Founding Editor: Daya Varma (1929-2015)
Editors: Vinod Mubayi (New York) and Raza Mir (New Jersey).
Editorial Board: Ram Puniyani and Irfan Engineer (Mumbai); Pervez Hoodbhoy (Islamabad); Dolores Chew (Montreal); Vamsi Vakulabharanam (Amherst); Ajay Bhardwaj (Vancouver).
Circulation/website: Feroz Mehdi (On behalf of Alternatives, Montreal).
EDITORIAL: ENDLESS HOSTILITY, ENDLESS CONFLICT: THE CHICKENS OF THE TWO-NATION THEORY HAVE COME HOME TO ROOST AND NOW THREATEN CATASTROPHE
Vinod Mubayi
It is useful to recall what some supporters of the Partition of British India on the eve of its occurrence said about its essentially benign nature. The separation or division based on the religious identity of the vast majority of its inhabitants, viz. Hindus and Muslims who became the two nations in this discourse, was likened to a family quarrel in which two brothers and their families who lived in the same house were bickering with each other. Give each of them their own separate home and the quarrels will eventually dissipate and disappear. Well, that was then. Rarely can a prediction have been so spectacularly off the mark. For not only did the quarrels not disappear, instead they grew and grew and with both “brothers” now having acquired nuclear weapons they threaten to consume their descendants.
Read more…SYED ADIL HUSSAIN SHAH, NOT TERRORISTS, REPRESENT THE SPIRIT OF J&K
Sandeep Pandey
Sanjeev Kumar is a school teacher. He and his wife Rashmi lived with their only son, thirteen-and-a-half-year-old Vihan, in Poonch. In the early hours of 7 May around 2-2:30 am there was lightout, TV had started airing scenes of shelling. Vihan started shivering and had to be given medicine. He went to sleep but at 4:45 am another blast woke him up half an hour later. Operation Sindoor was in full swing. He started sending messages to his friends.
Read more…THE KASHMIRIS CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE: THOSE IN THE DISPUTED REGION BEAR THE COST OF THE INDIA-PAKISTAN CONFLICT
Fahad Shah
POONCH, Jammu and Kashmir—In the early hours of May 7, 12-year-old twins Zain Ali and Urwa Fatima cowered in their family home as the walls around them shook amid heavy shelling. The Pakistan Army had unleashed an intense round of artillery fire nearby, hours after Indian warplanes struck nine locations across the border.
Read more…STOP FORCIBLE DAM ACTIVITY AND MILITARIZATION IN SIANG VALLEY – SAFEGUARD ECOLOGY & UPHOLD INDIGENOUS PEOPLE’S RIGHTS: SOLIDARITY WITH ARUNACHAL’S INDIGENOUS FARMERS
Aditya Nigam
Following is a statement of All India Solidarity with Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum, endorsed by 43 organizations and fifty individuals.
Read more…THE SARAJEVO DECLARATION OF THE GAZA TRIBUNAL
We, the members of the Gaza Tribunal, having gathered in Sarajevo from 26 to 29 May 2025, declare our collective moral outrage at the continuing genocide in Palestine, our solidarity with the people of Palestine, and our commitment to working with partners across global civil society to end the genocide and to ensure accountability for perpetrators and enablers, redress for victims and survivors, the building of a more just international order, and a free Palestine.
Read more…82ND MARTYRDOM ANNIVERSARY [MAY 14] OF ALLAH BAKHSH
Shamsul Islam
Great betrayal of the heritage of a martyr who sacrificed his life for all-inclusive India
It really needs a serious academic investigation that why a powerful mass based anti-two nation political movement led by Allah Bakhsh among Indian Muslims got pushed to oblivion. It suited the British masters and both Hindu and Muslim nationalists.
Read more…THE POLITICAL ERASURE OF INDIAN MUSLIMS
Harsh Mander
More Muslims live in India than in any other country in the world barring Indonesia and Pakistan. Yet, for the first time since India’s independence, its Muslims have been rendered electorally dispensable and therefore politically irrelevant. The Hindu Right has dispossessed India’s Muslims of meaningful political participation and fair representation while altering electoral politics to cast Muslims as a political liability.
Read more…CASE REGISTERED AGAINST NAGPUR ACTIVISTS FOR SINGING FAIZ’S POEM “HUM DEKHENGE”
Progressive Artists’ League
When the mountains of tyranny and cruelty
Will fly like cotton
Under the feet of the oppressed
This earth will shake with a thunder
And over the heads of the people of power
When lightning will crackle fiercely
We shall see
Certainly, we too shall see
We shall see!
Read more…VERMILLION LINES: OPERATION SINDOOR AND THE DELUSION OF DETERRENCE
Sushant Singh
SOMETIME ON 7 MAY, Lieutenant General Rajiv Ghai, India’s director general of military operations, called his Pakistani counterpart, Major General Kashif Abdullah. At 1.05 am, India had launched Operation Sindoor—airstrikes targeting what the Narendra Modi government described as “terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed.”
Read more… Top