Founding Editor: Daya Varma (1929-2015)
Editors: Vinod Mubayi (New York) and Raza Mir (New Jersey).
Editorial Board: Ram Puniyani and Irfan Engineer (Mumbai); Pervez Hoodbhoy (Islamabad); Dolores Chew (Montreal); Vamsi Vakulabharanam (Amherst); Ajay Bhardwaj (Vancouver).
Circulation/website: Feroz Mehdi (On behalf of Alternatives, Montreal).
INSAF BULLETIN SALUTES THE WORKERS OF THE WORLD ON MAY 1 DAY
WFTU DECLARATION FOR MAY DAY 2014 Read more…
SECULAR AND DEMOCRATIC FORCES MUST UNITE TO SAVE INDIA
Vinod Mubayi and Daya Varma
With just a few weeks to go before the final round of voting takes place and the election results are declared, it is imperative that the secular and progressive forces unite to defeat BJP and prevent the dark night of a Modi-led regime from spreading over India. Read more…
THE CULT OF CRONYISM
Siddharth Varadarajan
Who does Narendra Modi represent and what does his rise in Indian politics signify? Given the burden he carries of the 2002 anti-Muslim massacres, it is tempting to see the Gujarat chief minister’s arrival on the national stage as a watershed moment in the escalation of communal politics. Certainly the cult-like following he has amongst the sangh parivar faithful and a wider section of the Hindu middle class is due to the image he has of a leader who knows how to “show Muslims their place”. For these supporters, his refusal to do something so simple – and tokenistic — as express regret for the killings that happened under his watch is seen not as a handicap but as further proof of his strength. Read more…
REBUTTAL TO SHEKHAR GUPTA: The eulogy of secularism
Abul Kalam Azad
“Secularism is dead!”, declares Shekhar Gupta, in the latest addition to the priceless collection of pretentiously liberal diatribes against what he calls “intellectually lazy, morally cynical and politically disastrous” groups, of which I am a proud member. Read more…
INDIA: BIG BUSINESS TAKING OVER WILL BE UNDOING OF DEMOCRACY
Harsh Kapoor
The run-up to the 2014 general elections in India has been an unprecedented demonstration of the massive infusion of money in electoral campaigning. A veritable carpet-bombing of India’s voters with the opposition BJP’s message is everywhere to be seen, from advertisements in newspapers, on TV, Youtube, Radio, Mobile Phones, CDs and the Internet, to billboards in all metropolitan cities and small towns and on transport vehicles, including inside the Delhi Metro trains. In effect, it has blocked out all other political parties as far as public advertising goes. This vast campaign has been on a scale never seen in history, estimated by some to be costing Rs 5000-6000 crores or more (from 800 to over 900 million dollars). Read more…
IDEA OF MODI IN POWER FILLS US WITH DREAD, INDIAN-ORIGIN ACADEMICS SAY IN OPEN LETTER
Kounteya Sinha
London: After artists like sculptor Anish Kapoor, film director Deepa Mehta and novelist Salman Rushdie, it is now the turn of some of the best Indian academics teaching in Britain’s top universities like the London School of Economics, Cambridge, Oxford, SOAS and King’s College to issue a letter opposing Narendra Modi as the next Indian Prime Minister. Read more…
HOW IS MODI BEING VIEWED?
Pranab Bardhan
Hear That Hollow In The Drumbeat? The Modi hype is relentless. But some of our institutions of democracy are still fragile for us to risk a firebrand leader. Read more…
MODI HIT HARD BY BIG MEDIA IN THE WEST
The Citizen Bureau
New Delhi: Over the past few months, as India went into the 2014 general elections with opinion polls showing BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in the lead, there has been a spate of articles in the western media strongly critical of the Gujarat Chief Minister. Read more…
X-RAY OF A FASCIST
Amit Sengupta
Why we cannot afford to forget and why we cannot move on. What Modi means for India.
Those who have observed Narendra Modi have some revealing – and chilling – things to say about him. Read more…
VADODARA STILL HAS NOT FALLEN
V.K. Tripathi
I visited Vadodara for 3 days, April 17-19, 2014. Narendra Modi is contesting Loksabha election from here. Congress has fielded Madhusudan Mistry, its strategist and grassroots man, against him. Mistry’s candidature has galvanized non-political social groups to come in open against the Modi cult. Thirty such groups have formed “Peoples’ Forum for Madhusudan Mistry”. One hundred fifty of their volunteers are campaigning in the area. Read more…
MUSHAWARAT CRITICISES ELECTION COMMISSION’S DOUBLE-STANDARDS AND INACTIVITY, ASKS SUPREME COURT TO INTERVENE
New Delhi, 21 April 2014: All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat, the umbrella body of Indian Muslim organizations, said here today that the Election Commission of India is playing partisan politics by removing the ban on Amit Shah while retaining the same in the case of Azam Khan. Read more…
INDIA NEEDS A THINKER, NOT A DESPOT ON ITS PEACOCK THRONE
Gopalkrishna Gandhi
There is a strange stillness in the air. Marine geographers have a word for it – the Doldrums. The word signifies a stupor, in which everyone and everything is listless, stagnant and immobilized. Coleridge describes the state of the Pacific Doldrums in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “All in a hot and copper sky,The bloody Sun, at noon,Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the Moon. Day after day, day after day,We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.” Read more…
BJP’S MODI MILLSTONE, CONGRESS’S GANDHI BURDEN: Blundering on Priyanka
Praful Bidwai
Something unusual happened to the exhausted, jaded, effete Indian National Congress the other day. After years, somebody in the party had a bright new idea—of fielding Priyanka Gandhi as its Lok Sabha candidate against Narendra Modi in Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.
That would have instantly changed the entire complexion of the current election, electrified not just the Poorvanchal region (Eastern UP) and adjoining parts of Bihar, but the whole nation, and qualitatively changed the character of today’s political game. Read more…
IN THE BACKGROUND OF ELECTIONS – THE DEVELOPMENT DEBATE
Dr. Frazer Mascarenhas
The approaching elections have brought an interesting discussion to the public forum on what constitutes human development and how it is to be achieved. The Gujarat model has been highlighted for our consideration. That is very apt because it puts in stark contrast two current views. Is the growth of big business, the making of huge profits, the achievement of high production – what we seek? Or is it the quality of life for the majority in terms of affordable basic goods and services and the freedom to take forward the cultural aspirations of our plural social groups that make up India? Read more…
NEPAL: ALL FIVE HEADS OF CONSTITUTIONAL ASSEMBLY (CA) COMMITTEES ELECTED UNOPPOSED
United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) leader and former prime minister Baburam Bhattarai has been elected as the head of the Constituent Assembly’s Committee for Constitutional, Political Dialogue and Consensus Building (CCPDC) on Friday. Read more…
RWANDA, TWENTY YEARS LATER
Samir Amin
Twenty years later, full light has not been thrown on the shooting down of the plane of the then president of Rwanda, Habyarimana. The event was immediately followed by the genocide of the Tutsis by Hutu militias. Two hypotheses remain to this day equally possible: 1) the plane was shot down by Hutu extremists, making a pretext of the event to initiate the planned cleansing as well as get rid of the president who opposed it; 2) the plane was shot down by Tutsis in order to provoke a massacre and obtain the pretext for their “liberation army” stationed in Uganda to “liberate” (or “invade”) Rwanda, even if they may have underestimated the size of the massacre of which they would be the victims. Read more…
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