2017

The Hindutva juggernaut, which rode on with Ram, love jihaad and ghar wapsi on top of it, is riding with the cow this time. There have been countless incidents of lynching, maiming and robbing of Muslims and Dalits in the name of saving holy cows. It is to be noted that there are a large number of such attacks which go unreported. The videos of such lynching and maiming uploaded on the social media by the perpetrators as instances of the latter’s bravado are horrendous and blood curdling (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Abu Zubaydah, a “high-value” associate of fellow Saudi Arabian Osama bin Laden, was captured by America’s CIA from a safe house in Pakistan in 2002. (Pakistan’s ISI got $ 10 million for services rendered.) Badly wounded, Zubaydah was put on painkillers. CIA strategists mani-pulated the medication until the man was hallucinated into believing that he was in Saudi Arabian custody. Feeling relieved, he gave the “doctors” a telephone number and asked them to call a member of the (…)

In a shocking performance by his own standards, US President Donald Trump tore into Qatar in highly inflammatory language accusing it as a state sponsoring terrorism and casting it as an adversary of the United States.
Make no mistake, this was no early-morning Twitter, no ‘Trumpspeak’ at the golf course in Florida in the weekend. Actually, believe it or not, it happened while reading out from a prepared text drafted by the White House aides in advance for a joint press conference with the (…)

by Navneet Sharma and Divyanshu Patel
Workers of the world, Unite.—Marx
Workers, Unite the world.—Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh
If unity is to be of an abiding factor, it must be founded on a sense of kinship.—B.R. Ambedkar
Class, as an economic category, at least theoretically and in certain exceptional circum-stances, has vertical mobility. On the other hand, caste, being a social category, neither theoretically nor exceptionally, has vertical or horizontal mobility. The staticity is (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
Twentyeight years ago, N.C. had left for China when the Tiananmen bloodbath took place on June 4, 1989. Apart from his despatches which appeared in The Times of India on the tragedy that befell that great country at that time, he also wrote this detailed piece which was published in Mainstream (June 17, 1989). This was an enlarged version of an article in The Times of India (June 12, 1989).
The contours of the emerging set-up in China are still very blurred as the (…)

MUSINGS
After 25 Years, Advani and Company Stand in The Dock!
The Babri Masjid was destroyed by L.K. Advani, Uma Bharati, Murli Manohar Joshi and hundreds of kar sevaks in the winter of 1992. Yet, instead of getting discarded from the political scenario they were placed up there, centre-stage. One didn’t know whether to cry or shriek or weep when L.K. Advani was appointed Deputy Prime Minister of the country, when Murli Manohar Joshi was appointed the Union HRD Minister and Uma Bharati (…)

by Ram Puniyani
On May 26, 2017, the Modi Government completed three years in office. Various programmes such as the Modi fest were organised at various places and there are plans to celebrate them in different cities across the country. The underlying message of these programmes is that the Modi Government has done remarkable work and the country is moving towards prosperity for all. Modi has been labelled as ‘Garibon ka Masiha’ (Prophet for Poor) by his acolytes. Many channels and (…)

The Central Bureau of Investigation’s raid on the owners of NDTV for an alleged concealment of share transaction from the SEBI that has caused a loss of Rs 48 crore to a private bank has been termed by the channel as a witch-hunt based on “same old” false accusation. I tend to agree with the channel. Radhika Roy, the co-owner, and I have worked together at The Indian Express and I cannot imagine that she could have indulged in such activities attributed to her.
I think it is a trumped up (…)

A significant announcement in an English national daily recently to the effect that the ”RSS wing has a prescription for fair, tall ‘custo-mised’ babies”1 is a startling disclosure, com-parable to a secret project undertaken by the Nazi regime in Germany under the Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler. This has no parallel with the potential to provoke craze in millions of Indian hearts at home and abroad. According to the Hindutva outfit’s subsidiary Arogya Bharati, its health wing, a woman could deliver (…)

The following letter, sent to the President, Pranab Mukherjee, from the General Secretary of the Socialist Party (India), Dr Prem Singh, on May 4, 2013, has been resent by Dr Prem Singh, who is now the President of the Socialist Party (India), on May 10, 2017 precisely four years after the first letter in 2013.
His Excellency
Shri Pranab Mukherjee
President of India
Sub.: Request to bring back the mortal remains of Bahadur Shah Zafar
Most Respected Sir,
The Socialist Party would (…)