2015

Remembering Vladimir Ilyich Lenin on his one hundred and fortyfifth birth anniversary on April 22, 2015, we are reproducing excerpts from the following article by Jawaharlal Nehru that appeared in The Hindu (April 5, 1928).
by Jawaharlal Nehru
‘I know a pair of eyes which have been for ever numbed by the burning sorrow of the Terror,’ said Gorky of Lenin. This sorrow did not leave him to the end. It made him a fierce fanatic and gave him the strength of will to persevere and achieve. But (…)

by S.N. Sahu
In the annals of India’s modern history spanning our freedom struggle two towering personalities—Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Dr B.R. Ambedkar—rose on their own and that too not under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. Dr Ambedkar was one of the worst victims of untouchability. He was deliberately humiliated and excluded just because he was born as a Mahar, one of the lowest category of castes in the Dalit community in Maharashtra. After he came from Columbia University and (…)

First a non-sequitor: the return of Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley is fraught with great perplexities of emotion, organisation, and healthy sustainability. This contemplated return will not but be attended with consequences of historic import both for the State of Jammu and Kashmir and the subcontinent, one way or another. Of that there should be no doubt. Reason why the premises on which the project is undertaken need to be as comprehensively and objectively understood and acknowledged as (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Nitish Kumar has always endeared to promote women and their cause. It was in keeping with his political vision that on Bihar Diwas (March 22), while dedicating the day to the women of Bihar, he also came out with the policy-announcement that women would be the fulcrum of the future growth and economic development of the State. As if this was not enough, he also unveiled a Women Empower-ment Policy. This move of Nitish ought to be seen in the wider strategic perspective. (…)

MUSINGS
It is getting more than disgusting to hear those horrifying outbursts of the Hindutva elements directly or indirectly linked to the present-day government. These elements ought to be banned or thrown in those hell-holes. But here creeps in another of those horrifying realities—they are part and parcel of the entire set-up, so are left not just untouched but well-protected under layers of political patronage.
How could the Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut get away with this totally (…)

by Saurabh Bajpai
To destroy the legacy of the Indian national movement, the RSS-BJP has appropriated its modus operandi. It sounds harsh but true; the RSS-BJP is imitating the methods adopted by the anti-imperialist struggle led by the Congress. The question arises: how can it be? How can a secret-fascist organisation imitate the world’s largest democratic movement? The RSS-Muslim League-led communal politics was an anti-thesis of the nationalist mobilisation in India. Ideologically they (…)

The following analysis of the union budget by the marxist/maoist thinker, kobad ghandy, was written this month and reached us last week for publication in this journal. He sent it from tihar jail where he is once again lodged in jail no. 3 (where he had stayed earlier before being transferred to jail no. 2, ward 5). It is now being published here for the benefit of our readers.
However grand a carriage, without robust horses it is useless—it cannot move even an inch forward. So also it is (…)

From N.C.’s Writings The following is a tribute that N.C. wrote after the demise of the first General Secretary of the CPI-M, P. Sundarayya, in 1985. Sundarayya was the undisputed leader of the Telangana movement along with C. Rajeswara Rao and M. Basavapunnaiah. It is being reproduced here following the election of Sitaram Yechury, also hailing from Andhra Pradesh, to the post of the CPI-M General Secretary at the recently concluded 21st Congress of the party at Vishakhapatnam.
On May 19 (…)

by Shoaib Daniyal
From 1948 to 1968, the Government of India meticulously spied on Sugata Bose’s father, Sisir Bose, along with the rest of Subhash Chandra Bose’s immediate family in Kolkata, as has been recently revealed.
Sugata Bose is the grandson of Subhash Chandra Bose’s brother, Sarat Chandra Bose. He teaches History at Harvard University, is a Trinamul Congress Member of Parliament and has authored a book on Netaji, His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Spying, the very idea, has a bad aura about it. To that extent the declassified information that Jawaharlal Nehru spied on Subhas Chandra Bose and his family makes Nehru look bad. Unexpectedly Bhagat Singh’s family has pitched in with the allegation that Nehru’s government was spying on them too, planting intelligence agents inside the family in the guise of domestic servants and research scholars. All of this may be true because it’s a familiar game governments play. Some day (…)