2018

The following is the text of an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by forty nine former civil servents.
We are a group of retired civil servants who came together last year to express our concern at the decline in the secular, democratic, and liberal values enshrined in our Constitution. We did so to join other voices of protest against the frightening climate of hate, fear and viciousness that the ruling establishment had insidiously induced. We spoke then as we do now: as (…)

EDITORIAL
PM Narendra Modi is now in London to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). At a public function there yesterday—an event of the Indian diaspora in the UK called Bharat ki Baat, Sabke Saath—he did unequivocally condemn the Kathua rape case wherein an eight-year-old girl was kidnapped by several culprits, taken to a secluded place, repeatedly raped for days and then brutally murdered. Incidentally, Modi was among the first BJP functionaries to do so, most of (…)

COMMENTARY
The Left parties are currently holding or have already held their Party Congresses.
The CPI-ML (Liberation)’s 10th Congress at Mansa (Punjab) on March 28, 2018 heard party General Secretary Dipan Bhattacharya declaring:
...it (the BJP) is bent upon reshaping India in accordance with the Hindu supremacist blueprint of the RSS even as the latter marches towards its centenary in 2025.... This design must be defeated. The disaster must be prevented. And it is to this pressing (…)

by Ashok Celly
Akbar was not only a great king. He was also one of the greatest human beings Indian history has known. What made him great as a king was his awesome daring while he achieved greatness as a human being by the dint of his profound and pervasive empathy.
Look at the breath-taking audacity of this king. He gives the most important job in the kingdom—that of the Commander-in-Chief of the army—to a non-Muslim, a Hindu. It was an act of extraordinary courage. And I believe he (…)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now all in all in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He has installed his close lieutenant, Amit Shah, as the party President. However, people’s memory is short. The founder was Atal Behari Vajpayee who subsequently occupied the office of the Prime Minister to lead the NDA Government, a coalition of several parties.
The miracle of the Congres demise took place under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan, a Gandhian socialist. There was such a strong movement (…)

Asifa, my child, I wish I was not writing about you But holding you to my chest. Asifa, I wish you were watching Joyfully as I ripped apart The hyenas and hung their Entrails at the temple door, So the gods therein would smell The stench of their complicity. What wicked deity could Give you those beautiful black Eyes just so you could be witness To your so beastly mutilation?
Asifa, you were born in a country That did not deserve you, that does Not deserve millions of your sisters Either. (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
This week marks the completion of six months after the demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya on December 6. As one looks back on these six troubled months, one has to concede that December 6 has emerged as a distinct watershed in Indian politics. The period that has opened up since that date is qualitatively different from the period preceding it.
Whoever was responsible for the disappea-rance of the Babri Masjid—the act of violent demolition on the part of the (…)

by Ram Puniyani
In a historic judgment the Supreme Court gave the verdict that instantaneous triple talaaq (Talaaq-e-Biddat) is invalid as per the law. (August 22, 2017) Giving this verdict the Court invoked the ethos of equality of the Indian Constitution. This judgment has been path-breaking as it upholds the demands of many Muslim women’s groups on the subject. Just to recall this verdict was in response the petition filed by Shayra Bano, a victim of triple talaaq and many Muslim women (…)

by Ajayakumar Kodoth
The Party Congresses of the CPI and CPI-M are currently taking place in South India. This article is being published in that context.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech in Parliament in reply to the President’s policy statement, had a ring of hauteur to it. His hatred towards the Congress Party was as undisguised as ever. What this points to is a fascist tendency to twist historical truths in order to establish counterfactuals. The danger and threat lurking behind (…)

At a commemorative meeting in Mumbai the journalist who did the story for Caravan talks about how Loya’s family decided that he should be the one to tell their story.
by Jyoti Punwani
Shortly before independence there was a journalist who was killed trying to save lives during a communal riot. In recent years there have been efforts to commemorate Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, and this year’s memorial meeting in Mumbai, organised by the Mumbai Sarvodaya Mandal and the Janmukti Sangharsh (…)