2014

October 20 this year will mark the birth centenary of the legendary Communist parliamentarian Bhupesh Gupta, the longest serving Member in the Rajya Sabha —he was in the Upper House of Parliament for more than 29 years at a stretch since its inception till he breathed his last in Moscow on August 6, 1981. Indeed there is no gainsaying that he was the tallest Communist MP overshadowing such stalwarts like S.A. Dange, A.K. Gopalan, Hiren Mukerjee, Indrajit Gupta. He was looked upon as an (…)

It has been my privilege and honour to have belonged to this House for a quarter of a century. But it is not for me to say what role I have played from the standpoint of which I have worked in this House. However, I have tried, to the best of my ability, to serve my country, our great people, to uphold its cherished culture, our noble inheritance from an undying, ancient civilisation.
It is not an individual who shines in this House. We have shone in this House collectively. Each of us has (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
To write about somebody whom one has known for more than four decades—sometimes very closely—is not easy after his or her passing away. For me, Bhupesh Gupta was one whom I have known from the early beginnings of my active political involvement in the late thirties.
In the small group of young militant Indians in Britain more than forty years ago, groping for a revolutionary patch to the country’s freedom, Bhupesh was perhaps the only one who could really claim to (…)

Communication
Prime Minister Modi’s recent statement of praising Muslims and calling them patriots is nothing but double-speak as he has not a word of condemnation against the highly inflammatory, biased and vitriolic anti-Muslim speeches of his party leaders and VHP leaders.
Epoch-making and unforgettable sacrifices of Indian Muslims in the freedom struggle, in which Modi’s party had no role, is the established and lasting proof of patriotism of Muslims. In fact Modi has borrowed the (…)

Communication
Jeetan Ram Manjhi, the CM of Bihar, has taken the right decision in instituting a probe about the alleged ugly act of ‘washing’ of the deity and the temple at Madhubani by the priest and his ilk after Manjhi visited it. This incident has recently been reported byThe Indian Express. The abhorrent act, if true, is nothing but propagation of untouchability violating Article 17 of the Constitution. This needs sound punishment.
Manjhi is candid when he said that the same (…)

The late Kenneth Tynan, theatre critic, once wrote in the course of a review of one of Brendan Behan’s plays: “The English hoard words like misers; the Irish take them out on a drunken spree.”
Mr Bhupesh Gupta never drank, but when he spoke he took words out in the Irish manner. Words in his mouth achieved a kind of inebriation and they flung themselves out like a mob pursuing an enemy of the people. He spared no one, yet everyone (almost) had a soft spot for him. There were exceptions, of (…)

IMPRESSIONS
In itself, Sachin Tendulkar and Rekha treating Parliament as one of their trinkets is a non-issue. There are many in our vast and fertile country who have neither the civilisational range nor the intellectual calibre to understand the true meaning of Parliament. If such individuals are given positions they are not worthy of and they mishandle them, it is not their fault; it is the fault of the system that facilitates such mismatch. Indeed, the Tendulkar-Rekha controversy and (…)

by Paresh Chattopadhyay
This article is a rejoinder to a part of Alan Woods’ essay, The Ideas of Karl Marx, published in June 2013. To read the full text of Woods’ essay, click http://www.marxist.com/karl-marx-130-years.htm
We read with considerable interest Alan Wood’s article on the ideas of Marx. in dated January 16, 2014. It is a good pedagogical exercise. At the same time the piece is thought-provoking. In the following lines we give our reaction to only a part of this paper, the (…)

by Abhijit Chakraborty
The word education is synonymous to the word empowerment and an empowered nation would mean a progressive nation. It has been seen that education enables a country to make progress and improve the standard of living for its citizens. Countries like Japan had made early progress in education during the Meiji resto-ration in 1868 and reaped the benefits of the same. In a modern society, where an important means of communication is through the written medium, being (…)

EDITORIAL
Tensions have escalated along the India-Pakistan border with ceasefire violations and firing taking place on the Line of Control (LoC) and the International Border (IB) in J&K since the beginning of this month.
The gravity of the situation is evident from a press release issued by the India Chapter of the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD):
According to reports published in Indian and Pakistani newspapers, more than 18 civilians have been (…)