2020

TRIBUTE
by Prem Singh
An important Hindi writer, Giriraj Kishore, who lived quietly in the world of literature, left the world silently on February 9 (2020) at the age of 83. His condolence meeting, which was held on February 14 in Delhi, also passed silently. Barring a couple of Hindi critics, no major Hindi writer attended the solemn occasion to pay tribute to him. However, many senior Gandhi-family colleagues were present in the condolence meeting.
Giriraj Kishore was a person of (…)

by Sardar Amjad Ali
In the present political scenario of the country, the battle the Congress under the leadership of its young President, Rahul Gandhi, with the guidance and inspiration of Smt. Sonia Gandhi, is fighting, is certainly a very difficult one. It is a battle, in my estimation, not only against a divisive force in the guise of a political party called the Bharatiya Janata Party but also with its co-horts as well, having a common agenda of “Congress-Mukt Bharat”.
Looking at (…)

by Navneet Sharma and Anamica
Gar galtiyaan Babar ki thi, toh Jumman ka ghar fir kyu jale?! —Adam Gondvi
Jumman is the quintessential character portraying the typical imagery of an Indian Muslim; the one who is afraid of what he is by religion, of what he eats, what he wears, how he prays and where he prays. In India, the social identity of a Muslim is crafted as the ‘other’ to cater to the ‘us-them’ politics; and in daily discourse it is hammered into the people that Muslims are ‘they’ (…)

Months after the Bharatiya Janata Party rode to electoral victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, a fledgeling new activist outfit, christened the Aam Aadmi Party, won the Delhi State Assembly elections with an aplomb that was rare in modern Indian electoral history—67 of 70 seats.
Who would have thought that in the aftermath of the second Modi triumph at the Centre five years later, the 2020 Delhi Assembly elections would offer such a déjà vu moment? And how: After all the blood and gore (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
The menace of communalism looms large in this country today perhaps more than at any time before. With all the dire warnings being sounded repeatedly against the danger of destabilisation, the government so far has done very little to halt the advance of vicious communal hatred leading to orgies of violence in different parts of the country. It is amazing that while the Prime Minister concedes that there has been a deterioration in the communal situation—as he did at (…)

Amulya Leona raised the slogan “Pakistan Zindabad!” at a Bengaluru anti-CAA rally on February 21, 2020. She was arrested and taken into judicial custody, and charged with sedition among other charges.
Howsoever she may choose to explain its context or defend it, including following it with “Hindustan Zindabad!”, or whatever she is reported to have earlier posted on Facebook, Amulya’s “Pakistan Zindabad!” slogan is offensive as it supports Pakistan, which espouses violence against India. (…)

February 21 is the International Mother Tongue Day as declared by the United Nations in recognition of the martyrs of the language movement who fell to the Pakistani Police’s bullets on that day in 1952 in Dhaka while demanding that their mother tongue, Bangla, be made the official language of East Pakistan. Remembering the February 21 martyrs on the sixtyeighth anniversary of the language movement, we are carrying the following poem by a distinguished Bangladeshi intellectual. This was (…)

The race for Democratic nomination in the upcoming US presidential election in November has electrified with the huge victory by Bernie Sanders in the Nevada primary on Saturday (November 22). The race has crossed a critical milestone. The primaries so far gave us a sampling of the trend in two regions of America—the American heartland (Iowa) and the Northeast (New Hampshire)—that Sanders is at the top of the heap of Democratic contenders.
The racially diverse American West (Nevada) (…)

by Sandeep Pandey and Rajendran Narayanan
After being detained illegally at their respective residences for six months now the Public Safety Act has been invoked against Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and even Shah Faesal, in order to continue their detention. Omar Abdullah has been accused for his capacity to influence people to the extent that they came out to vote in large numbers even during the peak of militancy and poll boycotts, which has been so far considered an asset from the (…)

vt Arup Maharatna
It is not a random coincidence that the title of an essay, namely, The End of Imagination, published in 1998 by the celebrated author Arundhati Roy is almost the same as that of the present article. There exists a conscious, albeit subtle, difference of connotation between these two otherwise close titles. Although an end of imagination is the final upshot envisaged in both the titles, a wilful active agency role (behind this lamentable outcome) is connoted flamboyantly (…)