March 2009

Barring us, Socialists, all Opposition politics in the country today have degenerated into succession politics.
Opposition parties seem to have decided that the task of changing the attitudes of the people is far too difficult for them; or will at any rate take a lot more time than they think they can spare. The Prime Minister, according to them, is old and the Congress Party will soon have to find a successor to him. Who this successor will be is an open question—at least, so it (…)

On Dr Lohia’s birthday, we remember him with love and affection and as one of our top leaders of the socialist movement. He had a many-faceted personality. He was different from our other leades like JP. We had a reverence the JP, a certain kind of awe in his presence. There was no question of levity or extra talk—it was only the vision of a just socialist society that we listened to. But with Dr Lohia, while philosophical, political theories of socialist thought were no doubt a constant (…)

The socialist movement in India was born in the womb of the struggle for independence. Some of its first rank leaders, who promoted the idea of forming a socialist group within the Congress party, were together in the Nasik prison in 1932-33. They included Jaya Prakash Narayan, Achyut Patwardhan, Yusuf Meherally, M.L. Dantwala, S.M. Joshi, Asoka Mehta and N.G. Goray. Some other prominent leaders of the Congress party like Acharya Narendra Dev, Dr Sampoornanand, Kamaldevi Chattopadhyaya, Dr (…)

Dr Rammanohar Lohia was the theorist of seven revolutions in the context of creating a new world order on the basis of socialism. The programme of seven revolutions included confrontation with discrimination and deprivations based upon caste, class, race, gender and nationality. He wanted to give a new direction to the movement for socialism by giving equal emphasis to the struggles against sexism, class and caste-based exploitations.
It was a departure from the Marxist line of a (…)

Gandhian socialist, rebel by birth, visionary, man of letters, great parliamentarian and crusader for the upliftment of the poor and downtrodden of the country Dr Rammanohar Lohia was born on March 23, 1910 in Akbarpur in Faizabad district of Uttar Pradesh in a Marwari Vaishya community. Lohia’s father, Heera Lal, was a nationalist by spirit and a teacher by profession. His mother, Chanda, died when Rammanohar was very young. Lohia was introduced to the Indian independence movement at an (…)

From all available indications the so-called mutiny in Bangladesh was actually a conspiracy to badly destabilise and, if possible, topple the Sheikh Hasina Government, so that the truth about the war-crimes and 1975 killings which this government had promised to investigate remains buried. The conspirators caused a lot of bloodshed but did not succeed in achieving their final aim of disrupting a government elected by the people with overwhelming support. However, it is less likely that the (…)

Communication
It is indeed heartening that a geologist of Subrata Sinha’s experience and eminence has highlighted the pitfalls in establishing a chemical hub in Nayachar (Mainstream, February 14, 2009). He has very rightly pointed out the difference in geological setting of the off-shore islands of Singapur which are remnants of the Himalayan arc separated from the mainland by simple sea erosion. Very recent sediments of Nayachar are the end products of erosion of the Himalaya mountain (…)

The seventyeighth anniversary of the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh and his comrades-in-arms, Rajguru and Sukhdev, falls on March 23. They were executed on that day in 1931. We pay homage to the abiding memory of those revolutionaries by reproducing the following article by a close associate of Bhagat Singh; Bejoy Kumar Sinha was himself sentenced to transportation for life as the martyrs’ case-mate. The article first appeared in Mainstream (March 21, 1964).
__3__ On the twenty-third of (…)

Book Review
The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China And What it Means for All of Us by Robyn Meredith; W.W. Norton and Company, New York, London; page: 252; price: US $ 15.95.
India and China, the two neighbours, share the same civilisational antiquity. They are also credited with being the most populous nations on earth and additionally both are looked upon as states to reckon with in terms of global might in the near future.
Indo-centricity, asymmetry, colossal (…)

This letter from one of the prisoners in Nagpur Central Jail, an alleged Naxalite undertrial, was sent on December 3, 2008 explaining the reasons behind the ‘Naxalite’ undertrial prisoners going on a token hunger strike on Human Rights Day last year. It was belatedly received by us and could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons. In view of the abiding validity of its contents, the letter is being is published here for the benefit of our readers. The letter was sent to the People’s (…)