The Sapan January Circle: Catching Up and Looking Ahead took place on January 25, 2026, via Zoom, serving as an annual gathering to reflect on the collective achievements of the past year and outline a vision for a peaceful, harmonious Southasia*. The meeting was hosted by Khawar Mumtaz, a women’s rights activist from Lahore, who opened the session by noting the festive but cold winter in the city and the various intellectual gatherings like the ThinkFest and the upcoming Lahore Literature Festival.
Tributes
The session began on a somber note as the participants observed a minute of silence for several tragedies and lost leaders. Khawar Mumtaz highlighted the recent Karachi Gul Plaza tragedy, where a fire in a shopping mall claimed over 70 lives due to a lack of safety procedures.
The circle then paid tribute to influential figures who passed away since their last meeting, including Dr. Arfa Sayeda, renowned Pakistani educationist, historian, and human rights activist, Pramod Bhasin, road safety activist and founder of Muskaan, Mark Tully, longtime BBC correspondent, N. Sathiya Moorthy, prolific writer on Sri Lanka and the Maldives, and Iqbal Athas, Sri Lankan defense correspondent.
2025 year in review
Beena Sarwar, co-founder and curator the Southasia Peace Action Network (Sapan) and founder editor Sapan News, provided an overview of the network’s growth since March 2021. Nearly 140 organizations have now endorsed the Sapan Founding Charter. She emphasized that the network’s goal remains centered on a Southasia with soft borders and regional economic cooperation. Major 2025 milestones included the release of Sinhala and Urdu versions of the documentary Democracy in Debt: Sri Lanka Beyond the Headlines.
Pragyan Srivastava, associate editor of Sapan News, detailed the platform’s editorial and financial success in 2025 marking its steady expansion in reach, credibility, and impact. The platform published 112 original articles on politics, peace, media, freedom, climate justice, culture, and rights across Southasia and diaspora, reaching over 174,000 readers.
Meanwhile its content was republished 76 times across 21 regional and international outlets like The Wire, Scroll, and The Friday Times. Srivastava pointed out that the platform’s social media ethics pledge reached over 135 endorsements from around the world. The year-end fundraising campaign, run by Sapan News from November to December last year as part of News Match 2025, raised $25,000, matched to a total of $50,000 for independent journalism.
Regional perspectives
The meeting featured detailed updates from activists and scholars across Southasia. Speaking from Dhaka, Khushi Kabir, Bangladeshi social activist, discussed the work of Sangat (a Southasian feminist network Network). She noted the success of a simultaneous regional film festival for Southasian Women’s Day and shared plans for a month-long residential feminist course in Nepal. Mazher Husain from Hyderabad talked about the concept of ‘multi-faith celebrations’ and a Southsian initiative ‘Voyage of Peace.’ The latter engages youth aged 15–25 across Southasia through short videos focused on cross-border interaction and interfaith harmony.
Manisha Gera Baswani, visual artist based in Delhi, spoke about her independent partition project, “Postcards from Home,” which brings together 47 Pakistani and Indian artists to address generational trauma and reminiscence of a home lost.
M.J. Vijayan from Delhi, general secretary of India chapter of Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD), addressed the illegal detention of Indian and Pakistani fishers, highlighting the disturbing new trend of arresting children, including those as young as 8 and 11 years old. Representing Families of the disappeared, Visaka Dharmadasa, peace activist from Sri Lanka, expressed concern that even cultural unifiers like cricket have begun to cause regional division, necessitating a return to foundational peace efforts.
Amrita Ghosh, Partition scholar, introduced the Southasia Archive, a digital forum aimed at mapping and archiving marginalized voices from across the region, including Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. Additionally, Shahidul Alam, photojournalist and activist from Dhaka, discussed Chobi Mela as a radical space for freedom of expression. And, Siraj Khan emphasized that “art is the only thing… which really goes across borders without visa,” sharing his work in music diplomacy and Afghan-Pakistan women’s economic empowerment.
Kanak Mani Dixit, journalist and publisher from Kathmandu, reported on the launch of the Southasia Institute for History and Philosophy in Kathmandu. He stresses on the need of a movement in Southasia through academics who are thorough, courageous and critical thinkers.
Closing remarks
Lalita Ramdas, human rights activist from Secunderabad, concludes the meeting by appreciating ‘the extraordinary range of ideas and interactions’ shared with the depth of those initiatives and stories across music, art, poetry, history, philosophy, etc. Lalita Ramdas stressed on the urgent need for political leadership that prioritizes regional friendship and bonding over conflict, stating that Southasia’s survival depends on civil dialogue and cross-border cooperation that is “uninterrupted and uninterruptible.”
– Event report by Bidhi Adhikari, Kathmandu
*Why ‘Southasia’ as one word? Because our histories entangle, our struggles intersect, and our futures are bound together. It is not just a spelling choice, it’s a political and poetic one.
Thank you!
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