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: ON THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DECLARED EMERGENCY AN UNDECLARED EMERGENCY HAS NOW EMERGED
Vinod Mubayi
Over the last month, the ruling BJP regime seems to be trying hard to reawaken memories on its 50th anniversary of the Emergency imposed by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in June 1975. It is obvious that this is being done to denigrate and discredit the Congress Party, India’s largest opposition party, in general and, in particular, Rahul Gandhi, Indira Gandhi’s grandson. There is little doubt that the 1975 Emergency that stretched 21 months from June 1975 to March 1977 was a politically fraught era when thousands of opponents of Mrs. Gandhi’s Congress (I) government were jailed for daring to protest. It is also significant that the founding editor of Insaf Bulletin, late Dr. Daya Varma, was one among several Indians in North America who happened to come together in Montreal in June 1975 to create the progressive organization IPANA (Indian Peoples Association in North America) that opposed the Emergency and exposed its undemocratic character.
Read more…DARK SHADOWS OF EMERGENCY!
Subhash Gatade
25th June 2025 happened to be the fiftieth year of the internal emergency imposed by the then Indira Gandhi regime. Much has changed during all these years but till date we are still far away from a balanced review of that period.
Read more…ECONOMISTS IN PRAISE OF SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR FRANCESCA ALBANESE’S REPORT TO THE UNITED NATIONS: ‘FROM ECONOMY OF OCCUPATION TO ECONOMY OF GENOCIDE’
History teaches us that economic interests have been key drivers and enablers of colonial enterprises and often of the genocides they perpetrated. The corporate sector has been intrinsic to colonialism since its inception, with corporations historically contributing to the violence against, the exploitation, and ultimately the dispossession, of Indigenous people and lands, a mode of domination known as racial colonial capitalism. Israel’s colonisation of the occupied Palestinian territories is no exception.
Read more…ROOTS OF THE PARACHINAR CONFLICT
Sibth ul Hassan Turi
On November 21, 2024, a Turi tribe convoy under security forces protection was ambushed in Baggan area in Lower Kurram killing more than forty people. Since then, the Tal-Parachinar Road which connects the district with the rest of Pakistan has been blocked for the Turi tribe. This attack continued the episodic violent conflicts over the land that have resurfaced after the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) merger with the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) in 2018.
Read more…WHY A GENERAL STRIKE ON JULY 9, 2025?
Subodh Varma
A historic and unprecedented protest action is going to take place in India on July 9, 2025. It is expected to be one of the biggest strikes in history, with crores of workers, employees and informal sector workers joining hands with farmers and agricultural labourers across the country to stop work and come out on the streets.
Read more…‘NURTURING HOPE IN PRISON A RISKY BUSINESS’: UMAR KHALID WRITES FROM TIHAR JAIL
Umar Khalid
A book I finished recently is Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The House of the Dead. It is a fictional account but one based on his real experiences of imprisonment in Tsarist Russia sometime in the mid 19th century.
Read more…COMMON STATEMENT BY COMMUNISTS IN IRAN AND ISRAEL PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU’S ATTACK ON IRAN
Originally published by The Communist Party of Israel on June 18, 2025
Communists in Iran and Israel strongly condemn Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attack on Iran and President Donald Trump’s backing for it.
Read more…THE RSS DOES NOT EXIST: MAPPING THE HIDDEN STRUCTURE OF AN UNACCOUNTABLE ORGANISATION
Amrita Singh
THE FOOTBRIDGE OVER Desh Bandhu Gupta Road in Delhi’s Jhandewalan is typically dirty and dusty, with the staircase on one end often littered with plastic plates, food and tattered clothes. To use it at night, one has to be careful not to stumble over the homeless people who sometimes sleep at its base. Upon climbing the stairs, a massive tower comes into view—bright lights shine through a row of windows in each of the building’s 12 floors. All buildings in Jhandewalan, no matter how tall, are dimmed at night, but not this one.
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