2023

by Kate Webb
12 July 2023
In December 1968, a plane carrying Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes touched down in Prague. The two authors had come to show solidarity with Czechoslovakia’s writers and to discuss the year’s historic events: how the hopes of Alexander Dubcek’s Prague Spring had ebbed into the interminable autumn of the Soviet patriarch.
Their host was the Czech novelist and essayist Milan Kundera, who has died aged 94. Mindful of the need to talk freely, Kundera took (…)

The Platform of the 46
A week after Leon Trotsky had sent his letter to the Central Committee 46 prominent Bolsheviks, some of whom occupied leading posts in economic management, presented their own criticism of the economic and inner-Party policy of the Party leadership of Kamenev, Zinoviev, Stalin, Rykov and Tomsky. This statement of opposition which became known as ‘The Platform of the 46’ was submitted to the Politburo on October 15, 1923, after being circulated among a number of Party (…)

PEOPLE’S UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES 332, Patpar Ganj, Opp. Anand Lok Apartments, (Gate No. 2), Mayur Vihar-I, Delhi 110 091 Founder: Jayaprakash Narayan; Founding President: V M Tarkunde President: Ms. Kavita Srivastava (Rajasthan); General Secretary: V Suresh (Tamil Nadu); E.mails:, Please visit our website: www.pucl.org
10th July, 2023
PUCL Demands from the Manipur Government:
• Stop Criminalising Human Rights Work! Respect the fundamental rights of citizens to conduct Fact Finding (…)

National Federation of Indian Women
Friends,
A three-member delegation of NFIW visited the crisis gripped state of Manipur to conduct a fact-finding exercise. People of all communities have grossly and adversely been affected by the violence since 3rd of May 2023.
There has been a massive loss of life and property. As with any crisis, women and children are the first and worst victims of violence. The government for all practical purposes seems to have withdrawn from their (…)

T Vijayendra has just published a new book of short stories with a title, ‘Credible Fantasies’. The blurb reads:
‘The central idea of the fantasies presented here is to imagine a future for my young friends with ‘Green Jobs’, that is, jobs that help in restoring ecology and creating equity among humans. It is a very difficult proposition under the present circumstances and hence I refer to them as ‘fantasies’.
‘However, conditions are changing fast and soon it will be possible for (…)

BOOK REVIEW
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Upon a Sleepless Isle: Travels in Sri Lanka by Bus, Cycle and Trishaw
by Andrew Fidel Fernando
Picador India (PP, 2023), Pages: 267; Price: Rs 499 __0__
Call it an irony but tourists, primarily from the West, never stopped exploring Sri Lanka all through the period the country was caught up in one of the longest running and blood-soaked ethnic conflicts. The reason was simple. The battle for a Tamil homeland was largely confined to the northern and eastern (…)

Reviewed by Raina Bhagat (Northwestern University)
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Toxic Immanence:
Decolonizing Nuclear Legacies and Futures
by Livia Monnet
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2022. 472 pp. ISBN 978-0-228-01136-1
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Toxic Immanence: Decolonizing Nuclear Legacies and Futures is an edited collection with an ambitious scope, making impressive strides across both disciplines and genres to sketch out numerous paths toward the unequivocal need for the abolition of nuclear (…)

* Vasant-Rajab Exemplary of Communal Harmony in Gujarat | Pandey & Rahman
* Rajeev Lochan Das: a sanyasi rebel | Barik & Padhiari
* Revolutionary Intellectuals | Issa Shivji
* Paul Robeson: The singer who fought for justice and paid with his life

The Narendra Modi-led BJP Government true to its politico-ideological commitments is currently pushing for a Uniform Civil Code in India possibly for electoral purposes. Almost all the opposition parties have misgivings as to the motives of the Govt, there is mistrust towards rushing in a uniform civil code. People of the Left, feminists, and progressives have mostly been opposing on some ground or the other the uniform civil code idea something that they used to support in the old days. The (…)

Rajeev Lochan Mantri was born in 1839 and died in 1924 in a landed cultivating community in the village Nua Gaun (Kujanga). After he had a mastery over the Bhagvat he turned into Rajeev Lochan Das. He abandoned the village and family as a saint who entered into the domain of spiritualism. His spiritualism pushed him to the social reform movement. In the process, he turned into a sanyasi rebel against British rule. His reforms work in coastal Odisha broke the caste hierarchy. His creative (…)