2019

The moral compass has no tones of grey
It is white or black
It is light or darkness
It is good or evil
It is Gandhi or Godse.
Suhas Borker
[Suhas Borker is an independent documentary filmmaker and Convener, Working Group on Alternative Strategies and is based in New Delhi. He can be e-mailed at suhasborker[at]gmail.com]

Athens feared the cloutless Socrates, Because he said what he had to say; He drank the hemlock cheerfully, And Athens is known by him today.
Wycliff wrote the word of god In the English tongue; Burnt at the stake, he is now The English immortals among.
Copernicus found god’s own earth Moving round the sun; The truth of his discovery Pushed back religion.
Darwin disastrously dislodged The postulates of Creation; Reviled, he remains our beacon light To undefeated education.
Why may we (…)

by Binoy Viswam
The imaginary wall that the Sangh Parivar built in between the BJP and Godse has crumbled. All along these years, whenever the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi was discussed, the BJP leadership was extra-vigilant to distance themselves from Nathuram Vinayak Godse, the assassin. It was part of a well-designed strategy. In the heart of their hearts they all kept immense adoration for Nathuram Vinayak Godse. But due to various compulsions, mainly political and electoral, they (…)

by Amiya Dev
I first saw Subhas Mukhopadhyay in the mid-1950s. A Peace Conference was being held at Wellington or today’s Subodh Mallik Square. I had gone to hear it. One of the speakers was
Subhas Mukhopadhyay. But I was surprised by his mode of speech. He didn’t at all shout. He put his hands in his pant pockets and said, ‘We want peace,’ ‘Peace we want.’ The words still ring through my mind. Even without any rhetoric, he made home his demand for peace. I later realised that that was (…)

by S.N. Sahu
When the State of Odisha was hit by cyclone Fani it was stated that it was the worst cyclone after the super cyclone of 1999 described as “the most powerful ever recorded in India, and one of the strongest anywhere in the world in the 20th century”. Amitabh Sinha in his article in The Indian Express “Cyclone Fani: How 2019 was different from 1999 super cyclone” revealed “that super cyclone carried energy equivalent to 1,600 atomic bombs, similar to the ones dropped over (…)

by K.C. Ratha
Abstract
The major thrust of the article is to explore how river-dependent communities around the basin are bereft of minimum living support including safe drinking water and irrigation on the one hand and the political parties are engaged to make Mahanadi a poll issue for electoral gains remaining unconcerned with survival of people and its ecological entity on the other.
Odisha and Chhattisgarh are at loggerheads over a dying river. The Mahanadi river is dying as its (…)

by Zahoor Ahmad Wani
Those who are awake have one common world...
—Heraclitus
... they have a world to win
—Marx and Engels
This article examines how relevant Marx’s ideas are in the contemporary neoliberal world. It is impossible in this short write-up to do more than broach a few basic ideas of Karl Marx. Pronounced dead and buried at the end of the twentieth century, in the last one decade Karl Marx’s work and life have resurfaced and attracted the attention of international (…)

by Sukumaran C.V.
But the problem is no longer merely a moral or an ethical one. It is a practical and urgent problem of today, for the world is in a hopeless muddle, and some way out must be found....If we are to find a way out of this crisis of the spirit and realise what are the true spiritual values to-day, we shall have to face the issues frankly and boldly and not take refuge under the dogmas... —Jawaharlal Nehru (An Autobiography)
The exit polls predict a second term for the NDA (…)

Under oppression’s shadows condemned to breathe,
Still for a time we must bear them, and tears, and endure
What our forefathers, not our own faults, bequeath:
Fettered limbs, each impulse held on a chain,
Minds in bondage, our words all watched and set down—
Courage still nerves us, or how should we still exist,
Now with existence only a beggar’s gown,
Tattered, and patched every hour with new rags of pain?
Yes, but to tyranny not many hours are left now;
Patience a little, (…)

On the day Gujarat went to the Lok Sabha polls (April 23, 2019), the Supreme Court ordered the Gujarat Government to pay Rs 50 lakhs as compensation, provide a government job, and “accommodation in a place of her choice” to Bilkis Bano, who was gang-raped during the 2002 communal carnage in the State. The three-judge Supreme Court Bench, headed by the Chief Justice of India (CJI), Ranjan Gogoi, gave the verdict. Gogoi said: “In today’s world, money is the best healer. We do not know whether (…)