'A Library is a thought in cold storage' This adage by Herbert Samuel ( British Statesman 1870-1963) sounds prophetic but as of now it is not going to have any…
Writers, scholars, artists have always worried the powers that be. There was a time when the Parisian police had been given the onerous task of keeping the greatest writers of…
It was perhaps mid sixties or early seventies when US had resorted to continuous bombing to break the morale of the Vietnamese people. When questioned by a reporter about this…
How India is Slowly Emerging as a ‘World Teacher’ albeit of a different kind France has moved towards normalcy some time back. The anger and anguish of the still marginalised…
Decades are a short time in a nation’s journey. The sexual assault on three Kuki-Zo women and their being paraded naked by a frenzied mob in Manipur- with the police…
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…
'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…
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…
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 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' …
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
‘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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
'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.'"…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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?…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
'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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
“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…
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…
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…
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…
‘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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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)…
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…
Join Countercurrents Annual Fund Raising Campaign and help us