2020

PEOPLE’S UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES (PUCL) 332, Patpar Ganj, Opposite Anand Lok Apartments, Mayur Vihar I, Delhi 110 091 Phone 2275 0014 PP FAX 4215 1459 Founder: Jayaprakash Narayan; Founding President: V M Tarkunde President: Ravi Kiran Jain; General Secretary: Dr. V. Suresh E.mail: puclnat[at]gmail.com& pucl.natgensec[at]gmail.com
14th September 2020
To:
Mr SN Srivastava, IPS Commissioner of Police, Delhi Police Headquarters, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi (…)

Greg Ruggiero interviews Dorion Sagan
19 Aug 2020
A SINGLE STRAND OF coded protein packed in a fatty shell — so small that it is almost immune to gravity — is changing humanity as we know it. What is happening? If we approach this question from the perspective of ourselves alone, it appears that we are under attack. But there are many other perspectives to consider, including the planet’s, whose interconnected ecosystems may be far more “intelligent” than our technologies. Could it be (…)

BOOK REVIEW
Jinee Lokaneeta’s The Truth Machines: Policing, Violence and Scientific Investigation in India Pages 264, 2020 | ISBN: 9789390122028 Imprint: Orient Blackswan
In 2010 historian Martin Jay in his book The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics argued that ‘politics and mendacity have been intimate bedfellows’. Relying on intellectual history, political philosophy and contemporary developments in American politics, he stated that despite a moral disdain for lying, lies have (…)

Table of Contents - Mainstream, VOL LVIII No 39, New Delhi, September 12, 2020
Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Sept 12 On Pranab Mukerjee | Sumanta Banerjee Swami Agnivesh: The man who tried to retrieve the colour Bhagwa | John Dayal Why the Right is Winning | Shiv Visvanathan On the Foundation of the Communist Party of India in 1925 | Anil Rajimwale Promoting Fraternity: Courts to the Rescue | Ram Puniyani De-iconisation of Pandit Ishwar Chandra (…)

On the 15th of August, the Prime Minister announced that his government was considering bringing a legislation to raise the age of marriage for women to 21 years. The rationale for attempting to raise the minimum legal age for marriage beyond 18 is that this will bring down maternal mortality; this explanation is questionable. Studies show that the focus should be on health and nutrition and to curtail the widespread practice of Child Marriage that prevails in over 70 plus districts spread (…)

As I read the obituaries which are pouring in to pay tributes to Pranab Mukherjee, I find a missing link - the years during 1950-60 which were first spent by him as a post-graduate student in Calcutta, followed by a stint as a college lecturer, and then his entry into politics as an activist in West Bengal that was to lead to his eventual arrival in Delhi as an MP in 1969. Since I knew him during those years , I may (…)

Vepa Shyam Rao died ten days short of a precise 80 years in the Intensive Care Unit of a Delhi hospital, of the long-term impact of injuries sustained two years ago when the lone unarmed man was surrounded and beaten by armed assailants in Jharkhand. A lynch mob, you could call them.
It was not difficult to spot him, even by people who did not read newspapers, did not see television. If anyone had seen a calendar painting of Swami Vivekananda, they would recognise Agnivesh, by colour, (…)

The Left created a dream of the future while the Right allowed everyman to recreate his own past through an act of video violence

Foundation of CPI in 1925 was a historic event, welcomed by all the progressive sections of the national movement. It was a product of the dialectical combination of the national and class movements, deeply crystallized by the Russian revolution and international events. CPI in the twenties was truly rooted in the industrial working class and the emerging intelligentsia influenced by ideas of socialism and Marxism. Simultaneously a big section of the national movement was involved in it and (…)

Prashant Bhushan, the upright legal luminary and social activist, has shown the mirror to the Judiciary in a remarkable way. But that’s not the whole story. Recently two interventions of the Courts do give a hope that the judiciary can also come forward to preserve the democratic values in the society.