2021

by Sonam Arora
Women’s empowerment by way of enhancing their participation in education and employment has remained a key area of policy discourse across the globe including G7 countries. The subject has gathered more attention ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Indian economy. It has not only aggravated the gender bias but also put a large number of women at the brink of losing hopes of an economic survival in the post pandemic era. Women accounted for 10.7% of the workforce in (…)

Criminal betrayal of the martyrs of India’s First War of Independence 1857 by the Indian rulers.
Now it is almost 170 years that people of this country; men, women, children belonging to all religions, regions and strata rose in revolt from Kashmir to Madras and Sylhet to the borders of Afghanistan. Today, if Indians have forgotten about this glorious saga of commitment and sacrifices for the liberation of India, can be forgiven in absence of the contemporary narratives. But what (…)

by Tarun Kumar Basu
Satyajit Ray birth centenary: A tribute to the cine-maestro
Legendary motion-film director Satyajit Ray’s birth centenary was observed on May 2, last week. This year is the birth centenary of the auteur. Born into a reputed cultural family , Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) was an artist, film-maker, motion film director, writer, composer, Often touted as a figure that put indian cinema into a new dimension in the universe of cinematography. He was from a family (…)

by Nandita Chaturvedi and Archishman Raju
Bangabandhu, Bishwabandhu!
We find ourselves in the midst of an unprecedented crisis in the world order. The coronavirus pandemic has exposed many of the weaknesses, and the dormant rot in the Western-led world order. Western societies are plagued with unemployment, drug addiction, violence, and depression. The four years of the Trump presidency have brought into question the role of the US as the undisputed leader of the world. Trump made moves (…)

Night March: A Journey into India’s Naxal Heartlands
by Alpa Shah
HarperCollins Publishers India; Pages: 327; Price: Rs 499
SHE lived for four and a half years as an anthropologist amidst India’s Adivasi people, with one long spell outside Naxalite strongholds and yet another within. But even Alpa Shah would not have imagined that her academic study will turn out to be a classic on Indian Maoists who spearhead the world’s longest-running armed revolutionary movement. Indeed, Night (…)

May 12, 2021
by Carlo Aldrovandi*
The recent violence at the al-Aqsa mosque/Temple Mount area and in the Old City of Jerusalem has spiralled into something bigger and more dangerous. Clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinian protesters at the weekend have left hundreds injured. Tensions rose further on Monday and Tuesday after Israeli airstrikes launched in retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks killed 35 people, including 12 children, in Gaza City.
This latest episode (…)

May 12, 2021
Press Release
The National Secretariat of the Communist Party of India issued the following statement today (on May 12, 2021) condemning the ongoing Israeli attacks on Palestine:
The Communist Party of India condemns the ongoing Israeli attacks on Palestine. Till now 26 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza strips due to Israeli air raids. The present killings started with the aim of Israel to occupy East Jerusalem by brutal storming of the Al Aqsa Mosque at a time when (…)

Resist the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians! Oppose Zionism in the Streets! Fight for B-D-S
(Statement of Radical Socialist, 13 May 2021)
Radical Socialist holds that the very existence of Israel is the existence of a colonial-settler state. The centuries of violence on Jews was carried out, not by Arabs, not by Muslims, but first by the Romans, then by Christian Europeans. Within that, the UN in 1948 had given only a small area. Over the decades, a continuously aggressive Israel has (…)

United Nations [A/HRC/43/NGO/185]
General Assembly Distr.: General 17 June 2020 English only
Human Rights Council
Forty-third session 24 February–20 March 2020
Agenda item 9
Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance, follow-up and implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action
Joint written statement*submitted by Al-Haq, Law in the Service of Man, Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian (…)

[April 11, 1881 Letter by Karl Marx to his daughter Jenny [Longuet] in Argenteuil:]
London, April 11, 1881
It is dull since you went away – without you and Johnny and Harra! and Mr. “Tea.” I often run to the window when I hear children’s voices that sound like our children’s voices, forgetting for the moment that the little chaps are across the Channel.
One comfort is that you have good living-quarters, suitable for the children; otherwise everything seems rather worse than in London (…)