2016

by Fayezah Iqbal
I am a Muslim and an Indian too to supplement my identity description. Despite knowing the fact that the raging times of minority hatred will add to more alienation of Muslims at every single step, I have felt a strong affinity for my nation since my childhood, for my land, for this soil. Promising job prospects in a foreign country and thereafter a prospective career full of newness awaits me.... but yet these lucrative prospects never ever succeed in appeasing my senses (…)

by Shubhra Bhargava
The Association of South-East Asian Nations is an economic and political organisation with ten member-nations. The ASEAN was formed on August 8, 1967. The member-states are: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam. The ASEAN was set up with the objective to bring economic, political, cultural and social integration among the nation-states and to settle the differences among them peace-fully. The ASEAN is (…)

History often teaches through events the lessons not learnt through theory. To forget the serious history of Germany, Italy and Europe of the 1930s and other events is a serious lapse on the part of the progressive forces. The JNU events, particularly those related to Kanhaiya, and events elsewhere in India have once again strongly emphasised the need for the broadest cooperation of the progressive forces. The recent events in fact reflect the deeper processes going on in the political and (…)

by Arup Maharatna
In this essay we seek to posit that many of the major ills that presently afflict Indian politics, society, and culture are attributable, in a large measure, to its resolute escape from the core ideational and attitudinal influences of the Western enlightenment, the mainspring of the modern industrial democratic civilisational world. We use the term ‘escape’, because India has neither wholeheartedly rejected, nor sincerely embraced, the basic insights, wisdoms and (…)

COMMUNICATION
The BJP, the ruling party at the Centre, has earned notoriety for duplicity, artful demagogy for non-implementation of promises and tall talk. It has been implementing the RSS agenda of transforming India from a secular democratic republic into a Hindu state. It aims at destroying our precious composite national culture.
Its Ministers and leaders have launched a hate campaign against Muslims and deliver highly provocative speeches against them; these speeches are (…)

POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
As the pre-election tension grips several States going to polls to elect Assemblies where electoral campaign is on in full swing, the latest incident in Srinagar’s National Institute of Technology (where clashes took place on March 31 when two groups fought over India’s defeat to West Indies in the T-20 World Cup Cricket semi-final) has caused legitimate consternation across the country.
The Central Government is currrently being run by persons suffering from an acute (…)

That the Indians have stashed money abroad was known even when I began my journalism career almost 60 years ago. The West German Government once provided us with the list of depositors. But nothing came out of it because the people involved enjoyed political patronage. The much-hidden Swiss accounts were also given to the government when it made an official request. No action followed since it was once again seen that the people who had kept their money were influential.
I recall the Union (…)

The Committee for the Defence and Release of Dr G.N. Saibaba wholeheartedly welcomes the decision of the Supreme Court of India to release Dr G.N. Saibaba on bail forthwith. This is indeed a much-needed and long-awaited relief for Dr Saibaba, who has been languishing in the anda cell of the Nagpur Central Jail since December 2015, when the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court cancelled the bail granted to him by the Division Bench of the Bombay High Court and ordered him to surrender within (…)

Till the afternoon of Thursday, March 31, the Hyderabad-based construction firm Iragava-puru Venkata Reddy Construction Ltd., better known by its initials IVRCL, was not a very high-profile company. But the sudden collapse of a huge slab of a flyover the company was building in Burra Bazar, the thickly-congested business district of Kolkata, brought it into the limelight. Many vehicles and pedestrians got trapped under its debris. Till the time of writing, 26 deaths have been confirmed and (…)

MUSINGS
On Monday, March 28, the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for Historical Studies hosted a day-long convention—Jashn-e-Azaadi: Remem-bering Bipan Chandra... celebrating the people’s historian, Bipan Chandra, and celebrating the Indian Freedom Struggle. It was simply heart-warming to see that josh/that surcharged warmth, spread out in and around the venue, JNU’s Convention Centre. Discussions, talks, short plays together with lectures on the pluralistic traditions and performance (…)