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Parvez Sharma is a Muslim gay filmmaker born and raised in India. At the moment his documentary "A Jihad for Love" is screening at festivals around the world. Read more about his documentary and himself on his homepage.

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Re-name and Re-write by Parvez Sharma

posted by Parvez Sharma at 13h16 GMT on Oct 4

'Democracy' is hard work and for billions around the world the definitions vary.

In India, my home country and indeed the 'world's largest democracy'- governments have been voted in and out for generations since independence in 1947. The elected have always chosen to impose their
will and the expeditious re-naming as in the case of Iran has been frequent. Hence Bombay, became Mumbai when the Hindu 'extremists' of the Shiv Sena deemed it more culturally appropriate. And now we have Madras to Chennai, Calcutta to Kolkata and so many more. The pretext is often the idea of re-claiming national identity and in some of these cases, obliterating the painful memories of a colonial past.

The Burmese 'Junta' did not waste time to re-name that nation and
today, in one of the world's most isolated places, the batons and the
bullets have fallen silent, if only for a heartbeat. Who is going to
define the idea of democracy to the troubled citizen's of this nation.
Will it be armchair pundits in the West again? Or will it be the voices
we are hearing from within? And do the voices from outside need to
reach a crescendo, for the battles inside to be won?

Always one to seek my news elsewhere, I direct you to Fear on the Streets of Yangon (on Al-Jazeera English).

This much maligned source of news from the 'middle-east' claims to have a reporter inside Burma.

What we need to decide is how to engage when 'the peaceful rise up
in protest'-Is it not interesting that Buddhist monks are leading a
'jihad' for change in a nation many of us had forgotten about?

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It is kind of crazy how a

Submitted by yudhvir on Thu, 10/04/2007 - 14:48.

It is kind of crazy how a small nation like Burma has captured the global media's attention. If not a classic good vs. evil front page story, then does Burma finally indicate that citizens of the world have taken a stand for a just cause.

Although a small part of me hopes that causes such as these have indeed encouraged people to put pressure on their governments to take a stand, the pessimist in me wonders when the Burma situation will fade into obscurity. Let's hope that it is here to stay.

Re-name and Re-write by Parvez Sharma

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