2015

From N.C.’s Writings
April 14 this year marked the 124th birth anniversary of Dr Babasaheb Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. On this occasion we are reproducing the following piece by N.C. to offer our sincere homage to the abiding memory of that towering personality.
The award of the Bharat Ratna posthumously on B.R. Ambedkar raises mixed feelings. No doubt Ambedkar was one of the stalwarts of modern India; the high-water mark of his career was that he contributed most to the drafting of the (…)

by Vivek Kumar Srivastava
We can look at Bhimrao Ambedkar in many ways. He is credited with the drafting of our Constitution. He is respected as the champion of the Dalit cause. He is remembered for incorporating Article 17 in the chapter of Fundamental Rights, which abolished untouch-ability. These are the attainments and contri-butions of Ambedkar but he is more than all that.
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru presented the Objective Resolution on December 13, 1946 in the Constituent Assembly. (…)

by Sukumaran C. V.
“There is no code of laws more infamous regarding social rights than the Laws of Manu. Any instance from anywhere of social injustice must pale before it. Why have the masses of people tolerated the social evils to which they have been subjected? There have been social revolutions in other countries of the world. Why have there not been social revolutions in India is a question which has incessantly troubled me. There is only one answer and it is that the lower classes (…)

While Pakistan may appear to be losing its relevance to India in some Indians’ perception, it is in fact strengthening its geo-strategic relevance in the fast-changing Asian geopolitics. There is every reason to believe that the Indian Government is fully seized of Pakistan’s fast-growing importance in this context.
Ever since the two countries came to exist, Pakistan was clear in its perception that while it was no match to rival India, it must adopt policies to befriend powerful third (…)

I - Introduction
The next two decades (2015-2035) present some unprecedented challenges for the human civilisation. There is clearly a very urgent need for restricting climate change to tolerable levels, checking environmental ruin in other critical areas as also for restraints on accumulation and possible use of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). In fact this agenda should have been accomplished in the past two decades (1995-2014) as the extreme urgency of these issues had become clear (…)

TRIBUTE
by Subhoranjan Dasgupta
Gunter Grass, the German author and social critic who gave voice to the generation that came of age during the horrors of the Nazi era, died on Monday (April 13) morning. He was 87.
A friend of Gunter Grass, who interviewed the Nobel Prize winner several times, recalls and analyses the German author’ s association with Calcutta.
The question that is haunting me even after his death is basic in nature and, at the same time, essentially simple: did he (…)

This is the day that India’s greatest modern-day social thinker was born. Aided by a fratern-ity of able and well-meaning compatriots, he gave us Constitutional Democracy, and a vision of how much rot needed to be sorted out if our political freedom was to translate into genuine equality.
The struggles for that equality have seen many ups and downs. Clearly, at the point of writing, the downs overwhelm even those whose commitment and energy on hehalf of equity and justice remain firm and (…)

[(TRIBUTE
Sobho Gianchandani, one of Pakistan’s last leaders from its first generation of Marxists, passed away in Larkana (in Pakistan’s Sindh province) four months ago on December 8, 2014. He was cremated in his native village near Larkana on December 9, 2014.
Gianchandani was a member of the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) and stayed active after it was banned in the 1950s.
With his death an era has come to an end in the sense that the generation of Leftist politicians who (…)

EDITORIAL
Several developments in the last few days at the Centre and in the States have caused considerable controversy and concern.
First, there was the exchange of letters between Justice Kurian Joseph of the Supreme Court and Chief Justice of India H.L. Dattu on the issue of the right to convene a judicial conference of all Chief Justices and Cheif Ministers during the long week-end from Good Friday to Easter Sunday.
Justice Joseph, in his letter to the CJI on March 18, mainstained (…)

The bombing of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, by the Saudi-led coalition has exposed a bag of contradictions which are growing sharper with time. The coalition is battling the Houthi rebels hostile to the Sunni and pro-Saudi President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, more importantly, the Al Qaida and Islamic State (IS). In a sense this had to happen given the Saudi strategic vulnerability to a Shia dispensation to its south. Its oilfields could be threatened next and its own Sunni population, which is (…)