2017

From N.C.’s Writings
One of my earliest reporting experiences was the great Calcutta killing of 1946. Fierce communal passions were unleashed and thousands were done to death on both sides in the course of a couple of days. But behind that gory carnage was the fight for the city of Calcutta: who should get it? Pakistan or India? Religious beliefs are made use of to rouse mass anger among innocent people, but those who whip up such passions do so only for political gains.
In our immediate (…)

The following article was written for the Gandhi Jayanti (October 2) but reached us late. So we are using it now.
At a time when some powerful elements are trying to co-opt some of the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi without giving up their ideology of communalism, we need to recall that Mahatma Gandhi’s views on religion had absolutely no place for communalism and instead were based on very deeply felt, sincere respect for all religions. He went beyond tolerance and pleaded for respect for other (…)

While it is nobody’s suggestion that India was a tolerant land some three years back and has suddenly developed intolerance, none can deny the fact that the goons threatening intellectuals and activists have certainly become more arrogant and encouraged by the absolute ‘disinterest’ shown by those in power. In the past few years we have lost a number of persons for the cause of human rights and secularism and probes have reached nowhere even though links with organisations associated with (…)

by Nirmal Singh
The 2017 UP Assembly election results upset the perceptions that dominated the election scene throughout its prolonged process. How-ever, this was in contrast to the doubts over the results expressed rather angrily by the BSP’s supreme leader, Mayawati, who said the electronic voting machines had been tampered with and that contributed to the BJP’s huge success. Mayawati, meanwhile, could not relish the unprecedented reversals of her party and even before the final outcome (…)

by M.A. Sofi
Let me begin by putting into perspective the apparent paradox that one may read into the above lines involving the title/subtitle of this essay. In the absence of evidence on the ground of the achievements and accomplishments as promised by the political parties while begging for votes from the people, an obsessive fixation with winning elections after elections and in States after States would only arouse the baser instincts among the politicians, especially those in power, (…)

by Ranbir Singh
Haryana is once again in the news for the wrong reasons. The challenge to the authority of the State and judiciary by the self-styled Sant Gurmeet Ram Rahim Insa of Dera Sucha Sauda, Sirsa (Haryana) has created an explosive situation which has resulted in as many as 38 deaths and large-scale destruction of property. It took more than a week of pressure by the huge force of the Haryana Police, para-military forces and Army to control the situation created by Ram Rahim’s (…)

by Mahendra Ved
Description: Gurmeet Ram Rahim.
He is not Gurmeet, a supposedly Sikh, nor Ram, a Hindu, nor Rahim, a Muslim. He has blemished the three faiths to masquerade his misdeeds. But how do ‘godmen’ like him get away with what they do without scrutiny? Are they beyond the society’s normative systems of accountability and responsibility?
The unfortunate story still developing sensationally in India is that he has fooled millions of people into believing him as a saint and a (…)

by Ram Puniyani
In its recommendation to the NCERT, the Shiksha Sanskriti Uthan Nyas, an RSS affiliate, asks for removal of English, Urdu and Arabic words, the thoughts of Rabindranath Tagore; extracts from painter M.F. Husain’s autobio-graphy; references to the Mughal emperors as benevolent, to the BJP as a “Hindu” party, an apology tendered by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over the 1984 riots; and a sentence that “nearly 2000 Muslims were killed in Gujarat in 2002”. (July 25, (…)

by Sankar Ray
The German political scenario is amidst a seismic uncertainty with the ascendant Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)’s entry into the Bundestag with a voting share of 12.6 per cent and 79 MPs. The racist temper, combined with Nazi mores, albeit covertly, was reflected in a pre-election speech by the founder of the AfD, Dr Alexander Gauland, a former member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, who gave a call for reviving aggressive nationalism: “We have the (…)

by Gautam Sen
The political conditions in Brazil, the largest Latin American country with a population of 208 million and $ 1.8 trillion GDP, seems destined to remain unstable for some time, at least till a new President takes over next year. As of now, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is the most popular political leader from the Left-wing Workers‘ Party, in contention for the post. However, the moot point is whether Lula, an earlier two-term popular President who presided over (…)