Slow and Steady Destruction of Togetherness
MUSINGSLast week I was in Uttar Pradesh. And I saw and sensed communal politics at its peak. Citizens, cutting across communities and castes, sat apprehensive and worried. It was more than writ large...
View ArticleHindutva, the Asiatic Mode of Production and Indian Revolution
by Murzban JalFinally, in the struggle against the revolution, the parliamentary republic found itself compelled to streng-then, along with the repressive powers,the resourcesand centralisation of...
View ArticleIn Defence of the Chatterati
We face a problem of value-judgment today. Place and time have something to do with it. Post-independence, people from the older cosmopolitan cities of Kolkata, Mumbai, and Chennai were most visibly...
View ArticleConsumption and Protection: Understanding BJP's Victory
by Sri Ram PandeyaThe recent outcry in responsible scholarly discussions about the secular setting of our society getting affected due to a leader becoming the Prime Minister of India, even as he vows...
View ArticleNatwar's Betrayal
Like many of my fellow citizens I too watched the recent interview of Natwar Singh by Karan Thapar. The contents of the interview made front-page headlines in national newspapers. Having heard the...
View Article'It Is Majoritarianism That Needs To Be Contested'
(Ayesha Jalal is the Mary Richardson Professor of History at Tufts University and a 1998 MacArthur Fellow and the celebrated author of The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League, and the Demand for...
View ArticleHabitation and a Name for India in the BRICS
IIf the annual BRICS summit meeting, which just ended in Fortaleza, Brazil, assumed an unprecedented level of interest in India, three reasons could be attributed to it.First and foremost, India has a...
View ArticleCommunal Challenge to Free India
Desh Raj Goyal, 84, passed away in New Delhi after a brief illness in the afternoon of February 3, 2013. A veteran journalist and academic, he was the editor of Secular Democracy. From 1963 to 1967 he...
View ArticleSpirit of August Fifteenth
From N.C.'s WritingsAugust Fifteenth, the day when the Tricolour of independent India was hoisted on the ramparts of the Red Fort thirtyseven years ago, not only brings back the imprishable memories of...
View ArticleFaiz Ahmed Faiz: Only a few days, dear one, a few days more
Under oppression's shadows condemned to breathe,Still for a time we must bear them, and tears, and endureWhat our forefathers, not our own faults, bequeath:Fettered limbs, each impulse held on a...
View ArticleDefending Freedom in Perilous Times
EditorialOur sixtyeighth Independence Day is being observed in the country against the sombre backdrop of the BJP's return to power at the Centre after 10 long years.But it is not just the BJP's return...
View ArticleNabarun Bhattacharya [1948-2014]
TRIBUTERecently Bengal lost a prominent literary figure who never compromised with the establishment. One had worked with Nabarun in the students' movement of the sixties and interacted with him on...
View ArticleINLD Victory in Hisar: A Game-changer in Haryana Politics
by Ranbir SinghThe victory of the INLD candidate, Dushyant Chautala (grandson of O.P. Chautala and great grandson of legendary Jat leader Devi Lal), over the BJP-HJC alliance candidate, Kuldeep Bishnoi...
View ArticleCorrupt China and Lessons for India
by Prachi AggarwalSince Chinese President Xi Jinping is due to arrive in India in September, comparisons and contrasts of both the leaders has begun with renewed vigour. It cannot be doubted that...
View Article‘No Foreign Christian Missionary is Working in India': Interview with civil...
Six years after the outbreak of the 2008 anti-Christian violence in Kandhamal district of Odisha, killing more than one hundred Christians, mostly Dalits and tribals, and displacing sixty thousand of...
View ArticleYouth and the Struggles for Equality and Justice
Over a long historical period, one factor which has provided strength and dynamism to human society generation after generation has been a natural tendency on the part of a large number of youth to...
View ArticleAnother Chapter in Iraq
When a tentative nuclear deal was struck with Iran around November last year there was conjecture on repositioning of groupings in West Asia and its consequences. Iran, Iraq, and Syria, among others,...
View ArticleUkraine Crisis: Humanitarian Catastrophe in Novorussia
Ukraine has been plunged into deep chaos and violence of unprecedented magnitude in less than a year. The crisis—that began with the throwing of Molotov cocktails against the riot police in Kiev's Euro...
View ArticleModi in the Frame of the RSS' Vision of a Hindu India
by Arun SrivastavaRSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's remark certainly does reflect the concern of an overbearing parent that the progeny would go astray. Bhagwat, through his observation that the BJP came to...
View ArticleAnalysing Anarchy: Aroma of AAP in Indian Politics
This article was written quite sometime ago but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons.The sensational debut of the AAP in the Delhi Assembly elections and the subsequent developments...
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