2015

by Kancha Ilaiah and Mohasina Anjum Ansari
Unouchability is a major social issue in India, even in the modern times. In the recent past it had also become an international issue. In 2001 at the United Nation’s Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination and Xenophobia, held at Durban, a major discussion on caste and untouchability in South Asia took place. Several Indian organisations were pleading with the UN to recognise human untouchability as problem of international importance like (…)

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has done well to declassify the files on Subhas Chandra Bose. Prime Minister Narendra Modi should have followed suit and made available to the public the documents and papers which the Centre possesses on Bose.
While declassifying 64 files comprising 12,744 pages, the Chief Minister informed the media that documents proved that the Bose family was spied upon. “It’s proven...I will only say it is unfortunate,” Banerjee said. The first disclosures (…)

by Sadhan Mukherjee
There seems to be no political leadership worth the name in the country today despite the massive majority of the present ruling dispensation, the NDA 2. The whoopla of 2014 is over. Non-performance is at the core of every sector of governmental activity. There may be many well-meaning Ministers but hardly any-one appears capable of handling the bureaucrats. PM Narendra Modi perhaps is the only one who can dictate and his words seem to be law. But he is busy with his (…)

Seldom does adrenaline flow so instinctively the moment one begins reading the morning newspapers in the Indian Capital, but today is one such day. I am not entitled to claim friendship with Sudheendra Kulkarni but do have an acquaintance going back by several years. I hold him in high esteem as an intellectual and a humanist.
I am unable to read the newspapers anymore today. Can’t simply get past the blackened picture of Kulkarni, smeared with oil paint. I feel numbed with pain as the (…)

BOOK REVIEW
by Reena Cherian
India Since 2002 by Mukul Dube (Foreword by Professor D.N. Jha); AlterNotes Press, New Delhi; 2015; pages: xii + 198; Price: Rs 380.
India Since 2002 is a collection of articles published by Mukul Dube in the weekly Mainstream. The earliest were written in the aftermath of the Gujarat pogrom of 2002. The fiftythree articles are reflective of developments since then in the socio-political climate of the country. Some capture the emergence, origin and (…)

by Chapal Mehra
On September 28, a murderous mob got together to kill a man ostensibly for having kept some beef in his refrigerator. They seriously injured his young son and misbehaved with the women in his family. All of this over beef, a meat Indians have consumed for centuries.
Who were these people? Why did they kill a man over an item of food? What did they achieve out of it? All of us in India have for a fortnight been besieged by these questions.
Let’s start with the facts. It (…)

The Central Secretariat of the Communist Party of India issued the following statement to the press on October 12, 2015 congratulating the new Nepal Prime Minister, Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli:
“The Central Secretariat of the Communist Party of India congratulates the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) leader, Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, on his election as the new Prime Minister of Nepal.
“The CPI hopes that under his leadership the relations between Nepal and India (…)

POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh has said, in the wake of the lynching of Mohammmed Akhlaq at Bisada village of Dadri in UP for allegedly storing and eating beef, that he supports banning beef. “Out of 29 States, cow slaughter is banned in 24 States and this was done during the Congress rule,” he has asserted. He added in the same breath that even during the Mughal rule, cow slaughter was banned. Singh’s comments will undoubtedly (…)

When I read of the killing, in Bisada village of Dadri, of a Muslim man by Hindus who suspected him of keeping beef in his house, I was taken back to the Gujarat massacre of 2002. That wound is fresh: the passing of a dozen years has done nothing to lessen the pain and the anger. Indeed, many more wounds have been added after Modi’s election victory, which has enabled the underlying evil to spread its tentacles and grow more vicious. It is not surprising that people are reacting to Dadri (…)

The lynching at Dadri-Bisada pushes the scorched earth
into the throes of communal conflagration.
Farmer Mohammad Akhlaq is dead
and son Danish is battling for life.
But the perpetrators’ diabolical machinations
are thrown asunder
as the air warriors gently descend
from the azure sky
and uplift and relocate you in the
national mindscape of secular India.
Jai Hai My India! Jai Hai!
—Suhas Borker
October 5, 2015
Suhas Borker is an independent documentary film-maker and Editor, (…)