2014

by Nabanipa Bhattacharjee
Clime as Muse
Surrounded by lush green hills, Shillong, the capital city of Meghalaya, is widely known for its salubrious climate and natural beauty. As one of oldest hill stations of the subcontinent, Shillong was chosen—after the failure of the British administrators and soldiers to continue operating out of Cherrapunjee—to house the headquarters of the colonial government including the Sylhet Light Infantry in 1864. Following the creation of Assam as a Chief (…)

Bengali society is at risk today, thanks to the political parties. I will discuss one of the issues which devalues democracy. The Statesman has reported a number of times about cattle theft to Bangladesh. I have seen it myself at Ghojadanga, off the border on Bangladesh, very close to Basirhat. Headlights are tied to lamp posts to prevent cattle theft. But according to Haji Nurul Islam, a Trinamul MLA, cattle theft occurred at the Bangladesh border on our Republic Day. The CPI-M-led Left (…)

by Ivy Imogene Hansdak
The recent incident in Birbhum, West Bengal —where a 20-year old Santal girl was allegedly gang-raped by over ten men of her own village on the orders of a tribal court for refusing to end her sexual relations with a non-tribal man of the Muslim community—has brought to the forefront an emotive issue regarding unions between tribal women and non-tribal men. In this process, an earlier assumption that women in tribal societies enjoy a higher social status as compared (…)

In the midst of repeated disruptions that have made transaction of business in both the Houses impossible during the ongoing extended winter session of Parliament, there has been one silver-lining. The fact that all sections cutting across party barriers rose as one man to unequivocally condemn the tragic death of a 19-year-old student from Arunachal Pradesh, Nido Taniam, in the national Capital testified to the MPs’ resolve to protect the North-Eastern inhabitants in the Capital currently (…)

The recent judgement by the Supreme Court which has recriminalised homosexuality might have baffled a broad section of peace and justice- loving people but it has definitely emboldened many a self-proclaimed leader of religion and purveyor of morality who feel vindicated. It was only last month that a few of their representatives had held a press conference proclaiming their support to the decision of the Supreme Court on Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code as it was “[n]ot only in line (…)

The following piece, giving the reasons behind the resignation of retired diplomat Madhu Bhaduri from Aam Aadmi Party (of which she was a founder member), is being reproduced, with due acknowledgement, for the benefit of our readers.
I am a founder member of the Aam Aadmi Party. I had made a request to the party secretary several days in advance of the National Council meeting in Delhi on January 30, that I wished to move a resolution to tender an apology by AAP to the Ugandan and (…)

by L.K. SHARMA
Transitions and disruptions are changing relations between generations, between genders, between classes and between religious groups. It is not just a simple conflict between tradition and modernity that sparks occasional violence. India has become an excellent laboratory for studying change.
India has been gripped by a moral panic as a result of a spate of sexual and financial scandals. Seemingly unrelated, these have a cumulative quality. The Indian male is on trial. (…)

Over the past few weeks we have faced the classic moral dilemma, when to obey one ethical imperative was to transgress another. There were several test cases. One was the Congress Vice-President’s largely uncelebrated interview with a leading television channel. In the normal course, a public figure would talk in generalities. But the national, or perhaps prime-time, mood was such at that moment that he was put on trial on specifics. He was not really grilled on them (for example, inflation (…)

All my life I have regarded a few things as highly as tea. Back in America during the seventies I recall persuading a clutch of American friends to switch from instant coffee to tea if they were serious about ameliorating their everyday tensions. For the reason that, unlike instant coffee, indeed all things instant, tea demands its own time, and, once brewed, flourishes only in company and conversation. A regimen, if followed with all the caressing that tea invites, may in time lead to much (…)

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
In just about a year’s time, we shall be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the country’s independence when power was transferred from the unwilling hands of the British rulers to the leaders of our freedom struggle. And it is exactly fifty years now that in the last general election under colonial rule, in 1946, the leader of the Indian National Congress toured the length and breadth of this vast land promising the public that once the power was transferred, he (…)