Hindutva ideologue Golwalker had outlined the place of the minorities in the country in his much talked about book, We, or Our Nationhood Defined (1939), There are only two courses open to these foreign elements (Muslims and Christians), either to merge themselves into the national race and adopt its culture or live at its mercy so long[Read More…]
Citing Kepios.com, which “makes sense of what people are really do online” and helps people “identify changes in digital behaviour”, Datareportal.com indicates that internet users in India remained unchanged between 2022 and 2023. For perspective, these user figures reveal that 730.0 million people in India did not use the internet at the start of 2023, suggesting that 51.3 per cent[Read More…]
PETA—People for Ethical Treatment of Animals are active in India. They want to interfere in Indian cow politics. They are against the idea of non-vegetarianism. They are against people eating chicken, mutton, pork, and beef. While making their presence felt, they go on nude protests, wherein women disrobed in public raise the banner of PETA. They are a bunch of[Read More…]
“April is the cruellest month,” so begins one of the most admired literary pieces of modernity, The Waste Land by T S Eliot (1888-1965). Published in 1923, this masterpiece was taken to be a watershed in the genre of modern poetry. It is penned during a troubled time in Eliot’s life. His marriage was in disarray, he had a personality disorder, and[Read More…]
There was no idea of gomata or gau mata in ancient India. Evidence of beef eating is found even in the oldest Indian religious text of supposedly divine origin, Rigveda. Professor D N Jha has given ample proof of the killing of cows in his famous book, The Myth of Holy Cow (2002). He cited several Western scholars and Indian[Read More…]
For many days I am searching for the latest data on Indian lynching incidents. And I find that a host of websites listed at the end of this piece are tracking incidents of hate crimes in India. They are serving the nation with gory facts that humiliate the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. I have also found that Ziya Us Salam[Read More…]
Why has the state killed Jivan, the protagonist in Megha Majumdar’s much-reviewed, highly praised novel, A Burning? For her alleged ‘crimes against the nation’, ‘sedition’—for simply sharing a Facebook post posted by one of her Facebook friends on Kolabagan Train Attack which killed more than a hundred people—for writing a caption ‘Policemen paid by the government watched and did nothing[Read More…]
When I sit to write the first line of this piece, the air around my house is filled with the war cries of ‘Jai Shree Ram’, ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ and ‘Hindu Rashtra Ki Jai’. The lanes and by-lanes are jammed with trucks on which the boys in orange T-shirts are dancing and chanting the slogans with the unique beats[Read More…]
Basanta Utsav is held each year in the month of March on the Full moon day of Falgun. Spring is welcomed through music and dances. It literally means the ‘celebration of spring’. The beautiful tradition of celebrating spring festival in Bengal was first started by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, at Vishwabharati Shantiniketan, the University founded by him. Actually, Basanta Utsav[Read More…]
The cow is held as a sacred animal by a section of Hindus. But in the cases of lynching, it becomes a political animal with which to browbeat and even murder the minorities and the Dalits. Ziya Us Salam, Lynching Files (2019) The cow was never used for spiritual elevation. In the 20th century everybody used the cow[Read More…]
Introduction In almost all myths, the low-born non-Aryan characters, from Bali to Barbareek to Eklavya to Karna, are presented as generous to the extent that none of them cry foul at being robbed of their life. In fact they willingly give it away. What does their lack of protest say? What kind of consciousness does it reflect? The essence of[Read More…]
September is the cruelest month, babu We are daily labourers We are kiln workers We are domestic maids We are casual agricultural hands It is a lean season, babu And we are pushed to the walls Of seasonal hunger and recurring wounds We sell pots and pans And keep our empty stomachs at bay It is the month of diarrhea[Read More…]
Set in an unnamed southern town amid lush plantations of pepper, bananas, coffee, rice, and narrated in soliloquy Annie Zaidi’s 184- page novel, Prelude to a Riot is a brilliant, bold, honest, critical commentary on contemporary India. “Abu doesn’t want to work the land. He says it’s pointless because we cannot take the land with us when we leave”. Abu,[Read More…]
Moumita Alam’s debut poetry collection The Musings of the Dark is a powerful poetic assertion of dissent. Dissent against what? Against state sponsored violence against Kashmiris, violence against anti-CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) protesters at Shaheen Bagh, violence against migrant labourers, daily labourers during Covid 19 pandemic. She also voices her dissent against structural violence of casteism, fascism, violence against women[Read More…]
Rabindranath Tagore was far far away from what we popularly call patriotism. Our problem is that more we have been able to erase his ideals and ideas from our everyday life; more we have been able to be ‘Rabindrik.’ It is indeed sad to recognize this bitter truth. Our understanding of Rabindranath is confined to a mere recitation of his[Read More…]
From Education to Incarceration 
Tunakataa! Saying ‘No’ to Capitalism and Imperialism in Kenya 
Rising Islamophobia and Communal Discord: An Alarming Trend in BJP-Ruled States 
Speak Truth to Power and Pay the Price! 
USA’s Wars Took 12 Million Lives in The Last 25 Years 
US to send long-range ATACMS missile to Ukraine 
In Jawan, Shah Rukh Khan makes us an offer we can refuse 
Nijjar affair poses an existential dilemma 
On the Brink of Famine 
Appeal to withdraw the notification for the public hearing for the proposed Sijimali Bauxite Mining Project 
“Making a thriller from grain” 
Key Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) Likely To Collapse In 2025-2095 
Global Biofuel Alliance at G20: Land vs Water vs Food Security- Has the government addressed the trade-offs? 
The Nijjar Murder and Indian Government’s alleged “involvement”: Reactions and Reflections 
France Will Pull Out Its Diplomats And Military From Niger, Says Macron 
Imperial Footprints in Africa: The Dismal Role of AFRICOM 
Hunger in Africa has its roots in a History of Colonialism and Neo-colonialism 
The Climate March: Magnificent and Misdirected 
Imagining a Progressive Pentagon 
“Lost Voices of Fentanyl” Rally at the White House 
Indian Government Must First Evict Dalai Lama & his Followers before Admonishing Canada for Separatist Activities 
Peasant-rebels: lineages of insurgency 
Mission to Free Assange: Australian Parliamentarians in Washington 
Bayer-ICAR Collaboration Raises Serious Concerns Regarding Indian Farm Policy 
Place of Minorities as Allotted by Savarkar, Golwalkar and Upadhyaya 
What is in the name? Attempt to stop the usage of ‘India’ by the Government 
Poona Pact: A Reappraisal 
Hate Speech Inside Parliament: Reaching a New Low 
Criminal Justice And Freedom of Speech 
75,000 Climate Protesters Marched In New York With Demand To End Fossil Fuels 
On the Dark Side of the Moon.. 
Avoiding the War on Terror would have saved over 10 million lives at home and abroad 
The Angertainer Steps Down: Rupert Murdoch’s Non-Retirement 
Climate Emergency Update, September 2023 
My appeal to Meta’s Oversight Board: Palestinian political and resistance organizations & individuals are not “terrorists” as classified by Israel 
Artificial Intelligence: Profit Versus Freedom 
How Can We Understand the Passage of Time? 
Pre- and Post-Soviet Language Policy in the East-Baltic States 
Breadcrumb 
Three Indian Movies win TIFF 2023 Awards 
My Amma (Malayalam word for Mother) passed away on August 22, 2023 at 3.10 AM. It is always difficult to deal with the passing of a parent, that too one’s mother. I thought the grief would go away. No it didn’t. All those bitter sweet memories won’t go away. At night I lie awake for hours. My friend, guide and[Read More…]
