2020

The left must try to become truly ‘popular’ again, trying to translate values and programs into the language of common sense and bringing together two elements (one’s own political proposal and ‘the spontaneous feelings of the masses,’ as Gramsci called them).

[English translation of an article that appeared in a Russian news site]
Three years passed after the death of the Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.) Joseph Stalin. With his death, the Cold War between the USSR and the USA not only did not end, but also began to gain momentum. As a result of a complex bureaucratic struggle, Nikita Khrushchev came to power in the USSR. He became one of the initiators of the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, which was called upon to (…)

by Kalyananda Tiranagama
The 25th anniversary of the death of Mrs. Theja Gunawardana, a great personality and an indefatigable fighter for social justice who played an indelible role in the Left Movement in Sri Lanka falls on July 17, 2020. Most of the people belonging to the present generations may not be aware of the role Theja has played and the contributions she has made in the early stages of the Left Movement in our country and for the anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist struggle (…)

by Saleem Samad
Conspiracy theories and disinformation are spreading at an alarming rate
When Sara Khan, lead commissioner for an independent Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE) in a flagship report “Challenging Hateful Extremism” talked of how effective existing British laws are in dealing with hateful extremist activity — policy-makers and government officials in Britain were dumbfounded.
The report, launched on June 10, observes that the far right to the far left and Islamist (…)

Prashant Kidambi, Manjiri Kamat, Rachel Dwyer, eds. Bombay Before Mumbai: Essays in Honour of Jim Masselos. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. 336 pp. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-006170-8.
Reviewed by Frank F. Conlon (University of Washington) Published on H-Asia (July, 2020) Commissioned by Sumit Guha (The University of Texas at Austin)
In January 2017, an international conference organized by the University of Mumbai’s History Department with support of the University of (…)

John Lewis, you looked trouble
In the eye, and from its womb
Forged good trouble.
From the march on Washington
Till sixty years after, through umpteen
Arrests and near-fatal beatings
Your laughing spirit infused justice
With life and substance.
Never saying never, you shamed
Our pusillanimous dithering
And lack of faith, inspiring
Generations of every hue
To let a cussed world of infamy
Know how to become fully human
By carrying your conviction to
Disarm the (…)

Boisterous, measured, hilarious, abrupt, laughter alters in its flight over a face bright, innocent, wrinkled, furrowed, vivid in all its colours, shades, contours. Now a mask has crept in, covering from ear to ear nose, lips underneath, reducing laughter to a smile reflected by a pair of moving, floating eyeballs. The mask conceals expressions from a face, making it slippery to read if the smile is fake or showing the real intent; it drains the possible emotional reaction. Human face (…)

Table of Contents - Mainstream, VOL LVIII No 31, New Delhi, July 18, 2020 LETTER TO THE READERS - Mainstream’s, COVID 19 Lockdown Edition No.17 NREGA: The “digging hole” of Modi must take care of poor | Arun Srivastava A case for truth: Media oppression is a shifting landscape | Sevanti Ninan DOCUMENT: Report of the Delhi Minorities Commission Fact-finding Committee on the North-East Delhi Riots of February 2020 DOCUMENT: Violence Against Christians Spreads to 50% of Indian States - 95 (…)

The initial trajectory of the 2019 COVID-19 pandemic was China, France, the UK, Italy, Spain, the United State and Iran —all rich or middle-income countries— where it rapidly spread and caused dramatic harm but many months on, it has now engulfed the poorer countries of the globe. These countries of the Global South have more vulnerable health and social infrastructure facing a severe impact. Brazil, India, South Africa, Nigeria, Mexico and Peru are all experiencing very large rise in (…)

by Arun Srivastava
The much despised and derided NREGA scheme has at least helped the Modi government to salvage its prestige and image. If the UPA government had not executed this pro-poor, feed the poor programme it would have been tough to comprehend the nature and quantum of ignominy that the Modi government had to suffer.
Basically this programme was meant for the unskilled daily wage earner labourers, but the Central government used it to overcome the crisis created by the return (…)