2021

by M R Narayan Swamy
V.P. Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India by Narayani Basu Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Pages: 440; Price: Rs 799
There could not have a more unacknowledged and forgotten hero of a modern nation like V.P. Menon, and there could not have been a more gripping and readable biography. Imagine a rags-to-riches story, a man who rose from being a coolie and a street hawker to a top post in the Raj, an architect of modern India, a right hand of Sardar Vallabhbhai (…)

William S. Cormack. Patriots, Royalists, and Terrorists in the West Indies: The French Revolution in Martinique and Guadeloupe, 1789-1802. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2019. 392 pp. $70.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4875-0395-6.
Reviewed by Grant Kleiser (Columbia University) Published on H-Atlantic (March, 2021)
Those in the United States who are anxious about media misinformation, racial and class tensions, and insurrection might take some comfort in reading William S. Cormack’s (…)

by Nicola Williams*
17 March 2021
Since Myanmar’s coup and limitations placed on withdrawals indicate a looming liquidity crisis. Foreign trade is frozen have joined protests, refusing to do the dirty work of the military.
A groundswell of protests have swept across the country, with Myanmar’s tech-savvy youth proving to be a creative mobilising force the old guard has not faced before. As Min Aung Hlaing sports bulletproof vests in rare outings and uses state media to blast the civil (…)

by Victor Grossman
(Note: Wissler quotations at the bottom)
Surprise, surprise! Things worked out quite differently than expected at the congress of the LINKE, the left-wing party. The surprise was not that it took place at all, after the pandemic forced postponements from June to October and from October to last weekend, with most of the 580 delegates at home in front of a screen, microphone and camera; only the socially-distanced, masked leaders sat in a sparsely occupied hall in (…)

by James M. Dorsey*
March 14, 2021 Recent clashes in the Iranian province of Sistan and Balochistan highlight Iran’s vulnerabilities as well as its inability to overcome trauma and control its demons.
The clashes sparked by a crackdown on cross border fuel smuggling to neighbouring Pakistan achieved what past US and Saudi machinations failed to accomplish: ethnic unrest in a strategic, impoverished and long restive majority Sunni province in predominantly Shiite Iran.
The clashes in (…)

* Changing Goals of India’s Foreign Policy: An Analysis | P S Jayaramu
* Lessons of the Dandi March on its 91st Anniversary | Satya Sahu
* Remembering Fukushima: Phase-out all Nuclear power | Soumya Dutta
* Kronstadt Revolt in the Soviet Union: List of sailors demands in Feb. 1921

Exactly 91 years ago on 12 March 1930 Mahatma Gandhi had embarked on the Dandi March also known as the Salt March or Salt Satyagraha — Gandhi walked from his ashram in Sabarmati to the small town of Dandi in Gujarat to protest against the repressive salt tax imposed by the colonial government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi whose political party the BJP (and its ideological mothership the RSS) which had nothing to do with India’s anti-colonial movement has decided that it is politically (…)

by P. S. Jayaramu
An attempt is made here to reflect on the changing goals of India’s Foreign Policy( IFP). The author’s desire is to present the broad goals of IFP, and not get into a discussion of bilateral relations, except cursorily referring to them wherever necessary.
Pre-independence Foreign Policy:
India is perhaps the only country in the world which had articulated its foreign policy even before it became independent. The doyen of Pre-independence period of foreign policy, (…)

by Dr Jajati K. Pattnaik
Arunachal Pradesh, the frontier state of India, is poised to play a significant role in the geo-strategic space of India. It covers the largest geographical space among the eight sisters of India’s Northeast having geo-strategic significance for the country. The state is well located in the easternmost of the country by sharing international borders with Myanmar (520 km), China (1,080 km) and Bhutan (217 km). In this paper, the term geo-strategic is not merely (…)

One defining feature of ongoing farmers movement may not miss any eye. A sea of yellow chunnies worn by Punjabi women. How come that predominantly male farmers movement has attracted such wider participation of women? Interestingly two young girl singers have reframed the popular song-Mera rang de basanti chola to ---Merian rang de Basanti chunnian maye rang de Basanti chunnian….
Participation of Indian women in socio-cultural movements in not new. In ancient times Gargi and Maitreyi (…)