2021

MUSINGS
25 August 2021
Its about time we look towards our very own courtyards and backyards and front lawns! Not to overlook the murky happenings taking place in the very interiors of our prime setups. And, ah yes, also out there, along the lanes and by-lanes of our mohallas and bastis.
Yes, spreading out are the tell-tale signs of the hapless human beings getting abused if not threatened and humiliated and dumped about, here and there. Mind you, there is a rather distinct pattern to (…)

by Komal Deol*
The Independence Day celebrations on 15th August 1947 were tempered by the tragedy of partition that accompanied India’s midnight ‘tryst with destiny’. Less than a year after the dominions of India and Pakistan came into existence, another nation state — Israel — was born in 1948 under similar catastrophic conditions involving mass migration and communal violence. Both these events were rooted in the philosophy of ethnic homogenization, in the belief that it’s not possible (…)

by R G Gidadhubli
Belarus has been witnessing unprecedented political crisis, even as on the 9th August 2021 the country has been passing through one year of highly disputed presidential election when Alyaksandr Lukashenka claimed victory for the sixth time. An effort has been made to highlight as to how and why the country has been witnessing crisis which has been persisting and getting aggravated. Belarus is landlocked Slavic State in Europe, with Russia on the East, Ukraine on the (…)

Little over a month ago, on 13 July 2021 Japan issued the Ministry of Defense’s “Defense of Japan” white paper. Before analysing its content, it may be instructive to know its significance and what does it mean in the context of Japan’s Self Defense Forces and the nation’s security. Briefly put, it is the Defense Ministry’s report explaining the current state of Japan’s defense, military situations in countries around the world, policy issues and so on.
The first edition was published in (…)

August 26, 2021
The regional tour of Southeast Asia by the US Vice-President Kamala Harris got inundated with the tsunami of criticism over the United States’ frantic efforts to complete the evacuation out of Kabul Airport by the month-end. Again, Israel being a hugely attractive topic in US news cycles, Harris’ visit to Singapore and Vietnam may get marginalised with the arrival of the new Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in Washington later today.
However, Harris’ tour is far (…)

by Martha Rosenberg
In the 1980s, the animal rights movement was a sorry sight. In Chicago, it consisted of three to five activists handing out soggy leaflets in the rain outside a fur store on a Saturday, one also holding his skateboard. No one remembered to bring the signs and no one could agree whether to protest carriage horses or captive whales at the Shedd Aquarium on the next Saturday.
Passersby were abusive. “Your shoes are leather,” they would yell, a simplistic syllogism that (…)

Reviewed by Paulo Drinot
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Peripheral Nerve:
Health and Medicine in Cold War Latin America
Anne-Emanuelle Birn, Raúl Necochea López, eds.
Durham: Duke University Press
2020. 384 pp.
ISBN 978-1-4780-0956-6
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A specter is haunting the COVID-19 pandemic, the specter of the Cold War. This is particularly true in Latin America. From Mexico to Chile, the pandemic has had a devastating impact on people and the economy. But it has also played out in ways that evoke many (…)

by Prabhakar Gangurde Astitva, Aurangabad, 1978
Don’t expect revolution from those living corpses, comrade. First you become their beacon. The revolution that will flash like lightning and not be extinguished in any storm is still far far away. Don’t be in a hurry for revolution. You are still very small; your ability to resist the atrocities, boycotts and rapes that go on every moment has become nil, comrade. Tomorrow’s sun is yet to rise; sleep undisturbed until then. Take the fantasy (…)

August 24, 2021
Listening to you,
How my male genius is rebuked
By your brilliance,
Women of Afghanistan;
And how ignorant and frightened
Those that call themselves Taliban.
Can it be God’s will that
Such imbeciles have rule
Over your lives?
Have they no regard for the
Excellence of the Prophet’s wives?
Finding no other route to dominance,
They use Islam of their distortion;
What life have they without
Women who bore them for son?
How hollow then is their boast
Of being (…)

Long years ago, the British ruled, They declared: ‘the sun never sets on our Empire’, But when they left, they set off such a fire, Over a million people perished in that ire. The Partition was South Asia’s Holocaust, Yet no one asked, While our children lay asleep, That history is to do a repeat, For the blood of natives runs so cheap. You have abandoned us again; After holding the controls for over a decade, You flee in choppers across the glade; The airport is overrun By people desperate (…)