August 2009

Dr Ambedkar was against hero worship. But the Dalits worship him as a liberator, a social reformer and a great crusader who fought for their political rights. Dalits, who have read Dr. Ambedkar and Gandhiji, not only equally revered Gandhiji but regard them like two streams that meet at the confluence to merge with each other.
It takes quite long to understand the Hindu social system and its vexing corpus. After matriculation Gandhiji went to England to study Law and then to South Africa. (…)

A critical agreement finalised during US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to India last month was the Indo-US End-Use Monitoring Agreement, or EUMA. It involves US Government inspectors continuously monitoring all hi-tech weapons and advanced electronic systems and equipment across a broad front imported by India from the US, to ensure that they are used by the Indian defence services and the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Space only for the purpose—”end use”—for (…)

Challenge and Strategy: Rethinking India’s Foreign Policy by Rajiv Sikri; Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi; 2009; pp. XX + 317; price: Rs 595.
Those writing and researching on India’s foreign policy often are constrained by the lack of adequate access to authentic and reliable information. This constraint can be overcome, to some extent, through the writings of policy-makers who are willing and capable of sharing their experiences after retiring. There are courageous Foreign (…)

The national movement in India was one of the longest and most widespread mass movements in the history of the modern world. Though it was initiated by a handful of newly educated persons, gradually more and more people got associated with it and made the process of nation-making very eventful in the country. It is in this context that an attempt has been made here to understand and analyse the role of soldiers in the movement. It purports to discuss how the soldiers as a social class had (…)

Baba Bhagat Singh Bilga, the lone surviving Ghadarite revolutionary of India, breathed his last on May 22, 2009 at England in his son’s house. He had just completed 102 years of age the previous month. He was as alert as ever when I met him last on November 1, 2008 at the Desh Bhagat Yaadgar Hall, of which he was the President. He had unfurled the Ghadar Party flag on that day as usual to mark the Ghadar Party Memorial Day, formed in the USA, way back in 1913.
Baba Bilga was born on April (…)

When Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama emerged as a front-runner in the 2008 US Presidential elections, many in India especially in the policy circles were worried. The argument was that “the George W. Bush Jr years” had been one of the most productive for enhancing US-India strategic relationship after decades of distrust and suspicion. So, the related major question dominating Indian policy discourses was: will a Democratic President continue the upsurge in US-India (…)

This article was sent to us quite sometime back but could not be used earlier for unavoidable reasons. —Editor
On the black Saturday evening my family and I switched on the TV and heard the black and sad news of Pakistan coming under emergency rule, which meant Martial Law. We changed channels but all channels were telecasting the same news. I said, to the great annoyance of my wife, for she does not like my criticism of Gandhi, in Hindi, “Yeh sab Gandhi ki meharbani hai.” What I wanted to (…)

Introduction
Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are not a new concept, but the scale, speed and socio-economic ambience in which these are being created are entirely new. Since the enactment of the SEZ Act 2005, 300 SEZs are functional and 560 more approved.
While reading about the foundation of Madras (now Chennai) in 1639, and the manner in which the British received a firmaan from the local ruler for grant of land and trading concessions, its similarity with the creation of SEZs raised a (…)

The untimely death of Subhas Chakraborty, 68, West Bengal’s Minister for Transport, Sports and Youth Affairs, in Kolkata on August 3 has caused a genuine void in the State’s Left circles. A maverick Communist in every sense being unorthodox and independent-minded both in his utterances and his activities, he was a real people’s leader and this was testified by the unprecedented crowds that came out on the streets of the city during his last journey—the metropolis was literally plunged in (…)

Several academics and activists together with legal experts have countered the NHRC report on the alleged encounter at Batla House. Space constraints will come in the way, so let me focus only on two such reports.
One report is sent by Anhad’s Shabnam Hashmi:
“On 20th May, the Delhi High Court, acting on a petition filed by the People’s Union for Democratic Rights and Anhad, had asked the National Human Rights Commission to conduct their own inqury into the alleged Batla House (…)