SECULARISM, DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

INSAF Bulletin 216 April 2020
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: FORCED EXODUS: THOUSANDS LIKELY TO DIE FROM STARVATION RATHER THAN THE VIRUS

Vinod Mubayi

Prime Minister Modi is fond of claiming to have executed surgical strikes against the enemies of the country, viz. Pakistan. Whatever damage they may have done to the enemy is unclear, but his strikes on the Indian population disguised as moral lectures have inflicted more significant damage. While they were applauded as masterstrokes by the lapdog media, their consequences for the country have been considerably less pleasant. In December 2016, he suddenly demonetized the currency, rendering 86% of Indian banknotes worthless overnight. He justified this by claiming it would curb the twin evils of black money and terrorism and usher in a virtuous digital age of cashless transactions. There seems to have been no planning in advance for this momentous act and little thought given to what would happen. Three and a half years later, the economy is still trying to recover from the consequences of this disastrous action.

GROUND REPORT: CHAOS AT ANAND VIHAR AS BUSES PREPARE TO TAKE MIGRANT WORKERS HOME

Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta and Anuj Srivas

New Delhi: At the Anand Vihar Bus Terminal and its immediate surrounding areas on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border, the mass evacuation of thousands of daily-wage labourers and migrant workers is underway.

CAN INDIANS TRUST THEIR JUDGES AND LAWS?

Sumanta Banerjee

The two common utterances regularly heard during arguments in Indian courts are – “I have faith in the judicial process” (by the prosecuted), and “The law will take its own course” (by the prosecution). But both these two assertions need to be questioned, given the experiences of Indian citizens in their confrontation with certain types of judges on the one hand, and sufferance from laws on the other, like oppressive colonial Acts from the British era which are still on our statute book, and newer draconian Acts that continue to be promulgated in today’s India.

PETITION REQUEST

Dear friends,

Please sign the Global Solidarity Statement for Dr. Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha by clicking here: https://indiacivilwatch.org/petitions/global-solidarity-statement-for-dr-anand-teltumbde-and-gautam-navlakha/

HOW THE CORPORATE-HINDUTVA AXIS IS ASSAULTING INDIA’S FEDERALISM

Prabhat Patnaik

The anti-colonial struggle saw the emergence of a pan-Indian national consciousness that was superimposed upon a pre-existing “nationality” consciousness based on linguistic regions. The pan-Indian national consciousness, in other words, was superimposed upon a Bengali or Gujarati or Tamil or Odiya consciousness; and the anti-colonial struggle saw the flourishing of both kinds of consciousness.

‘OUR SITUATION IS APOCALYPTIC’: BANGLADESH GARMENT WORKERS FACE RUIN

Elizabeth Paton

The empty, echoing shopping malls of Western cities are a testament to the biggest crisis borne by global clothing and retail industries in over a generation. But the impact of the coronavirus on retail is a two-part devastation, as the daily flow of thousands of orders placed by Western retailers to supplier factories in South Asia has suddenly slammed to a halt.

GOD WILL PROTECT US’: CORONAVIRUS SPREADS THROUGH AN ALREADY STRUGGLING PAKISTAN

Zia ur-Rehman, Maria Abi-Habib and Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud

KARACHI, Pakistan — Doctors are refusing to show up for work. Clerics are refusing to close their mosques. And despite orders to stay at home, children continue to pack streets across Pakistan to play cricket, their parents unwilling to quarantine them in crowded homes.

FOR INDIA’S LABORERS, CORONAVIRUS LOCKDOWN IS AN ORDER TO STARVE

Maria Abi-Habib and Sameer Yasir

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ordered a lockdown of India’s 1.3 billion citizens to fight the spread of coronavirus, urging people to distance themselves socially and work from home.

[NON-SOUTH ASIA ANALYSIS]: SIX POINTS ON CLASS

Michael Zweig

1. We need to change the understanding of class in the United States, going from the division of “rich and poor” to the division of “worker and capitalist.”

EDITORIAL: AFTER LOSING DELHI ELECTION, BJP WREAKING VENGEANCE ON CITY’S MINORITIES: WHERE IS AAP?

Vinod Mubayi

The rout of the BJP in the Delhi election, while very welcome, should not blind one to the fact that the real political struggle is taking place in the streets not in the electoral arena. This struggle is directly related to the secular nature of the Indian state and the future existence of India’s minorities, especially Indian Muslims. Over the last few decades, and particularly the last six years, RSS/BJP propaganda has created a mindset among the Hindu majority, especially the politically influential upper classes/castes, that has put the secular character of the Indian state in severe doubt, despite all that is enshrined in the Constitution. Without this mindset, it is inconceivable that a blatantly majoritarian and unconstitutional law like the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) would have cleared both houses of Parliament. But every action has its reaction and the public anger manifested in almost all parts of the country in the last two months is evidence of the fact that defeating the nefarious CAA/NRC (National Register of Citizens)/NPR (National Population Register) triad of the BJP is the most urgent political issue in India today.

THERE WILL BE NO SAFE ANCHOR UNTIL ‘WE, THE PEOPLE’ ARE ABLE TO DECISIVELY OVERTURN CURRENT PARLIAMENTARY MAJORITY

Sugata Bose

Homage has been paid to the chairman of the drafting committee of our Constitution by our political class in a plenitude of platitudes without applying the creative and critical faculties that were Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s hallmark. India was extremely fortunate that as stringent a critic of mainstream nationalism as Ambedkar placed his intellectual prowess at the service of the nation for five crucial years from December 9, 1946 to October 12, 1951.

INDIA IS STEADILY CREEPING FROM DEMOCRACY TO SOME FORM OF THUGOCRACY

Pranab Bardhan

Contrary to expectation in many quarters five years back, the current regime has proved itself rather inept and incompetent in economic policy matters, partly because of over-centralisation of power with dependence on loyal mediocrities for policy advice, and partly because for a long time, it believed in its own hype and was in denial.

THE DELHI RIOTS OF 2020: A DIRECT PRODUCT OF BJP RELIGIOUS POLARISATION

The Wire

More than 48 hours after violence broke out in parts of the national capital, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has finally broken his silence on the Delhi riots. At least 24 people have now lost their lives, with the latest reports saying that the body of a man who works with the Intelligence Bureau was found in a drain in North East Delhi’s Chandbagh.

“WHICH IS THAT APPROPRIATE STAGE? AFTER THE CITY HAS BURNT DOWN?” SAYS HIGH COURT JUDGE MURALIDHAR

The Delhi high court on Wednesday asked the Delhi Police to ‘take a conscious decision with respect to the registration of FIRs’ against BJP leaders Anurag Thakur, Parvesh Verma and Kapil Mishra, and others, who made alleged hate speeches that may have incited violence in the national capital.

THE BJP HAS WILFULLY LET DELHI BURN

For three days, northeast Delhi has been in the grip of armed vigilantes mobilised by Hindutva politicians to attack and terrorise those protesting the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. Given the nature of the mobs and their leaders, the violence quickly lost any pretence of a ‘political’ motive and descended into crude, generalised communal violence against Muslims.

LETTER FROM WORLD PARLIAMENTARIANS TO NARENDRA MODI

(Courtesy Irfan Engineer)

The Most Honorable Narendra Modi

Prime Minister of the Republic of India

Office of the Prime Minister

New Delhi, India

MOB LYNCHING IN 2019- CONTINUING EXPRESSION OF HEGEMONY

Irfan Engineer, Neha Dabhade, Suraj Nair

Tabrez Ansari, a 24 years old youth in Jharkhand, accused of a bike theft pleaded for his life even as he chanted “Jai Shri Ram” demanded by the mob that brutally lynched him. 25 years old Mohammad Barkat Aalam while returning home from namaz was assaulted and forced to chant “Jai Shri Ram” because he was wearing a skull cap.

GANDHI’S KILLER EVOKES ADMIRATION AS NEVER BEFORE

Sameer Yasin

MEERUT, India — Under the shade of a banyan tree, a group of worshipers recite Sanskrit mantras. A couple men step forward and light a fire. Then they start walking, hands folded, as if in a trance, toward a statue.

A BLOW TO THE HEAD MAKES AN INSTANT HERO IN INDIA

Jeffrey Gettleman and Hari Kumar

Aishe Ghosh, a young woman who was set upon at a campus demonstration, has become an icon in India’s growing protest movement.

WHO IS AFRAID OF PAKISTAN’S AURAT MARCH?

Afiya Shehrbano Zia

Pakistan’s women are marching against patriarchy, but what is their destination and who is standing in their way? The Aurat March of 2019 faced severe backlash from both conservative as well as like-minded quarters, on account of some hard-hitting slogans and jabs raised against prevalent masculinist social norms. These have brought to the fore some paradoxes within feminist politics, which merit resolution for the sake of the emergence of stronger feminist politics in Pakistan.

INDIA TODAY: TEETERING BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND FASCISM

Vinod Mubayi

EDITORAL

India today is poised precariously between democracy and fascism. While the formal institutions of democracy, elections, legislatures, courts and so on continue to function their core is being systematically hollowed out by the ruling BJP and fascist measures are being implemented assiduously in India’s largest state, UP, where cops are acting against the Muslim minority exactly like Nazi thugs did against German Jews in the 1930s.

CITIZENSHIP TANGLE

Shoaib Daniyal

Surveys for the National Population Register begin in two months. There is still no clarity on the final questions that will be asked as part of the exercise to draw up a list of all residents of India.

‘THIS POLITICAL REGIME IS DESTROYING THE UNIVERSITY’

Sucharita Sen

Professor Sucharita Sen, of the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), teaches geography and was one of the people involved in organising a peace assembly on January 5, the day masked intruders attacked teachers and students with lethal weapons like iron rods. While many faculty members were roughed up, she was the only one who sustained deep head injuries.

WHY THE CAA+NPR+NRC IS A TOXIC COCKTAIL FOR EVERYONE

CJP Team

The Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA), combined with the proposed National Population Register (NPR), which is the first step to a nationwide NRC (National Register of Citizens), is likely to be disastrous, not just for Muslims, but also all other Indians as can be seen in the following point-wise analysis:

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT RESOLUTION ON INDIA’S CITIZENSHIP (AMENDMENT) ACT, 2019

– having regard to the Charter of the United Nations,

KEEPING JOURNALISM ALIVE IN KASHMIR

Majid Maqbool

For over five months now, hundreds of journalists in Kashmir have had to wait in long queues every day in a couple of cramped rooms in Srinagar to get a few minutes of access to the internet. Reporters, newspaper designers, freelance journalists, photojournalists, and video journalists have had to stand in lines at the Media Facilitation Centre – set up by the central government in the premises of the Department of Information and Public Relations – and rely on a dozen computers with internet access to file their stories, make pages, and communicate with their editors.

CITIZENSHIP AS PARTICIPATION: MUSLIM WOMEN PROTESTORS OF SHAHEEN BAGH

The peaceful indefinite sit-in by Muslim women at Shaheen Bagh has become the epicentre of nationwide protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act–National Population Register–National Register of Citizens, as the protestors have brought to the fore a protest performative that is to be comprehended beyond the physical protest site.

BEHIND CAMPUS ATTACK IN INDIA, SOME SEE A FAR-RIGHT AGENDA

Kai Schultz and Suhasini Raj

NEW DELHI — For decades, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party and its affiliates have struggled to control one of India’s most fertile ideological recruiting grounds: university campuses.

EDITORIALS: IS THE TIME FOR BJP’S FASCIST TAMASHAS OVER?

Vinod Mubayi

The unprecedented countrywide protests against the CAA and NRC are the opening salvos in what is bound to be a long struggle against BJP’s fascist governance over the last 5 years. It is encouraging that many of the protests are being led by students and youth, which augurs well for the vitality of the opposition to the Sangh Parivar’s agenda in the next few years. Read more…

INDIA NEEDS A PROPER REFUGEE LAW, NOT A CAA SUFFUSED WITH DISCRIMINATORY INTENT

Rajeev Dhawan

Perhaps, the most interesting comment on India’s Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 (CAA) was made by two Pakistani Hindus who protested that the CAA will worsen their lives instead of helping them. There are many minorities who prefer to live in Pakistan as their home and watan. Read more…

INDIA: INTIMATIONS OF AN ENDING

Arundhati Roy

While protest reverberates on the streets of Chile, Catalonia, Bolivia, Britain, France, Iraq, Lebanon, and Hong Kong, and a new generation rages against what has been done to their planet, I hope you will forgive me for speaking about a place where the street has been taken over by something quite different. Read more…

WHY I WILL NOT REGISTER WITH THE NRC

Sidharth Bhatia

This might be a futile act of personal defiance that could have perilous consequences, but think about it: what if millions of people stay out of the exercise? Read more…

BY PROTESTING A LAW THAT DIVIDES AND DISCRIMINATES, WE ARE FORGING NEW MAPS OF BELONGING

Chitra Padmanabhan

The CAA, which treats the modern-day equivalents of people like Badshah Khan as ‘illegal immigrants’, and the ‘all-India NRC’ which jeopardises the status of millions of Indians have energised a new moment of dissent. Read more…

THE RAM JANMABHOOMI-BABRI MASJID IMBROGLIO

Rakesh Shukla

On 9 November 2019, the Supreme Court of India held that the disputed Ayodhya site should be handed over to the Hindus in its entirety and directed the central government to construct a Ram temple on the site. The decision comes nearly 27 years after the destruction of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992 by karsevaks, and more than a century of contestation. Read more…

VIOLENCE AS PARENTHESIS

Gopal Guru

The response of the central government and its supporters to the protests that were organised against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) has brought into focus the complex nature of violence. In the current context of the protests, there seems to be a few points that we need to take into consideration. The government, in its attempts to underscore the social importance of peace, seeks to condemn the act of violence. Read more…

STATEMENT BY MONTREAL ACADEMIC COMMUNITY AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY IN INDIA, CAA, NRC

We, the members of the Montreal academic community, stand in solidarity with students exercising their fundamental right to dissent and protest across India. Read more…

SOLIDARITY WITH PROTESTS IN INDIA FOR THE CONSTITUTION & FOR SECULARISM

Sunday 22nd December, Montreal

For a democratic, secular and inclusive India!! Read more…

EDITORIAL: AYODHYA VERDICT: MAJORITARIANISM MEETS THE MARKET

Vinod Mubayi

In retrospect, the 2010 Allahabad High Court judgment on Ayodhya, despite its tortured logic, flawed reasoning and reliance on faith as a basis for resolution of legal claims, may come to be viewed in future as upholding a semblance of justice compared to what the Supreme Court ruled almost a decade later. Read more…

SAVARKAR

Kannan Srinivasan

Given that Savarkar’s portrait in Parliament is ritually garlanded, that Prime Minister Modi and the entire Sangh Parivar hold him in such reverence, clearly he is of great relevance today. I discuss Savarkar’s decision to turn from nationalist patriot terrorist to anti Muslim; his pathological focus on Muslims as the outsiders inside, who were foreign to India and must therefore be driven out or even as his hero Hitler had to the Jews, exterminated; the question of whether this could be called fascism. I conclude by seeing in Hindutva representation in the Congress Party. Read more…

“A LITTLE BRIEF AUTHORITY”: CHIEF JUSTICE RANJAN GOGOI AND THE RISE OF THE EXECUTIVE COURT

Gautam Bhatia

Ranjan Gogoi is no longer the Chief Justice of India.

There is much to write about today. But this post will follow precedent (unlike some of the major judgments delivered during the ex-Chief Justice’s tenure) and – like last year – focus on the law. Read more…

NOW THAT TITLE SUIT IS RESOLVED, CAN WE TALK ABOUT BABRI MASJID DEMOLITION CASE?

Mahtab Alam

On April 17 2017, in an extraordinary order concerning the Babri Masjid demolition case, the Supreme Court of India directed a sessions court in Lucknow to hold daily hearings and deliver a judgment within two years. Read more…

AYODHYA JUDGEMENT UNJUST: AN ASSAULT ON THE SECULAR FABRIC OF THE CONSTITUTION

National Association for Peoples’ Movements
13th Nov, 2019: The National Alliance of People’s Movements condemns the ‘unanimous’ verdict by the 5-judge Bench of the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya matter. The judgement, instead of holding accountable before law all those who criminally demolished the 450 year old Babri Masjid has rewarded the violators. The judgement legitimizes majoritarianism and mobocracy and strikes at the very secular fabric of our Constitution. Full of contradictions, the verdict only pays sermons to the values of equality and fraternity, but ends up violating these very principles in its relief. Read more…

INDIA: INTIMATIONS OF AN ENDING

Arundhati Roy
While protest reverberates on the streets of Chile, Catalonia, Britain, France, Iraq, Lebanon, and Hong Kong, and a new generation rages against what has been done to their planet, I hope you will forgive me for speaking about a place where the street has been taken over by something quite different. Read more…

SRI LANKAN CRITICS FEAR A CRACKDOWN IS UNDERWAY, AND SOME FLEE

Maria Abi-Habib and Sameer Yasir
Fears of a potential crackdown on critics of the newly returned Rajapaksa political dynasty in Sri Lanka are rising just days after the election, as officials and journalists who investigated the Rajapaksas for human rights abuses and corruption began trying to flee the country, officials said. Read more…

EDITORIAL: KASHMIR – THREE MONTHS LATER

Editors

For the vast majority of the people of Kashmir, the agony continues with no end in sight. Dribs and drabs of the reduction of oppressive measures, like restoration of landline telephones that few people have, treated by the credulous Indian media as restoration of normalcy, cut little ice with the local populace; they are akin to the rolls of toilet paper that Trump tossed out to hungry and ailing Puerto Ricans in the aftermath of hurricane Maria. For many of the thousands arrested and even those subsequently released, their plight is becoming truly Orwellian. Read more…

TERM MOB LYNCHING COMES FROM BIBLE, SAYS MOHAN BHAGWAT

Vidya (India Today)

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Chief Mohan Bhagwat on Tuesday said that some incidents of violence such as lynchings were actually being branded to defame India, Hindu society and create fear among some communities. Read more…

HOW HATE WORKS

Rakesh Shukla

Commenting on the performance of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Gujarat State Assembly elections in December 2017, where the incumbent party had barely managed a majority, journalist Revati Laul writes in her book The Anatomy of Hate, “In Gujarat, it seemed as if there was no more room for the hate to grow.” In the context of the massive victory for the BJP in the 2019 general elections – in Gujarat alone, the BJP won all 26 parliamentary seats – it is ironic to read Laul’s assessment – that they had gone “as far as they could”. Read more…

EU MPS IN KASHMIR – A DIPLOMATIC BLUNDER?

Seema Mustafa

NEW DELHI: Kashmir has indeed become a Pandora’s box that either the only very stupid or the very callous could open. And follow the decision not with acts of wisdom but the very opposite as is evident in the much touted visit of 23 European Union Parliamentarians to the Valley. That too after Indian MPs have not been allowed to take a step outside of the Srinagar airport, and requests by American Senators for such permission has been turned down. Not to speak of the United Nations and the foreign media. Read more…

IN PAKISTAN, FISHING VILLAGES ARE LOSING THEIR LIVELIHOODS AS THE INDUS DRIES UP

Akhtar Hafeez

The province of Sindh is grappling with an acute water shortage, a crisis which the government hopes to address through the construction of more dams along the Indus river. While fundraising for these megastructures continues in Pakistan, fisherman and delta communities along the river fear the worst, as they are transported back to 1991 when the Water Apportionment Accord between the country’s four provinces was inked – and when the fate of the fishing community was sealed. Read more…

SRI LANKA PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: PAST IN THE PRESENT

R.K. Radhakrishnan

There were quite a few visitors at the world’s emptiest airport, the Chinese-built Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, just over 200 kilometres south of Colombo, on October 12, just like every other day. No scheduled commercial aircraft has operated from the airport for the past three years. The visitors, all local Sinhalese Sri Lankans, were there to experience the airport, built at a cost of over $200 million. Read more…

MANDATE FOR A STRONG OPPOSITION

EPW Editorial on Elections in Maharashtra and Haryana

Arrogance of power can be undermined by the reassertion of social contradictions.

The results of the assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana have punctured the myth of the invincibility of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Inflated claims made by its leaders regarding the huge number of seats have fallen flat as its tally has come down from the 2014 assembly results, and forming the government on its own has been reduced to a pipe dream. Read more…

HARD TIMES HAVE PAKISTANI HINDUS LOOKING TO INDIA, WHERE SOME FIND ONLY DISAPPOINTMENT

Maria Abi-Habib

JODHPUR, India — By the time an angry Muslim mob stormed the local Hindu school and ransacked an adjacent temple a few weeks ago, many members of Pakistan’s dwindling Hindu minority had already been wondering whether it was worth trying to stay in a country where they felt increasingly unsafe. Read more…

INDIAN ECONOMY HEADING TOWARDS DISASTER, ABHIJIT BANERJEE SAID DAYS BEFORE WINNING NOBEL

Remya Nair

New Delhi: India is “barreling down” the path to disaster with its decision to cut taxes for the rich and making unnecessary public investments that could “explode government debt”, economist Abhijit Banerjee said, days before being awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. Read more…

NUCLEAR DANGERS OF THE NAVAL KIND

Zia Mian, M V Ramana And A H Nayyar

In 2019, a new set of nuclear dangers emerged for Southasia. The growing danger was underscored during the military crisis between India and Pakistan in February 2019, when India put one or more of its nuclear submarines on “operational deployment mode.” During the crisis, the Pakistani Navy claimed to intercept an Indian submarine. No one has confirmed if this interception involved an Indian submarine carrying nuclear weapons. With India and Pakistan on an accelerated programme of acquiring and developing nuclear submarines, Southasia needs to pay urgent attention to the risks of nuclear accidents at sea. Read more…

EDITORIAL: LOCKDOWN DRAGS ON IN J&K

Vinod Mubayi

At the time of writing (September 25), Jammu & Kashmir remains in a locked down condition. There is no internet or mobile phone service over most of the state, there is an unending curfew for many inhabitants of major towns like Srinagar, the schools are largely closed, and thousands of political and business leaders in jail for no reason apart from the whims of the central government, i.e. the wishes of Prime Minister Modi, Home Minister Shah, and National Security Adviser Doval, and the repressive security apparatus at their control. J&K, especially the Valley, is beginning to resemble a vast open-air jail on the lines of Gaza. Read more…

THOUSANDS PROTESTED OUTSIDE UNGA IN NEW YORK DURING NARENDRA MODI’S SPEECH

Though Modi has visited the United States six times since 2014, this is the first time his presence in the US has been met with such vociferous protests. Read more…

WHY WE, AS HINDU AMERICANS, ARE OPPOSED TO MODI’S UNDECLARED EMERGENCY

Raju Rajagopal and Sunita Viswanath

“Democracy, beloved husband of Truth, loving father of Liberty, brother of Faith, Hope and Justice, expired on June 26.” – Times of India classified advertisement, inserted surreptitiously just as the 1975 Emergency went into effect. Read more…

WOMEN’S VOICE: FACT FINDING REPORT ON KASHMIR

[Kindly note. To protect the identity of the people we met, all names in the Report have been changed. We have not named the villages we visited for the very same reason] Read more…

INDIA, PAKISTAN, KASHMIR: TAKING THE WAR OPTION OFF THE TABLE

Zia Mian, Abdul H. Nayyar, Sandeep Pandey, M. V. Ramana

On September 27, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan will address the United Nations General Assembly in New York. This appearance will come at a time of great concern about the increasingly hostile relationship between their two countries. Read more…

JNUTA STRONGLY CONDEMNS HARASSMENT OF DR HANY BABU

JNUTA strongly condemns the illegal raid conducted by Pune Police at the Noida residence of Dr Hany Babu of the English Department, University of Delhi on September 10, 2019, allegedly in connection with the Bhima Koregaon case. Read more…

THE SCRAPPING OF ARTICLES 370 AND 35A – THE STAND OF THE RADICAL SOCIALISTS GROUP

We, the Radical Socialists Group, resolutely and unequivocally oppose and condemn the effective abrogation of the fundamental meaning and purpose of Article 370 and the overturning of Article 35A. This was carried out through anti-democratic, unconstitutional legal manoeuvrings and accompanied by the deliberate armed intimidation of the people of Kashmir. What has taken place is dishonest and a fraud on both the letter and spirit of the relevant Constitutional provisions. Read more…

BOOK REVIEW: NARRATING AN EPIC LIFE

Venu Madhav Govindu

Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914–1948 by Ramachandra Guha, Gurgaon: Penguin Allen Lane, 2018; pp xx + 1129, ? 999.

Ever since he came to dominate Indian public life a century ago, M K Gandhi has been a source of endless interest and fascination. He played a fundamental role in India’s freedom movement, and in turn, enabled the demise of the idea of empire. Read more…

TALL CLAIMS OF INDIA’S ‘GREAT CIVILISATION’ ARE HUMBUG

Vidya Bhushan Rawat

Two kids, who happened to be born in the Valmiki community, became victims of a deep rooted caste hatred which the caste Hindus have been nurturing since centuries. What was the fault of these kids? That they were Dalits, and that, too, of the community which is ‘supposed’ to keep the street, houses, ‘clean’. A community which has kept India clean, and carried the dirt of the caste Hindus for centuries, is not allowed to live a life with dignity. Most of the Valmiki bastis are out of sight for India’s politicians and officials. Not even the activists go to their place. Read more…

KASHMIR SWITCHED OFF

Basharat Ali, Iqbal Sonaullah And Mudasir Amin

It is the afternoon of 15 August 2019. We sit numb in our rented apartment in Delhi. While mainstream Indian media busies itself digging the wounds of Kashmir, barely any news has been allowed to escape the mountains since 5 August 2019. Read more…

RSS AGENDA, MAJORITARIANISM AND MODI’S FOOLS – PERFECT RECIPE FOR A CREEPING FASCISM

Vinod Mubayi

Modi, Shah and the rest of the BJP have made no secret of their desire to implement the RSS agenda after winning a second term by a large majority in the national elections last May. The main components of the RSS agenda include: a Uniform Civil Code, construction of a grand temple to Lord Ram at the site of the Babri mosque, destroyed by Hindutva vigilantes in 1992, in the town of Ayodhya, and the abolition of Article 370 of the Indian constitution that conferred a special status on the state of Jammu and Kashmir when it acceded to India. Progress is being made on fulfilling this agenda after six years of BJP rule. Read more…

MONTREALERS PROTEST ON 15TH AUGUST

Over 50 people, Montrealers of Indian origin along with friends and supporters gathered at Norman Bethune Square to mark this 73rd anniversary of India’s Independence in the darkest days of the country since 1947. Read more…

AMIT SHAH’S ‘HISTORY’

A.G. Noorani

The Sangh Parivar’s hatred of Jawaharlal Nehru is perfectly understandable. At the Partition of India he stood by Gandhi and bravely fought back the rising surge of hate fostered by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). The RSS supremo M.S. Golwalkar’s plans to exterminate Muslims were detected, as the Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh, Rajeshwar Dayal, revealed in his memoirs, A Life in Our Time. Had he been arrested, as Dayal suggested, Gandhi’s life would have been spared. Read more…

ACCIDENTS, INJURIES, PANIC: SUDDEN NRC NOTICES PUSH ASSAMESE TO BRINK OF DESPERATION

Gaurav Das

Inside the surgical ward of the state-run Gauhati Medical College Hospital (GMCH), Kabeluddin Rahman was sitting with his four-year-old daughter Kulsum on his lap. Visible on Kulsum’s small face were patches of bitumen, a material used for repairing roads. Read more…

THE SILENCE IS THE LOUDEST SOUND

Arundhati Roy

As India celebrates her 73rd year of independence from British rule, ragged children thread their way through traffic in Delhi, selling outsized national flags and souvenirs that say, “Mera Bharat Mahan.” My India is Great. Quite honestly, it’s hard to feel that way right now, because it looks very much as though our government has gone rogue. Read more…

KASHMIR: MODI’S DRACONIAN MEASURES WILL BE FOUGHT BY THE WORKING CLASS OF THE ENTIRE REGION

Adam Pal

Draconian measures by the Modi government regarding Kashmir have sent shockwaves across the whole region. On 5 August, the 70-year status of the disputed Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir was revoked by a presidential order. The existing constitutional arrangement was also revoked suddenly without any democratic process. Read more…

SPECIAL EDITION ON KASHMIR

WILL THE SUPREME COURT ALLOW BJP’S CONSTITUTIONAL COUP D’ETAT IN J&K TO STAND?

Editors

The INSAF Bulletin is published typically at the beginning of the month, but given the unrest in Kashmir that has blindsided many of us and represents a huge challenge to Indian democracy as well as prospects for peace in South Asia, we felt it appropriate to bring out a special issue on the topic. The articles in this bulletin pertain exclusively to the Kashmir problem, which was triggered by a unilateral and undemocratic action by the BJP government announced in Parliament by Home Minister Amit Shah on August 5, 2019. These actions included stripping Jammu and Kashmir of statehood, cutting internet communication, mobile and landline telephones across the state, abolishing article 370 that granted protection to Kashmiris, ratcheting up police and paramilitary forces in the region and arresting a wide swath of elected politicians who represented the population. Read more…

CONSTITUTION TORN TO SHREDS AS RSS INDULGES ARTICLE 370 FANTASY IN KASHMIR

Siddharth Varadarajan

Not only has Amit Shah stripped Article 370 of its essence, he has abolished the entire state as well, replacing it with two ‘Bantustans’ in which key decisions on issues like law and order and land will be taken from New Delhi. Read more…

AND KASHMIRIS SHALL IMMEDIATELY CEASE TO EXIST

Mohamad Junaid

The Indian government’s measures to bring Kashmir under direct rule by New Delhi attempts to erase the Kashmiri political identity and will inflame an already simmering resistance. Read more…

LAWS OF OCCUPATION

Asad Rahim Khan

“WHEN I think of India, I think of many things,” Jawaharlal Nehru wrote once. “Of … some mountain valley in Kashmir in the spring, covered with new flowers, and with a brook bubbling and gurgling through it.” In words that take on a new meaning today, Nehru concluded, “We make and preserve the pictures of our choice.” It suited India’s first prime minister, a Kashmiri Pandit, to preserve that picture, even if it meant occupation. Read more…

J&K SPECIAL STATUS: HOW THE MODI GOVERNMENT USED ARTICLE 370 TO KILL ARTICLE 370

Sruthisagar Yamunan

Scrapping Article 370 of the Indian Constitution was an election promise of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The Article grants special status to Jammu and Kashmir, which basically meant laws enacted by Parliament could not be enforced in the state without the approval of its government. Read more…

ARTICLE 370 OF THE CONSTITUTION: A GENESIS

Jai Shankar Agarwala

A brief history of why Article 370 of the Constitution was framed in a certain manner and the importance of the text of the Article from the viewpoint of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Read more…

INDIA REVOKES KASHMIR’S SPECIAL STATUS, RAISING FEARS OF UNREST

Jeffrey Gettleman and Sameer Yasir

NEW DELHI — The Indian government said on Monday that it was revoking a constitutional provision that had for decades given a unique degree of autonomy to Kashmir, a disputed mountainous region along the India-Pakistan border. Read more…

WHAT IS ARTICLE 370, AND WHY DOES IT MATTER IN KASHMIR?

Vindu Goel

Kashmir, a mountainous valley that borders Pakistan and India, has been a center of conflict between the two nuclear-armed countries since the 1947 partition of British India. Read more…

INDIA REVOKES OCCUPIED KASHMIR’S SPECIAL AUTONOMY THROUGH RUSHED PRESIDENTIAL DECREE

(Unsigned report from Dawn)

With an indefinite security lockdown in Indian-occupied Kashmir (IoK) and elected representatives under house arrest, India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stripped Kashmiris of the special autonomy they had for seven decades through a rushed presidential order on Monday. Read more…

BJP WANTS TO REVOKE ARTICLE 370, IRONICALLY SARDAR PATEL WAS ITS ARCHITECT

Srinath Raghavan

Until late 1947, Patel was open to Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan if Pakistanis would tell Nizam of Hyderabad to join India. Read more…

CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE A TERRORIST!

G. Sampath

I’ve spent the last few weeks reading about life in prison. I must say it’s time well spent. Advance preparation always helps. Tomorrow I could be carted off to jail. So could you. Read more…

THE ARTICLE 370 AMENDMENTS: KEY LEGAL ISSUES

Gautam Bhatia

In this post, I will attempt to break down the constitutional changes to Article 370, and highlight some key legal issues surrounding them. In essence, to understand what has happened today, there are three important documents. Read more…

KASHMIR: MODI’S ‘BANGLADESH MOMENT’?

Satya Sagar

If any confirmation was needed Narendra Modi is determined to cast himself as a carbon copy of Indira Gandhi- albeit one with a venomous, communal edge – you need not look further than his latest Kashmir gamble. Read more…

CURRENT PARADIGM SHIFT IN J&K IS IN TUNE WITH THE STEADY CENTRALISATION OF THE STATE SINCE 2014

Christophe Jaffrelot |

The two trends — obliteration of cultural differences and state centralisation — that are well illustrated by the way J&K has been dealt with, may impact policies vis-à-vis other states and other domains. For instance, Hindi may be promoted at the expense of linguistic diversity more decisively. Read more…

AUGUST 7: NATIONAL PROTEST DAY AGAINST ABROGATION OF ARTICLE 370

Sabrangindia

Move an “assault on India’s Constitution, democracy and federalism” Read more…

EDITORIAL: INDIA ON THE EVE OF 73rd YEAR OF INDEPENDENCE

Vinod Mubayi

On the eve of its 73^rd birthday, India offers glimpses of a society repudiating the promise made at its birth of a secular state with freedom and liberty for all that respected the ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity of the country. While the formal trappings of constitutional democracy exist, majoritarian politics based largely on a nakedly political use of religious identity is hollowing out the core elements of democracy; the pace has accelerated after the April-May 2019 election led to a second term for Modi and the BJP with an enhanced majority in Parliament. Read more…

BUDGET: MORE OF THE DISMAL SAME

Prabhat Patnaik

The most obvious exogenous element that could have been introduced to break out of this pro-cyclicality is a wealth tax, at least on the billionaires of the country, whose wealth is estimated at present to be around Rs 560 lakh crore. Read more…

ONE BUFFALO, THAT’S ALL IT TAKES TO MAKE US BUTCHERS OF FELLOW CITIZENS

Dev Raj

Police say: In the early hours of Friday, July 19, three men from Paigambarpur village — Naushad Qureshi, 40, Raju Nat, 40, and Videsh Nat, 20 — were lynched in Pithauri Nandlal Tola, 10km away, in Saran district, 95km northwest of Patna. Read more…

A NEW CAST — BY ELEVATING D RAJA TO THE POST OF GENERAL SECRETARY, CPI MAKES HISTORY

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

The elevation of D Raja to General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI) is a historic step. Raja is not only a well-known national communist leader but also a Dalit leader who rose to the status of a seasoned communist, theoretician and inspirational figure. Ever since the pro and anti-Mandal movements changed the course of Indian politics, Raja has been the only communist leader from within the left parties to negotiate between Dalit-Bahujans and communists as a authentic voice. Read more…

FROM ACHHUT KANYA IN 1936 TO ARTICLE 15, HOW INDIAN CINEMA HAS DEALT WITH CASTE

Seema Chishti

Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit (1939) is a rendition of a poem on racism in a time when lynching of Black men was common in America. More recently, rapper Kanye West used it in his album Yeezus (2013), the haunting lyrics speaking of strung-up bodies of Blacks lynched for acting above or outside their station and breaking the harsh code of the times: 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. Read more…

MOB LYNCHING AND THE INDIAN STATE

Irfan Engineer

Please see video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcr8QTPM9Io&feature=youtu.be

ARUNDHATI ROY ON INDIA’S ELECTIONS: “A MOCKERY OF WHAT DEMOCRACY IS SUPPOSED TO BE”

Interview by Samuel Earle in The New Republic

“In India,” Arundhati Roy wrote in 2002, “if you are a butcher or a genocidist who happens to be a politician, you have every reason to be optimistic.” Roy was referring to Narendra Modi, the then-chief minister of Gujarat who had been implicated in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in the state that killed at least 1,000 people. Read more…

ARUN KUMAR ROY: AN INDOMITABLE MARXIST IDEOLOGUE WHO BEACONED THE JHARKHAND MOVEMENT

Saurav Kumar

21st July brought a big shocker to the Indian politics at whole and Indian Left in particular in the form of the loss of a veteran communist leader, Arun Kumar Roy alias A.K.Roy and famously known as “Rai Da” among the masses of Jharkhand. His reminiscence in the minds of millions is imbibed firstly as someone who throttled the fight against oppressors who tried capturing rights of the people of Jharkhand. Read more…

LETTER FROM KARACHI: FOR A PLACE IN THE SHADE

Kevin Shi
In Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, the sun is an ever-present force, sometimes making it hard to even be outside. Every summer, the city suffers from heat waves causing dozens if not hundreds of deaths each year. Residents and medical personnel recall shocking scenes during the heat wave of 2015, when temperatures rose beyond 45ºC and over 1300 people died as a result. The city’s biggest morgue had to turn away bodies and cemeteries ran out of space to bury the dead. Read more…

50 PEOPLE DIED CLEANING SEWERS IN THE FIRST SIX MONTHS OF 2019

The Wire Staff

Data collated by the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK) reveals that at least 50 persons have died cleaning sewers in the first six months of 2019 alone. Read more…

INDIA: 49 INTELLECTUALS WRITE TO PM MODI, CONDEMNS LYNCHING OF MINORITIES

Telesur

“About 90% of those attacks were reported after May 2014 when your government assumed power nationally,” the signatories wrote. Read more…

MIYAH POETRY: HOW DO BESIEGED COMMUNITIES RESPOND?

Ram Puniyani

A FIR was registered against 10 Assamese poets (July 10, 2019). These poets mostly Muslims; have been pioneers and are leading lights of what has come to be known as Miyah Poetry. One sample, by the initiator of this trend; Hafiz Ahmed goes like this: Read more…

MAN AND THE MOVEMENT – RAJA DHALE’S WORDS AND WORK STIRRED SLEEPING SOULS, GAVE EXPRESSION TO SIMMERING DALIT ANGER

Suraj Yengde

Raja Dhale died on July 16 in Mumbai due to a heart attack, his family reported. He was 78 years old. Read more…

MY FRIEND, FIROZ ASHRAF

Vrijendra

In the late evening of June 8, 2019, Firoz Ashraf died in a freak accident outside his home in Jogeshwari when he was crossing the road. It is more than a month since he died, and many memorial meetings have been held to mourn his death, to celebrate his life, to remember him and to try to find out who will and how would fit in the large void he has left behind in so many, especially, young lives of so many Muslim girls for whom he was, to use an old but apt cliché, a saviour! In the last one month, I have also thought about him more than ever. Read more…

BITING MY TONGUE: WHAT HINDI KEEPS HIDDEN

Sagar
I was born into Hindi, and brought up in it. It was the language of my parents and siblings, my cousins and friends, all our neighbours in the Dalit ghetto in the small town in Bihar where I spent my childhood. It is still the only language I use with them. I studied for ten years in a Hindi-medium school that followed the curriculum of the Bihar state board. Read more…

EDITORIAL: HECKLING IN PARLIAMENT, LYNCHINGS IN THE STREETS: INDIA’S NEW GOVERNMENT HITS THE GROUND RUNNING

Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir

On the 19th of June 2019, India’s 17th parliament was sworn in by the speaker of the Lok Sabha. Muslims and Dalit leaders who took the oath were taunted incessantly by members of the ruling BJP in a naked act of intimidation. Troubled times could not have been announced more presciently. Read more…

HOW THE NATIONALISM OF INDIA’S ANTI-COLONIAL STRUGGLE DIFFERS FROM HINDUTVA AND WHY IT MATTERS TODAY

Prabhat Patnaik

The concept of nationalism that informed India’s anti-colonial struggle was a unique and unprecedented idea. There were at least three ways in which it was the very opposite of the concept of nationalism developed in Europe in the wake of the Westphalian peace treaties in the 17th century. Read more…

POPULISM PLUS

Partha Chatterjee

The Narendra Modi triumph has been built on two projects: one, the representation of Modi as the unquestioned populist leader who could be trusted to defend the nation’s security, and two, the long-term project of a nationalism defined by the Hindu majority. Read more…

WHAT DID INDIA REALLY VOTE FOR?

Vamsi Vakulabharanam and Sripad Motiram

The recently concluded election produced a puzzling outcome. During the tenure of the National Democratic Alliance government (NDA-II), the Indian economy significantly under-performed, heightening the distress of millions of farmers, raising unemployment and increasing the insecurity of workers in the informal sector. Read more…

MODI WON POWER, NOT THE BATTLE OF IDEAS

Amartya Sen

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India has led his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party to a major victory in the country’s general elections, winning more than 300 of the 543 parliamentary seats and five more years to run the country. Read more…

MOB LYNCHING AND THE INDIAN STATE

Irfan Engineer

Please see video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcr8QTPM9Io&feature=youtu.be Read more…

THE SPECTRE OF FOREIGNNESS

Harsh Mander

Extending the concept of foreigners tribunals from Assam to rest of India will result in an upheaval that will stir memories of Partition. Read more…

OF MANGOES, MOSQUES AND MUSLIMS : A TALE OF UNCHEYGAON, MY VILLAGE

Syed Areesh Ahmad

Politics is writ large on the landscape of Uncheygaon whether people talk about it or not. It is there in the graveyards that the Akhilesh government built, or the toilets, the izzat ghars, that the Modi government constructed. But I sensed that there has been a general apathy regarding politics in the muslim community of the village since the rise of Modi. Read more…

AUTHORITIES MUST ENSURE SAFETY OF DR. PUNIYANI, WHO HAS BEEN A STRONG SECULAR VOICE AND CRUSADER FOR COMMUNAL HARMONY

Courtesy SACW

Civil Society strongly condemns the criminal intimidation and threats made to noted scholar and ant-communalism activist Dr. Ram Puniyani and demand speedy and thorough investigation into the crime. Read more…

TO SANJIV BHATT, A MAN WHO DISPLAYED THE HIGHEST COURAGE

Harsh Mander

Dear Sanjiv,

I don’t know whether you will get to read this letter, and if so when. Possibly your indomitable life partner Shweta Bhatt will carry a copy to you when she goes next to meet you in prison. But she has, at this moment, so much to fight and cope with, she may well forget the trivial matter of this letter. Read more…

BOOK REVIEW: LABOUR IN THE INDIAN ECONOMY

Jayan Jose Thomas

Labour and Development: Essays in Honour of Professor T S Papola edited by K P Kannan, Rajendra P Mamgain and Preet Rustagi, New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2017; pp 722, ? 1,495 (hardcover). Read more…

EDITORIAL: THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

Vinod Mubayi

In the wake of the recently concluded 2019 elections India has been dubbed a “majoritarian democracy”. In the near future, it is very likely that more emphasis will be placed on “majoritarian” and less on democracy. The essence of Indian democracy so far has consisted of adherence, no matter how flawed in practice, to the liberal, secular Indian constitution with its promise of equal rights for all, including minorities. Read more…

LET NOT TRUTHS REMAIN TONGUELESS

Badri Raina

Athens feared the cloutless Socrates,

Because he said what he had to say;

He drank the hemlock cheerfully,

And Athens is known by him today. Read more…

VIJAYI MODI? YES. VIJAYI BHARAT? NOT ON YOUR LIFE

Siddharth Varadarajan

The election results show Modi has overcome his poor track record in office, but the fact that he has done so with a heady cocktail of communalism and nationalism, obscene amounts of money, unstinting media support and pliant institutions is bad news for Indian democracy. Read more…

THE NEW INDIAN ELECTION: FREE BUT NOT FAIR

Mukulika Banerjee

This 2019 national election in India is nothing like the one before it in 2014. There is something fundamentally different about it, even though it is superficially familiar. The vocabulary is the same, but the grammar has changed. Read more…

ECHOES OF PAKISTAN IN INDIAN POLLS

Pervez Hoodbhoy

It was once common wisdom that India had succeeded in developing a viable form of Westminster-style parliamentary democracy whereas Pakistan had failed. Pakistan has indeed suffered a succession of military governments interspersed with periods of nominally civilian rule; as such, it is not a model worthy of emulation. But the rise of Hindutva politics has taken away the starkness of earlier comparisons. Read more…

DEMOCRACY AS MAJORITARIANISM

Subhash Gatade

Subhash Gatade’s Hinduta’s Second Coming deals with the question of normalisation of majoritarianism which India is currently witnessing. The book is divided into three sections. Read more…

A SAVAGE SUMMER, A MERCILESS DROUGHT

Harsh Mander

After a long, harrowing drought, you wait with aching, desperate hope for the monsoon rains. You expect it will quench your parched arid fields, it will heal your land, feed your starving cattle, your skinny children, and restore them all to life. But when its time comes, you stare at the sky and find that there are no rain clouds, only a pitiless burning sun. You slowly realise with foreboding that there will be no life-giving rain, that you need to brace and fortify yourself, to endure an even longer, more savage summer, and a merciless drought. Read more…

WHY THE BJP’S HINDUTVA EXPERIMENT FAILED IN KERALA

Anoop Sadanandan

This election cycle, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Kerala followed the standard protocol to replicate the Hindutva experiment that had catalysed the party’s rapid rise in the north. By the book, the party pivoted its campaign on a temple issue. Read more…

A COLLECTIVE MADNESS: WHAT MODI’S VICTORY SAYS ABOUT TODAY’S INDIA

Namit Arora

In Varanasi recently, I took an auto-rickshaw from Godowlia to Assi Ghat. Like everyone else in town, the driver and I began talking politics. The 2019 general election was a week away and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was seeking reelection from Varanasi. The driver was an ardent Modi fan and would hear no criticism of him. Read more…

EXPLAINING NARENDRA MODI’S GLOBAL IMAGE VICTORY

Arjun Appadorai

It is highly likely that Narendra Modi will be handed another term as prime minister on May 23, even if the Bharatiya Janata Party takes a few losses here and there. If, by some unlikely chance, he loses, he has already established a global presence as a bold, imaginative and popular leader, a tribute to the democratic voice of India’s people. Read more…

MORE THAN EVMS, IT IS ‘THE HINDU MIND’ WHICH HAS BEEN EFFECTIVELY RIGGED

Apoorvanand

Modi has become confident that the Hindu mind has been vulgarised and become so spiritually hollow that even a crudity like his Kedarnath yatra can pass off as a religious expedition. Read more…

BOOK REVIEW: MAKING ECONOMICS MORE ACCESSIBLE

Rahul De

Economics of Real-Life: A New Exposition by C T Kurien, New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2018; pp 249, ? 995 (hardcover). Read more…

INSAF Bulletin strongly condemns the suicide bombings in Sri Lanka that took the lives of hundreds of innocent people, mainly Christians celebrating Easter and offers its sincere condolences to the families of the victims.

EDITORIAL: ELECTION CHICANERY, AND INDO-PAK PEACE – SOME REFLECTIONS

Vinod Mubayi

Two phases of the more than month long Indian elections are over with several still to come before the results are finally declared late next month. Read more…

BEYOND ELECTORAL BONDS

EPW Editorial

Electoral reforms should look beyond “anonymity of donors” to make a real difference. Read more…

OPINION: ON BALAKOT AND AFTER, REAL MYSTERY IS HOW THE INDIAN RESPONSE HAS BEEN TOUTED AS A TRIUMPH

Girish Shahane

We desperately need details countering the international narrative that is building steadily claiming that the Balakot mission was a failure. Read more…

THE CONTINUING CRUCIFIXION OF AMARTYA SEN

Santosh Paul

An article has surfaced under the title ‘Strange Saga of Amartya Sen and the Rothschilds’ by the author Arvind Kumar. The title is obviously meant to conjure up the latent anti-Semitic sentiment against a time tested goblin – the Jewish global financial conspiracy. This harangue is published in an online newspaper called Sunday Guardian. Read more…

THE MASSACRE THAT LED TO THE END OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

Gyan Prakash

The events at Jallianwala Bagh, in the Indian city of Amritsar, marked the beginning of the resistance against colonial governance. Read more…

THE GOVERNANCE DASHBOARD: THE BJP REGIME AND ITS PROMISES

Vamsi Vakulabharanam and Sripad Motiram

The current regime has failed to deliver on its promises of development and clean government. Read more…

THE TRUE STATE OF DEVELOPMENT

Rahul Menon

A Quantum Leap in the Wrong Direction? edited by Rohit Azad, Shouvik Chakraborty, Srinivasan Ramani and Dipa Sinha, Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2019; pp 315, 495. Read more…

PAKISTAN TO RELEASE 360 INDIAN PRISONERS AS TENSIONS EASE

Syed Raza Hassan

KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistan will release 360 Indian prisoners this month, the foreign office said on Friday, as the nuclear-armed neighbours scale back from a confrontation that prompted world powers to urge restraint. Read more…

IN DETAIL: ACCESS TO FACILITIES FOR WOMEN EXPERIENCING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Shireen J Jejeebhoy and K G Santhya

In India, 29% of women aged 15–49 have experienced marital violence. Although crisis centres, known as helplines, exist to support those who experience violence, little is known about the experiences of women who use these services. Read more…

EDITORIAL: MAJORITARIANISM – MALADY OF OUR TIME

Vinod Mubayi

The recent release of all the accused Hindutva terrorists by Indian courts in the Samjhauta Express bombing case that killed 68 persons including 44 Pakistani citizens, following the fizzling out of similar prosecutions in the bombings of Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid or Malegaon’s Idgah shows quite convincingly that under its present political dispensation, India is unable (or unwilling) to procure justice for the victims of violent acts when these are committed by actors owing allegiance to Hindutva ideals. Read more…

ATTACK ON PROFESSOR RAM PUNIYANI

Editors’ Note: The noted secular humanist Dr Ram Puniyani, who is also a contributing editor of Insaf Bulletin, was harassed at his residence in Mumbai on March 9 by three men claiming to be from the CID. The statement below protesting this treatment and the suspicious circumstances in which it occurred while asking the Mumbai police to investigate it, was signed by many eminent Indians. Insaf Bulletin adds its voice to theirs. Read more…

APPEAL TO NON-BJP OPPOSITION PARTIES REGARDING 2019 ELECTIONS

The coming 2019 may prove to be a watershed in India’s political history, as were the 1977 elections forty-two years ago. In 1977, elections were held after a declared Emergency, during which the Constitution was suspended, political activity disallowed and opposition leaders and activists imprisoned. The success of non-Congress parties in those elections strengthened the electoral system in Indian democracy. Since then all ruling parties losing elections have demitted office gracefully, rather than attempting to subvert the popular mandate. Read more…

IN UTTAR PRADESH, LAW IS MISUSED TO TARGET MINORITIES

Christophe Jaffrelot, Syed H A Rizvi

Patterns of communal violence are changing in Uttar Pradesh. As Sudha Pai and Sajjan Kumar had shown in Everyday Communalism: Riots in Contemporary Uttar Pradesh (OUP, 2018) after the 2004 BJP defeat, which former prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, partly attributed to the 2002 Gujarat riots, the Hindutva forces have opted for a new modus operandi. Read more…

WHO ARE THE FREE RIDERS OF INDIAN DEMOCRACY?

EPW Editorial

The NDA’s refusal to engage in argumentative politics results in the violation of democratic norms. Read more…

BANGLADESH: INNOCENT UNTIL FOUND PROTESTING

Sushmita S Preetha

In December 2018 and January 2019, workers from Bangladesh’s ready-made garment (RMG) industry went on spontaneous mass protests and strikes around major industrial belts in Dhaka. They were agitating against what they deemed insufficient wage increases, announced by a government-appointed wage board in September 2018, that would go into effect three months later. Garment-factory owners and the Bangladesh government responded with a tried and tested strategy: repression and attack. Read more…

LEFT-LIBERALS DON’T REALLY UNDERSTAND RIGHT-WING POPULISM – AND HAVE NO EFFECTIVE WAY TO COUNTER IT

Ajaz Ashraf

Populism succeeds because of a nation’s social psychology, which the left-liberal rarely takes into account. Read more…

INDIA, PAKISTAN BEGIN TALKS ON KARTARPUR CORRIDOR AMID CHILL OVER PULWAMA ATTACK

PTI

Attari (Amritsar): A meeting between officials of India and Pakistan to finalise the modalities for setting up of a corridor linking the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in the Pakistani town of Kartarpur with Gurdaspur district in Punjab commenced here on Thursday, officials said. Read more…

PAKISTAN: AURAT MARCH AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Neelum Hussain

Mainstream Pakistan is shocked by the slogans of Aurat March. A nation that is characterised by its free use of sexual abuse that not only targets women with explicit reference to their sexual body parts, but does so with impunity, is shocked by women’s demand for bodily integrity and safety. Read more…

BOOK REVIEW: CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM, AND THE TRANSITION FROM ONE TO THE OTHER

Rohini Hensman

Socialism and Commodity Production: Essay in Marx Revival by Paresh Chattopadhyay, Leiden, and Boston: Brill, 2018. Read more…

EDITORIAL: PULWAMA POSTURINGS

Vinod Mubayi

In a time of hyper-nationalism, reason and rational thinking go out the window to be replaced by chest thumping, calls for surgical strikes and revenge. The Pulwama episode reveals these features in gory detail. Indian TV anchors screaming like demented hyenas smelling blood if a guest dares to offer the mildest critique of the Government’s policies in Kashmir. Lynch mobs roaming the streets in many states outside Kashmir threatening and intimidating students of Kashmiri origin and forcing them out of their schools, colleges and hostels. Read more…

PEACE NOT WAR — HIGH ALERT/ YOUR PARTICIPATION IS URGENTLY NEEDED!

The following is the text of a petition urging for peace. It is followed by the links that may be used to sign on. Read more…

PULWAMA AND AFTER

Venkitesh Ramakrishnan

“If we are to defeat terrorism, it is our duty, and indeed our interest, to try to understand this deadly phenomenon, and carefully to examine what works, and what does not, in fighting it,” said Kofi Annan, Nobel Peace laureate and Secretary General at the time of the United Nations, at “Fighting Terrorism for Humanity: A Conference on the Roots of Evil” on September 22, 2003. Read more…

COVERING UP THE RAFALE TRAIL

EPW Editorial

In the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha general election, the Rafale issue has galvanised the opposition parties, which are seeking to force Anil Ambani and the government to take responsibility for the irregularities surrounding the deal. On the other hand, spokespersons of the government are making every effort to disentangle it from these irregularities. However, recent revelations have embroiled the government further in the controversy, which reeks of corruption and malfeasance. Read more…

DECLARATION: MAHARASHTRA STATE CONVENTION OF WORKERS: DEFEAT THE ANTI-WORKER MODI GOVERNMENT

The Kamgar Sangathana Samyukta Kruti Samiti, Maharashtra, is holding today the Maharashtra State Convention of Workers in continuation of the chain of its consistent agitation programmes – three day mahapadav at Delhi on 9th-10th-11th November , 2017 , January 6th 2018 Nashik convention and campaign, and the historic two day All India Strike on 8th, 9th January 2019. Read more…

WE NEED UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME AS JOBS SHRINK

Aakar Patel

The government’s announcement of a scheme to give small farmers Rs 6,000 cash per year is seen as a brilliant move that will reap political benefit in May. The scheme, announced in the budget, comes after two other developments. First, a report that the government has suppressed which says that unemployment is at its highest in more than 45 years. Second, that the Congress president Rahul Gandhi is talking of a minimum income guarantee. Read more…

LAW VERSUS FAITH, FEMALE ACTIVISTS VERSUS MALE DEVOTEES AND OTHER STRANGE CREATURES AT SABARIMALA

Nivedita Menon

The three images below teach us how society is transformed – by the courage and determination of the oppressed and marginalized; by tears of rage, and by stony cold resistance in the face of violent retaliation by entrenched power. It is not that these pioneers were fearless, but that they acted despite their fear. Read more…

INDIAN AUTHORITIES FAILED TO STOP ‘COW VIGILANTE’ VIOLENCE: REPORT

Helen Regan and Swati Gupta

Cow vigilante crimes in India have been ignored or covered up by the authorities, according to a new report. Read more…

EDITORIAL: CLASSISM, CASTEISM, SEMI-FASCISM AND THE POLITICAL USE OF RELIGION

Vinod Mubayi

Classism

At its inception, Modi’s regime bragged about the Gujarat model of economic development that, in its view, would transform the Indian economy. Mesmerized by the advertising glitz of the BJP, supported to the hilt financially by all the leading lights of Indian capitalism, the Ambanis and the Adanis, the Indian middle class succumbed to Modi’s rhetoric and rewarded his party with an unprecedented victory in the national elections. Read more…

‘I AM DEVASTATED BY THE PROSPECT OF IMMINENT ARREST’

Anand Teltumbde

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to quash the first information report filed by the Pune Police against civil rights activist and respected author Anand Teltumbde in connection with the violence at Bhima Koregaon on January 1, 2018. Read more…

WHO’S AFRAID OF ANAND TELTUMBDE?

N. Balmurli

Dr. Anand Teltumbde has demonstrated tremendous courage in departing from the hero-worshipping style of approaching the historical personalities, which is so rampant and so universal in our country. Read more…

THE 10% RESERVATION IS A CYNICAL FRAUD ON THE CONSTITUTION

Partha Chatterjee

Barely two days after it sprang the Constitution (124th Amendment) Bill on an unsuspecting Indian nation, the government managed to get it passed, virtually unanimously, in both houses of parliament. Days later, it was signed into constitutional law. Read more…

THE MALIGN INCOMPETENCE OF THE BRITISH RULING CLASS

Pankaj Mishra

With Brexit, the chumocrats who drew borders from India to Ireland are getting a taste of their own medicine. Read more…

NEW SOCIALIST INITIATIVE’S (NSI) STATEMENT ON THE PEOPLE’S RESISTANCE AGAINST THE CITIZENSHIP AMENDMENT BILL

New Socialist Initiative stands in solidarity with the people of Assam, Tripura and the other North Eastern states in their heroic struggle against the communally motivated Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB). It was only because of the resistance of the people that the government couldn’t table the Bill for voting in the Rajya Sabha after surreptitiously passing it in the Lok Sabha. Read more…

STATEMENT REFUTING FALSE ALLEGATIONS ON APSC AND IN SOLIDARITY WITH DR. ANAND TELTUMBDE

Karthik Navayan Battula

We pledge our strong support and solidarity to Prof. Anand Teltumbde who is facing an imminent threat of arrest in connection with the Bhima Koregaon incident on January 1, 2018, an event he has not even attended. Read more…

THE GROUND BENEATH OUR FEET HAS MOVED TO THE RIGHT

Nissim Mannathukkaren

Hate has become mainstream. This can only change when democracy is no longer equated with majoritarianism. Read more…

POLITICS OF CONTEMPT?

EPW Editorial

Members of the BJP have been losing their grip on the 2019 election as well as on their tongues. Read more…

PAKISTAN’S MISSING #METOO MOVEMENT

Hafsa Khawaja

As the #MeToo movement gathers momentum across various parts of the world, Pakistan remains largely unaffected by it. Far from making waves, the social-media-driven movement has hardly made ripples in the country. Read more…

OBITUARY: Mrinal Sen, One Of India’s Leading Directors, Dies At 95

Neil Genzlinger

Mrinal Sen, one of India’s leading filmmakers and a central figure in the movement known as parallel cinema, a socially conscious alternative to splashy Bollywood films, died on Dec. 30 at his home in Kolkata, India. He was 95. Read more…

EDITORIAL: INSAF TURNS 200

Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir

The results of the 5 state elections in India declared yesterday brought to mind a line from Faiz: “Roshan kahin bahar ke imkaan hue to hain” (Some possibilities of spring have emerged). Only possibilities, mind you. Bigger, sterner tests lie ahead. Read more…

ALARM BELLS FOR BJP: CONGRESS TAKES BIG STRIDES, MODI MAGIC WANING BUT STILL FORMIDABLE FOR 2019 POLLS

Nalin Mehta

In an election bookended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Congress “ki kaun si vidhwa hai” jibe on the one hand and Rahul Gandhi’s “chaukidar chor hai” slogan on the other, there are larger portents for the 2019 general election. Read more…

RAFALE CONTROVERSY: SUPREME COURT JUDGEMENT AMONGST WORST EVER?

Sukla Sen

Judgement Sparks Controversy

The judgement delivered by the Supreme Court on December 14th, has already attracted a hell lot of controversy. Read more…

ALTERNATIVE SECULAR GOVT TO BE FORMED AT CENTRE POST 2019 LOK SABHA POLLS: SITARAM YECHURY

PTI

CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury Monday claimed that a secular, alternative government will be formed at the Centre after the general elections in 2019. Read more…

INDIA’S #METOO MOMENT

Laxmi Murthy

The recent wave of revelations about sexual harassment in the entertainment and news media industry in India, popularly called the #MeToo moment has made one thing clear: there’s a dearth of listening skills and empathy. There is anguish, there is pain, there is hurt and most of all, there is anger. The time has finally arrived to heed these voices, and with understanding. Read more…

LETTER FROM AMERICA: HINDUTVA IN CHICAGO

Slok Gyawali

Were it not for the statuette of a cow outside the adjoining Harry Caray’s Italian Steakhouse, it would be impossible to distinguish the Westin Hotel in Lombard from other high-rises across Chicago’s suburban sprawl. Read more…

SABARIMALA PROTEST

O B Roopesh

On 28 September 2018, the Supreme Court lifted the ban on women’s entry (between the ages of 10 and 50) to Sabarimala Ayyappa Temple in Kerala. Women’s entry was banned in 1991 by the Kerala High Court (S Mahendran v The Secretary, Travancore 1991). Read more…

INDEFINITE STRIKE BY BIHAR’S ASHA WORKERS IS ANOTHER REMINDER THAT THEY ARE OVERWORKED, UNDERPAID

Kavita Krishnan

Accredited Social Health Activists or ASHA workers in Bihar went on an indefinite strike from December 1 with a 12-point charter of demands. Bihar has 93,687 ASHA workers – the second highest contingent of the one million ASHA workers in India. Read more…

WHAT IS MISSING IN THE #METOO MOVEMENT?

Ditilekha Sharma

How can we talk about sexual harassment in the context of a sex-negative atmosphere where conversations around sex and sexuality are considered taboo? Read more…

PAKISTAN’S ‘GOOD’ AND ‘BAD’ FEMINISMS

Amna Chaudhry

Transgressing Boundaries, an art installation by Karachi-based artist Nisha Pinjani, depicts several women in various positions all tied together by their hair. A thick black braid grows out of each woman’s head and proceeds to get in every woman’s way. Read more…

INDIA’S DANGEROUS NEW CURRICULUM

Alex Traub

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the Mughal Empire did much to create modern-day India. It consolidated the country into a sovereign political unit, established a secular tradition in law and administration, and built monuments such as the Taj Mahal. Read more…

EDITORIAL: INSAF TURNS 200

Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir

All milestones are social constructions, but it is good to report this one. We bring to you with pride the 200th issue of the INSAF Bulletin. When the bulletin started, the winds of war were on the horizon. The US invasion of Iraq was being readied, and India-Pakistan relations were on the brink of conflagrating into a direct attack after the Akshardam attacks of September 2002. Read more…

ELECTIONS AND BORDERS: INDIA’S REFUSAL TO TALK TO PAKISTAN HAS MUCH TO DO WITH BJP’S ELECTORAL NARRATIVE

Christophe Jaffrelot

Sometimes what has not happened needs to be explained as much as what has happened. External Affair Ministers of India and Pakistan, Sushma Swaraj and Shah Mehmood Qureshi, did not meet on the sidelines of United Nations General Assembly in New York in September. Why? Read more…

FAHMIDA RIAZ OBITUARY: SHE DWELT AMONG THE UNTRODDEN WAYS

Peerzada Salman

What were Fahmida Riaz’s accomplishments as a poet, as a novelist? Countless. Ironically, in her case, achievements in the literary world didn’t matter. That’s what she would tell anyone who, to her face, would speak highly of her creative output. Read more…

NATIONALISM A DRIVING FORCE BEHIND FAKE NEWS IN INDIA, RESEARCH SHOWS

A rising tide of nationalism in India is driving ordinary citizens to spread fake news, according to BBC research. Read more…

INDIA’S #METOO MOMENT

Laxmi Murthy

DID JAWAHARLAL NEHRU EVER SAY “I AM ENGLISH BY EDUCATION, MUSLIM BY CULTURE AND HINDU BY ACCIDENT”?

Arjun Sidharth

A statement which is attributed to India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru has circulated online for the past few years. According to this quote, Nehru had said, “I am English by education, Muslim by culture and Hindu merely by accident”. Among those who claimed that Nehru had said this include BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya who had tweeted this in 2015. Read more…

CROSSROADS IN SRI LANKAN HISTORY

Tamara Fernando

Histories of Sri Lanka have often concurred with nationalist sentiments which favour the majority ethno-linguistic group of the island, the Sinhalese Buddhists. The oft-cited A History of Sri Lanka (first published in 1981) by historian K M de Silva, for instance, begins by establishing “colonisers and settlers” of the island. Referencing the Mahavamsa – a fifth-century Pali chronicle which recounts a Buddhist monastic version of Sri Lankan history – the author concludes that existing sources “tend strongly to support the conclusion that Indo-Aryan settlement and colonisation preceded the arrival of Dravidian settlers by a few centuries”. Read more…

ARMY’S ROBUSTNESS IN AID OF CIVIL AUTHORITY: LESSONS FROM THE GUJARAT CARNAGE

Ali Ahmed

When the army is called in aid of civil authority, robust action taken by the army in a timely manner can prevent civil disturbance from exacting a strategic cost. The recent revelations on army inaction in the critical first 24 hours during the Gujarat carnage in 2002 are examined. Read more…

SETBACK FOR FREEDOM OF ACADEMIA

A G Noorani

The Aligarh Muslim University is very much a “central university”. The University Grants Commission seems not to have the faintest conception of academic freedom. Its fiat is shockingly archaic. Read more…

YES, SABARIMALA IS IN PERIL, BUT NOT THE WAY YOU THINK

Rajan Gurukkal

Misogyny In Malayalam

Sabarimala, named after Sabari, an epic vestal known for her austere penance to attain Lord Rama’s blessings, and now world-renowned for the Ayyappa temple perched on it, is a beautiful hillock of the Periyar Tiger Reserve on the Kerala side of the Western Ghats. Originally a cult spot of the local forest-dwellers’ protector deity, Ayyanar, it became a small shrine of Ayyappa around the 15th century. Read more…

THE AFTERLIFE OF THINGS IN A DELHI JUNKYARD: LIMINAL DEBRIS OF CONSUMER CULTURE

Sreedeep Bhattacharya

The trajectory of “things” that are declared obsolete is mapped to argue that a junkyard is not merely a repository of the redundant, but also a liminal space between waste and trash, as well as use and reuse. An exploration of a junkyard in the Mayapuri neighbourhood of Delhi reveals how value is extracted from waste, bypassing the imposed norms of planned obsolescence in order to induce life into the lifeless. A complex set of relationships between the imposed rules of obsolescence and actual practices of a junkyard are observed to argue that “waste” is not merely matter out of place or matter without place, but it is essentially matter on the move. Read more…

EDITORIAL: LYING AS A MODE OF GOVERNANCE

Vinod Mubayi

The undoubted champion of lying as a mode of governing is the current US President Donald Trump. The Washington Post estimates that he has uttered or tweeted more than 8 lies per day on average over the last two years largely as a means of exciting his base who seem to cheer every falsehood that emanates from him. Read more…

NARENDRA MODI AND THE SANGH PARIVAR ARE TRYING TO APPROPRIATE THE STRONGLY SECULAR NETAJI

Subhashini Ali

A BJP loyalist from Madhya Pradesh declared more than a week ago that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was lord Vishnu himself (sakshaat Vishnu Bhagwan). Many may not have taken him seriously, but after hearing the prime minister’s October 21 speech – rather, watching it, as his public appearances before a mic are more performance than substance – one cannot help but feel that perhaps he took the loyalist’s assertion quite seriously. Nothing else can explain the cap on his head. Read more…

UNITE! RESIST! HATE & XENOPHOBIA in QUEBEC & CANADA

In Québec, (as in many other parts of the world) anti-Muslim racism has been on the rise for many years. The most horrifying proof in Québec was the attack on the Grand Mosque in Québec City in January 2017. 6 people were killed and 19 injured. Read more…

PAST PERFECT AND A FUTURE TENSE

Rajesh Kochhar

The things All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) wishes to formally teach engineering students in the name of ancient Indian scientific achievements is a gross insult to ancient India. Making unsubstantiated claims about the past detracts from the genuine contributions that were actually made, and brings ridicule to an otherwise respected discipline. Read more…

PAKISTANI WOMAN ASIA BIBI ACQUITTED AFTER SUPREME COURT OVERTURNS DEATH SENTENCE FOR BLASPHEMY

Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned the conviction of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother facing execution for blasphemy, in a landmark case which has incited deadly violence and reached as far as the Vatican. Read more…

SS & BJP’S NEHRU-NETAJI ‘COSPLAY’: IRONY DIES A THOUSAND DEATHS

Ashutosh

The RSS and BJP’s relentless attack on the Nehru-Gandhi family is quite understandable. After all, the grand old family is the last stumbling block in their historical project – the building of a “Hindu Rashtra”. Read more…

SABARIMALA: BRAHMANISM’S LAST DITCH BATTLE IN KERALA

Binu Mathew

The only code of law for Hindus is Manu Smriti. IX.3 of Manu Smriti says “Na stree svaatantryam arhati” (a woman does not deserve freedom). Manu Smriti is the code of the four fold Varna system, namely Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vysya and Shudra. Hinduism is in fact is rooted in this pyramidal varna system, Brahmins being at the top. Manu Smriti is at the root of the Hindu code of law. It governs all aspects of Hindu life from birth to death. According to Manu Smriti the lower castes are not even the right to knowledge, not speak of the right of women. Read more…

THANK YOU VERY MUCH, MR. AKBAR

Harish Khare

Rather than give in to a perfectly justified sense of outrage over M.J. Akbar brazening out the #MeToo storm against him, his refusal to step down from the ministerial perch should be lustily cheered. The Bharatiya Janata Party establishment has just advertised to the whole wide world that it has lost its marbles. Read more…

A DALIT WOMAN’S THOUGHTS ON #METOOINDIA

Mimi Mondal

For generations in India, Dalits have been actively stopped from speaking. It’s a marvellous nexus—the actively casteist population doesn’t even consider us human enough, and the population that pretends to be anti-caste forcefully silences us. Read more…

PROPAGATING THEOCRACY BY STEALTH?

EPW Editorial

The Sangh Parivar seeks to push its extraconstitutional agenda under the guise of law. Read more…

THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION AND THE ANTI-COLONIAL MOVEMENTS IN SOUTH ASIA

The histories of the revolutionary anti-colonial movements in South Asia and their engagement with the October Revolution are reflected upon, in this article. Accompanying these reflections is a sensitivity to contemporary problems of Islamophobia, the manipulation of popular protests by imperial powers and the internal ethnic and cultural divisions that invariably prise open the doors for imperialist interventions. The relationship between South Asian anti-colonial movements and the October Revolution was reciprocal. Read more…

EDITORIAL: THE REPUBLIC OF FEAR – II

Vinod Mubayi

Last month, Insaf Bulletin published the first installment of The Republic of Fear, the attempt of the Modi-Shah regime to instill a climate of fear in the public to forestall opposition in advance of the 2019 national elections. This was to ensure that the mounting protests against the failed policies of the regime, especially by the marginalized sections of society like the Dalits, would be met by intimidation including false arrests on fake grounds of those who articulated the causes of the Dalits most clearly, such as lawyers, academics, and activists. Read more…

ANAND TELTUMBDE: HOW THE POLICE CAN FABRICATE EVIDENCE TO SUGGEST THAT ANYONE IS AN ‘URBAN MAOIST’

The Pune Police has been brandishing letters ostensibly extracted from the hard disk confiscated from activist Rona Wilson during the raid on his home on June 6. Computers have come handy for the police to produce virtually anything, quite like Satya Saibaba’s vibhuti, to implicate anyone and to harass them for a number of years as dreaded criminals, without an iota of misdoing. Even the inventors of computer systems could probably not have imagined that their creations would find such a vile application in the hands of the unscrupulous Indian police to destroy the lives of innocent people. Read more…

STATEMENT ON VIOLENCE AT HINDU NATIONALIST CONFERENCE

Chicago South Asians for Justice is a coalition resisting the rise of global fascism in the United States, India, and worldwide. Last night, we staged a peaceful disruption of the World Hindu Congress (WHC), an event that celebrated speakers like Mohan Bhagwat, the chair of the Indian right-wing, militant group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), now ascendant in Indian politics. Read more…

RAT POISON

Sumanta Banerjee

There is a nation-wide scare about a plot to kill our beloved prime minister Narendra Modi-ji by Maoists. Thanks to the ever alert police force of Maharashtra – and aided by our even more alert national investigative agencies – the conspirators have been apprehended before they could carry out their plot. Read more…

INDIA’S RIOTOUS TRIUMPH OF EQUALITY

Manil Suri

In a landmark ruling this week, the Indian Supreme Court didn’t simply strike down Section 377, the odious British-introduced law criminalizing homosexual acts — it did so in a judgment of remarkable scope and eloquence. Read more…

NARENDRA MODI: THE DISASTROUS PRIME MINISTER

Uttam Sengupta

He is the first PM to have replaced politics of hope with politics of fear. His public speeches are replete with innuendos, conspiracy theories, communal canards and victim card play. Read more…

PROSPECT OF PEACE PROCESS BETWEEN INDIA AND PAKISTAN

Adeela Ahmed

The Sovereign States frame their foreign policy to set political goals that enable them to interact with the other countries of the world to promote their national interest, national security and enhance national power. Read more…

UN TELLS OF MYANMAR GENOCIDE BUT ARE WORLD POWERS LISTENING?

Simon Tisdall

The UN report on violence inflicted on Rohingya Muslims and other minorities by Myanmar’s security forces is damning, but whether the guilty will ever face justice is open to serious question. Much now depends on the willingness of the UK and other veto-wielding UN security council members to forcefully pursue the allegations of genocide and crimes against humanity. Read more…

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS OF ATHEISTS AND NON-BELIEVERS

Anurag Bhaskar and Shubham Kumar

Though atheism has been socially prevalent in India, it has remained a grey area in the legal context. There are no specific laws catering to atheists and they are considered as belonging to the religion of their birth. Read more…

ARE SEWER DEATHS THE NEW NORMAL?

EPW Editorial

The recent deaths of six sewerage workers in Delhi in two separate incidents form part of a continuing series of such deaths. However, the response of the authorities indicates a new normality. It is typical of all that is unacceptable and insensitive in dealing with those who are condemned to perform a task that is considered as crucial in the rhetorical language of swachh Bharat (clean India). Read more…

THE TRUTH OF RSS IN ITS’ OWN WORDS

The AISA Collective

Introduction

All wings of the hydra-headed Rashtriya Swayamasevak Sangh (RSS), be it the student front ABVP, or Bajrang Dal, or BJP or its numerous vahinis and senas share the ideology of the RSS. Read more…

EDITORIAL: INDIA FAST BECOMING A REPUBLIC OF FEAR

Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir

A perceptive columnist recently wrote that national leaders govern their people by two major methods; the first one promises affection and inclusion, the second fear and intimidation. As the rhetoric of “sabka vikas” (development for all) fades into oblivion, several recent events suggest that Modi’s India is quickly becoming The Republic of Fear, an appellation once coined to describe Saddam Hussain’s Iraq three decades ago. Read more…

CORPORATOR WHO REFUSED TO JOIN VAJPAYEE CONDOLENCE MEET JAILED FOR ONE YEAR

Sukanya Shantha

In an incident that raises serious questions not just about the fate of freedom of expression in India but also the rule of law, an elected official in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad has been sent to prison for a year for declaring that he would not be participating in a condolence meeting for former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Read more…

CONDEMNATION OF THE MOB ATTACK ON SANJAY KUMAR, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY, MG CENTRAL UNIVERSITY, MOTIHARI BIHAR

Sent by Ram Punyani

As sociologists, social scientists and concerned individuals across the world, we strongly condemn the brutal mob assault on 17 August 2018, on sociologist Sanjay Kumar at Mahatma Gandhi Central University, Motihari, Bihar. Read more…

ARE THE ‘SUPPOSED’ IMMIGRANTS IN ASSAM A SECURITY THREAT?

Ram Puniyani

The perception is that those not finding their place in the NRC are supposed to be Bangladeshi Muslims. The primary anger of Shah is against this group of people. Read more…

AS IMRAN KHAN TAKES OFFICE, MILITARY LOOMS OVER PLAN FOR ‘NEW PAKISTAN’

Howard LaFranchi

When Pakistan installs Imran Khan as its new prime minister Saturday, the cricket star-turned-populist politician will be wearing an old sherwani, or traditional coat-length garment. Read more…

THE CLIMATE CHANGE WIDOWS OF INDIAN VILLAGES

Arpita Chakrabarty, Al Jazeera

19 August 18

When natural disasters claim the lives of men, it is women in Indian villages who suffer the most. Read more…

TOP SECURITY EXPERT EXPOSES DANGEROUS FLAWS OF AADHAAR

Sandeep Shukla/ Ujjawal Krishnam

Scientist Dr. Sandeep Shukla’s confidential studies highlighted the loopholes in Aadhaar but nothing has been done to beef up data security by the government yet. Read more…

PETITION: PROF. SP KOTHARI- WITHDRAW FROM PARTICIPATING IN WORLD HINDU CONGRESS 2018

Aazaad Lab

Aazaad Lab started this petition to Gordon Y Billard Professor of Accounting and Finance, MIT Sloan School of Management SP KOTHARI and 1 other. Read more…

SRI LANKA: FORMER SRI LANKAN POLICE OFFICERS GRANTED BAIL OVER MURDER OF JOURNALIST

Two former Sri Lankan police officers have been granted bail by a court in Mount Lavinia today, after they had been detained over the killing of Sinhala journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge. Read more…

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF SUSPECTED ‘FOREIGNERS’ IN ASSAM: ‘HE SAID MAI, I SAID BABA, WE BOTH JUST CRIED’

Tora Agarwala

On a Monday morning at the Kokrajhar District Jail, paper and patience are both in paucity. “We don’t provide paper,” snaps the jailor across a grille. Read more…

MAKING SENSE OF KERALA’S FLOOD DISASTER

EPW Editorial

The humanitarian response to Kerala’s calamity has risen above blame games. Read more…

OBITUARY: KULDIP NAYAR

Abdullah Niazi

Aged 95, Kuldip Nayar passed away as frail old men often do. A chill is followed by pneumonia that attacks the weakened lungs and there is nothing much that doctors can really do. Age takes its toll on the human body, and at 95, Nayar had reached a grand old age. Read more…

HOW KERALA SURVIVED ITS WORST CRISIS IN A CENTURY

Brinda Karat

As the flood waters in devastated Kerala recede, the extent of damage can be better though still not fully assessed and the way forward charted with lessons from what has occurred. Read more…

NTUI STATEMENT

Immediately Stop the Unlawful Arrest of Trade Unionists and Human Rights Defenders
Read more…

EDITORIAL: ELECTIONS IN PAKISTAN

Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir

The elections in Pakistan are over. There were sporadic and horrific incidents of violence, especially in Baluchistan. Initial results indicate that former cricketer Imran Khan’s party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Justice Party) will obtain the largest number of seats although it may fall short of a majority and will have to form a coalition with smaller parties. It is likely, however, that Imran will be installed as Prime Minister in the coming days. Read more…

ANATOMY OF A POLITICAL MOMENT

Sarah Eleazar and Sher Ali Khan

What kind of freedom is this?

You are deaf to our voices.

What KIND of freedom IS this?

Our young men keep getting killed.

What KIND of freedom IS this?

– ‘Da Sang Azadi Da’ by Shaukat Aziz Read more…

INTERVIEW: IMRAN KHAN IS PAKISTAN’S DONALD TRUMP – AND THE ARMY’S MAN, SAYS ACADEMIC PERVEZ HOODBHOY

Ajaz Ashraf

When former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz landed in Lahore on July 13, Pakistan was agog with excitement. Nobody had expected them to ever return to Pakistan. After all, just a week ago, a court in Pakistan had convicted the two of corruption in connection with the purchase of luxury apartments in London. It had sentenced Nawaz Sharif to 10 years in prison and Maryam Nawaz to seven years. Read more…

THE RISE, FALL AND RISE AGAIN OF IMRAN KHAN, PAKISTAN’S NEXT LEADER

Jeffrey Gettleman

LAHORE, Pakistan — Imran Khan, a charismatic cricket star who has fiercely criticized American counterterrorism policy in a region plagued by extremism, appeared poised on Thursday to become Pakistan’s next prime minister. Read more…

“NO REAL CHOICE” AT THE BALLOT BOX FOR THE PEOPLE OF PAKISTAN

Interview with Tariq Ali

SHARMINI PERIES: It’s The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore. Read more…

INDIA: ALL INDIA SECULAR FORUM STRONGLY CONDEMN THE ATTACK ON SWAMI AGNIVESH

All India Secular Forum strongly condemn the attack on Swami Agnivesh, a 80 years old Highly respected social activist and Right Livelihood Awardee considered alternative Nobel Prize. Read more…

INDIA: 13-FEET WALLS NOT ENOUGH: STEALING YOUR AADHAAR DETAILS COSTS JUST RS 125

Anand Venkatanarayanan

That the central Aadhaar database has never been breached and can’t be breached is an often-made claim, especially by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and its CEO. Read more…

ON THE ‘URBAN MAOISTS’

Anand Teltumbde

Even in these times of a growing sense of hopelessness in the country under the present regime, the arrests of five activists by Maharashtra’s Pune police have stunned many due to the blatant misuse of power and impunity that it reflects. The continuing spate of condemnation by scores of people within and outside India does not affect the regime that parrots the statement that the law will take its course. Read more…

MOB LYNCHING: LET US ACT NOW

Irfan Engineer

Mob lynching has drastically increased in recent years, particularly since the election of the BJP government. There has been fourfold increase in cow related violent incidents from less than 5% of incidents communal violence in 2010 to 20% in 2017 (Subramanya, 2017). Read more…

WAS EMERGENCY IN INDIA AKIN TO HITLER’S REGIME?

Ram Puniyani

On the eve of 43rd anniversary of the Emergency, which was imposed on the country in 1975, BJP has come out strongly condemning the event, has issued half page advertisement and Modi said that it was imposed to save the power of a family. Read more…

STOP THE WITCH-HUNTING OF TRADE UNIONISTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS

The New Trade Union Initiative condemns the baseless allegations, that are fabricated and defamatory, made against Comrade Sudha Bharadwaj leader of the Pragatisheel Cement Shramik Sangh and Jan Aadharit Engineering Mazdoor Union in Chhattisgarh of having ‘Maoist’ links, receiving funds from ‘Maoists’ and creating a ‘Kashmir like situation’ by Republic TV Managing Director and anchor, Arnab Goswami. Read more…

NATIONAL PROTEST BY LEFT PARTIES ON MURDER OF DEMOCRACY IN WEST BENGAL AND TRIPURA ON JULY 24

[Released from CPI(M) Central Committee office]

An open daylight murder of democracy is taking place in the states of West Bengal and Tripura. Human rights and political freedom have come under severe strain. Read more…

WHERE IS INDIA HEADED? SABKA VIKAS TURNS INTO HAMARA VIKAS, TUMHARA VINASH

Editors

Recent moves by the government and the BJP suggest that in preparation for the forthcoming elections next year the Modi/Shah duo is opting to polarize the electorate on religious majority-minority grounds as part of its electoral strategy. Since the tall promises made by Modi in 2014 of “acchhe din” (good times) and “sabka vikas” (development for all) have turned out to be mere “jumlas” (fakes), and the BJP seems to be losing popularity in its key strongholds in the north and west as evidenced by its defeat in several by-elections, Modi and Shah seem to have decided to fall back on their tried and trusted strategy of consolidating the (upper caste) Hindu vote, demonizing their political opponents as anti-national, and “othering” the religious minorities who are not going to vote for BJP. Read more…

STIFLING DISSENT

Anupama Katakam

In a bizarre turn of events after the violence that broke out on January 1 during the 200th anniversary of the Bhima-Koregaon battle, five rights activists have been arrested for their alleged links with naxalites. According to the police, the “Elgaar Parishad” meeting that saw hundreds of Dalits congregate in Pune on December 31, 2017, was funded by naxalites. Read more…

POTENT ANTIDOTE

Purnima S. Tripathi

The RLD’s victory in the Kairana Lok Sabha byelection proves that majoritarian triumphalism, which has taken root since the BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014, can be defeated with grass-root level social engineering and by making minority votes matter. Read more…

AIIB SHUT DOWN! REJECT NEOLIBERAL DEVELOPMENT MODEL!

We, representatives of social movements, adivasis, dalits, women, farmers, fisherfolk, forest workers, trade unions, civil society organisations from across India, together with solidarity groups from Asia Pacific, Europe and the Americas, who have gathered at the Peoples’ Convention on Infrastructure Financing in Mumbai, 21-23 June, 2018, declare that International Financial Institutions have no role and function to play in today’s democratic polity and should be shut down immediately. Read more…

THE BJP’S DANGEROUS END GAME IN KASHMIR

Prem Shankar Jha

The BJP wishes to use Kashmir as a cornerstone of a bid to return to power in 2019. Read more…

MODI AND DISSENT

A.G. Noorani

The state has turned a libeller with intimidation as its weapon, inspiring mobs and using them as its tools. To what depths will Narendra Modi and Amit Shah not stoop in 2019 when the prize is the Prime Minister’s job? Read more…

PEOPLE’S ALLIANCE FOR DEMOCRACY AND SECULARISM (PADS)

Press release

Isolate and Defeat Perpetrators of Lynching: A Lynching Nation Cannot be Democratic.

PADS statement against recent cases of public lynching in different parts of the country: Read more…

BOOK REVIEW: MAN WITH THE WHITE BEARD

Harbans Mukhia

Shah Alam Khan is a professor of orthopaedics at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. That is, he sets old people’s bones and enables them to stand up from their chairs and walk. Not one you would expect would write some soul searching poetry and now an evocative novel that brings you closer to the deepest sorrows brought home to us by human cruelty as well as the most heartfelt joys of being compassionately human. Read more…

EDITORIAL: CAPITALISM AS USUAL

Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir

The 5th of May 2018 was the 200th birth anniversary of Karl Marx. Marx’s ideas have reverberated across the world, including South Asia. In this issue, we include a tribute to Marx by Vijay Prashad as well as a history of a few communist parties in South Asia, notably Bangladesh and Pakistan. Read more…

THE SO-CALLED “CONSUMERS’ INTEREST”

Prabhat Patnaik

IN the wake of the take-over of Flipkart by Walmart, one is once again hearing an argument which one has often come across before, namely that having a large multinational in this sphere, which can do global sourcing for its products, will make goods cheaper for buyers and therefore be in the “consumers’ interests”. Read more…

PROFITING FROM THE POOR: THE EMERGENCE OF MULTINATIONAL EDU-BUSINESSES IN HYDERABAD

Sangeeta Kamat, Carol Anne M Spreen and Indivar Jonnalagadda

Over the last decade, education for the poor in the developing world has become an increasingly attractive market for global investors and multinational corporations. This movement, known as the Global Education Industry (GEI), is vested in setting up schools for profit. It presents private schools as the best alternative to public schooling and possibly the only alternative to universalising access to education in developing and emerging economies. Among developing countries, India is almost always underscored as an education market ripe with potential and profits. Read more…

KARNATAKA: DECEIT AND DEFEAT

Ravi Sharma

The high drama in Karnataka that ended with the shameful exit of B.S. Yeddyurappa after remaining as Chief Minister for 56 hours gives the BJP a bitter political lesson and secular parties an opportunity to unite against their common foe. Read more…

CITIZENS’ REPORT ON FOUR YEARS OF THE NDA GOVERNMENT 2014-2018

Since the time Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (WNTA) came out with its first Citizens’ Report on the BharatiyaJanta Party (BJP) led National Development Alliance (NDA) government in May 2015, India has witnessed an unprecedented political change whose sheer continuity has surprised many. Read more…

WHAT IS HOME? INDIAN AND PAKISTANI ARTISTS EXPLORE THE QUESTION THROUGH STORIES OF PARTITION

Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri

Rashmi Kaleka’s family was one of the countless many which came to India from Pakistan during Partition in 1947 but never really forgot what once was home. The sound installation artist grew up on stories about Pakistan and the house her parents, aunts and uncles lived in in Lahore. One of the stories, narrated to her in Punjabi by her father, involves a simple mesh door and the desire to bring a piece of home to India. Read more…

ANATOMY OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF BANGLADESH

The rewriting of history has begun. On 30 June, 2000, the CPB (Communist Party of Bangladesh) arranged a meeting in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Moni Singh’s birth. Read more…

PAKISTAN ARCHIVES: HISTORY OF THE COMMUNIST MAZDOOR KISSAN PARTY

The Communist Party of Pakistan was created in 1948 with Sajjad Zaheer as its General Secretary. An unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government by anti-imperialist officers within the army led to the incrimination of members of the CPP in 1951. This was known as the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case. Read more…

ASHOK MITRA: A LIFE OF RARE RICHNESS

Prabhat Patnaik

A fellow economist and friend looks back at Ashok Mitra’s intellectual contributions and the wide range of his experiences, associations, and interests. Read more…

MARX TURNS 200

Vijay Prashad

I imagine Karl Marx at his desk in the British Library, reading the Blue Books produced by the British imperial officials, studying the large books of Smith and Ricardo, spilling ink onto his coat, wondering what chaos will meet him at home. Read more…

MAY DAY GREETINGS TO ALL OUR READERS!

EDITORIAL: HINDUTVA’S EVOLUTION – FROM CRIMINAL TO PATHOLOGICAL BEHAVIOR

Vinod Mubayi

The drugging, torture, rape, and eventual killing of the little 8-year old girl child Asifa in the Kathua region of Jammu is a crime of such extreme depravity as to literally stagger the imagination. The fact that the premeditated criminal act was planned, perpetrated and executed by a retired government functionary aided by his relatives and a few policemen and carried out inside the confines of a Devisthan (the local Hindu temple) compounds its heinous nature. And what was the tawdry motive behind this horrific act? Read more…

THE REAL INSTINCT LURKING BEHIND THE KATHUA HORROR

Apoorvanand

The rapes at Unnao and Kathua have shaken most of us. And yet it needs to be said that the Kathua rape falls in an entirely different category. The abduction, brutalisation, multiple rape and finally murder of the eight-year-old girl was an act of communal or ethnic ‘cleansing’. It was done with an intent to rid Kathua of the presence of the Muslim Bakarwal community. That it was done on “behalf of the nation” was clear when we saw the tiranga being waved to cover the crime, led by people who are known as officers of the court. Read more…

MODI SHOULD REIN IN HIS PARTY MEN, SAYS LAWYER FOR KATHUA GIRL’S FAMILY

Kabir Agarwal

While many lawyers in Jammu actively protested the filing of the police chargesheet against the accused in the brutal rape and murder of an eight-year-old, one local lawyer has stepped in to fight the case on behalf of the girl’s family. Read more…

WHO IS MOST GUILTY OF THE KATHUA BARBARITY? MODI, SANGH PARIVAR, “SECULAR” PARTIES – AND ALL OF US

Harsh Mander

Today, in this somber moment of collective grief and revulsion across India, the child from a pastoral community in Kathua with two sets of parents has also become your daughter and mine. At this time of loss, the question we must confront is this: who is responsible for her ghastly rape and murder? Read more…

CPI (M)-CHALLENGING TIMES

EPW Editorial

Will the CPI(M) live up to the task of successfully uniting all secular and democratic forces to defeat semi-fascism? Read more…

HOW I GOT OVER THAT DARK GEOGRAPHIC SHADOW CALLED PAKISTAN

Qudsiya Ahmed

“Musalman ke do hi sthaan, qabristan ya Pakistan” (A Muslim has only two choices of abode – graveyard or Pakistan) is not a rhyme that a nine-year-old forgets with time. Its memory becomes stronger with age, as does the intensity of this choice. What hits her first is the option available; followed by the realisation of what is at stake — her life, and her loyalty to the country. Read more…

PAKISTAN: REVIVAL OF THE LEFT

Rashed Rahman

The task of reviving the Left to once again become an effective player in the polity has been exercising minds in the surviving Left parties and groups for long but the achievement of this goal has proved difficult. It is therefore heartening to note the follow-up of the meeting of 10 Left parties and groups in Lahore on December 29, 2017 by the formation of a 17-parties/groups’ platform dubbed Lahore Left Front (LLF). Read more…

INDIA: ASSURING DESTRUCTION FOREVER

MV Ramana

India continues to develop a triad of nuclear-delivery systems that have an increasing capacity to deliver destruction to longer distances. In recent years, the country’s political elite also have expanded their military ambitions. Despite a stated national commitment to a policy that involves no-first-use of nuclear weapons, there is some evidence that operational doctrines might call for first use of nuclear weapons under some circumstances; some of the additions to the country’s nuclear arsenal will allow for quick launch of weapons.1 Read more…

HOW PAKISTANI SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS MOULD ITS STUDENTS’ SKEWED WORLDVIEW

Madiha Afzal

Prior to 1977, no textbook contained any mention of the “Pakistan ideology.” But after that, the construct became the starting point and the central premise of high school Pakistan Studies texts. The description of Pakistan Studies textbooks that follows is based on my reading and analysis of textbooks from the mid-1990s to today, from all four provinces. Read more…

OBITUARY: ASHOK MITRA (1928-2018)

Calcutta, May 1 (PTI): Eminent scholar and Marxist economist Ashok Mitra, who also served as the finance minister of West Bengal and chief economic adviser to the Government of India, passed away on Tuesday morning after protracted illness. Read more…

EDITORIAL: SCIENCE AND HINDUTVA

Vinod Mubayi

Ever since the BJP won the 2014 elections, its votaries have been obsessed with making claims of the superiority of the ancient Vedic texts in all matters, not only those pertaining to culture and civilization, but extending to science and technology. Read more…

KISAN SABHA LONG MARCH IN MAHARASHTRA ENDS IN A RESOUNDING VICTORY

Ashok Dhawale

It was truly an amazing struggle, the like of which has not been seen in Maharashtra in recent times. It caught the imagination of the peasantry and the people, and received their unstinted support, not only in the state but all over the country. It received the backing of parties and organisations all across the political spectrum. Read more…

INTERVIEW: LEFT MUST TEAM WITH CONGRESS (AND OTHERS) TO SAVE DEMOCRACY: HISTORIAN SUMANTA BANERJEE

Ajaz Ashraf

The drubbing that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) just received in Tripura deepens the crisis the Indian Left has been facing. Is the Left’s demise in the country inevitable? Will the Tripura Assembly election result dampen the morale of Left-liberals who have been opposing Hindutva for the last four years? Will it aggravate the tension in the CPI(M) over the issue of whether or not to align with the Congress in 2019? Read more…

INDIA’S WAR ON SCIENCE

Shashi Tharoor

For India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, religion is not a matter of personal belief, but a key feature of traditional identity politics and crucial to maintaining social order, ensuring discipline and conformity, and preventing radical change. Science and rationality threaten all of the party’s goals. Read more…

[FROM THE ARCHIVES] INDIAN PRIME MINISTER CLAIMS GENETIC SCIENCE EXISTED IN ANCIENT TIMES

Maseeh Rahman

Hindu nationalists have long propagated their belief that many discoveries of modern science and technology were known to the people of ancient India. But now for the first time an Indian prime minister has endorsed these claims, maintaining that cosmetic surgery and reproductive genetics were practiced thousands of years ago. Read more…

SRI LANKA: REFRAMING THE RIOTS

Devaka Gunawardena

The recent riots targeting Muslims in Kandy have provoked accusations on many sides. While mainstream conversations focus on what the riots entail in terms of immediate political consequences for the current Government and its tepid response, progressives have also had to reckon with the growing presence of anti-Muslim rhetoric and violence as a feature of contemporary Sri Lankan life. Read more…

PAKISTAN: GUNS OR BOOKS?

Zubeida Mustafa

The infamous legacy of ‘enforced disappearances’ that the Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet left behind has, unfortunately, been picked up by Pakistan. This phenomenon is today a source of great human agony in the country with thousands believed to have been abducted, many for political reasons. Read more…

A ‘HUMAN RIGHTS GIANT’: ASMA JAHANGIR (1952–2018)

Beena Sarwar

Asma Jahangir, a “human rights giant,” lives on as an inspiration and source of strength for millions fighting for rights and justice. This is a portrait of an incredibly courageous woman, lovingly drawn with a collection of memories and anecdotes. Read more…

UNEQUAL MUSIC

T M Krishna

In “Crossing the Vindhyas” (EPW, 13 January 2018), Kamala Ganesh has rightly pointed out that we should not be surprised that a caste-based society’s art forms are also caste-based. But does this mean that we should not examine or question the specific manifestation that caste has taken in different social spheres, such as Carnatic music? Read more…

REWRITING OF HISTORY AND SECTARIAN NATIONALISM

Ram Puniyani

With the Hindu nationalist BJP in the seat of power an exercise in History writing is being undertaken on lines parallel to what was done in Pakistan. So far we did keep hearing loudly about the communal version of medieval history, where villainous foreigners, the Muslim kings attacked India, spread Islam and destroyed Hindu temples. Read more…

RIP ASMA JAHANGIR

Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir

Gaye dinon ka suraagh lekar kidhar se aayi, kidhar gayi vo

Ajeeb maanoos ajnabi thi, hamen to hairaan kar gayi vo Read more…

AGAINST DEIFICATION

Maryam Hussain

The progressives are mourning the passing of Asma Jahangir. For many the loss is personal, a friend has gone. It follows the loss of Lala Rukh and Nigar Ahmed last year and brings home once again, the enormity of losing Shehla Zia over a decade ago. Though Asma was more visible, and her fame undeniable, the connections are clear. Read more…

FROM THE ARCHIVES: A CONVERSATION WITH ASMA JEHANGIR (2001)

Asma Jehangir, lawyer, human-rights advocate and activist in the women’s movement in Pakistan, passed away on 11 February 2018 at the age of 66, following a cardiac arrest. Her first tilt at officialdom was at 18 when she filed a writ of habeas corpus for her father who had been arrested by General Yahya Khan in 1971, for being a member of the Awami League. Read more…

THE BJP GOVERNMENT’S LAST BUDGET: SLOGANS FOR WORKING PEOPLE AND PROFITS FOR THE RICH

NTUI Statement

The BJP, like all parties of the far right, claims to serve the peoples’ interest. Its success lies in getting its slogans right. In reality it serves only the rich. In the last two years, the wealth of India’s richest 1% population increased from 58% in 2016 to 73% of the total wealth generated in the country in 2017, according to a new survey by an international rights group. Read more…

RESIST BIGOTRY, RECOVER SOLIDARITY: SAY NO TO “HINDUS FOR TRUMP”

India Civil Watch

We, the members of India Civil Watch (ICW) reject unequivocally the rank opportunism of “Hindus for Trump” (henceforth HFT) that leads them to offer to pay for President Trump’s proposed wall at the Mexican border as long as it will facilitate their own presumed ability to stay in the U.S. Read more…

AN IDEA OF JUSTICE

Ishtiaq Ahmed

On 15 February 2018 I had the privilege of visiting Sahiwal on the invitation of the Principal of Government College Sahiwal (established in 1946 as Government College Montgomery) Prof Dr Akhlaq Hussain. Read more…

THE SHEEN AROUND MODI IS QUICKLY FADING

Swati Chaturvedi

The BJP’s bypoll defeat in Rajasthan and West Bengal will likely be a big cause of concern for the Modi-Shah duo. Read more…

LESSONS FROM A ‘SCAM’: THE ARGUMENT THAT PRIVATISATION WILL REMEDY BANKING FRAUD IS SPECIOUS

EPW Editorial

The Punjab National Bank (PNB) “scam” is the latest addition to the list of scams, real and imagined, that have rocked India in recent years. In the case of PNB, two things should be highlighted upfront. One, it is clear that a bank fraud was perpetrated. Read more…

BIGOTRY AND ISLAMOPHOBIA IN BHANSALI’S “PADMAAVAT”

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s highly controversial historical drama “Padmaavat” was released a day before the unfortunate Kasganj incident when the country was celebrating Republic Day. A vicious narrative of nationalism in the small town in Uttar Pradesh resulted in a communal feud and led to the death of a young man. Read more…

FROM THE ARCHIVES: TERROR AND POLITICS IN BANGLADESH (JULY 2016)

For the past year, Bangladesh’s government and political commentators have spent a lot of time speculating about whether the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has a presence in the country. This month’s bloody attack at an upscale café in Dhaka’s diplomatic zone registered telltale signs of the form of terrorism common to transnational terrorist organizations such as ISIS. Read more…

EDITORIAL: THE NATION AND ITS FRAGMENTS: INDIA’S TYRANNY OF ENUMERATION

Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir

‘Majrooh,’ likh rahe hain vo ahl-e wafa ke naam

Hum bhi khade hue hain, gunehgaar ki tarah

Majrooh, they are writing the names of the faithful

And we stand in wait, like a guilty supplicant. Read more…

ASSAM RECOGNISES 1.9 CRORE LEGAL CITIZENS IN FIRST NATIONAL REGISTER OF CITIZENS DRAFT

Indian Express

The Assam government published its first draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that includes the names of 1.9 crore people out of the 3.29 crore total applicants, recognising them as legal citizens of India. Read more…

BENEFITS OF AADHAAR UNCLEAR: RBI RESEARCHERS

Swagata Yadavar

The benefits of Aadhaar, India’s biometrics-based unique national identity system–the world’s largest–are unclear and the impact of direct benefit transfers it will be used to deliver to the poor is not studied enough, a new study published by an arm of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has concluded. Read more…

CAN YOU AFFORD TO DIE? ESTIMATES OF EXPENDITURE ON RITUALS AND IMPACT ON ECOLOGY

Archana Kaushik

Even though death seems to wipe out all social inequalities, ways of disposing dead bodies continue to perpetuate economic differences. This article provides an indicative estimate of the costs incurred in cremation and burial according to religious affiliations. Read more…

AADHAAR IS SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY MASQUERADING AS SECURE AUTHENTICATION TECHNOLOGY

Javed Anwer

Aadhaar didn’t start as surveillance technology. While the concept of a unique ID for all was fuzzy even in the beginning — around 2009 — it was meant to be an authentication technology that would plug leaks in India’s welfare schemes. Read more…

WHY DID THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA SUPPORT THE CREATION OF PAKISTAN?

Yasser Latif Hamdani

I have been receiving non-stop mail in response to my article “Two Nation Theory” which has now necessitated that I further develop my thoughts on the complex political scenario that 1940s’ British India presented and which ultimately led to two distinct events which are often interlinked partition of India and creation of Pakistan. Read more…

PAKISTAN: WHO BENEFITTED FROM US AID TO PAKISTAN?

EPW

After putting Pakistan on notice through a tweet on 1 January, US President Donald Trump’s administration suspended at least $900 million in security assistance to Pakistan, beginning from Friday 5 January, until Pakistan takes action against the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network militant groups. Read more…

AGAINST MILITARISTIC NATIONALISM: WE MUST REMEMBER THAT ZIONISM AND HINDUTVA DO NOT REPRESENT JUDAISM AND HINDUISM

EPW

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to India from 14 to 19 January 2018 completes 25 years since the two countries established full diplomatic relations in 1992, following the victory of the United States (US) over the Soviet Union in the protracted Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel from 4 to 6 July 2017 came in a year that marked the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration by the British occupying government in 1917, asserting the objective of establishing a Jewish “National Home” in Palestine, a promise British imperialism had made to the Zionists. Read more…

THE SLAIN ‘MILITANT’ WAS A MODEL, AND A KARACHI POLICE COMMANDER IS OUT

Meher Ahmadjan

KARACHI, Pakistan — A top Karachi police commander known for harsh tactics has been forced out after what he called a shootout with the Taliban ended in the death of an aspiring model popular on social media, triggering days of protests. Read more…

INDIA’S RICHEST 1% CORNER 73% OF WEALTH GENERATION: SURVEY

PTI

DAVOS: The richest 1% in India cornered 73% of the wealth generated in the country last year, a new survey showed today, presenting a worrying picture of rising income inequality. Read more…

FROM THE ARCHIVES: THE POVERTY OF PAKISTANI IDEOLOGY: AN INTERVIEW WITH TAIMUR RAHMAN

Last year, Pakistan’s government nearly fell. Denouncing alleged vote rigging in the 2013 general election, opposition leader Imran Khan organized what he called the Azadi March in protest. Read more…

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Vinod Mubayi and Raza Mir

Dekhiye paate hain Ushaaq buton se kya faiz

Ik barahman ne kaha hai ke ye saal achcha hai Read more…

DOES THE BJP’S GUJARAT STRATEGY TELL US HOW IT WILL CAMPAIGN IN 2019?

Rohan Venkataramakrishnan

Win or lose in the state, it seems likely that the party will now deploy unbridled Hindutva and attempt to portray its opponents as anti-national. Read more…

HITLER’S HINDUS: THE RISE AND RISE OF INDIA’S NAZI-LOVING NATIONALISTS

Shrenik Rao

July 2008. I was on a cycling expedition, from the southernmost tip of India to its most northern state. Along the way, I took a pit stop at Nagpur, the geographic center of India and the epicenter of Hindu nationalism. There, I saw a building with a bizarre name: “Hitlers Den.” A pool parlor, its walls were emblazoned with tacky Nazi insignia, and on its shopfront – a swastika on full public display. Read more…

BREAKING DOWN BABRI: THE EVENT, THE AFTERMATH, THE VERDICT

EPW Meta-Report

India changed as a nation with the destruction of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992. The events of the day have not only permeated the social and political fabric of the country, they unfurled a series of events that have led to the creation of a new normal. Read more…

PAKISTAN: AFTER FAIZABAD – WHAT IS TO BE DONE ?

Ammar Rashid

There has been a tangible sense of despair among liberal and progressive commentators in the wake of the state’s capitulation to the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYRA) at Faizabad. Read more…

FIVE YEARS AFTER DEADLY FACTORY FIRE, BANGLADESH’S GARMENT WORKERS ARE STILL VULNERABLE

Rebecca Prentice & Geert De Neve

Exactly five years ago, in November 2012, a fire in the Tazreen Fashions factory in Bangladesh killed at least 112 workers. Probably caused by a short circuit on the ground floor of the building, the fire rapidly spread up the nine floors where garment workers were trapped due to narrow or blocked fire escapes. Many died inside the building or while seeking an escape through the windows. Read more…

CELEBRATION AND INTROSPECTION: REFLECTIONS ON THE CENTURY-OLD OSMANIA UNIVERSITY

K Srinivasulu

The Osmania University, now a 100 years old, has, especially from the 1940s onwards, played a pivotal role in shaping the intellectual, social, cultural and political life of Telangana. But tragically, the present dismal state of affairs in its portals does not befit its centenary status. Sincere support from the Government of Telangana is the need of the hour. Read more…

Top - Home « go back — keep looking »

Year:
Month: