2022

O citizen, un-besotted by zeal, Un-fathered by the state, Between the heat wave And the hate wave Take your pick; Torched by the two now Smoulders the captive republic.
Neither the all-out sun nor the bellowing Saint knows the pinch Of price rise. Once the Gorgon has spouted, What son of woman May blubber otherwise.
Have you no work, have you no food, No plaster for the broken bone, No cooking oil, nor firewood, No sympathetic microphone That may your throttled syllables To the lord of (…)

(The agencies of state be CBI, Police or ED and drug control authority are very powerful to create a police state)
The sky Full of stars They do not give light The moon is there But its light does not fall on us A writer writes But words do not create ripples Poet creates a powerful metaphor But it does not reach people We look at the folk story Once there was a king Whose rule we enjoyed He has been turned into a god Now People worship it Forget his rule We have new rulers (…)

Furrows in a Field: The Unexplored Life of H.D. Deve Gowda
by Sugata Srinivasaraju
Vintage/Penguin Random House
Pages: 562; Price Rs 799
ISBN: 9780670093434
__0__ He was a reluctant Prime Minister but proved his worth once he entered 7 Race Course Road; he remains a devout Hindu but respects all religions; he rose in politics the hard way, taking loans each time he fought elections; he was a product of provincial politics but embraced a national vision. Meet Haradanahalli Dadde (…)

Reviewed by Ryan W. Booth (Washington State University)
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The 1945 Burma Campaign and the Transformation of the British Indian Army
by Raymond Callahan, Daniel Marston
Lawrence: University Press of Kansas January 2021 296 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0700630414 Hardcover: ISBN 978-0-7006-3041-7 __0__
If ever there was a war that probably did not need another book written about it, World War II might be a good candidate. Raymond A. Callahan and Daniel Marston enter the fray and beg to (…)

by Vijay Kumar
The Leaked draft opinion, penned by arch conservative Justice, Samuel Alito, observed that landmark judgment in Roe v Wade was “egregiously wrong” is shocking but not surprising, as the US Supreme Court is packed with conservative judges. The Leaked judgment marks the decisive forward momentum to dogged effort by right-wing religious groups represented by the Republican Party to overturn the most liberating, indeed epochal, legacy of the US Supreme Court in Roe v Wade in (…)

To Mr. Naftali Bennett, Prime Minister of Israel, Tel Aviv, Israel
Through Mr. Naor Gilon, Ambassador of Israel to India, New Delhi, India
16.05.2022
Dear Mr Prime Minister,
We, Indian journalists, are writing to you to express our strong condemnation of the ’murder’ of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot in the face while she was reporting a raid by Israeli soldiers from Jenin. The shocking assassination — described as such by Al Jazeera — again underlines your (…)

* Sedition Update by a layperson | Maj Gen S. G. Vombatkere
* Sri Lankans have risen | Apratim Mukarji
* Rajapaksa Resigns: Mass fury topples Mahinda | MR Narayan Swamy
* May Day - Slum Demolitions in Chandigarh | Bharat Dogra
* Adapt Gandhian “bread labour” to current circumstances | Mark Lindley
* Abolish Psychiatry | Campaign for Psychiatric Abolition

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, May 14, 2022
On May 11, 2022 the Supreme Court of India created a flutter by putting in abayence the law on sedition that has been on our statute books since colonial times. This repressive law was used to silent opposition to colonial rule and has continued to be used pretty widely in the post-colonial period. During the UPA years the scores of protesters part of anti-nuclear movement in Koodankulam were charged with sedition, some 405 people were (…)

May 12, 2022
Following the 1857 so-called Great Indian Rebellion during the rule of the East India Company, British monarch Queen Victoria, issued proclamation in 1858 that India would be governed by and in the name of “the Crown”. Thus, the British territory of India (the State) and the British Government of India, were embodied in the British Monarch.
An Indian subject who expressed disaffection by conduct or speech, was threatening the Crown by inciting people to rebellion. That was (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Hindi zealots do not realise a basic fact of life — that zealotry is negative in its impact. Its dictionary meaning makes this abundantly clear. "Fanatical and uncompromising pursuit of religious, political or other ideals." Of course zealots do not see this. Their minds are so tightly closed that they cannot see the disserrvice they do to their cause — in this case, Hindi. Some of them allow zealotry to turn them into idiots.
No one with basic commonsense would say (…)