2020

I lost my eldest surviving sister in law in July, to cancer. Amni Soshamma Thekkeveetil, the 83 year old widow of the late Kadavil Thomas of Thiruvalla, was the second of six sisuters and two brothers, was 83. The eldest brother and sister passed away some years ago. My wife is the second last sibling. Amni’s siblings and children are in several states in India, and several countries across the globe.
Covid made her last days so lonely, in ICU in a Kerala hospital and at home as they (…)

Document and Appeal
REMEMBERING KANDHAMAL
“Kandhamal Never Again, Never Anywhere”
The National Solidarity Forum, representing 70 national and regional organisations, has issued the following Appeal to observe the 12th Kandhamal Day anniversary on 25th August 2020. The Forum observes the pogrom against Christians in the Kandhamal district of Orissa masterminded by the Sangh Parivar, with the then BJD-BJP coalition government looking on. “Kandhamal Never Again, Never Anywhere” has been (…)

PEOPLE’S UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES 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
27th August, 2020
Press Release
Organizations from All Over India Issue a call for a Protest Week,
August 28 — September 5, Urging People to Stand Up for (…)

Moscow, Brussels and other stakeholders should avoid transforming the Belarus crisis into a European one, cooperate to warn against repression and insist on new, fair elections

THE Indian foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla’s hastily arranged and sudden visit to Dhaka is shrouded in mystery. The centrepiece of the visit was his audience with Sheikh Hasina. Not a word has come out of the Bangladesh Prime Minister’s Office, not even who were present at the important audience. The Indian side has been equally silent.

Habermas’s social evolutionary learning theory carries critical insights pertaining to the way humans overcame specific “learning challenges” as history unfolded over thousands of years. In modern times, Habermas emphasizes that both the League of Nations, the United Nations and the European Union, though flawed, fan “sparks of hope” that we can learn from catastrophe. We do not simply lay down amidst the bombed-out buildings and corpse-strewn streets and perish into oblivion.

Book Title: Haksar on India’s Sri Lanka Policy; Authors: V. Suryanarayan and Ashik J. Bonofer; Publishers: Centre for Asia Studies, Chennai, and Bookventure; Pages: 96; Price: Rs 200
This is a slim but informed and, if I may say so, an accidental book. It would not have been written but for the recently published letters from the late P.N. Haksar to Thomas Abraham, a highly respected diplomat, on the Sri Lankan conflict in the 1980s. For one who was once very close to Indira Gandhi, Haksar (…)

Table of Contents - Mainstream, VOL LVIII No 36, New Delhi, August 22, 2020 Letter to the Readers - Mainstream, August 22, 2020 | The Editor Congress, Hindutva and Indian Nationalism | Barun Das Gupta Disregarding Ravi Chopra’s Recommendations on the Chardham Project Will Destroy the Fragile Ecology of the Himalayan Region | Surabhi Agarwal, Lubna Sarwath and Sandeep Pandey Racism: An Entrenched System | Suranjita Ray Dalit Politics Needs a New Radical Direction | S. (…)

Over the past many years sections of society in India have been campaigning for the repeal of the sedition, defamation and contempt laws which are part of a colonial legacy when dissent was criminalised. Prominent figures of India’s freedom movement including Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were repeatedly jailed under these laws. A day before India’s 73rd anniversary of Independence, the Indian Supreme Court passed an order charging the prominent lawyer, Prashant Bhushan, as guilty of (…)

August was an important month for India in the twentieth century. It was on August 9, 1942, that the Congress passed the momentous Quit India resolution. It was on August 15, 1947, that India attained independence. And again it was on August 16, 1946, that the Muslim League started the Great Calcutta Killing that culminated a year later in the partition of India. We blame the Muslim League and its leader, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, for unleashing communal violence and for the partition of India. (…)