March 2009

My father was a Bengali from East Bengal though he lived most of his life in Calcutta. After the age of ten I have never lived in Bengal and only visited it occasionally. It may sound exaggerated, a bit of a hyperbole, but on my first proper visit to Bangladesh recently I felt I had discovered my identity—what it means to be a Bengali and to be part of a larger Bengali culture. For one who speaks only a smattering of Bengali and had a non-Bengali mother, I never felt I was part of the (…)

Before the country gets into the real election mode, we, secular Indians of all persuasions, have been shocked into silence by the fulminations of young Varun Gandhi. Some veterans, in whose minds his father Sanjay’s deeds during the infamous Emergency still remain fresh, were quick to draw a parallel between the father and the son. However, for all his arbitrary use of extra-constitutional authority antagonising large segments of the people as also veteran political leaders and (…)

Distinguished environmentalist and prominent scholar-activist Smitu Kothari is no more. He passed away at New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on March 23.
Smitu, 59, was attending a Delhi Solidarity Group meeting at the Indian Social Institute in the Capital on March 20 when he suffered severe chest pain; he was rushed to the AIIMS but later discharged from there as his ECG was found to be normal. However, according to a release issue by the Delhi Solidarity (…)

COMMUNICATION
This has reference to Mr D.P. Sen‘s piece entitled “Mainstream and Nano Car Project of the Tatas at Singur” published in Mainstream (March 14, 2009). I am not surprised to go through this fairly provocative comment of Mr Sen. Without meaning any disrespect to anybody, one can state a general proposition regarding the neo-elites of Bengal. The real elites of Kolkata society where the landed-gentry—the zamindars, pattanidars and other big tenure holders having widespread (…)

It has indeed been a momentous victory for the people of Pakistan. While the pre-poll political alignments and realignments as well as seat-sharing problems plus inner-party dissidence and bickerings (alongside blatantly communal pronouncements by at least one notable person in the electoral fray) on the national plane hog the headlines in our newspapers every day, these literally pale into insignificance before the latest extraordinary developments in our northwestern neighbouring state (…)

Professor Lotika Sarkar is a widely-known pioneer in the fields of law, women’s studies and human rights. She taught criminal law and conflict of laws at the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi and has been an active member of the Indian Law Institute. She was a member of the Government of India‘s Committee on the Status of Women in India and has been a founding member of several institutions—the Indian Association for Women Studies and the Centre for Women‘s Development Studies. At the age (…)

Elections are for Parliament not for constituencies or parties. We need Members of Parliament, not of constituencies but to represent the nation, not to indulge in vocal magnum battles to earn more emoluments and power but fighters for the common good of the country.
Parliamentary elections are coming close upon the nation. In these elections once, periodically, the little Indian matters. Winston Churchill wrote:
At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man (…)

The general elections have already come and the political parties have been getting ready how they will enter the mass campaign in the next two months or so. Here is an election that has been forced upon us because the parties that returned to the Lok Sabha could not elect a leader from among themselves who could command the majority in the Lower House of Parliament, and as such its leader, I.K. Gujral, had to tell the President that he had ceased to command the majority that he had enjoyed (…)

The birth centenary celebrations of Dr Rammanohar Lohia, the stormy petrel of the Indian socialist movement, one of the most talented and versatile personalities in the freedom struggle, and a profound, innovative and original socialist thinker, are to start from March 23, his ninetyninth birth anniversary. Dr Lohia was born at Akbarpur, Faizabad district, UP on March 23, 1910. Since his birthday coincided with the day of martyrdom of three of the country’s finest revolutionary freedom (…)

I once asked a philosopher from America, Scott Buchanan, what modern civilisation meant. At that time stood before me the tall and graceful buildings of Paris and there moved before me the pageant of Parisian men and women with their health and beauty of body and I felt sad because I thought of conditions obtaining in my own country and in Asia and Africa generally. The question was even more of a reverie. What is the secret of this modern civilisation? Wherein lies its mystery? What is it (…)