2020

Equality before the law
Is a fine idea,
But propagated unequally
By an unequal media.
And judges are wise not to speak
In mechanical voice;
Justice demands that lordships weigh
Who stacks the dice.
Most citizens know their place
In the scheme of things;
Most are pedestrians,
A third float on wings.
Justice wears a bandana
All across her eyes,
Too embarrassed to observe
How the lay of the land lies.
November 17, 2020 - Badri Raina

by LK Sharma
Social Distancing!
Two Words signify Two Worlds Two Faces.
Two Words. Not new to me. Inherited these.
These are in my blood. I distance myself from the Other, instinctively.
These got engraved in my mind as I saw Dalits and Brahmins not eating together. Men and women not sitting together.
By colour code, I can make out the faces of two types
When I grew up and began to show signs of nonconformity, I got quarantined. I became the Other.
It has been like (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Refusing to be sworn in as the next chief minister of Bihar unless the LJP is dismembered and Chirag Paswan is sacked from the NDA, the JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar has put the BJP leadership, especially Narendra Modi in a piquant situation.
Modi was expecting some kind of precipitative action from Nitish but was not sure that he would go to this extent. Well-placed sources maintain that the celebration function which was held at the party’s headquarter in Delhi was also (…)

by P. S. Jayaramu
Results of the by-elections in Karnataka are out. The BJP has emerged victorious in both the R R Nagar constituency in Bangalore and Sira in Tumkur district. The results call for an analysis of the impact of the by-polls on the Political Parties in the State.
Let us take up first the case of the Bhartiya Janata Party. The BJP which came to power by resorting to operation lotus in a big way In 2019 after the collapse of the Congress-JD(S) Coalition Government has not (…)

Ahead of assembly polls in West Bengal, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s victory in Bihar is said to be ringing alarm bells for anti-BJP parties in this state. Of course, BJP leaders love this prediction. But seriously speaking, it is as yet too early to assume that political tide may turn in favour of BJP. Even Bihar-verdict does not spell absolute majority of BJP. Statistically speaking, BJP has not swept the polls in Bihar. Apprehensions about saffron brigade having gained more ground to (…)

Background
Retrospectively, in 2015, The RJD and JDU had developed tacit understanding to defeat the BJP and subsequently formed the government making Nitish Kumar (JDU) as Chief Minister and Tajashwi Yadav (RJD) the Deputy Chief Minister. Ram Vilas Paswan’s (LJSP) was part of NDA and worn on only two seats. The CPIML won three seats in Siwan, Bhojpur and Katihar Districts. The ignominious defeat of the BJP in 2015 election, hurt the BJP’s stalwarts and the RSS, both hatched the conspiracy (…)

All human beings are basically selfish. But the selfishness of someone like me is inconsequential compared to the selfishness of someone like Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, the ranking leader of the Communist Party that rules Kerala. He was once Home Minister in that state.
He has two sons fondly named Binoy and Bineesh. Binoy has an FIR against him in a Mumbai rape case. Bineesh was arrested in Bangalore the other day on charges of financing Mohammed Anup to set up a hotel in the city. Anup (…)

What Arnab Goswami’s TV Channel has been doing can’t be called journalism. He is spewing venom through his channel against all that is sane and sound in politics. He is insulting secularism, plurality and dissent under the label of journalism. He is a vociferous propagandist of the Hindutva Mr Modi and team represents. While Mr Modi has degraded politics into meaningless rhetoric, Mr Goswami has degraded journalism into mudslinging and abusing those who question his skewed views being (…)

The role of Indian revolutionaries, who advocated armed uprising to drive the British out of the country, has not been adequately recognised in the history of freedom movement. The British had ruthlessly suppressed the armed revolt of 1857, but the pioneering revolutionaries such as Shyamji Krishna Varma, Bhikaji Cama, Har Dayal, Ras Behari Bose and a whole band of unknown heroes like them, kept the flame of freedom alive in heart of Indians. Many of them operated from abroad to escape the (…)

by Zofia Malisz, Razem 30 October 2020
Last Thursday, the Polish Constitutional Tribunal outlawed pregnancy termination in cases of severe and fatal congenital diseases of the fetus. Its verdict violates fundamental human rights and sentences generations of Polish women to personal tragedies and torture. Massive protests have erupted all around the country and abroad, including in smaller municipalities and conservative regions.
Polish public opinion had been, and continues to be, (…)