2012

Anna Hazare and General (Retd) V.K. Singh have called for Parliament to be dissolved immediately. They point out that the (Union) government is “looting” the people and “bending to the corporates”, and people have lost faith in it. There is also little doubt that the people are disillusioned with Parliament because of its general non-functioning and the fact that a good proportion of its Members are charged with serious crimes and offences. People are also thoroughly fed up with the Union (…)

October 31, 1984 witnessed one of the most gruesome incidents of our time. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated at her residence by her own security personnel. The country plunged into darkness as a highly communalised anti-Sikh violence took place threatening the very integrity of the country. India cannot endure the repetition of such incidents and must learn its lessons from the tratedy. It was in the early morning of October 31 that Indira Gandhi was preparing herself for an (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
Early next week, on October 31, the country would be observing the tenth death anniversary of Indira Gandhi who had been cruelly shot down on this very day by her own security guards right inside her residence.
By all accounts it was a ghastly tragedy committ6ed by those who had been embittered by the ‘Operation Bluestar’ at the Golden Temple at Amritsar. The perpetrators of Indira’s assassination owned up the full responsibility for their gory deed which in their (…)

The following was written quite sometime ago but could not be published earlier for unavoidable reasons.
The news was that the Supreme Court hadn’t framed any blanket guidelines for the media coverage of court cases. Most people felt relieved. However, much to the dismay of those who believe in open justice and free speech, the court had actually done worse.
It may be a personal victory for the outgoing Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia, but a reverse for the rule of law. The highest (…)

INTERVIEW
Do journalists question enough?—asks Seema Azad, the Dastak editor who was charged under the UAPA, in this interview with Shobha S.V.
Thirtyseven-year old Seema Azad’s calm demeanour belies the trauma that she’s had to undergo. Azad, editor of the Dastak magazine and Organising Secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), was arrested in February 2010 in Allahabad along with her husband, Vishwa Vijay, on charges of sedition and the UAPA. Vishwa Vijay has been a (…)

Kobad Ghandy from Tihar Jail is writing on the concept of freedom vis-s-vis present-day society as also in relation to a future just order, bringing out some causes for the failure of the erstwhile socialist states. It will comprise a series of five to six articles. The first article (covering Part I—The Context) appeared in Mainstream’s Independence Day Special (August 18, 2012), the second one (covering Part II—Search for Freedom through History) in this journal’s September 15, 2012 issue, (…)

Remembering October Revolution on its 95th Anniversary Seventh November this year marks the 95th anniversary of the historic October Revolution. Although the politico-economic situation in Russia has undergone a sea-change since 1991, the worldwide significance of the Russian Revolution of 1917 has not waned in the least; on the contrary its importance has been heightened in the light of the latest international events capped by the global financial meltdown that has shaken the world (…)

COMMUNICATION
I must first thank Mainstream for starting some kind of debate on the Stalin question.
I read through Grover Furr’s reply (Mainstream, October 27, 2012) to my review of his book (that appeared in this journal’s August 4, 2012 issue). I must thank him too for responding. But he has not met any of the points raised in the review. The ‘documents’ that he refers to in his book and mentions in his reply just show nothing: they do not provide any grounds to justify the measures (…)

Rightwing Hindutva social forces may well have collaborated with the colonising Britishers during the high noon of India’s Congress-led freedom movement, their standard polemic after Independence has been that what ought to have remained an indigenised Bharat has been systematically degraded into an internationalised India by generations of secular-liberal Indians whom they habitually characterise as “Macaulay ki Aulad” (Macaulay’s children, because the induction of English into Indian (…)

You must be watching on your small screens the great political circus taking place in New Delhi. One thief letting off the other. Or simply grabbing him by the collar and throwing him, here and there and all over. But not really in those hell holes! The prime players, or call them by any other apt term of your choice, seem many and it wouldn’t be incorrect to say that they are from almost all the political parties of this country—from the BJP, Congress, Samajwadi, BSP, RJD and several other (…)