2021

* Farmers’ victory helps democracy survive | Arun Srivastava
* Remembering Gail Omvedt | K Srinivasulu
* Science changes – and so should rational behaviour | Stewart & van Rooyen
* US Christian Right behind Mississippi abortion case | Cordero, Cariboni, Ferreira

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, December 11, 2021
For much of the week gone by, news of events connected to India’s Armed forces & national security had prominence in the national media. The most high profile of these was the news of the death of 12 military personnel and one civilian in a Military helicopter crash in Cunoor on December 8, 2021. A high level inquiry by the armed forces into this serious accident in which India’s top military czar Gen Bipin Rawat passed away is (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Mysterious are the ways of politics. Why did the BJP ask its time-tested leader Yediyurappa to give up the chief ministership of Karnataka? Why did it ask Basavaraj Bommai, inheritor of a rare tradition of corruption-free politics, to become the new CM?
It cannot be that the BJP has suddenly turned against corruption. Notice that it paid attention to Father Yediyurappa’s request that his two beloved sons be given high positions in state and central governments. Notice (…)

by Arun Srivastava
The battle between the farmers and the Modi government has entered into a very critical phase. On November 19, Narendra Modi told the nation that he was repealing the three farm laws against which farmers have been on satyagrah for over a year. He even apologised. Obviously he resorted to this strategy to gain back the sympathy of the people and particularly of the farmers. But he was mistaken this was his admission of guilt.
Though he and his protégés claim him to be (…)

6th December, is the solemn anniversary of the demolition of Babri Masjid. It was on this day in 1992 the it was completely destroyed and razed to the ground by those who spread hatred and venom in the name of Lord Ram and executed their diabolical design in complete disregard of law, Constitution and civilisational ethos of India characterised by coexistence of faiths and equal respect for all religions. In 2019 the Supreme Court in M Siddiq (D) and Versus Mahant Suresh Das & Others (…)

by Prof Gull Mohammad Wani *
When the crescent is Born, It grows Every Night, and is Full Moon by Fourteenth You were a crescent My Boy You went down at Fourteenth —Ayaz Rasool Nazki (Kashmiri Poet) After August 5, 2019 abrogation of the special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir state the managers of the Indian state seemingly show their concern to mitigate the sufferings of the youth who constitute the most anxious category of the population. One (…)

An advertisement of Bhartiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh proclaims, ‘Educated woman is our resolve, She is an alternative for golden future.’ However, an educated woman Shikha Pal is perched on top of an overhead water tank for more than hundred days at the height of about hundred feet aspiring to become a teacher in U.P. government run schools. She hold a Bachelor of Education degree and has qualified the examination conducted by the U.P. government and there are about 26,000 (…)

Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister of W. Bengal, is also a prominent, nationally recognized political leader of India whose reputation as a gutsy, gritty, courageous political leader capable of establishing a close rapport with people was strengthened greatly with a very significant and emphatic victory in West Bengal Assembly elections held in April. Although the BJP, by far the richest and most powerful political party of India at present, had left no stone unturned and poured in all its (…)

by Santhosh Mathew *
After the end of World War II, nations started to realize the benefits that came from regional cooperation. European Union after experiencing the economic and other benefits from regional cooperation tried to share it with other parts of the world. In Southeast Asia, Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) followed the same pattern.
The South Asian nations were little late in seeking the advantages of regional cooperation, owning to the historical (…)

With the passing away of Gail Omvedt at the age of eighty we have lost one of our leading anti-caste scholar-activists. Born in the USA, Omvedt came to India in the early 1970s to research on Mahatma Jotibha Phule-led Nineteenth century Satyashodhak movement in Maharastra which resulted in a Ph. D. thesis submitted to the University of California, Berkeley and later published as a book entitled Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The Non-Brahman Movement in Western India.
Omvedt’s (…)