2012

The electronic media beamed images of thou-sands of people from the North-East climbing on to trains at Majestic Railway Station in Bangalore heading home to Guwahati. This panic was caused by anonymous SMSs warning that the Muslims would attack them after the month of Ramzan. On the first day 6500 young men and women from the North-East booked tickets for Guwahati but soon the figure reached 30,000.
There were reports that similar reactions were happening in Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai and (…)

This is a story that beggars belief, and puts into the shade everything we have thus far known of Narendra Modi’s prowess at chicanery and subterfuge.
Indeed, had a report on this not appeared in so impeccable a daily as The Hindu, even my first instinct might have been to say “surely, this can’t be.”
Let me cite in extenso from the write-up authored by the reputed Manas Dasgupta, in the issue of August 13:
“Talking to journalists here, Mr Patel (once the redoubtable Chief Minister of (…)

On August 2, 2012, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer and several other eminent citizens made a statement calling upon Anna Hazare and his associates to end fasting and “focus their energies on creating an alternative political force that is democratic, accountable, ethical and non-violent and capable of leading an electoral revolution to democratise and decentralise power and make the power structures of the country more accou-ntable to the people”.
Accepting the sober advice of Justice Krishna (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
The concluding functions that brought the curtain down on the year-long celebrations of the golden jubilee of the ‘Quit India’ struggle of 1942, presented in sharp relief the slump in morale allround.
With all the exposures of mega corruption in which the wielders of power have been entangled, and the unashamed buying of MPs so that the reins of the government do not slip out of one’s hand—all the homilies and harangues at the August 9 celebrations sounded so hollow (…)

Some recognition at last: That both President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should send messages of goodwill to the Hind-Pak Dosti Manch is a welcome development. The Manch is engaged in an endeavour to improve relations between the two countries. This was the 17th year for its members from the Manch and SAFMA in Pakistan to light candles at mid-night on August 14-15, when the two countries were born, on the Attari-Wagah border. The sky was rent with slogans like: Long (…)

Going backwards. These happenings and the ongoing offshoots pull you backwards towards the times of Partition, when trains carried petrified beings from here to there, when fear and anarchy reigned, when politicians held sway with or without hate speeches, when opportunists made headway, when sane voices lay submerged amidst communal onslaught, when innocents sat hungry and horrified in refugee camps, when religious and regional divisions hit, killed, bled, displaced hundreds and thousands. (…)

by John Pilger
The British Government’s threat to invade the Ecuadorean embassy in London and seize Julian Assange is of historic significance. David Cameron, the former PR man to a television industry huckster and arms salesman to sheikdoms, is well placed to dishonour international conventions that have protected Britons in places of upheaval. Just as Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq led directly to the acts of terrorism in London on July 7, 2005, so Cameron and Foreign Secretary William (…)

by Shameem Faizee
I last met comrade A.K. Hangal at his residence in Bandra in the last week of April this year. I had gone to brief him on the decisions of the 21st Congress of the CPI held in March. Actually, in February 2012, when I along with the then party General Secretary, A.B. Bardhan, met him, he was confined to bed and regretted that he will not be able to come to Patna but asked me to brief on the deliberations of the Party Congress as soon as possible.
In April, the first (…)

by Hargopal Singh
India was ‘granted full self-government’ under the Independence Act 1947 passed by the British Parliament and assented to by King George VI during the Labour Party Government led by Prime Minster Clement Attlee. The hard fact, however, is that India wrested Swaraj—the goal set by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and further propoun-ded and pursued by Mohan Das Karamchand Gandhi—from British imperialism. Both of them were outstanding leaders of the Indian National Congress, although (…)

by Biswajit Roy
Is Mamata still Bengal’s Joan of Arc? Has she turned into a female version of Caligula, at least, halfway through the transformation?
After a year of ‘Paribartan’ in Bengal, the non-CPM Left and Left-leaning members of the civil society in the State appear to be divided on this question as they differ in their attitudes to Mamata Banerjee, her government and her party, the Trinamul Congress.
The crux of the debate is whether there is any perceived or real ‘Leftward (…)