2023

The intensified war on Palestinians across Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is being protested by democratic and progressive people across the world since Saturday, and many of us here in India have also been watching the siege and genocide unfold with growing dread. All of us on the side of truth and justice in India, across religious, political and regional differences pledge our support to the Palestinian people’s right to life and liberty, and their uncompromised right to (…)

Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer
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Machines Behaving Badly:
The Morality of AI
by Toby Walsh
La Trobe University Press and Black Inc. Press, Collingwood
2022. 275 pp.
pb ISBN 9781760643423
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Toby Walsh begins Machines Behaving Badly by making clear that ‘[i]n reality, artificial intelligence is [not a] conscious robot […] We cannot yet build machines that match the intelligence of a two-year-old […] program computers […] do narrow, focused tasks’ (1). Like a coffee maker (…)

* There is no perfect solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict | Pritam Singh
* Need to amend the Karnataka State Universities Act 2000 | P S Jayaramu
* India’s First Metadata Case | Gopal Krishna
* The Constitutional Irrelevance of Sanatana Dharma | Andimuthu Raja
* Why Ecosocialism? For a red-green future | Michael Lowy

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, November 4, 2023
Israel’s war on the Palestinian territory of Gaza has intensified causing huge human dislocation and destruction. The UN Secretary-General and all top officials from the UN are repeatedly calling for a ceasefire, appealing to the world to take note. India’s abstention from a United Nations General Assembly vote of October 27, 2023, on a resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip has disappointed (…)

Law and Religion have evolved as social institutions throughout history, not only in Indian society but also in Rome, Judia, in the Christian and Islamic lands and elsewhere in the world. India’s theological contributions were subjected to intense scrutiny of European scholars during the colonial administration. The book, Sanatana Dharma: An Elementary Text-Book of Hindu Religion and Ethics, published by the Central Hindu College, Benares in 1916, says, the term ‘Hindu’ referred more to (…)

On October 30 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court led by Justice Sanjiv Khanna and S.V.N. Bhatti rejected former Delhi Deputy chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Manish Sisodia’s bail plea in the case of Money Laundering slapped upon Sisodia by the Enforcement Directorate.
The Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) arrested Sisodia on February 26 this year under the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) charging him with taking a bribe from the liquor lobby for tweaking the (…)

On 9th November 2005 former President of India K R Narayanan passed away at the age of eighty-five. This year when the solemn occasion of his death anniversary is being observed on 9th November there is a countrywide discussion on the details of the data concerning the Bihar Government’s historic caste survey which was released on 2nd October 2023, on the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary, and tabled in the State Assembly two days back on 7th November.
Convergence of Caste (…)

by Arun Srivastava
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat is not known to speak blatant lies but his yearly Dussehra discourse, which he delivered at the RSS office in Nagpur was not an honest narration. His compulsion to hang on to power and lack of moral conviction to accept the faults and absurdities of Modi government was clearly manifest in his speech. His lies also got manifest in his effort to dig out the ghost of the “foreign powers” for put the blame on it for the unabated six-month long (…)

“We kill people on the basis of metadata.

Backdrop:
The remittance of Indian immigrants has been a catalyst for socio-economic development, as it has brought about significant positive changes in various domains, such as education, healthcare, and poverty alleviation in both the home country and the destination country. The remittance inflows have multiplier the Indian economy, increasing disposable income, consumption demand, and investments in various sectors. Moreover, the remittance inflows have facilitated the development of (…)