2011

by ANAND MUTTUNGAL
The thirteen-day-long non-violent protest led by Anna Hazare has again proved that non-violence has an upper hand against violence. Non-violence can be understood in two ways: the first is a general philosophy of abstention from violence because of moral or religious principle and the second is the behaviour of people using non-violent action to attain a systematic transformation. The general version of non-violence became a pragmatic approach with the application of (…)

When Anna Hazare gave up his fast, he announced that the next movement is for electoral reform and especially prioritised the right to reject a candidate at the elections and the right to recall a legislator earlier than the end of his term.
The Central Government is seeking to project itself as responsive to public opinion. Here then is an opportunity to do so. I say this because the public demand for effectuating the right to reject vote or more clearly “None of the Above” (NOTA) is (…)

On August 27, 2011, The Telegraph newspaper published an article on Anna Hazare by Ramachandra Guha under the title “A Patriarch for the Nation”. The article sparked a debate between the author and the social worker, Lalit Uniyal. The debate is reproduced below for several reasons. The dialogue is without artifice; it grew naturally. Marxists might perceive an instance of the dialectic in operation, thesis to synthesis. Younger scholars might discover a model of courtesy in debate. And, (…)

Jolt for the government of the day. Rattled it is. Perhaps, trying its best to avoid a full fledged uprising to take off, much in keeping with what was witnessed at Egypt’s Tahrir Square. And here, as the build-up seems simmering, isn’t it time to grasp and sense the rather obvious political shades gathering around this momentum. There’s that lurking danger of political lobbies intruding and puncturing the very purpose. Also, whether three drafts are presented (the government’s, Team Anna’s (…)

by A.K. VERMA
That the government should have turned down Team Anna’s draft on the Lokpal Bill and pushed him to protest is quite understandable. Anna’s desire to fast at Jantar Mantar, and the government’s pre-empting the same by imposing Section 144 all over Delhi, and suggesting some insignificant place for the fast with ceiling on the number of people who can join the fast was a clear indication of some panic driven anger on the part of the government. But, should the government show (…)

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
While there is no doubt a lot on which to attack those in authority for their dereliction in running an orderly system of governance, one has to ask at the same time why there has been such an appalling deterioration in social conscience in most of our public activity. In other words, the corrosion of values in public life is not confined to Ministers and top bureaucrats, but has become all-pervasive, the pollution of morals seem to choke out public service.
If we (…)

TRIBUTE
In the passing away of R.S. Sharma the discipline of history has lost its leading, living representative of the older generation, of the same quality and stature as D.D. Kosambi and Sushobhan Sarkar.
D.D. Kosambi, however, was perhaps a lone scholar and researcher of exceptional calibre but confined mainly to a scholar’s ivory tower. Only in his later years did he turn into a leading promoter of the world peace movement. Sushobhan Sarkar was primarily a teacher of history having (…)

On September 11 this year falls Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s sixtythird death anniversary. The following article is being published on that occasion. There are a few figures in the history of the world who can be put in both a positive and a negative frame. Mohammad Ali Jinnah is one of them. He is both revered and hated, and admired and cursed, by the vast masses of the subcontinent.
For forty years of his political career, he fought for the freedom of India. In those days he was proud to be (…)

A voice that informs several themes, at least in debate, is that of the Libyan novelist, Hisham Matar. Though an obvious empathiser of the anti-Gaddafi rebels, he has enunciated the idea of change in universal terms: “For the first time in our history the idea of democracy is a real, tangible idea, not a fairy tale. Revolutions aren’t about negative objectives, about simply getting rid of people. They are about discovering who we are; and what it means to be Libyans.” Gaddafi might have “got (…)

REVIEW ARTICLE Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid; Viking, New York; 2008; Maps, Glossary of Terms, Notes, Bibliography, Index.
America has now been in Afghanistan for ten years. Again, America has triumphed. Again, America has failed. Again, countries have been saved. Again, countries have been destroyed. Again, people have been freed. Again, people have been crushed, and maimed, and (…)