2024

BOOK REVIEW
by Catherine Abou-Nemeh (Victoria University of Wellington)
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The Paradoxes of Ignorance in Early Modern England and France. by Sandrine Parageau
Stanford: Stanford University Press 2023. viii + 254 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-1-5036-3256-1 (paper), ISBN 978-1-5036-3531-9
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What role did ignorance play in René Descartes’s philosophy and the experimental philosophy of the Royal Society of London? How did enduring Christian anxieties about the pursuit of ignorance (…)

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Rabindranath Tagore: Among Saints Bipul Kumar Gangopadhyay
Translators: Swaraj Kumar Chakrabarti and Dr Amitava Sanyal
Vitasta 163pages; Price: Rs 395 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 8119670892 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-8119670895
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To the world at large, Rabindranath Tagore is an icon in literature and philosophy, a man deeply committed to the idea of India, a deserving Nobel laureate, and a rarity among geniuses who wrote the national anthem of not one but two countries. Not much is (…)

BOOK REVIEW
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Being Reshma Reshma Qureshi with Tania Singh
Pan Macmillan India
248 pages
ISBN-978-93-86215-52-9
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Being Reshma, The Extraordinary Story of an Acid-Attack Survivor Who Took the World by Storm by Reshma Qureshi is haunting and tragic. She and Tania Singh penned the memoir. This book is not only an exposition on acid attack or her craving for justice. It is more than that.
Tania Singh is the CEO of Make Love Not Scars. Throughout the book her empathy (…)

We, the undersigned organisations, are deeply concerned about the drastic intensification of anti-drug operations in Sri Lanka leading to significant human rights violations.
On 17 December 2023 the Acting Inspector General of Police Deshabandu Tennekoon, with the endorsement of Minister of Public Security Tiran Alles, spearheaded an operation titled “Yukthiya”, with the stated aim of controlling “the drug menace”. The operation is ongoing as of 10 January 2024, with at least one thousand (…)

* Telangana state a new beginning for the welfare policy & development | A Naidu
* Kerala Needs More “Mariyakuttys” | J Chathukulam
* Hindutva, Pythagoras and the Zero | Prabir Purkayastha
* The Agony of Sri Lankan People Continues | M R Narayan Swamy
* India gets a rude awakening in West Asia | M. K. Bhadrakumar
* Ukraine war increasingly seen as ‘fought by the poor’ | Wolff & Malyarenko

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Jan 13 2024
In a commendable and gutsy move, the Indian National Congress party has declined the invitation to attend the Ram Mandir inauguration ceremony scheduled on January 22. The Congress leadership has stood up for secular ideals going against the opinion of a section of the Congress party that feels inclined to mimic the BJP’s strategy of instrumentalisation of religion for political gain. The Congress Party rationalises its stance by saying that: (…)

Justice B.V. Nagarathna truly deserves to be called in our difficult times a “Danial” a la Portia of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.
After full 21 years Bilkis Bano, then barely 21 and pregnant with her second child, finally received a consolation for the retribution awarded to her tormentors, rapists and murderers who publicly stripped her, her mother and sister, raped them all, brutally killed her three-year-old daughter by banging the child’s head against a stone, her mother and (…)

Increasing cold weather conditions have led to many vulnerable people remaining indoors as far as possible in Delhi. The pollution of the city mixed with fog and cold weather has also prompted those having vulnerable health conditions to avoid going out particularly in night and early morning.
It is really distressing and in fact shocking to know that the authorities have nevertheless continued to demolish hundreds of houses of poor and vulnerable people even during these times. The Indian (…)

Abstract
Mariyakutty is a beneficiary under the Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme (IGNWPS) from Kerala who used to get a small amount of Rs. 1600 under the scheme, ‘a purse of her own’ in the words of Susan B. Anthony. However, for the past six months, she has not received the entitled amount under this pension scheme. Though she filed a representation before the state government seeking disbursal of the pension arrears, there was no follow-up on it. This forced the 86-year-old (…)

8th January 2024
The upcoming elections to the Lok Sabha, consisting of the Bharatiya Janata Party’ ( BJPs) and the INDIA alliance is the flavour of the season.
Let me first deal with the BJP’s hegemonic hold over Indian Politics in recent years.While I do not want to get into the numbers and statistical part of the electoral exercise, it is as clear as sun light that with the results of the assembly elections in Chattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madya Pradesh going in its favour, the BJP is (…)