2023

As a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organisation, the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF) wields influence in shaping the discourse and progress of women’s rights in various aspects at the state level. But because the ACWF must walk a fine line between adhering to CCP discourse and advocating for women’s issues, the extent to which it functions as a feminist organisation is limited.
The ACWF holds the dual responsibility of representing the interests of women and assisting with the (…)

BOOK REVIEW
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The Raging Himalayas and A Warming Planet: Recollections of the 2003 Himalayan Floods and Reflections on Global Warning by Asokan Vengassery Krishnan
Konark ISBN: 9788195678693 Pages: 210; Price: Rs 495
__0__ Even as he entered the scenic Himalayan region of Kedarnath in June 2003, Asokan Krishnan felt disgusted on seeing the ugly all-round construction in brazen violation of the environment. There were plenty of multi-storey lodges and hotels built on the delicate (…)

BOOK REVIEW
Reviewed by Carol Winkler (Georgia State University)
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The Taliban’s Virtual Emirate: The Culture and Psychology of an Online Militant Community
by Neil Krishan Aggarwal
Columbia University Press
2016. xix + 211 pp. Ill. $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-17426-8
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Neil Krishan Aggarwal’s The Taliban’s Virtual Emirate provides a much-needed, theoretically grounded analysis of the cultural and psychological dimensions of the discourse of the Taliban. His book (…)

* What Went Wrong With The Communist Movement In India | T. Vijayendra
* Why is the reality of the Prime Minister’s political capital veiled! | Prem Singh
* On 1980 Moradabad Riots | Arup Kumar Sen
* Can An Award Chain the Conscience of an Individual? | Sandeep Pandey

Letter to the readers Aug 12, 2023
The Indian parliament’s monsoon session that began on 20 July, was marked by repeated protests from the opposition parties demanding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi make a statement in Parliament on the continuing violence in the state of Manipur. For months they had called out the unacceptable silence of the Prime Minister The opposition parties stood up together and supported a no-confidence motion in Parliament to compel the Prime Minister as head of (…)

The country is witnessing horrific violence in different regions. The Manipur violence, going on for over three months as it has shamed the nation for the treatment meted out to the three young girls, it has led to the death of over one hundred innocent lives, (more Kuki) and also displacement of close to a lakh of people, more from Kuki-Naga-Zo communities, (Adivasis who are Christians in the main). The ethno-religious nature of the violence is writ large on the whole phenomenon. The (…)

August 10, 2023 may go down in the history of Indian Parliament and democracy a historic victory for the combined anti-communal, anti-democratic parties led by the Congress rechristened as INDIA, forcing a reluctant and petulant Prime Minister Narendra Modi to come to the House, though at the last minute and speak about the state of border state of Manipur, burning for over three months with communal clashes, under the watchful eyes of a BJP chief minister N.Biren Singh.
The Prime Minister (…)

A lot of ordinary people in India – both women and men have a lot of respect for the communists and communist movement. It is based on their direct knowledge from interactions with the communists in trade union movements and other social and political movements. They are also impressed by the personal integrity of most of the communists. They are prepared to overlook aberrations of some of them.
They are puzzled as to why the communists had so little success. What went wrong? How did they (…)

The editorial titled ’ Draw the Line’ in ’Indian Express’ (August 2, 2023), the first one to be written in the context of communal violence in Haryana’s Nuh town and killings in the passenger compartment of Jaipur-Mumbai Central Superfast Express, is noteworthy. The title of the editorial ’Draw the Line’ reads like a directive and warning. The sub-headline of the editorial says that the ‘Murders on a train and on Haryana streets are unrelated. But both point to a cycle of hate, impunity - (…)

Very recently (August 8, 2023), “nearly 40 years after Justice M P Saxena submitted findings on the communal riots that rocked Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh in August 1980, the report was tabled in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly…The violence that began on August 13, 1980, at the Eidgah in Moradabad town, continued in Sambhal, Aligarh, Bareilly, Allahabad (now Prayagraj), and the rural areas of Moradabad until early 1981.” (The Indian Express, August 9, 2023). What are the findings of (…)