June 2009

My tablet and my pen,
My two cherished treasures
Are snatched from me,
But does it matter?
For I have dipped my fingers
In the blood of my heart;
My tongue they sealed
Bu does it mater? For,
I have placed a tongue
In every link of chain
That fetters me.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Pakistan’s Wild West
In order to understand the roots of the present-day violence in Pakistani’s Pashtun (or Pathan) belt, we need to go back to colonial times. While the British colonial rule was oppressive all over (the then united, pre-partition) India, it was even more ruthless in this region (present-day North-West Frontier Province and FATA area) as this was regarded as the strategic gateway of India which had to be secured for British interests at all costs.
Although the (…)

Remembering N.C. [gris]On June 27 this year falls Nikhil Chakravartty’s eleventh death anniversary. On this occasion we reproduce the following tributes to his abiding memory—the first two were published in Mainstream (July 11, 1998) and the remaining two in Mainstream (August 1, 1998) following N.C.’s demise on June 27, 1998.gris]
It was with some trepidation that I first met Nikhil. I was then just past 21 and working for the tottering United Press of India (UPI) on whose ashes is (…)

In the passing away of Nikhilda at the ripe age of eightyfour the country has lost the doyen of Indian journalism and a vigilant watchdog of national interest and democratic rights. And the common people have also lost a friend who was sensitive to their hardships and their striving for a better life.
The loss caused by his passing away is hard to fill. For in his own way he was the symbol, one of the few left, of a heroic age—the age of India’s epochal fight against British (…)

Nikhilda was a rare type of journalist. He always tried to use his pen for the welfare of the people.
Whenever I met him, he expressed his concern for the people—how people were suffering. He always told me that I was fortunate to tour with Mahatma Gandhi for three years and also to have witnessed how the Mahatma worked as a journalist, and guided me in my work as a young journalist.
When I informed him that Gandhiji told me that the sole aim of journalism is service, (…)

He was all grace when we (my wife and I) met him our last time. That was a few weeks before Nikhil’s final departure. My wife placed a bunch of flowers on the small table before him and was moving back, when Nikhil rose unsteadily to his feet, beckoned her closer and held her hands fondly for a moment, asked us to sit, sat himself, got us some tea and spoke haltingly. If his memory was slipping, he did not let it. With a shy smile, he quietly confirmed for himself and for us that he (…)

Lenin once asked a group of Soviet students as to whom they regarded as the greatest literacy figure of Russia. “Mayakovsky,” they replied. “Yes, but what about Pushkin?” asked Lenin, and added, “Could there have been a Mayakovsky without a Pushkin?” A hundred years from today the people would speak of Tagore in the same way and with more truth. At the moment we are too near to his personality to fully appraise its greatness. You cannot size up a Titan when you stand next to him. Tagore (…)

Colonisation is the act or the process of establishing a colony or colonies like what had happened in the past. It has two distinct connotations: de facto and de jure. The first one means ‘concerning the fact’ or in practice but not necessarily obtained by law. The second means ‘following the decree’ and is created or developed without or contrary to regulation. In other words, de facto colonisation means what happens in real life beyond the domains of any legal sanctity, and de jure (…)

[gris]This article reached us quite sometime back but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons. —Editorgris]
Satyug is an extraordinary theme for a Mumbai Festival held after 26/11—extraordinarily visionary or extraordinarily foolhardy. Or both. Either way, the theme is typical of all Bombay Dreams, with their promises so much larger than their risks. Dreams brought my forebears in the early 1900s to Bombay, the name by which they loved this great city. No fear then of the (…)

The government’s strategy to deal with the internal security problem has caused legitimate concern in civil society.

For sometime now violence has erupted in the Lalgarh-Jangalmahal area of West Bengal’s West Midnapore district bordering on (...)