The Israel-Palestinian conflict is routinely framed as an ancient religious war between Judaism and Islam or as a battle between Israel, the Middle-East’s only ‘Western-style democracy’ and autocratic regimes in…
It was decades ago, as a teenager, that I first heard Karl Marx’s famous description of religion as the ‘opium of the people’. The impact of that pronouncement on me…
A few days ago, as Navratri overlapped with Eid, I found myself staying with a Bengali friend’s family in a pocket of Uttar Pradesh on the edge of New Delhi.…
He’s not as affable, well-meaning and certainly not at all a truth-seeker of the same kind. In terms of his potential historical impact though US President Donald Trump is destined…
Over four decades ago, as a South Indian growing up in the 'Hindi heartland' of Madhya Pradesh, I learned something that blew my mind – that Hindi was in fact…
They are not clad in black pyjama-like fatigues or have a ‘krama’ – the Cambodian traditional scarf- around their necks. Nor are they particularly young and idealistic. And yet, in…
This is a story from over two decades ago when a passionate environmentalist friend from New Zealand, who lived as I also did in the northern Thai town of Chiang…
"How can the US population even consider making Donald Trump its President, and that too for a second time? It's a question on the lips and minds of millions around…
I turned sixty a few months ago and contrary to what I imagined it would be like when I was much younger - I don’t feel very old at all.…
The Indian elite has once again proven that when it comes to choosing between saving lives and throwing lavish parties, there's no contest. As the country grapples with heatwaves, floods,…
Note: This piece of fiction (and believe me, it is complete fiction, with nary a grain of truth) was written with the assistance of an AI bot, which fashioned the…
As the trends of the recent Indian elections became clear, the Chinese rover that recently landed on the far side of the moon picked up a strange sound from Planet…
For weeks now, everyone and his uncle in India has been speculating about the outcome of the country’s general elections, hunting for clues on media outlets, studying past trends and…
For a very long time, I was absolutely certain that India could never be ruled by a Hitler. My argument was that there are already too many Hitlers in the…
It was the day after the shock results in the Indian general elections. The unimaginable had happened. The seemingly invincible government of Narendra Modi had been routed thoroughly – down…
Imagine a football match in which one team keeps committing foul upon foul without any consequences because the referee and the linesmen are completely biased in its favour. Meanwhile, the…
Soon after Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, one of the stranger promises he made was that his regime would ‘end 1200 years of slavery in India’. Mr Modi…
Dear Bhakts and Wannabe-Bhakts, Greetings from Heaven! This is a letter to all of you from Lord Ram, dictated to me on the eve of inauguration of the new temple …
Javier Milei, an outspoken right-wing libertarian economist, took Argentina's political establishment by storm when he was elected to the country’s parliament in 2021. A former radio show host and media…
Writing about the passing year, a friend of mine recently lamented the state of the world, expressing a very bleak view of the future. It was doom and gloom everywhere…
Note: Bereft of any ideas of my own and in complete desperation I asked an AI software program, ‘What would Jesus do in Gaza?’ The result was this article in…
As anyone who has watched the hugely popular Hunger Games series of movies can testify, the dystopian, totalitarian nation of Panem it depicts is eerily similar to the world we…
The daily death and destruction in Gaza has evoked painful memories for Tamils everywhere of a similar carnage half a world away in Mullivaikal, the coastal village that became the…
A two-state solution, with both Israel and the newly formed nation of Palestine getting automatic membership of the European Union. Plus, a Marshall Plan-like initiative funded by the US, UK…
"The blood of innocents flowed freely like a river swollen with injustice," and "for days the city endured terror, misdeeds darker than night itself descended." That was the renowned Urdu…
For all those who think that Israel is run by the most despicable, racist and repressive regime in the world here is some very bad news indeed. Not only are…
The brutal murders of the politician Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf in police custody and that too in front of rolling TV cameras corroborates the worst kept secret about…
On the 74th anniversary of its formation a specter haunts the Indian Republic – the specter of Monarchy. For those who want to see or hear or feel it, the…
Towards the last phase of his life K.P.Sasi, the filmmaker, cartoonist and activist, obsessed about a one-point agenda he wanted all his friends, colleagues, contacts to work towards. To ‘Defeat…
Our beloved K.P.Sasi is no more. Filmmaker, cartoonist, writer, mentor, friend and above all tireless activist championing the cause of every underdog, Sasi breathed his last, mid-afternoon this Christmas day…
According to legend, Zhou Enlai, the first premier of the People's Republic of China, when asked what he thought was the impact of the French Revolution of 1789, is supposed to…
The recent passing of Mikhail Gorbachev triggered memories from the mid-eighties, when as a young communist party activist, I would be constantly confronted with the question, ‘Why are you still…
Dear Mrs Murmu Your nomination by the ruling party of Hindutva to be the next President of India fills the hearts of all Adivasis around India with great joy. At…
I have a confession to make. That I have been converted many times. From one faith to another to yet another, endlessly. And I simply love it. Sometimes I got…
It has taken my slow brain a long time to figure it out but finally, as 2021 comes to an end, I have found a sure shot way of bringing…
There has been some heated discussion in recent weeks in India about whether the term Hindutva is the same as Hinduism or not. For those supporting the ruling BJP regime…
Origin: Unknown Crime record: Unknown Armed or unarmed: Unknown Capabilities: Unknown Motive: Unknown Category: Extremely dangerous! If that were a profile of a criminal suspect, the cop writing it would…
Note: This article is based on a presentation made on 25 October 2021 at the Congreso de Salud Socioambiental organised by the Instituto de Salud Socioambiental, Rosario, Argentina It is…
“I am planning to get my Covid vaccine shot this week” I told a very dear German friend of mine the other day over the phone. “No! Don’t do that!”…
A few years ago, on a visit to La Paz, the Bolivian capital set high in the Andean mountains, I spotted a board inside a restaurant that said ‘All Humans…
What connects the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to Remdesivir, the blockbuster medicine widely used during the ongoing Covid pandemic? First is the fact that both are based on…
Editors note: The death of former US Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld on 29 June marks the end of a man who was one of the main architects and executors…
Why should a country in the grip of a deadly wave of Covid-19, with people dying all around, remember the Emergency, a nationwide suspension of democracy, that happened almost half…
“Cow dung, cow urine didn’t work. Groundless argument. Tomorrow I will eat fish”. In mid-May this year, this simple Facebook post about the futility of bovine waste as a cure…
Covid-19 patients dying on the streets gasping for oxygen. Hundreds of wailing, desperate folks searching for hospital beds to access treatment. Even the dead denied dignified funerals, their bodies dumped…
You can call it the ‘Rihanna and Ganesha Syndrome’ – the inability of some folks to focus upon the truly divine and get easily distracted by imaginary demonesses. In India…
Rihanna, Susan Sarandon, Greta Thunberg, John Cusack - the list of well-known celebrities endorsing the struggle of Indian farmers against the country’s new corporate-authored farm laws is growing by the…
The tug-of-war between Indian farmers and government over new laws facilitating corporate takeover of the country’s agriculture is getting uglier by the hour and likely to get quite bloody too.…
In the murky netherworld of the mafia the Godfather is the one who speaks softly, but whose words carry the deadliest intent. On 15 January as yet another round of…
A popular joke among leftists in the eighties was to ask why there had never been a military coup in Washington D.C. The answer: Because it doesn’t have a US…
As 2021 arrives I am not planning to wish anyone a ‘Happy New Year’ while everything wrong with the world remains deeply entrenched. And anyway, nothing really changes with the…
For nearly two decades now Countercurrents has provided millions of readers around the world with deep insights and analysis of news, events, trends that are usually ignored by mainstream media.…
First they came for the corner shops And I did not speak out Because I was not a shopkeeper Then they came for the taxis And I did not speak…
The ongoing siege of the national capital New Delhi by hundreds of thousands of farmers represents, perhaps, the biggest revolt against ‘Company Raj’ since India’s First War of Independence way…
Can the world be changed in any fundamental way or not? Will the methods one uses to change it end up doing more harm than good? Should one mind one’s…
Murders, kidnapping, rape, police atrocities, sectarian violence, lynch mobs on the prowl. Welcome to a typical day in the life of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous, lawless and politically important…
The dismantling of European colonialism in Asia and Africa seven decades ago and then the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late eighties led to the formation of many…
“Today, the villages are dung heaps. Tomorrow they will be like tiny gardens of Eden where dwell highly intelligent folk whom no one can deceive or exploit”. Mahatma Gandhi, writing…
This article is based on the 25th Chandrashekar Memorial Lecture delivered on 20 September 2020. The original lecture was delivered in Hindi and the event was organized by Punashcha, the…
The Chief Chaddis smirked, stroking his little beard menacingly. This was the moment he and his fellow Chaddis had waited for and chewed so much cud over. They had finally…
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