2017

EDITORIAL
The latest episode in the progressively deteriorating relations between India and Pakistan is the one involving Kulbhushan Jadhav, a former naval officer now a businessman working out of Chabahar in Iran. The case, exposing Pakistan’s lip-service to democracy and the rule of law, has been vividly brought into focus in an editorial today in The Times of India. Captioned “Judicial Murder”, its first paragraph reads as follows:
The decision of a Pakistani military court to hand (…)

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came to Delhi on a four-day visit from April 7 to 10. During her visit as many as 22 agreements were signed. There was an agreement on defence cooperation and another on civil nuclear cooperation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a concessional credit of $ 4.5 billion to Bangladlesh which includes $ 500 milllion for defence supplies..
But the unwritten, unannounced issue that dominated the minds of both Hasina and Modi was the agreement on (…)

After the debacle at the hands of the Chinese in 1962, I went to Bum La Pass from where the Dalai Lama had entered India to seek asylum. His land, Tibet, had been occupied by the Chinese who also destroyed their culture. The Chinese imposed communism and had no respect for either the Dalai Lama or his monastery. The Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh has brought back memories of the days when the Chinese annexed Tibet. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, did not raise (…)

The results of the UP State Assembly elections have come as a shock to all parties including the pollsters. The appointment of Yogi Adityanath as the Chief Minister of UP is the worst outcome. I feel that it requires all political parties, the secular and Leftists (I am using loosely because unfortunately the meanings of the terms have become quite barren), to come close to each other.
I am mentioning some items which all of us could take up, as these have no party monopoly. Of course my (…)

This article was the written at the beginning of last month and carried in kafila.online from where it is being reproduced with due acknowledgement.
..The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote.To a number.To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of star dust.In every field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living.
....My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
April 14 this year marks the 126th 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 (…)

Caste discrimination is not expressly prohibited under the UK equality legislation, although section 9 of the Equality Act 2010, as amended, requires the government to introduce secondary legislation to make caste an aspect of race, thereby making caste discrimination a form of race discrimination. The Coalition Government initially indicated that this legislation would be introduced in Parliament during the summer of 2015. (House of Commons Publications and Records, The Equality Act 2010: (…)

Noted Leftist intellectual Anuradha Ghandy was born on March 28, 1954 and died on April 12, 2008 shortly after her 54th birthday. In this piece, written on March 28, 2017, her husband and Leftist thinker Kobad Ghandy remembers her on her 63rd birth anniversary. He has sent this piece from the Cherlapalli Central Jail, Cherlapalli, Medchal district, Hyderabad where he is currently lodged.
“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but those who watch without doing anything.” (…)

by Murzban Jal
What idea lies behind these words? Is it believed that in present-day society (and it is only with this one has to deal) education can be equal for all classes? Or is it demanded that the upper classes also should be compulsorily reduced to the modicum of education—the elementary school—that alone is compatible with the economic system not only for wage-workers but of the peasants as well?
—Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme
Of late, the Social-Democratic (…)

BOOK REVIEW
by Ram Puniyani
Kandhalmal: Introspection for Initiative for Justice 2007-2015 by Vrinda Grover and Saumya Uma; Media House and United Christian Forum Delhi; 2017.
Violence is the bane of the Indian society and a manifest agenda of the communal forces which thrive on divisive politics and polarisation. This is part of their political agenda. While Hindu-Muslim violence during the British period had a particular beginning and characteristics, the same violence became (…)