. "Foreign Correspondent: Fifty Years of Reporting on South Asia" is edited by Simon Denyer, Reuters bureau chief in New Delhi; John Elliott, president of the Foreign Correspondents Club and Bernard Imhasly, former president of the club (Penguin India, 450 pages; I could).

From the publisher's note below: "This collection marks the fiftieth anniversary of the founding in 1958 of the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of South Asia (FCA)—renamed the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) in 1991."

From a review by Melissa Bell in Mint:

Here is another addition to “the India book”—a genre in itself now, with so many foreigners writing about India and the subcontinent. Within that genre, this book is a refreshing change—fewer clichés (though they’re still there) and actual in-the-moment reporting. The editors of Foreign Correspondent: Fifty Years of Reporting South Asia have put together a collection of reportage and photography by foreign correspondents from a variety of publications, covering almost every aspect of the subcontinent from 1949 to 2007. The result is an engaging look at the way South Asia has evolved in the last 50 years.

Four months ago, I became an associate member of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC)—the organization that produced the book to mark its 50th anniversary. I joined primarily because I love to drink their delicious whisky in the clubhouse on Thursday nights, but also because I’m a lover of the Ernest Hemingway and Stephen Crane brand of fearless foreign correspondents, some of whom have invented the hallowed genre of literary journalism.

PRESS FREEDOM: Barry Bearak safe at home in Johannesburg

Here's a message sent today by Barry Bearak of the New York Times after his safe arrival in South Africa:

I'm happily back in Jo'berg, having evaded a likely re-arrest by going overland through Zambia rather than risking the Harare airport. I received a lot of support from many places and chief among the supporters were my colleagues at The Times and my former students and friends at Columbia. I'm extremely grateful.

Zimbabwe is a very sad place right now. It appears that Mugabe is going to get away with stealing yet another election. That means continued suffering for the Zimbabwean people. My own understanding of their terrible problems increased a lot in the Harare cells, where I met many good people. I'm hoping for the day when I can safely return to that country and continue reporting.

Regards,
Barry

Earlier coverage of Bearak's ordeal:

• April 5, 2008: NYT's Barry Bearak arrested in Zimbabwe; Dileepan Sivapathasundaram released (includes CPJ alert)
• April 8, 2008: Bearak released; awaits hearing

ADVERTISING: In India, white models on the ascent

In The Washington Post, Rama Lakshmi examines the omnipresence of Caucasians in India's modeling world, beckoning from billboards to TV ads to storefronts. From "In India's Huge Marketplace, Advertisers Find Fair Skin Sells":

These days, the faces of white women and men, mostly from Eastern Europe, stare out from billboards, from the facades of glitzy, glass-fronted malls and from fashion magazines. At an international automobile show this month in New Delhi, most of the models were white.

The presence of Caucasian models in Indian advertisements has grown in the past three years, industry analysts say. The trend reflects deep cultural preferences for fair skin in this predominantly brown-skinned nation of more than 1 billion people.

This may seem the logical conclusion to Indians, who are all too familiar with skin-color description tags on bachelorettes ('wheatish', 'dusky'), fair-skinned Bollywood stars (men and women) and skin-lightening products like Fair and Lovely.

European models have been drawn to Mumbai, India’s cultural capital (even as more Indian models go abroad), and advertisers prefer them because they're often less inhibited than their Indian counterparts (and not as expensive as Western European models). There's also the belief that ‘fair’ and ‘beautiful’  go together and the perception that brands with international faces are of better quality and therefore reliable. One model interviewed, Tanya Bohinc, is Slovenian and newly arrived.

BOOKS: Wash Post on India's "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

Emily Wax of The Washington Post writes about author Kancha Iliah and his illustrated children's storybook "Turning the Pot, Tilling the Land: Dignity of Labor in our Times":

"Turning the Pot" is the first Indian children's book to openly challenge the 3,000-year-old caste system, which ranks professions from scholars to shoemakers in a rigid hierarchy and is reinforced by some interpretations of Hindu theology.

"This book is a weapon for India's millions of low-caste children who are fighting for respect, just as African Americans did and do in the U.S.," said Ilaiah, who also wrote the best-selling anti-caste book "Why I Am Not a Hindu." "How do you change ancient prejudices in any society? You do it through repositioning caste at childhood. If young children are taught respect over a bedtime story or in class, that could help enormously."

Three thousand copies of the book have been bought for schools by UNICEF, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may also order copies for the school system. Wax suggests that the book is part of a larger movement in India to teach about historical discrimination against lower castes, and comes at a time when the economic divide is growing.

Upper-and middle-caste children in India often grow up with domestic servants, including maids, personal chefs, door openers and dog walkers. In many such families, Indian children are never asked to clean their rooms, wash the dishes or empty trash, because such tasks are seen as beneath them.

Ilaiah hopes that children will learn to see that's not the case. "Today, Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo and Christian Louboutin are famous cobblers known for designer footwear at over $750 a pair," he said. "In India, because of the caste system, people who did this work were labeled 'untouchables' and forced to live away from the main village. They were not allowed to prosper."

Earlier on SAJAforum:

• "MEDIA: Courting Dalits as Readers"
• "LANGUAGE: Calling Dalits what they really are"
• "BOOKS: Plain Speaking: A Sudra's Story"
• "HUMAN RIGHTS: Human Rights Watch says India's failed to Uplift Dalits"

EDUCATION: The NYT on the failure of India's schools

Just a few weeks after The New York Times reported on Japan's newfound lust for Indian-style education (see our earlier post),  NYT South Asia bureau chief Somini Sengupta has a front-page piece on the "spectacularly low levels" of education at many Indian primary schools. The report is pegged to a new study from the nonprofit Pratham. From "Education Push Yields Little for India's Poor":

The latest survey, conducted across 16,000 villages in 2007 and released Wednesday, found that while many more children were sitting in class, vast numbers of them could not read, write or perform basic arithmetic, to say nothing of those who were not in school at all.

Among children in fifth grade, 4 out of 10 could not read text at the second grade level, and 7 out of 10 could not subtract. The results reflected a slight improvement in reading from 2006 and a slight decline in arithmetic; together they underscored one of the most worrying gaps in India’s prospects for continued growth.

The article is accompanied by some great photos by Ruth Fremson - click here to see a slideshow. At a school she visits in the Bihari village of Lahtora, Sengupta finds food shortages, absenteeism and indifference.

Another teacher arrived 90 minutes late. A third did not show up. The most senior teacher, the only one with a teaching degree, was believed to be on official government duty preparing voter registration cards. No one could quite recall when he had last taught.

PRESS FREEDOM: Pakistan deports reporter Nicholas Schmidle

[UPDATE, Feb. 3: Schmidle writes essay in WP about his explusion]

UPDATE, Jan. 12, 4:30 pm NY time: A SAJAer reports that Schmidle and his wife are now safely in DC.]

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Nicholas Schmidle, a freelance reporter whose latest piece, "Next-Gen Taliban," appeared in January 6 issue of The New York Times Magazine, has been deported from Pakistan. From the CPJ press release, which quotes NYT Mag editor Scott Malcolmson:

Security services members visited Schmidle on Monday, and the local police gave him a deportation order on Tuesday, according to Malcomson. While the deportation order was dated December 29, 2007, editors at the magazine say they believe it was back-dated, and that officials issued it after the magazine’s article ran. The reporter, who is also a fellow at the Washington-based Institute of Current World Affairs, regularly freelances for The New Republic and Slate. He had been in the country 16 months, Malcomson said.

Schmidle is currently in London and is scheduled to return to the States.

“I have yet to hear the Pakistani side in this, but if this is a sign that journalists will be subject to reprisals for reporting honestly on conditions in Pakistan, that is a cause for serious concern,” Gerald Marzorati, editor of the New York Times Magazine, told CPJ.

More at the Huffington Post:

Some believe that Schmidle's article antogonized Pakistani government officials because he conducted interviews in Quetta where the Taliban are operating in full public. These sources suggest that Pakistan government authorities want to limit exposure to the fact that they have done nothing to shut down the Taliban in Quetta and/or are turning a blind eye to the Taliban's operations theres.

Visit Nicholas Schmidle's website.

Also read our earlier post on the assault on NYT Pakistan correspondent Carlotta Gall, from December 2006. That also took place in Quetta, where Schmidle's article is set.

Post your comments below.

[See SAJAforum coverage, sources and resources about the Bhutto assassination]

BHUTTO: AP reporter Zarar Khan gets $500 for confirming Bhutto's death

[ RESOURCE: Benazir Bhutto Assassination ]

Associated Press reporter Zarar Khan was at the rally in Rawalpindi where Benazir Bhutto was killed, and managed to be the first to confirm she had died by rushing to Rawalpindi General Hospital. From a memo to AP journalists, reprinted by Jim Romenesko at Poynter.org:

With no car available, Khan ran until he flagged down a passing motorcyclist who took him the rest of the one-mile journey. Then he talked his way past police at the gate, past a Bhutto guard at the door and finally got inside the annex to the operating theater.

There a party aide confirmed that Bhutto was in serious condition and undergoing surgery. Khan phoned in that news (on a borrowed cell phone, since his had been lost in the bombing chaos) and then, when a doctor emerged and spoke to weeping party leaders, Khan learned from Bhutto's personal secretary that she had died. He got confirmation and time of death from a second party aide, while correspondent Munir Ahmad in the Islamabad bureau got further confirmation from a military source.

That gave Pakistan CoB [chief of bureau] Mat Pennington enough to file the FLASH with which AP broke the tragic news to the world.

The memo concludes by saying that Khan won a weekly prize of $500.

Post your comments below.

INDIA: Scott Carney on The Bone Trade and U.S. Medical Supply Companies

Scott Carney is an (perhaps the only?) American-born journalist working full-time out of Chennai, India (most correspondents live in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore). As someone who focuses mainly on investigative journalism, he's made waves with some of his stories for Wired, NPR and other media outlets. Back in Feb. 2007, we wrote about his coverage of the India trade in human organs. In May 2007, he an extended series on "Surgeons, Slums and Money: Organ Trafficking in India." That series became the basis for the Indian section of a National Geographic Explorer documentary her worked on that aired in mid-November (see a clip and read Carney's take on it).

From organs, he has moved on to bones: He has a piece running today about the bone trade in Wired and an NPR version, too. In June, he traveled to the state of West Bengal and tracked down a bone factory where human bodies are dug up from graves, defleshed and then eventually sold to medical supply companies in the US and Europe. From "Inside India's Underground Trade in Human Remains":

A constable in a sweat-stained undershirt and checkered blue sarong lays a ragged cloth over a patch of mud. He jerks open the back door of a decrepit Indian-made Tata Sumo SUV what passes for an evidence locker at this rustic police outpost in the Indian state of West Bengal. A hundred human skulls tumble out onto the cloth, making a hollow clatter as they fall to the ground. They've lost most of their teeth bouncing around the back of the truck. Bits of bone and enamel scatter like snowflakes around the growing pile.

Standing next to the truck, the ranking officer smiles and lets out a satisfied grunt. "Now you can see how big the bone business is here," he says. I crouch down and pick up a skull. It's lighter than I expected. I hold it up to my nose. It smells like fried chicken.

Read the rest of the piece here and post your comments below. Scroll below to see a chart of what U.S. companies pay for human bones.

See ScottCarneyOnline.com for his portfolio of stories and his blog.

NEPAL: Two Disturbing Developments Against the Press

Two disturbing developments in Nepal. Pradeep Kaphle of the Federation of Nepali Journalists reports that a journalist has been kidnapped and another had his car set on fire.  See details on both events - and post your comments - below. SAJAforum was alerted by AAJA Asia chapter president, Ken Moritsugu (now an editor in Bangkok for the AP; formerly in Delhi as a freelancer). 

ROUNDUP: Coverage of the 60th Anniversary of India/Pakistan

[Update: Several new items continue to be added below. Comments welcome...]

Happy birthday, independent India and Pakistan! [the tiny Reuters photo on the left is by Amit Dave - see the caption and full photo here.]

August 14-15 marks 60 years since the British left their former colony of India, leaving behind two free nations (eventually becoming three when East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971) and one of the most horrific bloodbaths in history.

We are collecting web links to various stories from around the world about the anniversary, so please post them below or e-mail saja[at]columbia.edu. Your analysis of the coverage is also welcome.

First, some history: Stories from 1947

• NYT: Front page story on Aug. 15, 1947 by Robert Trumbull (see replica of front page below)
  Other NYT stories that ran in 1947
• Time: India: Liberty & Death - Oct. 12, 1947 (see replica of cover below)
• SAJAforum collection of South Asian magazine covers includes several from 1947 - just click back in time on the slideshow
  Also see SAJA collection of historic front page stories
  (other links welcome!)

Coverage from 1997, the 50th anniversary

• CNN: India & Pakistan: 50 Years of Independence (big package)
• Time: Special package of stories
  The Price of Freedom: 50 Years Later, the Scars of Division Remain
  Mahatma's Miracle: How Gandhi spent Aug. 15, 1947
  Land of Plenty: Salman Rushdie Finds Reason to Celebrate
• Hurrying Midnight by Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre
  also see a Time review of the authors' "Freedom at Midnight," from 1975
• PBS Newshour: Pakistan Celebrates (transcript of news story)
    India Turns 50 (David Gergen interviews Shashi Tharoor)
• Harappa.com: 50 years of India, Pakistan & Sri Lanka movies/newsreels

Coverage from 2007

Packages/roundups:

• Time International's cover story & several stories: India Charges Ahead (ran last week in Asia, Europe; did not run in US edition, which had a Katrina package)
• Forbes package includes several stories, op-eds (by Amartya Sen and others), even a video
• Financial Times: several reports and features, including a slideshow
• The Guardian: several stories on India & Pakistan
• BBC: several stories linked at Partition: A Quick Guide

Stories:

• SAJAforum: Posting about The Observer on Coopers Camp, the refugees at the easter border of India by Dan McDougall
• VOA: Pain of Partition Lingers by Steve Herman (audio & text)
• NPR: India, Pakistan Mark 60 Years of Independence (audio)
  
  • From Guns to Cereal, Military Dominates Pakistan (audio & text)
• Yahoo: Pakistan Marks Independence Day
• Forbes: At 60: Pakistan's Potential & Pakistan's Conundrums by Ruth David
• Reuters: India, Born in Violence, Celebrates Miraculous Survival by Simon Denyer
• Reuters: Pakistan Celebrates, Warns of Meddling by Augustine Anthony
• The Journal News (NY): Rockland's India Independence Day Festivities by Amisha Padnani
• Asbury Park Press: India-Pak Enmity Evaporates in Melting Pot by Shruti L. Mathur

Opinion, editorials, etc:

• Slate: The Parallels Between India '47 and Iraq '07 by Fred Kaplan
• The New Yorker: Exit Wounds: The Legacy of Partition - review of "Indian Summer" by Alex Von Tunzelmann, reviewed by Pankaj Mishra
• The Economist: The Unruly End of Empire - review of "The Great Partition" by Yasmin Khan
• Indivual-Land: Pakistan at Sixty
• IHT: Pakistan's First Three Generations by Mohsin Hamid
• SAJAforum: Essay on the anniversary by Ambreen Ali
• IHT: India's democratic Path by Salil Tripathi
• Dorf on Law: Now we are Six(ty) by Prof. Anil Kalhan of Fordham Law
• BBC: Have Your Say - What is the Legacy of Partition?
• Daily Candy: Indian Summer
• Wild River Review: In A State of Partition (a novel excerpt) by Aneesha Capur
• Boston Globe: The Pakistan Problem by H.D.S. Greenway
• CFR.org: India & Pakistan at 50 by Lee Hudson Teslik
• NYT: India's Internal Partition by Ramachandra Guha
  
  • After 60 Years, Will Pakistan Be Reborn? by Mohsin Hamid
• The Guardian: The "Poor" Neighbour by William Dalrymple
  • Every one of is a minority by Shashi Tharoor
• Baltimore Sun: India Beat the Odds to Achieve Democracy by Shashi Tharoor
• Time: The India Advantage by Ishaan Tharoor
• Forbes: India and the United States by Mira Kamdar (see her new blog)
  
  • India @ 60 by Amartya Sen
  • India's 40 Richest
• NPR: Media emboldened under Musharraf by Fasi Zaka

Please post your links and comments below!

MAGAZINES: 130+ South Asian Covers From 1921 to the Present

The cover on the right, "India: Liberty & Death" is what ran on the cover of Time on Oct. 27, 1947.  And it's a part of a major SAJA research project that you can participate in. Starting in Oct. 2006, we have been building right here the largest database of major U.S. magazines featuring South Asia and South Asians.

Below is a collage/slideshow of the covers we found - 75+ 85+ 100+ 125+ 130+ as of now. This not a comprehensive list and we need your help to make it better. If you know of a cover image we missed, please let us know in the comments section. Better yet, include the URL or file of the image. Or e-mail us at saja[at]columbia.edu - subject line = "South Asian covers." We will keep adding to this slideshow as you help us find more covers.

A quick analysis and trivia (add your own below).

• The images on the cover seem to fall into these major categories: photos/illustration/cartoons of newsmakers; and photo illustrations/cartoons featuring some typical subcontinental elements, including elephants (lots of elephants!), turbans, snake charmers, sari borders, multi-armed gods/goddesses, etc, etc.
• Since SAJA is most interested in tracking the American press, we are only including the U.S. editions of Time, Newsweek, Businessweek, etc. The Asian editions of these mags regularly feature South Asian themes. We have also included the U.S. edition of The Economist, which is a separate edition created for American audiences.
• Time is the only publication which has full archives of its covers online and easily accessible. It's search function, too, is very good. Once you find a cover you are interested in, you can read the table of contents and read the stories themselves. You can also buy the cover images, ready for framing or already framed.
  If you have access to Newsweek and other mags' covers, please help fill in the gaps.
• Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was popular with the editors of Time. He made the cover  six times, his daughter, Indira Gandhi  and the most famous Indian of them all, Mahatma Gandhi  (no relation, of course), only three times each (see results for a search of "Gandhi").
• Gandhi's first appearance, in March 1930, is in a drawing so unusual that you may not  recognize him.
• In the run-up to Partition, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and Sardar Patel, a major Congress leader, both made the cover once each.
• Nehru's repeated appearances show you how the world has changed. I can't easily imagine a near-term scenario when a leader from anywhere in South Asia makes multiple appearances on the covers of the U.S. editions of Time or Newsweek. I would love to be proven wrong, of course.
• While three other British Viceroys made the cover of Time (Irwin, Linlithgow, Wavell), Lord Louis Mountbatten never made the cover as Viceroy (he did make the cover, in June 1942, for his leadership during World Word II).
• The nuclear test of May 1998 by India and Pakistan did not get full cover treatment in the U.S. As you can see from this Time cover, Frank Sinatra's death moved the test to a secondary story and  a cover mention; same thing for that week's Newsweek.
• In the last couple of years, almost all the covers have to do with India's economy, rather than South Asia's politics, security, etc.
• We couldn't find Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on a major U.S. magazine cover - though he must have made it at least one - let us know if you know if you find one.
• Naeem Mohaiemen says in the comments: "Bangladesh's independence war in 1971 was mostly covered as the 'India-Pakistan war' in US media, and most of the focus was on last 20 days when India intervened on behalf of Bangladesh."

Please take a look and post your comments, analysis, etc, below. You can control each image by clicking on the forward, pause and back buttons.

SOUTH ASIA-RELATED COVERS, 1926-2007 (in reverse order)

Post your comments below - help us make this list better! If you can't see the covers above, click here.

[This is just an example of the kinds of activities that SAJA does. You can support us by becoming a member - just $10 a year for students, $20 for journalists, $40 for everyone else. Sign up now. Or you can make a donation of any amount (click "I will attend" on that link).]

OBIT: Dilip Ganguly, Veteran AP Journalist, Dies

Dilip Ganguly, a veteran AP newsman best-known for extensive coverage during the 1991 Iraq War, died Sunday, July 29, 2007, in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) India.  He had taken charge of the Kolkata bureau in India in April, after covering Sri Lanka for a decade. From the AP obit:

Dilip Ganguly, whose 21-year career at The Associated Press saw him report from Baghdad during the Gulf War, on the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide and on stories across South Asia, died on Sunday. He was 57.

Ganguly, in a coma since suffering a brain hemorrhage on July 14, died in Calcutta,
the eastern Indian city where he was based as a correspondent for the news service, said his son, Shonal Ganguly.

"Dilip loved being a journalist. His career had taken him around the world and he had shown repeatedly through his hard work and his earnestness just how good a journalist he could be," Shonal Ganguly said.

Among the high-profile assignments Ganguly undertook - and the one he was most proud of - was covering Baghdad at the start of the Gulf War in 1991.

Click on photo, from 1994, for hi-rez version

[ See some of his reportage below.]

Arul Louis, an editor with the New York Daily News, and former colleague, shared his thoughts on Ganguly with SAJAforum:

Dilip Ganguly was the quintessential journalist-adventurer: Always looking to get into
places where everyone else was trying to get out of.

From our days at the United News of India in the 1970s, Dilip dada was forever fighting for the toughest and most dangrous assignments: A riot in Old Delhi or an upheaval in Bangladesh. And dreaming of being a roving reporter hitting all the hot spots.

And he had an eye for the unusual -- and for looking at the usual from an unusual angle. (He once proposed a feature to the Illustrated Weekly on paan spitting habits; Kushwant Singh, the then-editor, sent back a two-word telegram: "Spit out.")

MOVES: Steve Coll to Head New America Foundation

Steve Coll, former Washington Post managing editor and South Asia correspondent; author of the Pulitzer-winning "Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001;" and 2002 SAJA Journalism Leader Award winner is leaving full-time journalism to become president of the New America Foundation, a major think tank in Washington, D.C. (it has a 100+ staff and an annual budget of $10 million). From the press release:

The Board of Directors of the New America Foundation announced today the appointment of Steve Coll as the Foundation’s next President & CEO. Coll will succeed New America’s founding President & CEO, Ted Halstead, who will remain on New America’s Board.
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“Steve Coll has the right combination of intellectual energy and achievement, managerial experience, and personal stature and integrity to make New America even better in its second chapter,” said Fallows. “As a manager of creative talent, he is deeply experienced. And as a public intellectual and creative talent himself, he sets an admirable model for our organization.”

Among the current fellows are the following South Asians:

• Parag Khanna - see his latest essay, in GOOD magazine: "Peshawar Politics."
• Rajan Menon - see his latest essay, in The Boston Globe: "Pakistan's Uncertain Future."

Learn how you can apply for a fellowship here.

NAM's site is NewAmerica.net:

The New America Foundation is a nonprofit, post-partisan public policy institute whose purpose is to bring exceptionally promising new voices and new ideas to the fore of our nation’s public discourse. Relying on a venture capital approach, the Foundation invests in outstanding individuals and policy solutions that transcend the conventional political spectrum. Headquartered in our nation’s capital, New America also has offices in California and New York.

Congrats to Steve, who's been a great friend to SAJA for several years now. You can read his old SAJA bio here. Post your comments below.