Whose Sentiments are Hurt? This poser is slowly being raised – may be – in rather muted terms in this part of the world. Right from Karachi to Patiala or Uttarakhand to B’desh concerned citizens or victims of this bogey, one finds there is an increasing audience to this query. You could easily listen to it among the Ahmadiya Jamaat[Read More…]
‘To Kill a Mocking Bird‘ This novel by Harper Lee published in 1960 – which focusses itself on a white lawyer Atticus Finch’s rather lonesome struggle for justice for a black young man who has been falsely accused of rape of a white girl, in a town ‘steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy’ has mesmerised generations of readers and even[Read More…]
Whether the proposed inauguration of Manusmriti at Telugu University, Hyderabad be stopped ? As per reports appearing in a section of the press, the The Veda Dharma Prachara Trust has translated and published Manusmriti from Hindi to Telugu which will be inaugurated in a mass programme to be held at Telugu University in Hyderabad on 11 th of Feb 2023.([Read More…]
Can the Guwahati High Court’s Judgement on ‘Illegal Demolitions’ act as a break to the growing normalisation of ‘Bulldozer Justice’ ? There are interventions of courts which occasionally reverberate across the country. The recent judgement of the Guwahati High Court which had suo moto taken up a petition regarding ‘illegal demolitions’ of houses in Village Salonabari, Nagaon district in Assam[Read More…]
The search for enemies of ‘Mother India’ has perhaps finally ended for RSS. It is the ‘ecosystem of Islamists, evangelists, cultural Marxists and global tech giants Google, Facebook and Twitter’ is being seen as India’s major challenge. A senior RSS functionary – who also coordinates work between RSS n BJP – shared his piece of mind about it at a[Read More…]
Time the ruling dispensation decides whether it is committed to rule of law and protection of rights of victims and survivors of heinous crimes or their perpetrators ? Truth has an uncanny ability of popping up suddenly when you are least aware of it. PM Modi and his closest confidant Amit Shah must be realising it of late. Thanks to[Read More…]
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell[Read More…]
Why criticism of religion should now come on the agenda ? There are some ‘unnatural deaths’ which remain a mystery forever. Whether death of Mahant Narendra Giri, of the Baghambari Math, Prayagraj (earlier Allahabad) last year – who was found hanging in his room, merely a day after he had a meeting with a senior minister of the state government,[Read More…]
Fariba Dalir and Sakin Behjati’ prison sentence has just begun. It was in the month of April that the Iranian courts finally convicted these two women – recent converts to Christianity – for their ‘attempts to put national security in danger’. One among them has been sent to a much dreaded jail near Tehran. (https://www.en-hrana.org/tag/fariba-dalir/) Interestingly neither Fariba nor Sakin[Read More…]
1. We lost Gauri Lankesh, journalist, activist and very passionate human being, exactly five years back It is now history how she was assasinated by rightwing Hindutva fanatics outside her home in Rajarajeshwari Nagar on 5 September 2017. A killing which shocked not only the people of Karnataka but everyone who believed in a just and equitable society elsewhere.[Read More…]
Whether Remission of Sentences of her Perpetrators offers a template for Victims / Survivors How Justice Would End for them now onwards ? Who gets ‘Amrit’ , who gets ‘Vish’ ? Hindu mythology according to ‘Vishnu Purana’ talks about gods getting ‘Amrit’ (nectar) and asuras ( demons) getting Vish ( poison) after the Samudra Manthan of Kshirsagar. Well, in[Read More…]
‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’ – French critic, journalist and novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808-1890) AIIMS, the premier medical institute in the country is in the news again albeit for wrong reasons. The Parliamentary Panel headed by Kirit Premjibhai Solanki, which looks into issues of caste discrimination in specific institutions has come out with a[Read More…]
Why the Corporate Czars are Silent over increasing attacks on Social Fabric and rising Communalism Celebrity actors and players share an interesting commonality in this part of South Asia. Their moral compass normally veers towards the ‘righteousness’ of the rich, powerful and the influential. Lynching of innocent people on the streets for their faith, social and governmental hounding of lovers[Read More…]
When Government itself Does Not Have Any Qualms in rationalising Drona Mindset [H]istory has come to a stage when the moral man, the complete man, is more and more giving way, almost without knowing it, to make room for the . . .commercial man, the man of limited purpose. This process, aided by the wonderful progress in science, is assuming[Read More…]
A note on ‘Indian Muslims’ by Ms Humra Quraishi Farid, the earth questioned the sky, Where are the mighty captains gone ? In their grave they rot, was the reply And rebuked for tasks Not done Baba Farid Shakarganj ( 1173- 1265) A video of a photographer jumping on the dead body of a hapless ‘encroacher’ from Assam has gone[Read More…]
Review of ‘ From ‘Nazneen to Naina’ “To get a name is one of the few things that cannot be bought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted.” – British writer Samuel Johnson ( 1709-1784) – poet, playwright, essayist, biographer, critic, editor The idea to be fascinated by individuals –[Read More…]
Legendary freedom fighter and Civil Rights activist Harohalli Srinivasaiah Doreswamy popularly known as HS Doreswamy breathed his last yesterday. The 103 year-old Gandhian, who kept the ‘conscience of Karnataka till his very last breath, and was the tallest public intellectual, who appeased none and spared none‘ would be remembered for his enthusiasm for public causes till he remained alive Born[Read More…]
Whether people of the world will have to learn to live with the virus? As India and many parts of the world seem to be engulfed by the second or third wave of the Coronavirus epidemic – which is more dangerous and has appeared with new symptoms – this idea is being pushed from different quarters. Newspaper articles or surveys[Read More…]
The Metropolitan Magistrate’s recent damaging observation vis-a-vis Delhi Police while acquitting 36 foreigners associated with Tablighi Jamaat who were accused of flouting Covid 19 protocols have largely gone unnoticed. The magistrate in the judgement acknowledged the possibility of the ‘[p]olice picking up these individuals with the malicious intention of implicating them under the directions of the Union home ministry.”(https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/justice-again-tablighi-acquittal/cid/1800862) Definitely[Read More…]
‘You may burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas those books contain have passed through millions of channels and will go on.’” Helen Keller, An Open Letter to German Students ‘Fahrenheit 451’ It was the name of a movie which had appeared in mid-sixties. ( 1966) The only English movie directed by[Read More…]
Review of ‘Religious Nationalism – Social Perceptions and Violence : Sectarianism on Political Chessboard‘ by Ram Puniyani, Media House 2020 “Blatant dictatorship – in the form of fascism, communism, or military rule – has disappeared across much of the world. Military coups and other violent seizures of power are rare. Most countries hold regular elections. Democracies still die, but by[Read More…]
Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K, he knew he had done nothing wrong but one morning, he was arrested. These opening lines of Franz Kafka’s classic novel, The Trial, published just over a century ago, in 1925, still ring true. Joseph K, the novel’s protagonist, is cashier at a bank. On his 30th birthday, two unidentified agents arrest[Read More…]
Belarus-born American writer Evgeny Morozov, a scholar of the political and social implications of technology, is among the early technology sceptics whose words have now proved prescient. Morozov had questioned the claim that the internet would challenge dictatorships even at an inconvenient time to do so. While thousands were out on streets during the Arab Spring, he delivered a Ted[Read More…]
The bias that social media platforms such as Facebook display reflect their own world-view as much as it does the regimes they support. A few gave the appearance of being truly psychopathic individuals. The mass of others were ragged and illiterate peasants easily roused to hatred of the Tutsi. Perhaps the most sinister people I met were the educated political[Read More…]
How does a poet respond to the situation of a city under siege? For a poet, a crisis can trigger a tenacious journey even in the midst of a siege. The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s Memory for Forgetfulness tracks the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon in which Beirut, where he lived, was bombed. “Beirut, [is] surrounded by Israeli tanks and official Arab paralysis,” he wrote. Beirut is holding on to its nerves as it strives to “protect the radiance of its meaning as the capital[Read More…]
Will we ever know the category-wise distribution of vice chancellors of the forty central universities located across the country? Thanks to the rules governing these universities, and those of the University Grants Commission, there is no such record. This form of “castelessness” at the top is coupled with marginal representation of teachers from socially and physically marginalised sections. Be it[Read More…]
Does anybody still remember the Dalits of Chakwara, a village around 50km from Jaipur in Rajasthan, who had launched a struggle to gain access to the pond in their village? It is more than 18 years since the Dalits, supported by human rights organisations, won that fight for water. Their undertaking had echoes with the historic struggle launched by Dr[Read More…]
What happens to caste when Indians migrate to Western countries? Do their feelings of being born superior or inferior, their belief in the purity-pollution ethic, just melt away? The “model minority” has tried to avoid a conversation on this issue but it returns to haunt them time and again. Now the American state of California is at the centre of[Read More…]
The outlawed Ranvir Sena—the private army of upper caste landlords of Bihar—is in the news again. It recently threatened the Bihar chief of the Bhim Army, Gaurav Siraj, and one of its activists, Ved Prakash, through a Facebook post. The so-called army has “ordered” its “sainiks” to “arrest” him dead or alive. The sena is apparently peeved over how the[Read More…]
Even today the attempt is to whitewash Manusmriti, not shun it. But all is not lost as the ripples of Black Lives Matter have reached Indian shores. It was 1927, the second phase of the historic Mahad Satyagrah was on, and Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar led thousands of people in burning the Manusmriti, an act he compared with the French Revolution[Read More…]
Darren Sammy has revealed he faced racism in India at a time when the world is battling racism. India needs to join this fight. Darren Sammy, the famous all-rounder from West Indies, is a legend. He has led his country team and is the only captain to have won two T20 World Cups, in 2012 and 2016. His achievements in[Read More…]
Malappuram, Kerala’s lone Muslim-majority district, made history recently. The 5,000 mosques in the district would remain closed indefinitely. Logic behind this decision is simple. As the state is witnessing spike in Coronavirus infection recently, it was found more prudent to keep the doors closed for devotees. (https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/mosques-unite-to-stay-closed/cid/1779566?ref=search-page) Panakkad Sayyed Sadiq Ali Shihab Thangal, a leading Islamic Scholar and Malappuram district[Read More…]
The killing of a pregnant elephant has caused national outrage. The elephant had strayed into a village in Palakkad, Kerala, and is said to have been fed a fruit stuffed with firecrackers, which exploded in its mouth. It is impossible to comprehend the tremendous suffering of the elephant, who died a painful death. It is also learnt that people in[Read More…]
It is inevitable that the virus will spread anywhere people gather in numbers. India went for the world’s toughest lockdown in March, when just about 500 Covid-19 cases had been reported. And it has started withdrawing the lockdown when India has become the seventh-worst pandemic-affected nation, with over 1.91 lakh infections and close to 5,500 deaths. India is registering giant[Read More…]
Is “God” really deaf, that you need to call out so loud to communicate your prayers? In his time Kabir, the great 15th-century poet-saint, raised this question in his own inimitable style. One can only imagine the ire of both Hindus and Muslims that he must have invited, yet that did not deter him from questioning their rites and practices. He continued to expose the society he lived in. Now his poser about noise being an integral part of religion has received a fresh lease[Read More…]
No doubt the clarification that India will not map Covid-19 infections on the basis of religion has many heaving sighs of relief. But will the peace last? “Move for community-based mapping of coronavirus?” a recent news item in a prestigious daily asked, getting tongues wagging about “closed-door meetings at the highest level”, though no “official” decision had been taken in them. The Ministry of Health declared that any such news is “baseless, incorrect and[Read More…]
It was exactly 13 years back that the Thorat Committee, constituted in September 2006 to enquire into allegations of differential treatment of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students at the premier medical institute, AIIMS—was released. The first of its kind in independent India, this three-member committee led by then chairman of the University Grants Commission, Sukhdeo Thorat, had looked deeply[Read More…]
‘The workers’ and peasants’ government… calls upon all the belligerent peoples and their government to start immediate negotiations for a just, democratic peace. By a just or democratic peace, for which the overwhelming majority of the working class and other working people of all the belligerent countries, exhausted, tormented and racked by the war are craving [we mean] an immediate[Read More…]
A medical emergency is no pretext to impose a political emergency. How many policemen in civil clothes are required to deliver a mere summons to an editor of a web journal 700-k away in an age of email and WhatsApp? The recent action of the Uttar Pradesh police, where it sent a posse of 7-8 policemen, in civil clothes, in[Read More…]
The rediscovery of scientific collaboration across borders is a welcome development. Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. Marie Curie. Does the 5G network have any link to the novel coronavirus outbreak?” Well, any sane person on this part of Earth[Read More…]
Rare are those photographs which can be declared iconic right after they are taken, without awaiting the approval of the connoisseurs, critics or people. It is an ordinary-looking photo, of a large team of people, dressed in white robes, disembarking from a plane and being welcomed by someone wearing a white coat too. Take a closer look at the frame[Read More…]
Yad ihasti tad anyatra, yan nehasti na tat kavcit. ‘Whatever is here might be elsewhere, but what is not here could ever be found’.—The Mahabharata, 1.56.33, from Meera Nanda’s The God Market: How Globalisation is Making India More Hindu, Random House 2009. It was the fag end of the 1st decade of the 21st century when the historian Rink Shenkman wrote his marvellous book, Just how[Read More…]
Bella Ciao! Bella Ciao! A song which traces its origins to the struggles of working women (rice-weeders) in 19th-century Northern Italy, and which later became an anthem of anti-fascist struggles there, recently made a comeback on the streets of Rome. Well, there was no mass gathering, obviously, but you could hear people’s voices sing not only Bella Ciao from windows and balconies but many[Read More…]
“Though this be madness yet there is method in it.” Hamlet, William Shakespeare. The saffron brigade’s ever-readiness to stigmatise people holding differing opinions and dissenting voices reached a new low recently. Perhaps it was the saddest day in post-independence India when a Karnataka BJP legislator hurled abuses of being a ‘Pak agent’ and ‘fake freedom-fighter at 102-year-old freedom fighter, H[Read More…]
This ‘Veer’ is a divisive figure within the RSS-BJP, tough for even the Sangh parivar to paper over. The Savarkar Sahitya Sammelan, which was organised with much fanfare in the national capital, proved to be rather a tame affair. With the talk of Savarkar being posthumously honoured with the Bharat Ratna in the air, the two-day gathering was considered important.[Read More…]
PM Modi didn’t mention former RSS chief Golwalkar on his recent 114th birth anniversary. The idea is to implement his ‘essence’ in private while not mentioning him in public. The 114th birth anniversary of Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar went unnoticed. Barring a stray article by a second-rung leader of the saffron party in a national daily, none from the top hierarchy deemed it[Read More…]
Seattle City Council, one of the most powerful city councils in the United States, recently made history. It became the world’s first elected body to pass a resolution asking the Indian government to repeal the CAA, stop the National Register of Citizens and uphold the Indian Constitution. It also sought ratification of United Nations treaties on refugees. The said resolution[Read More…]
‘Death ends all enmity’ (Marnanti Vairani) goes a maxim in Hinduism. The story also goes that when Ravana was on death bed, Ram had even asked Laxman to go to him and learn something which no other person except a great scholar like him could teach him, declaring that though he has been forced to punish him for his terrible crime, ‘you are[Read More…]
The arrest of yet another alleged bomb-maker with right-wing links should lead to action at last. ‘When Crimes shoot up, they become invisible. When pain becomes unbearable, cries are no longer heard.’ —Bertolt Brecht Can the provocations of a cabinet minister, who openly raises controversial slogans, be considered a “breach of peace” or are they merely attempts to “gauge people’s mood”,[Read More…]
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attempt to further his deeply-sectarian and divisive agenda at Belur Math, global headquarters of the Ramakrishna Mission founded by Swami Vivekananda, has backfired. His controversial defence of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019 at the historic math in which he invoked Vivekananda himself has enraged a broad spectrum of people and formations. The CAA is, of[Read More…]
Uttar Pradesh is dealing with CAA as it dealt with crime: encounters. Seventy-six year old advocate Mohammad Shoaib fought to have innocents branded as terrorists under repressive laws released, and risked multiple assaults by right-wing lawyers as he took these cases through various courts in Uttar Pradesh. His contemporary, former police officer SR Darapuri became a human rights activist and writer after he retired.[Read More…]
Dharshini, aged 34 years, one of the Sri Lankan Tamil refugees living at a camp in Tamil Nadu’s Gummidipundi, is really disappointed these days. (https://www.news18.com/news/india/fear-of-deportation-looming-large-sri-lankan-tamil-refugees-play-wait-and-watch-in-hope-of-indian-citizenship-2419791.html). She was hoping against hope that the government would finally decide to grant citizenship rights to her and her family members after waiting for all these years. Somebody had told her that the government is[Read More…]
BR Ambedkar wrote in Annihilation of Caste that “…the world owes much to rebels who would dare to argue in the face of the pontiff and insist that he is not infallible. I do not care about the credit which every progressive society must give to its rebels. I shall be satisfied if I make the Hindus realize that they are the[Read More…]
Academician, writer and social activist Zaheer Ali in Conversation with SubhashGatade about his latest book ‘Romancing With Revolution : Life and Works of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’ (Aakar Books, Delhi, 2019) and why Faiz is ‘ extremely relevant in today’s India’ This is the hour of madness, this too the hour of chain and noose You may hold the cage in[Read More…]
Coexistence between social groups was a social reality and a primary tenet of Indian life, long before the word secular was included in its Constitution in 1976. Now that a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court has delivered a “historic” judgement on the Babri Masjid dispute, there is a sense of disquiet. This is not just on account of the[Read More…]
Last year, a statue of freedom fighter and first education minister of independent India, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, was destroyed by Hindutva mobs at Kankinara in North 24 Parganas district, West Bengal. At the time, there were communal flare-ups in many districts of the state in the aftermath of aggressive Ram Navami marches, the first of their kind in the[Read More…]
History is witness that Buddhism, which originated in the Indian subcontinent, posed a challenge to brahmanical Hinduism. It is also recorded history that Buddhism was completely wiped out of this region centuries later, through means violent and non-violent. But the Hindutva supremacists, compelled by their desire and fantasy to re-shape national identity, want India’s past to match their views on[Read More…]
Ghatam Bhindyat, Patam Chhindyat, Kuryat Rasbharohanam Yenken Prakaren, Prasidho Purusho Bhavet Break earthen pots, tear clothes, ride a donkey: Men try to achieve popularity by any means. It was 2006 and DH Shankarmurthy, a nondescript swayamsevak, was handling the higher education ministry in the HD Kumarswamy-led coalition government suddenly hit the national headlines. The trigger was his unusual demand to[Read More…]
No commentator even asked why the home minister—a graduate in bio-chemistry who has also worked as a stockbroker and in co-operative banks [Sheela Bhatt, “What Amit Shah’s fall really means”, July 28, 2010]—was found the most apt person to inaugurate a two-day seminar on a subject of history at Banaras Hindu University where he shared his pearls of wisdom. His emphasis was that[Read More…]
BJP’s poll promise of Bharat Ratna for Savarkar, who inspired a wide spectrum of fanatic individuals and violent organisations, shows the moral vacuousness of the Hindutva project It was in the wee hours of dawn of the 21st century that renowned scholar and historian, Eric Hobsbawm, had talked about the process of “destroying the past” to “modify” it or how[Read More…]
The speech by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) supremo Mohan Bhagwat on its foundation day (Dusshera) has now become an event, watched with interest. The speech itself has a long tradition within the organisation, which all its affiliated (anushangik) bodies look upon as a guiding light. This year was no different. Donning the Sangh’s uniform, the top echelons of its organisations[Read More…]
The popularity of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, which present female role models before young readers, has proved rather phenomenal. Within a span of three years, it has been published in 47 languages around the world and has sold more than a million copies. The plan to render a Turkish version has met with a big roadblock. A board for[Read More…]
Amruta Fadnavis – wife of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis – found herself at the centre of controversy two weeks back. Her birthday greetings to PM Modi – whom she wished ‘Father of Our Country @narendramodiji a very Happy Birthday -…’ – on her twitter evoked reaction from twitterati. Her ‘height of ignorance’, was pointed out and her attempt was[Read More…]
Jinnah propounded his two-nation theory in 1939—exactly two years after Savarkar presented it. Who could have been the best prime minister of independent India? Nehru or (Vallabhbhai) Patel? For more than last five years, we have been a witness to this manufactured debate—courtesy Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has tried all the tricks in its kitty to create a false[Read More…]
A simple query sometimes occasions judicial intervention: Does the right to freedom of expression apply merely to believers? On September 6, the Madras High Court dismissed a Public Interest Litigation filed by M Deivanayagam raising such a question. The petitioner wanted the atheistic inscriptions placed under the statue of Periyar, father of the Dravidian movement, installed in Tiruchirappalli, to be[Read More…]
Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. The word lynching conjures up images of a dark period in the history of the United States of America. Between 1877 and 1950, white supremacist gangs murdered 4,000 African Americans, while[Read More…]
Scientists have barely offered resistance to pseudoscience. This must change—IIT students show how. Surely India’s scientific community must be waking up to the realisation that their silence is detrimental to scientific development and allows many varieties of mischief to breed. In a rare show of gumption, students of the elite engineering institute, IIT Bombay, have slammed the recent decision to invite the Human Resources[Read More…]
…an historian who is indefatigable in the pursuit of knowledge and prolific in its publication, and who is above all a devoted partisan of the truth. … The early history of the country has been illuminated by Professor Thapar, whom I now present, more than by almost any other scholar. An historian of that period who seriously wishes to refute[Read More…]
A brief history of books, resistance, the police and politicians. It is humanly impossible for even the most learned judge to have read every book referred to in their court. For a brief while this week, the judge conducting the trial of activist Vernon Gonsalves, an accused in the Bhima Koregaon incident of 2018, became an example of this. That[Read More…]
“He came, he saw and he concurred“ – Caption of a RK Laxman cartoon in early 90 s AAP’s stand on article 370 has confused and disheartened many. For its workers the party has opened itself to attacks by its adversaries because of its support to stripping of statehood for Jammu and Kashmir and thus weakening its own plank for[Read More…]
These are strange times. A state can just get ‘obliterated’ from the map of the nation. Constitutional propriety is set aside to deprive millions of citizens of their basic human rights while a significant section of the rest of the country ‘rejoices’ over it all. A large section of the media has abandoned its role as watchdog of democracy but[Read More…]
The ethic that dehumanises dalits continues 72 years after the country’s Independence. ‘What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty,[Read More…]
Economist and activist Jean Dreze, who has co-authored books with Nobel laureates, such as Amartya Sen and Angus Deaton, was in the headlines for a placard he carried to a protest rally in Delhi earlier this week. His placard challenged the government’s most critical justification for its controversial move to scrap Article 35A and read down Article 370 in Jammu[Read More…]
Is tweaking of Babasaheb’s iconic slogan — Educate, Organise, Agitate — by the Gujarat government part of a pan-India phenomenon in the saffron camp? Does anyone still remember the ‘re-editing’ of Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi during National Democratic Alliance (NDA)-I period when demands were raised that it should to be scrapped and the original collected works should to be reinstated so that readers/scholars[Read More…]
Rare are the occasions when the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) — which could be said to be the biggest organisation of Hindu men — moves beyond its founder member Dr Hedgewar to build memorials. Whatever might be the consideration behind it, but it came as a little surprise that the RSS has decided to start a school in the memory[Read More…]
Preface: Modi 2. The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear (Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 1930). Narendra Damodardas Modi, the man who began his political journey as a Pracharak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has been re-elected Prime Minister[Read More…]
The German envoy’s visit to the Nagpur headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has worrying implications for both India and Germany. Silence on what transpired at the meet can only make matters worse. ‘…The burden of National Socialist crimes accompanies Germany to this day. Immediately after the war ended in 1945, and in following decades, confronting the crimes committed under National[Read More…]
Hier Wohnte Bernhard Marx JB 1897 Deportiert 20.07.1942 Minsk Ermordet 24.07.1942 ‘Here lived Bernhard Marx Year of Birth 1897 Deported 20.07.1942 Minsk Assassinated 24.07.1942’ It was while walking past a desolate street in Bonn that we stumbled upon some brass plates on which the names of the members of a family were engraved. The name Bernhard, supposedly the head of[Read More…]
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” – Gramsci A journalist friends’ prophesy has finally come true. The day India launched ‘surgical strikes’ across the border supposedly to avenge the Pulwama terror attack, this friend immediately sent a message[Read More…]
USS passe rani hai, iss passe Gandhi!” (“On that side is the Queen, on this is Gandhi) (https://indianexpress.com/elections/patiala-dharamvira-gandhi-aap-elections-2019-bjp-congress-5726029/) Nawan Punjab Party’s candidate ex MP Dr Dharamvira Gandhi’s election campaign and the way he projected his appeal as ‘battle against the royals’ had rightly evoked interest in a section of the media as well as pro-people circles.(https://www.newsclick.in/electoral-mobilisation-vehicle-rainbow-social-coalition) It is of interest[Read More…]
Why does Hitler’s legacy in India greatly differs from that in the West. More removed from the traumas associated with World War II and the Holocaust ( An extract from ‘Hindutva’s Second Coming’ by SubhashGatade, www.mediahouse.online) ……………………………………………………………………. ..An innocent question sometimes comes up with very troubling answer(s). J’admire( I admire)… a simple exercise given to students to know from them[Read More…]
“We can never forget that everything that Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal,’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did was ‘illegal.’ It was ‘illegal’ to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany, but I am sure that if I lived in Germany during that time I would have comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal… we[Read More…]
A WhatsApp-sponsored report, prepared in partnership with Queen Mary University, has raised the alarm that the 2019 elections in India, which already has cleavages on lines of caste, race, gender, religion, would be a fertile ground for damaging fake news. There was a time when ‘Good Morning’ messages were causing much “pain” to internet giants? It was the beginning of[Read More…]
“Kasturba Gandhi is no more. She died at the age of 74 in British jail….I salute this great woman who was like a mother to Indians ….Kasturba was an inspiration for millions of Indian girls with whom she lived and met during the freedom struggle of our motherland. She was party to the many travails and tribulations of life with[Read More…]
A campaign is gathering steam against MIT inviting BJP leader Subramanian Swamy for a conference on February 16. ‘We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides — on many sides,” – Donald Trump on Charlottesville violence The year was 2017 when the Charlottesville violence happened, when White Supremacists –[Read More…]
A conversation with youngsters – who are by nature bubbling with energy , fired with idealism and suffused with innumerable questions – is a thing which everyone with grey hair looks forward to. For someone like me it is an added gift this morning that after exactly a gap of forty years this writer is with students of engineering helping[Read More…]
Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination on January 30, 1948, was a culmination of a vicious campaign launched by Hindu communal groups in post-Independence India. It is far too early to dismiss the possibility of a future Hindu State in India. However, the possibility does not appear a strong one. The secular state has far more than an even chance of survival in[Read More…]
It is rather difficult to begin when you know that within a few days or weeks, one of your close friends could be behind bars under one of the most draconian laws crafted by this Republic. The world knows him as Anand Teltumbde, but for me he has always been Anand. Merely four months ago, we were together in a[Read More…]
Narendra Modi, the present incumbent to the Prime Minister’s chair, had a little break the other day for an award ceremony. Well, little different from the usual award ceremonies — where the Prime Minister presents awards and gives some pep talk, here Modi himself was presented with the ’First-ever Philip Kotler Award’. Perhaps looking at Modi’s much-publicised workaholic nature (if[Read More…]
December 25, 1968, termed as ‘Black Thursday’, saw the first mass crime against Dalits in independent India, who were fighting for respectable wages under the leadership of the Communist Party. P Srinivasan, a veteran village functionary who cremates the dead had, in an interview done few years ago, described the darkening early morning on December 26, 1968, when the bodies began[Read More…]
Qazi Zainus Sajidin, the city Qazi of Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, has an added responsibility these days. Anyone who listens to his sermons, gets a surprise when nearing the end of his takreer (speech), he underlines the importance of vaccinations and how a timely dose can save the lives of children. Qazisaab is not the only cleric in the region who has[Read More…]
The institute’s recent order, now withdrawn, of separate entrance for non-vegetarians is just a part of the overall policing and push for vegetarianism after the Modi government’s ascent. Nagesh (name changed), a bright student at the Indian Institute of Technology- Madras, who hails from a very poor economic background, had a shock of his life when he was entering the[Read More…]
“It is a curious people. With them, all life seems to be sacred except human life.” – Mark Twain on Indians A single quote sometimes remains the sole memory of a leader. Giriraj Kishor, VHP leader, can be considered a classic example to demonstrate this who had rather (in)famously said “Cow is considered more sacred than human beings in Puranas[Read More…]
To such a degree has Religion fuelled conflict, complicated politics, retarded social development and impaired human relations across the world, that one is often tempted to propose that Religion is innately an enemy of Humanity, if not indeed of itself a crime against Humanity … it is time that the world adopted a position that refuses to countenance Religion as[Read More…]
In Act 3, scene 4, Macbeth causes chaos at a celebratory banquet at his castle when he suddenly starts to behave very oddly. Everything starts quite normally. The guests are greeted and they all sit down ready for the meal. One man is absent: Macbeth’s old friend, Banquo. The reason why he is absent is very simple – Macbeth has[Read More…]
Mera azm itna bulund hae, Parae sholon se dar nahin. Mujhe dar hae tu atish e gul se hae, Ye kahin chaman ko jala na dein (my confidence in self is strong, I’m unafraid of foreign flames I’m scared those sparks may ignite, that in the blossom’s bosom lay ) — Shakeel Badayuni’s couplet which was very dear to Salman Taseer who was assassinated by[Read More…]
From Hindu Code Bill to Sabarimala via Roop Kanwar ’s Sati — keeping women subjugated under the cloak of tradition It was mid-eighties when a eighteen year old Roop Kanwar’s burning on the pyre of her husband – under controversial circumstances – had made national headlines. There was national outrage over the incident because more than 150 years after the[Read More…]
Review of ‘Truth in Fetters : Broken Promises and Shattered Unity’ “Change is in the air”! A retired academic who had his last assignment as Vice Chancellor of a leading university said to me the other day, while we were discussing the contemporary political scenario. Frankly admitting that he had supported Modi’s candidature then and had even discreetly campaigned for[Read More…]
Are public colleges/universities being left to die at the cost of private universities in the US? A cursory glance at the case study of Yale University, which also includes other Ivy League universities – namely, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Brown etc. – done by a young scholar serves as an eye-opener Describing how Yale ‘..[s]its on a mountain of money, and yet receives[Read More…]
“It has been said with good reason that the Jana Sangh resulted from a combination of a partyless leader, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, and a leaderless party, the RSS”. (The Jana Sangh: A Biography of an Indian Political Party, by Craig Baxter p. 54) 1. In Search of the “Selfless Patriot” Untimely deaths of political leaders – whose career is just[Read More…]
Why Jailing of Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Did Not Become A News In This Part of Asia “Ordered disorder, planned caprice, And dehumanised humanity…” – Brecht (The Exception and the Rule) (Quoted in http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2012/04/29/the-mad-men-of-dambulla/) “I have done my duty towards the country,” Gnanasara told reporters as he boarded the bus taking him to prison. “Why should I regret?” (https://in.reuters.com/article/sri-lanka-monk-sentence/sri-lanka-jails-extremist-buddhist-monk-for-six-months-over-threats-to-woman-idINKBN1JA1BW) I Rarely[Read More…]
This is not the story of a man who once sold tea and later ‘sold’ dreams to a people and managed to reach top echleons of power in the biggest democracy in the world. This is not the story of this man and his rise from the margins of a organisation which is called the biggest cultural organisation in the[Read More…]
“..I am afraid I have no faith in astrology and certainly I should not like to fix up national programmes in accordance with the dictates of astrologers…” Jawaharlal Nehru (In a letter to Rajendra Prasad, who had objected to January 26, 1950 as the date for inaugurating the republic on astrological grounds. Page 77, Volume 2, Jawaharlal Nehru, A Biography, OUP,[Read More…]
Does burning wood helps reduce pollution? Well, a school goer who has to read environmental studies these days would yell a resounding ‘no’. If one wants to go deeper, one can come across guidelines issued by the central pollution control board itself to avoid wood burning. Just a while back, when there was a dip in the air quality of[Read More…]
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is in the news again. (Of course, once again for entirely wrong reasons) A few days back while talking to a news channel he had shared the dark prophecy that India could become Syria if the mandir issue was not resolved soon. “If the court rules against a temple, there will be bloodshed. Do you think the Hindu majority will[Read More…]
Would it be possible to imagine that leader of any organisation openly declaring that her/his people/activists have the ability to prepare an “army” in three days , can be deployed on the front within three days, questions the ability of the security forces for quick operations, and does not face any legal hassles ? A lesser mortal would have been[Read More…]
Ghalib has fascinated generations of people and they have tried to understand/interpret his poetry in their own way. For any such individual it is really difficult to recollect when and how Ghalib entered her/his life and ensconced himself comfortably in one’s heart. This wanderer still faintly remembers how many of Ghalib’sshers were part of common parlance even in an area[Read More…]
The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seemed to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition, exploitation and the preservation of vested interests.[Read More…]
It is not just BJP minister Anantkumar Hegde. Here is a look at some past attempts of the RSS-BJP to tinker with the Constitution. “Line wahan se shuru hoti hai jahan ham khade rehte hain” (The queue starts from the point where we stand). Remember that 70s Bollywood film where teh then bad boy of Hindi cinema (Shatrughan Sinha) barges into[Read More…]
“… A Hero of Our Time, gentlemen, is in fact a portrait, but not of an individual; it is the aggregate of the vices of our whole generation in their fullest expression.” ‘(From Foreword to Á Hero of Our Time, Lermontov’ quoted in Albert Camus novel ‘The Fall’) Shambhu Lal Raigar is a new hero of our times. It[Read More…]
It was probably late sixties or early seventies – when a gentleman called P N Oak started appearing in Marathi magazines peddling his weird theories about well known monuments in and outside India. An article which made lot of news then was centred around Taj Mahal where it was claimed that it was ‘Tejo Maha Aalay’ or hindu god Shiva’s[Read More…]
(Note : This article would appear in the coming issue of ‘Think India Quarterly’) ..Kovind acknowledged that “the key to India’s success is its diversity” and “our diversity is the core that makes us so unique” and ended his speech with a call to build an egalitarian society as “envisioned by Mahatma Gandhi and Deendayal Upadhyayaji”… The Congress took[Read More…]
These are really ‘bure din‘ for the spiritual gurus of India. While the likes of Ram Rahim, AsaramBapus and Rampal are cooling their heels behind bars for their not so spiritual acts, Sant Swami BhimanandJiMaharajChitrakoot Wale who is also known as “Ichadaari Baba” among his followers has also joined them for running a high profile sex racket. It was[Read More…]
Death of a freedom fighter normally evokes mixed emotions. For a section of people – whose number is diminishing fast – it is a moment of nostalgia when idealism was in air and sacrificing oneself for the cause of emancipation of humanity was looked at with respect, whereas for a larger section which is being intoxicated with glories of[Read More…]
Bhupendra Singh Chudasama, Education minister of Gujarat and his colleague AtmaramParamar, who handles the Social Justice Ministry, were in the news sometime back- albeit for wrong reasons. A video went viral which showed them participating in a felicitation ceremony of exorcists in Botad. They were also seen watching how a couple of the exorcists were beating themselves with metal[Read More…]
Jaipur — Rajasthan State Commission for Minorities has sought a factual report on a video that went viral on Thursday showing four Sikh men purportedly beaten up by local residents of Chainpura in Ajmer district.The 51-second video shows four members of Sikh community being abused and thrashed by a mob as people witnessing the incident filmed the entire episode…..three[Read More…]
Cow vigilantes attacked six people, including a 9-year-old girl in the Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir on Friday and fled away with their flock. The vigilantes beat up the nomad community blue and black and the minor girl has suffered multiple fractures when the community was en route to Talwara area… (http://www.timesnow.tv/india/video/cow-vigilantes-attack-6-including-9-year-old-in-jammu/59745) In yet another chilling instance of self-styled[Read More…]
..nothing to eat nothing to wear boundless is the anguish who indeed can bear to see such misery among the world’s creatures let my soul be condemned to hell but let the Universe be redeemed. – Bhima Bhoi, [Source: BiswamoyPati in Religion and social ‘subversion’, Re-examining colonial Orissa (EPW, July/2010).,BidyutMohanty in Orissa famine of 1866 Demographic and economic[Read More…]
Big news – at times – go completely unnoticed. (Thanks to the mediatised times we are passing through) And thus it did not appear surprising that the decision by Posco, the South Korean steelmaker, the fourth biggest in the world, to exit the proposed 12 million-tonnes a year steel plant in Odisha did not cause much flutter. Yes, newspapers[Read More…]
“DEENDAYAL UPADHYAYA is to the BJP [BharatiyaJanata Party] what Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was to Congress” opined R. Balashankar, former editor of the RashtriyaSwayamsewakSangh’s (RSS) organ Organiser and now a member of the BJP’s central committee, on Prasikhshan Maha Abhiyan (The Indian Express,; September 24, 2016). Cows inhale, exhale oxygen, says Rajasthan education minister VasudevDevnani (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/cows-inhale-exhale-oxygen-says-rajasthan-education-minister-vasudev-devnani/articleshow/56612529.cms) Rajaram (name changed)[Read More…]
..The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of star dust. In every field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living. ..My birth is my fatal accident.[Read More…]
When I was born I was not a child I was a dream, a dream of revolt that my mother, oppressed for thousands of years , dreamt. Still it is untouched in my eyes Covered with wrinkles of thousand years, her face her eyes, two lakes overflowing with tears have watered my body….. – SahilParmar* Well known Gujarati poet[Read More…]
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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 – after battling a medical condition for months. I remember the last time I met him, almost exactly a month before he passed away, at the ayurvedic healing center in[Read More…]
