Articles by: Abu Siddik

Place of Minorities as Allotted by Savarkar, Golwalkar and Upadhyaya

Place of Minorities as Allotted by Savarkar, Golwalkar and Upadhyaya

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…]

by 24/09/2023 Comments are Disabled India
Modi’s Looking Away

Modi’s Looking Away

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…]

by 15/08/2023 Comments are Disabled India
Vegans and Beef Politics In India

Vegans and Beef Politics In India

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…]

by 14/08/2023 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
Flames of Hatred in Modi’s India

Flames of Hatred in Modi’s India

“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…]

by 10/08/2023 Comments are Disabled India
No Idea of Gomata or Bovine Identity in Ancient India

No Idea of Gomata or Bovine Identity in Ancient India

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…]

by 28/07/2023 Comments are Disabled India
On Indian Lynching Data

On Indian Lynching Data

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…]

by 20/05/2023 Comments are Disabled India
Fear is making inroads into our homes

Fear is making inroads into our homes

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…]

by 12/04/2023 Comments are Disabled India
The Boys of my Town at Ram Navami Day

The Boys of my Town at Ram Navami Day

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…]

by 31/03/2023 Comments are Disabled India
What We Miss at Basanta Utsab

What We Miss at Basanta Utsab

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…]

by 08/03/2023 Comments are Disabled India
Cow is a Potential Political and Polarising Tool for BJP

Cow is a Potential Political and Polarising Tool for BJP

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…]

by 14/02/2023 Comments are Disabled India
Indian Myths and the Violence Against the Non-Aryans

Indian Myths and the Violence Against the Non-Aryans

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…]

by 18/09/2022 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
September is the Cruelest Month,Babu

September is the Cruelest Month,Babu

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…]

by 31/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Prelude to a Riot

Prelude to a Riot

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…]

by 01/07/2021 Comments are Disabled Book Review
The Musings of the Dark : A Saga of Our Violent Time

The Musings of the Dark : A Saga of Our Violent Time

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…]

by 22/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Book Review
Patriotism & Rabindranath Tagore

Patriotism & Rabindranath Tagore

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…]

by 09/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Translate »