2020

BOOK REVIEW
by Astha Ahuja
India: the Wrong Transition by Anand K. Sahay; Aakar Books, New Delhi; 2019; pp. 288; Hard Cover: Rs 595.
The book, India: the Wrong Transition, by senior journalist Anand K. Sahay is a collection of his monthly columns in various news-papers. There are 69 articles which have been divided into three sections. The articles range from the political situation in India after the general elections of 2014 and the one following the general elections of 2019 to the (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
Today is February 8, 2020. Twentyfive years ago on this day passed away the distinguished revolutionary, Kalpana Dutt, in Kolkata. The following lines were written by N.C. twentyfive years ago and published in this journal’s February 18, 1995 issue. It is being reproduced on the occasion of Kalpana’s twentyfifth death anniversary. February 8, 1995 came and went with hardly anyone remembering her on that day. Kalpana’s birth centenary on July 27, 2013 also went (…)

As we approach the seventieth anniversary of the declaration of the Indian Republic on January 26, our thoughts go back to the words of our first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in his message to the nation on our first Republic Day on January 26, 1950.
On that day, Nehru had observed:
“There is a peculiar appropriateness about this January 26, for this day links up the past with the present and this present is seen to grow out of that past. Twenty years ago we took the first pledge of (…)

by Rushda Siddiqui
Heading the anti-CAA/NPR/NRC protest are the women of Shaheen Bagh of Delhi, who came out on the night of December 15—when a protest by students of Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia ended with the police entering the hostels, library and residences of students to break their protest movement. The standoff between the students and the police at Jamia and Aligarh Muslim University raised many red flags at various levels. There was global condemnation by academics and civil (…)

by A.K. Biswas
The year 2020 marks the bicentennial celebration of educationist and social reformer, Iswar Chandra Bandyopadhyay, more popularly known and eulogised as Vidyasagar, who was born on September 26, 1820 in village Birsingha under Ghatal police station of district Midnapur. Intensive intellectual activities in West Bengal are underway to commemorate his contri-butions in various fields.
Dayamoyee, an untouchable illiterate woman, belonged to a faceless village in the (…)

by Sourin Bhattacharya
The following article was published in Indian Literature from where it is being reproduced with due acknowledgement.
Subhash Mukhopadhyay, a major figure of Bangla poetry of the 1940s, passed away on July 8, 2003. His first collection of poems Padatik (Pedestrian) was published in 1940 with the scholarship money of his lifelong friend, Debiprasad Chattopadhyay (1918-1993), himself an eminent philosopher and noted author of Lokayata. But the book came out under the (…)

The following paper was presented at an International Winter School on “Globalistion and Religious Diversity: Issues, Perspectives and the Relevance of Gandhian Philosophy”, organised by the Ambedkar University, Delhi and Aarhus University, on January 8-14, 2020.
Commemorating the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, I find it most relevant to talk about a subject like religious faith and secularism. Gandhi, a truly religious man, struggled throughout his life to make the people of (…)

Pardon me for writing
For you have wrenched
The tongue of the students
And used their pens
To impair their legs,
Forcing your way
Into their library.
About entering the mosque
I will not say,
For now it is the norm
To break mosques
And to say your God
Was born right here.
I say your God
Because mine is everywhere,
Omnipresent,
But you have reduced Him
To a historical figure
With birth pangs and waste,
While you forbid menstruating women
To enter the (…)

by Soumya Awasthi
We, the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a Sovereign, socialist, SECULAR, democratic republic and to secure to all its citizens: Justice, social, economic and political; Liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; Equality of status and of opportunity; And to promote among them all Fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the nation...
—Preamble of the Constitution of India, 1949 (…)

IMPRESSIONS
The President of India in June 2019, six months ago said: “My Government has decided to implement the process of NRC (National Register of Citizens).” The Prime Minister of India in December 2019, just a few days ago stated: “My Government has never discussed the word NRC.” So whose government is running the country? In other words, who is lying?
For the general elections early this year, the BJP’s manifesto said: “We are committed to the enactment of the Citizenship (…)