2019

January 30 this year marks the seventyfirst anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. On this occasion we remember the Father of the Nation by reproducing the following piece by Jawaharlal Nehru written shortly after Gandhiji’s departure.
by JAWAHARLAL NEHRU
Nineteen-sixteen. Over thirty-two years ago. That was when I first saw Bapu, and an age has gone by since then. Inevitably one looks back and memories crowd in. What a strange period this has been in India’s history and the (…)

My mind knows no fatigue,
Yet the withered wailing of the boughs,
Yet the numb cold on plains and meadows,
And unceasing the sky’s tears.
Life is neck-craned in expectation,
Expectation or is it a complex tune!
Carbon reddness in the blue of desire,
In that beggarliness wanting is one with receiving,
The mind is accessible in the body, in the fist the far.
I do not want peace without you,
I want you unceasingly,
Poinciana reddness in bloom, that too is waiting
That is (…)

On the occasion of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s 122nd birth anniversary on January 23 this year, we are carrying the following excerpts from Netaji’s speeches and writings while remembering that stalwart of our freedom struggle.
This is Subhas Chandra Bose speaking to you over the Azad Hind Radio.
For about a year I have waited in silence and patience for the march of events and now that the hour has struck, I come forward to speak.
The fall of Singapore means the collapse of the (…)

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
The Republic of India is now thirty-eight years old. It has weathered many a storm and has come to be recognised as a functioning democracy. The tremendous interest of the voter to exercise his right to vote is taken as proof of the enduring quality of our democracy. From this phenomenon, our Prime Minister seems to have drawn the conclusion that an unlettered electorate has a wider vision, a broader outlook. According to him, literacy ”does more to narrow the vision (…)

by Basudev Mazumdar
BJP President Amit Shah has again got his history wrong. While inaugurating the BJP’s national convention recently on January 11, 2019 in New Delhi for giving a push to poll preparedness, he compared the ensuing Lok Sabha election with the third Panipat battle of 1761 AD (January 14, 1761) when the Peshwa regime was vanquished by the Afghan ruler, Ahmad Shah Abdali. He said that the defeat led to a slavery of 200 years. People should not forget that and make similar (…)

by Bharat Dogra
I Introduction
There is a growing realisation that our world is increasingly faced with a survival crisis in the sense that the very life-nurturing conditions of our planet, which made such amazing biodiversity possible on earth, are threatened. Time-bound solutions have to be found within the next two decades to prevent several of these threats from crossing the much-feared tipping points beyond which these may slip out of human control. As finding time-bound solutions (…)

Until a week or so ago, the chief fare on the nationalist menu was clearly the Ram Mandir. Till the Kumbh took its place.
A frenetic onslaught on the nation’s attention was in evidence, as diverse recipes for a quick execution of the building of the temple were unleashed by the many outlets of the Hindutva Parivar.
One stalwart of the parivar went about feverishly recommending on television channels that since the Narasimha Rao Government had already acquired the land at the disputed (…)

The other day I drafted a poem and showed it to a friend. He said: don’t generalise, be specific.
I started chronicling the specifics: local bullying, cruel ragging, purchasable degrees, greased-palm delivered jobs, adulterated sustenance prolonged by spurious aftercare, listless drone of daily grind, opulence of the bragging thugs, acquiescence by the marginalised.
And so on! They swarm over the page, leaving no elbow room for my humble poem. Yet it refuses to be stifled, wades through (…)

by Gopal Krishna
Inspired by the Long March of Maharashtra farmers and farm workers, that is, the astute practitioners of democracy who walked from Nashik to Mumbai to encircle the State Legislative Assembly in Mumbai in March 2018, this year’s fourth march of farmers and farm workers to Parliament Street has brought the demand for a 21-day joint session of Parliament on agrarian crisis to the centre-stage. This demand of the All India Kisan Struggle Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), (…)

by Suranjita Ray
The 2019 Lok Sabha elections, to be held in a few months from now, has compelled almost all the political parties not to miss the opportunity to promise fulfilling the demands of protesting farmers. Of the various demands the issue of farm loan waiver has become the most crucial for every political party across ideological and political differences as they claim to stand with the protesting farmers to fight their distress. Opposition parties from the Congress to Aam Admi (…)