2016

Shri Rajnath Singhji,
Namaskar. It was heartening to note that as the Home Minister of a democratic-secular India you warned Pakistan, an Islamic state, not to be misled by the illusion that the latter could divide India on the basis of religion. You were absolutely right when addressing a public meeting at Kathua, Jammu, on December 12, 2016, you said: “Pakistan is under the wrong impression that it can divide India again on the basis of religion... All Indian Hindus and Muslims were (…)

The idea
A project to interlink Indian rivers was formally declared in 2002. It was envisaged as a grand scheme to link 37 major Indian rivers by 30 link canals (14 Himalayan and 16 peninsular) with a total length of 14,900-km. The interlinking of rivers (ILR) project, had a first-estimate cost of Rs 5,60,000 crores (Rs 5.6 trillion).
But the project is not simply a scheme to connect rivers by canals. It is a system of large dams and high-capacity canals to sequentially transfer very (…)

The observance of a century of the Russian Revolution has begun on November 7 this year. This article is being published in that connection.
No other revolution has so deeply impacted the world as the great Russian Revolution. It has begun its hundred years in November this year. It continues to be a reference-point on crucial issues. Every revolution deeply influences history: English revolution (1688), American (1776), French (1789) etc. The Russian Revolution moulded the people and (…)

TRIBUTE
by Vijay Kumar
The death of Fidel Castro has marked the end of an iconic revolutionary phase of the post-Second World War era. Fidel Castro was a hero of generations of students of history and politics, especially for students in DU and JNU. Castro and Che Guevara of Argentina were two profoundly heroic revolutionaries of the second half of the twentieth century. In fact, I have all along differed with Left intellectuals and Marxist scholars as I put Castro and Che Guevara on a (…)

by Irfan Engineer
The observations of the Allahbad High Court on December 8 stating that the Muslim personal law on triple talaaq didn’t give unbridled authority to a Muslim male to unilaterally divorce his wife would be welcomed by Muslim women who have been victims of misuse of the provision in particular, and to Muslim women in general, who face the threat of capricious use of the authority not granted to men by the Quran.
Though the Court refused to comment on the legality of triple (…)

The following is the author’s valedictory address at the National Seminar on ‘Governance, Resouruces and Livelihoods of Advasis in India: Implementation of PESA and FRA’, organised by the S.R. Sankaran Chair at the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Hyderabad, November 19, 2016.
The Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996—applicable to Schedule V areas in 10 States—empowers Gram Sabhas to manage forest lands and community resources, including (…)

by Murzban Jal
The overthrow of mother right was the world-historic defeat of the female sex. The man seized the reigns of the house also; the woman was degraded, enthralled, the slave of the man’s lust, a mere instrument for breeding children. —Frederick Engels, The Origin of Private Property, Family and the State
Much that is written about the caste system has reference mostly to the caste system among the Savarna Hindus. Very little is known about the Avarna Hindus. Who are the (…)

by Tapan Bandyopadhyay
“Gajio Me Boo Rahegi Jab Tak Iman Ki/Tab To London Tak Chalegi Teg Hindustan Ki.” — Bahadur Shah Jafar, the last Mughal Emperor of India, refusing to ask for clemency and mercy
Historians and chroniclers of all hues have written, analysed and formed their own pet theories about various peasant revolts in the Indian subcontinent beginning 1760 (after the Plassey defeat of Siraj-ud-daulah at the hands of the East India Company in 1757) extending upto the (…)

The following is the speech by Prof Ashok Parthasarathi after accepting a volume of Festschrift (collection of writings in his honour) from the Vice-President, M. Hamid Ansari, at a function in New Delhi on November 15, 2016.
It is a matter of great gratitude and gratification for me to the honoured today in my 75th year with a Festschirift. That I should have received the Festschrift from your hands, Mr VP, makes it a particularly unique honour for me.
I do not know if you remember, Mr (…)

“Turn in any direction you like, caste is the monster that crosses your path. You cannot have political reform; you cannot have economic reforms unless you kill the monster.” — Dr B.R. Ambedkar,
Annihilation of Caste
The public parade of deplorable ignorance of some of the Members of Parliament from West Bengal about the election of Dr B.R. Ambedkar to the Constituent Assembly in 1946 while celebrating the first ever Constitution Day on November 26, 2015 in Parliament was shocking, if (…)