2024

[fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
Reviewed by Scott C. Woodard
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Toxic Exposures: Mustard Gas and the Health Consequences of World War II in the United States
by Susan L Smith
Rutgers University Press Critical Issues in Health and Medicine Series 2017. 209 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8135-8609-0
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Susan L. Smith’s Toxic Exposures: Mustard Gas and the Health Consequences of World War II in the United States gathers a rich and thoroughly documented collection of (…)

* Hindutva Fascism and the Future of Indian Politics | Kobad Ghandy
* Consequences of Ram Mandir Inauguration by the Prime Minister | Vijay Kumar
* 2024 Interim Budget - Statement by All India Kisan Sabha
* India’s 2024 elections may bring a new political epoch | Robin Jeffrey

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, February 3, 2024
Multiple fronts are targetted simultaneously by the machines of the right-wing Narendra Modi Govt and its auxiliaries in society on a 24/7 basis. The 2024 National election campaign by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for a third term for the Modi Government, is in full swing; The Hindutva project for a Ram temple in Ayodhya has mostly achieved its goal —it was inaugurated on 22 January with the Prime Minister leading the show clearly to (…)

Nitish Kumar’s political hoppings and his resumption of the Chief Minister’s position for the 9th time with the support of the BJP is the hottest news in Indian politics after the consecration of the Ram Lalla temple in Ayodhya. Writings have emerged in the last few days about Nitish Kumar’s actions, some calling it abrupt, with some others saying it was in the offing for quite sometime, tracing it to the handshake he had with PM Modi at the G-20 summit meeting in New Delhi, where the ice (…)

(Paper Presented at a Conference in Trichy (Tamilnadu) on January 7th 2024)
In much of India, Hindutva has got into the bloodstream of not only the middle classes but even of the lower classes/castes including sections of Dalits. Let alone left thought even the democratic thoughts of Ambedkar seem to be on the back burner. Whichever party is in power, even at the state level, they seem more involved in appeasing the Hindutva sentiment with soft Hindutva than countering it with democratic (…)

What is common between Nitish Kumar, Mamata Banerjee, Arif Mohammad Khan, late Ram Vilas Paswan and even Hemant Biswa Sarma, or former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda?
One, that their hearts are full of vaulting ambition, never mind the limitations of their political constituency.
Once Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad, the only one in this vast jungle of opportunist politicians, who has demonstrated political integrity, had called Paswan, “Mausam Vaigyanik” (Meteorological (…)

Democracy has developed into an inclusive ideology by seperating faith/religion from the state. The founders of Indian democracy—Gandhi, Nehru and Azad—took special care not to be part of religious rituals and ceremonies in order to respect the diversity of the nation and not to hurt the nation’s unity in diversity. The state-sponsered pran pratishta ritual in Ayodhya seems to end the seperation of faith and state hurting the unity in diversity. To see the PM of democratic India in the (…)

The framing of the Indian Constitution, whose 74th Anniversary was celebrated last week, was a watershed moment for modernity through the preambulatory promise of liberty, equality and fraternity and guarantee of social, economic and political justice. The framing of the Constitution marked complete rupture from the past. Part-III of the Constitution guarantees fundamental rights to all citizens. Right to Religion is also guaranteed under Article 25 of the Constitution, but is subject (…)

The abnormally high level of hype and hoopla with which the Prime Minister Narendra Modi consecrated Lord Ram in Ayodhya on 22nd January, 2024 has upended many foundational concepts of constitutional and republican democracy, nay fundamental tenets of Hinduism. Enumerated hereinafter are the takeaways of the temple consecration ceremony :- The prayer is not silent communion between the Seeker and his God; the logical corollary is that prayer and silence are contradiction in terms. The act (…)

Freud defines the ‘symbol’ as a comparison where the compared term disappears. If we compare, for example, a snake with a staff, when the compared object – the snake – is no longer specified, we only have the staff which could be a symbol for the snake (J Jones in The Meaning of Symbols in Psychoanalysis).
I believe, we were witness to something akin on 22 January 2024, just four months before a nationwide general election that will give us our next government for five years, until 2029, (…)