2021

Gandhi’s moral idealism, informed by political realism, hoped for a world order without war....This was the key difference between the state as envisaged by Gandhi and the one conceptualized by everyone else, including his disciple Jawaharlal Nehru.—The authors of The Murderer, the Monarch and the Fakir.
’Had Gandhi not been killed in 1948, had he been alive atleast for five more years,’ I have often used to think, ’India would not have remained a country of rampant inequalities.’
The (…)

To celebrate 152 Jayanti of Mahatma Gandhi, on the one hand, most of the political parties from the Left to Right (barring a section of Ambedkarites) including secular parties are busy in celebrating Gandhi’s Jayanti with much compassion and commitment. In this respect, civil society and public intellectuals have written several articles in the newspapers and posted messages on social media to express their tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on said occasion. On the other, a section of Hindu (…)

MUSINGS
13 October 2021
Nah, I am not going to wait till 10 December, World Human Rights Day, to detail the horrific human rights violations ongoing here, in our country, in these current times. Where the actual or the official killers are seldom caught and nailed. It’s the unofficial ones and those labeled ‘sympathizers’ who get hounded and harassed to such an extent that they sit ruined for generations to come.
Mind you, the prime accused killer in the Lakhimpur Kheri killings (…)

by Gautam Sen *
Obituary of a Public Figure who could be Friend to Many
Shakti Sinha went away unobtrusively on 4th October 2021 plus. After living a life of 64 years plus, full of zest and involvement in affairs of the state, of his friends and acquaintances, and in myriad facets of public life, Shaktiji left for the eternal world. I still remember 11th May 1998, a young virtually college lecturer-like person - actually then Joint Secretary in Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s (…)

Fulfillment of human life is in utilising many small and big opportunities in daily life to take happiness to others. The supreme fulfillment is in the ability to achieve this even when faced with much personal distress.
This is the most noble message which the famous Hindi film Anand took to millions of admiring film-viewers in 1971. In the 50 years since this, the admiration for this iconic film and its message has only grown. This film has been included in several listings of ‘must see’ (…)

Murder on the Menu: The Sensational Story of the Tycoon who Founded Saravana Bhavan
by Nirupama Subramanian
Juggernaut
2021 Pages: 190; Price: Rs 499
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9391165303 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9391165307 __0__
It is difficult to believe this actually happened in our times; not in the Chambal but in Tamil Nadu. The outlines of a murder the founder of the iconic Saravana Bhavan chain of restaurants ordered because he wanted to marry the victim’s wife is known. What ace journalist (…)

Reviewed by Marina Cardozo (Universdad de la República, Uruguay)
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Il fascismo nella Banda Oriental
Valerio Giannattasio
Rome: Edizioni Nuova Cultura
2020. 292 pp.
EUR 28.00 (paper)
ISBN 978-88-336-5318-1
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Fascism in Uruguay
This innovative volume reconstructs twenty years of Italian-Uruguayan relations, with special attention given to the fascist penetration in Uruguay, through channels of diplomacy, the press, and a network of Italian Fasci in the South (…)

by Mukesh Kapila *
October 8, 2021
I first visited the North Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 1994 during the genocide in neighbouring Rwanda. In Goma’s emergency hospital, I witnessed rows and rows of rape survivors who had fled across the border.
A quarter-century later, it is hurting again in the same place, for the same reason: sexual violence. But what is different is that the alleged perpetrators are humanitarians, sent to save the community from a deadly (…)

by Malalai Joya
October 11, 2021
Twenty years after the U.S. launched their invasion and war, the people of my long-suffering country are right back where we started. After trillions of dollars spent, and hundreds of thousands killed and displaced, the Taliban flag is once again flying over Afghanistan.
As the youngest woman elected to Afghanistan’s Parliament back in 2005, my experience reflects the failure of the U.S. and NATO war — a policy that used women’s rights as a pretext (…)

[Paul Goodman, who was born in 1911, was a novelist, poet, playwright, social critic, a psychologist, and an anarchist public intellectual who wrote several books - which include Gestalt Therapy (Julian Press), The Structure of Literature (Univ. of Chicago), and Growing up Absurd (Vintage Books), Compulsory Mis-education/The Community of Scholars (Random House).
The below essay by Goodman appeared in the journal Anarchy of January 1962]
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by Paul Goodman
What is most significant, (…)