2022

Then there are times When thoughts find no words. Like misbegotten embryos, sans Lips that form, eyes that see, Fingers that point, Their life tosses liquid in a miasma, Unable to shape the days to come.
When that which is said is said often, Remains in effect unsaid, Like rain that falls incessant Far away from sight or hearing. When was the last you heard What I said, insistent in my Peroration? Or if you did, it did not show In how your pupils moved Or your head nodded. Nothing in the (…)

* Gandhi Secularism, Reason and Faith | Anil Nauriya
* Is the Left, Right? | Kobad Ghandy [12087]
* Russia’s Feminists Statement Against Putin’s War on Ukraine

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, March 5, 2022
A study published in India’s reputed journal Science estimates that the number of Covid-19 related deaths in India between “1 June 2020 and 1 July 2021” was over 3 million which is eight times the official Government figure on coronavirus deaths of 400,000. We hope that the, universities, statisticians and public health specialists will over time produce more such studies so that they are eventually officially accepted by the Government. (…)

IMPRESSIONS Why is it that we don’t have writer-intellectuals like Mulk Raj Anand any more? Why is it that we don’t have reformists like B. R. Ambedkar any more? The impolite answer is that Anand’s and Ambedkar’s India no longer exists, the India whose ideology was India. When ideology took on political postures, things changed. What exists now is an India that thinks things through as per the single ideology that is identified as patriotic.
In the old days religious and (…)

Although Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) derived strength from a sense of faith, he supported the idea of a secular state. And while he did not a priori exclude or reject faith, he stood committed to apply the test of reason even to religious scriptures. This article is concerned with how Gandhi understood and reconciled these various concepts. The secular nature of the state — that is, a religiously neutral state as postulated in India by the resolution adopted by the Indian National Congress (…)

The defense of victims of one (majority) religious fundamentalist extreme right should not lead to supporting another (be it minority) one.
by Marieme Helie Lucas 18 Feb 2022
Dear friends,
I am following closely the events in Karnataka university/colleges and the controversy about female students wearing various head covering in class – whether hijab, burqa, etc...
Let me first tell you that I realize everyday how lucky I am to be a citizen of a virtually 100% “Muslim” country (…)

Tamil Nadu has reportedly made clear to the Supreme Court that it does not want the Indian Neutrino Observatory (INO) to be set up in a sensitive ecological zone in the Western Ghats at great cost to wildlife, biodiversity, and by ignoring the local opposition and public agitations to the project.
Neutrinos are esoteric
Neutrinos, first postulated in 1930 by Wolfgang Pauli, are naturally occurring elementary particles without electric charge, emanating mostly from the Sun and traveling (…)

The Editors Guild of India
PRESS STATEMENT
March 3rd, 2022
The Editors Guild of India is deeply disturbed by the arrest of Kishore Ram, a journalist working for the news portal Janjwar, by the Uttarakhand Police on February 24, 2022 from Pithoragadh.
Ram has been arrested under section 153-A of the Indian Penal Code, on charges of promoting enmity between castes. This is deeply concerning as Ram has been reporting on issues pertaining to marginalised classes and lower castes for a (…)

If we seek to change society the starting point is to have a correct assessment of the current situation at any given time, as also the direction of its likely development. It is important to predict the future, to the extent possible, as only then one can adopt correct tactics well in advance. Without such clarity one would continue beating around the bush, shooting blindly in the dark, being satisfied with small/petty organisational gains, yet not moving one step forward in the direction (…)

The Sangh Parivar claims to be a cultural organization. Core supporters of its ideology are upper caste and/or the educated elite. Quite naturally it gives importance to education. It is opposed to caste based reservation in the name of honouring merit. The irony is among the top leadership of Sangh Parivar or it affiliate organisations there are hardly any intelligent people. Both the Atal Behari Vajpayee and Narendra Modi governments were bereft of people, except the ones who could be (…)