2020

DOCUMENT
PEN International
1 June 2020
PEN International is deeply concerned for the welfare of Indian poet P. Varavara Rao who has been in detention since November 2018. Aged 81 and in poor health, a bail hearing for Rao is due 2 June 2020. Given his fragile state of health and questions surrounding the validity of the charges under which he is held, PEN is calling for him to be released on medical grounds.
A Marxist poet and activist, Rao is considered an important figure in Telugu (…)

DOCUMENT
May 30, 2020
Press Statement
The Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the All India Forward Bloc have issued the following statement:
Provide Immediate Cash Transfers and Free Rations
The GDP growth rate data for 2019-20, released yesterday coinciding with the completion of the first year of the Modi 2.0 Government resoundingly vindicates what the Left parties (…)

A Place in our History
by Swapna Liddle, MAY 24 2020
When the British government first considered transferring the capital of their Raj from Calcutta to Delhi, they knew that it would be an unpopular decision among powerful British commercial and political interests, most of whom were connected with Calcutta. In the minds of the decision-makers – the Viceroy, Hardinge, and the Secretary of State, Crewe, however, there were considerations that outweighed this.
Hardinge had first (…)

by Ram Puniyani Country is under lockdown. Most of the activities related to production and construction have come to a standstill barring few. One such is the construction of the Ram temple. The path for this has been cleared by the Supreme Court judgement. This judgement has been not widely debated as ‘Muslim side’ had conceded that whatever be the decision of SC, they will accept it. The Hindu side, RSS and its progeny, had hinted times and over again that come what may the temple will (…)

Here is how the sight of a wren, the smallest of birds in creation, fighting to protect her little nest from an intruding hawk taught me the difference between patriotism and nationalism.
As she unleashed the fury of her miniscule wings and beak, I heard the wren say the following to the overbearing hawk who had obvious contempt for the little bird seeking to defend so negligible a homestead:
“Dear predator, here is what you need to understand: the same god who made (…)

One of the received ideas that became a ‘truth’ after the fall of the Berlin Wall was that the Soviet bloc’s populations cursed communism, yet obeyed it slavishly. In fact, many social movements within the Eastern bloc had long aspired to genuine socialism.

DOCUMENT
We, feminists in India, strongly condemn the murder of George Floyd, an African-American, by a white officer of the Minneapolis Police Department, and express our deep solidarity with the people’s resistance against police violence presently raging in the US and many other parts of the world.
Words from George Floyd in his death throes, "I cannot breathe", speak to each one of us. Recent data has yielded clear evidence that the Black community in the US has borne the brunt of (…)

Amnesty International – USA
For Immediate Release
Sunday, May 30, 2020
WASHINGTON - Rachel Ward, National Director of Research at Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), issued the following statement about the police response in cities nationwide to this weekend’s protests.
“U.S. police across the country are failing their obligations under international law to respect and facilitate the right to peaceful protest, exacerbating a tense situation and endangering the lives of protesters. In (…)

George Floyd, an innocent African American, was killed in the night of May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis, by a white policeman pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck. Floyd was not even the suspect the policeman suspected him to be! On 26 June 2011, in Mississippi, a group of white teenagers savagely beat up James Anderson, a middle-aged African American, and then they ran over him with a pick up truck and killed him. It is believed world over, or rather the world is forced to believe, that the (…)

by Jos Chathukulam
By now most of us have become very vigilant about washing our hands with soap or sanitizers as it is widely touted as an effective strategy to contain the spread of the novel Coronavirus. As the world grapples with the deadly pandemic, hand washing has turned out to be the definitive public health practice that needs to be religiously adopted in our daily lives.
According to the guidelines issued by the World Health Organization (WHO), a proper hand wash involves (…)