2024

27 August 2024
It has been two years since the US Supreme Court blew up federal protection for abortion, handing states the power to enact abortion bans and realising the decades-long fever-dream of anti-rights actors.
Though a minority in the US, these extremists are loud and determined and won’t stop at our borders. Their plans for the future are outlined in Project 2025 through anti-abortion and anti-LGBTIQ+ initiatives and would be fully executed if radical conservative forces (…)

This is written on the occasion of Vinobaji’s 129th birth anniversary!
I was very angry about Vinobaji for his role in the JP movement during 1973-75. But after reading a book titled ’Gandhi is no more, what next?’ (which is mainly a chronicle of the meeting of the founding of the Sarva Seva Sangh!) edited by Shri Gopal Krishna Gandhi while he was working as the Governor of Bengal and staying in the Raj Bhavan of Kolkata, that anger, mainly about Acharya Vinoba Bhave, was completely (…)

The boundaries between civic and cultural nationalism were never neatly demarcated in India. For instance, Congress leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s Ganesh festival was adopted by the right-wing Shiv Sena party of Maharashtra as an expression of Hindu assertion. Mahatma Gandhi spoke of the spiritualisation of politics and suggested the inseparability between religion and politics, although he did not express a preference for a particular set of religious values over any other. Right-wing (…)

According to recent reports the people being displaced by the Renuka dam in Himachal Pradesh have demanded alternative sites for their rehabilitation as most of the land earlier provided for their rehabilitation has been washed away or suffered harm in recent torrential rains. This land is located in Sirmaur district.
The dam is an approximately INR 7000 crore project which envisages the construction of a 148 metre high rock-fill dam on the Giri river in Sirmaur district.
According to a (…)

Communist Party of India (Marxist)
September 12, 2024
The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement:
Homage to Comrade Sitaram Yechury
The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) expresses its profound grief at the passing away of Comrade Sitaram Yechury, General Secretary of the Party on September 12, 2024. He died after battling a severe lung infection at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. He was (…)

Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya symbolizes

Keywords: Dalits, Education, Affordability, Exclusion, Marginalization, and Suicides.
The Indian social system has been largely influenced by thoughts and perceptions of the Varna or caste system. Higher education provides a window of opportunity to Dalits who for thousands of years have lived in a culture of oppressive silence. Generally, Dalits lack the resources to enter the portals of good higher educational institutions, their problems are compounded as most of them are (…)

[fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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Undersea Geopolitics: Sealab, Science, and the Cold War. Geopolitical Bodies, Material Worlds
by Rachael Squire
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
2021. 180 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-1-78660-730-0.
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Reviewed by Kimberley Peters
In a recent work-related exchange with a colleague, it was mentioned that many students in the classroom today, in 2024

In the heart of the business centre of Bangalore City, there was once the Central Jail under the control of the State Govt. In the early 1980s, the then Govt of Karnataka took a decision to close down the jail and transform it into a large public park. However, it took the Government nearly 30 years to implement this decision.
This is the same jail where during the Emergency in 1975 all national opposition leaders were kept. It was finally opened in November 2008 by former Deputy Prime (…)

[fond noir][blanc]TRIBUTEblanc]fond noir]
Mr. Sitaram Yechury was everyone’s comrade. He lived his life in public like an open book of praxis. Everyone was familiar with his family background, student life, many talents, achievements, and political journey that defined his everyday life as a committed communist. Comrade Yechury possessed a unique ability to dissect complex theories in everyday language and theorise everyday issues in the colloquial language of the working people. He had (…)