2018

Revolution splashes multi-hued beams: wavy green carpeting barren brown; milky white washing away anaemic pale; bloody spring dismantling steely tyranny.
From the dusty memory lane glints velvet that erased long past emblazoned red. Now ablaze—the fury of yellow fire of rage, leaping at the crafty graft’s black face.
Rumblings grow louder on the horizon. A storm is blowing over the mindscape, breaking all shackles, walls of divides, ballasts of the stinking status quo.
The (…)

COMMUNICATION
In many parts of the world the need for electoral alliances has acquired a new urgency in the wider context of protecting justice, peace and democracy. The reason is that due to a complex of reasons, political forces with a narrow harmful agenda of promoting discrimination and inequality are finding short-term support among the people. To counter this the forces of justice and equality have a much greater need for unity. One aspect of this coming together has to be in the (…)

by V. Bijukumar
The Supreme Court verdict on opening of the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple in Kerala for women of all ages created political gutter in a State which is known for its progressive and everyday political activism. Though initially most of the mainstream political formations and caste associations welcomed the verdict, the social compulsions and political astuteness forced them to adopt a more strategic and often pliable stand on the issue. While the central leaderships of the RSS (…)

EDITORIAL
The results of the by-elections in Karnataka have definitely given a boost to the JDS-Congress ruling alliance in the State while the Opposition BJP has been routed. The JDS-Congress alliance has won four seats while the BJP could notch up a relatively narrow victory in one. On the political plane this is the most striking news of the day whose importance can barely be minimised.
It would be premature to conclude that these results would set the stage for the 2019 Lok Sabha (…)

Ajit Doval must indeed be a talented man. Until the other day what we knew was that he was the National Security Adviser to the Narendra Modi Government. What we also knew was how his no-nonsense “Doval Doctrine” has so conclusively put down militancy in the Kashmir Valley, dented and even reversed the people’s alienation, brought peace to our border areas and told Pakistan where they get off.
Then we discovered that Ajit Doval’s exceptional merits may have obliged the highest of the land (…)

by Ram Puniyani
Yogi Adityanath, the Chief Minister of UP, seems to be in the name-changing spree. In his latest move he has changed the name of the famous city of UP, Allahabad, to Prayagraj. Prayag is the meeting-point of rivers and since this city is the meeting-point of Ganga, Yamuna and probably invisible Sarswati, this name might have been chosen by him in his attempts to remove the Islamic touch to the names of our cities. As such many a version of the origin of the name of this (…)

This letter was written and published on October 30, 2018.
Respected Sardar Patelji,
Namaskar!
Whereever you may be, as our leader of the Freedom Movement, your soul, I know, rests here on the motherland whose beloved son you have always been. Your act of freeing India from the shackles of the royal states and estates and of freeing the farmers from the oppressive tax laws of the British regime is unprecedented even to this day. As the first Home Minister of the first government of (…)

by Arup Kumar Sen
A scholar of nationalism, Gabriella Elgenius, reminded us that “national symbols, of various kinds, are essential as expressions of nationhood and as such are able to ignite passions and conflicts of a larger, as well as a lesser, kind”.
The recent construction of the gigantic 182 metre-high Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Statue of Unity at Kevadiya in the Narmada district of Gujarat, built at a cost of Rs 2989 crores, has ignited “passions and conflicts” of various kinds. (…)

A convention was held in Bangalore on September 5, 2018 as a tribute to Gauri Lankesh who, as per the ongoing investigation, was targeted and shot dead by members of the Right-wing Sanathan Sanstha on that evening a year ago.
Girish Karnad, one of the principal initiators of the gathering of about a thousand persons, invited me as one of the five persons who had filed a petition in the Supreme Court, protesting the arbitrary arrests of Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha, Varavara Rao, Arun (…)

Now we are to tell this Court How the deal was made, How the price was computed, How Anil Ji made the grade.
If the Court will thus enquire Into Executive considerations, How may this Bharat outsmart Wily enemy nations?
Once for all we must decide If Courts and the Constitution Will this Republic run, Or the Messiah newly born.
Due process, democracy— Cconceal a conspiracy; Mere law and order will not help Us demolish Nehruvian legacy.
Sentiments and crony aid And a Hindu King to (…)