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).
OVER 600 NRIS PROTEST MODI AT SPIRITED RALLY IN NEW YORK
Over 600 people participated in a spirited rally in New York on Sunday, September 28 opposing, Modi and Hindutva, while Modi was being feted inside the Madison Square Garden (MSG) arena by a section of India’s diaspora. Read more…
ANTI-DEMOCRATIC PRACTICES CONTINUE
EDITORIAL
Indian State has a long history of repressing the democratic rights of the people inherited from the practices of the British Raj and strengthened in successive years by passing anti-democratic laws. Read more…
MASS ARREST IN TELANGANA AND ANDHRA PRADESH: BLACK DAYS OF EMERGENCY ARE HERE AGAIN?
Coordination of Democratic Rights Organization
The AP and Telangana State governments have coercively prevented the one day convention of the FORUM FOR ALTERNATIVE POLITICS in Hyderabad on 21 Sep 2014 from being held. This is a most condemnable, undemocratic and unconstitutional acts of the two governments. Read more…
SPREADING FEAR THROUGH STEREOTYPES: THE POLITICS OF ‘LOVE JIHAD’
Praful Bidwai
How does Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s lofty slogan Sab ka Saath, Sab ka Vikaas (inclusion and development for all) square up with India’s social-political reality as vulnerable groups such as the religious minorities experience it? The honest answer is that these groups had the most to fear from a Bharatiya Janata Party election victory, and some of their fears are coming true. The BJP’s leaders, Mr Modi included, have done very little to allay them although it’s their duty to do so. Read more…
TOOLS FOR DIVISIVE POLITICS: HATE SPEECH AND PATRIARCHY
Ram Puniyani
After the last general elections where Narendra Modi and his party won a majority overwhelmingly, the BJP has not been doing so well in subsequent by-elections. The Lalu-Nitish experiment is one model, but whether it will be replicated in different parts of the country is a million-vote question. Read more…
KASHMIR FLOODS: ACCHHE DIN SLOGAN TURNS BITTER FOR J&K RESIDENTS
Editors
Modi’s slogan acchhe din aane wale hain (better days are about to come) that helped him and his party win the election has no doubt turned bitter for the flood-ravaged residents of Jammu and Kashmir. Almost 300 are reported to have died and hundreds of thousands have been left homeless and are living in flimsy makeshift shelters without adequate supply of food or water. Read more…
COMMUNITIES IMPACTED BY FLOODS IN PAKISTAN – 2014
Roots for Equity, Pakistan NGO (Abridged)
The recent floods sweeping through Pakistan have affected thousands of communities in Punjab and Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Thankfully, though the floods are not as devastating as of 2010, they have still created havoc in many communities costing nearly 300 lives to date. Read more…
THE MARS MISSION: LAURELS FOR INDIA
Com Space Research Organiation (ISRO) launched its Mars mission on November 5, 2013 by the Congress-led UPA government. It has now successfully entered into Mars orbit, a great achievement in space science. Below are two comments. Read more…
THE TRUTH THAT WILL NOT DIE: Tribute to Shubhradeep Chakravorty
Anand Patwardhan
“En Dino Muzaffarnagar by Shubhradeep Chakravorty and Meera Chaudhary is going to be recorded in history as the first documentary film banned under Prime Minister Modi. Gagging order came on 30th June. Today we applied in Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) for redressal of our grievances. We will not go down without a fight.” Read more…
RSS REWRITES HISTORY: DALITS ‘CREATED’ BY INVADERS
DK Singh
In its renewed impetus to woo Dalits, various other castes and sub-castes, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has embarked on an ambitious exercise to re-write history. Read more…
INQUILAB ZINDABAD, LAL SALAAM ECHOES IN KOLKATA
Unprecedented is too mild an epithet to describe the Saturday rally by Kolkata students. The number is most conservatively [by the police] 80,000 and by watchers 1,10,000 and more because no one can count the real number as the end of the rally could not even come out of Nandan complex when the starting was getting fully drenched at the end point in Mayo Road where it was blocked. Read more…
LOVE COMMANDOS COUNTER LOVE JIHAD, UNITE 30,000 COUPLES
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-love-commandos-unite-to-counter-concept-of-love-jihad-brings-30000-couples-together-2020329
At a time when the country is being exposed to an oxymoronic term ‘ love jihad, countering such a concept is an organization with an equally paradoxical name called ‘Love Commandos’. Read more…
AISA SWEEPS JNU STUDENT UNION ELECTIONS ONCE AGAIN
Doubles Votes To Emerge As Significant Third Force in DUSU Elections Read more…
NATIONAL CONVENTION OF WORKERS
A National Convention of Workers was held on 15TH September 2014 at New Delhi, under the banner of joint platform of all the Central Trade Unions of the country. The Convention was held in protest against the policies of Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization and the all-out attack on trade union/working class rights by the Modi government and the Rajasthan government. Read more…
DECLARATION OF THE NATIONAL CONVENTION OF WORKERS
(September 15, 2014, New Delhi)
This National Convention of Workers being held under the banner of joint platform of all the Central Trade Unions of the country along with independent national federations/organizations from all the sectors and service establishments expresses deep concern at the unilateral move to amend the labour laws by a number of state governments and by the Central Govt. Most of the amendments sought to be done will have serious negative impact on the working conditions including trade union rights of the workers and the employees. Read more…
THE CAUSE OF COMMUNAL VIOLENCE IN WESTERN UP
Sadiq Naqvi
Tanweer Fazal, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, explains the reasons for communal disharmony in Western UP. Read more…
HUNDRED DAYS OF MODI POINTS TO EMERGENT DISASTER
Economy, Religious Extremism and Human Rights Areas of Biggest Concern
The Ghadar Alliance, a US-based educational/watchdog coalition created by concerned citizens in the wake of the BJP victory, today released a comprehensive ‘100-day report’ evaluating the performance of the Modi government’s first 100 days in office. The report, titled “Fast Track to Troubling Times,” (modifacts.org) is being released as Modi prepares for his first visit to the US as India’s Prime Minister. Modi’s US tour begins on September 26th. Read more…
MY NAME IS KHAN AND I AM A HINDU
Ishita Mishra
Agra: If there is one place in India that just doesn’t get the idea of ‘Love jihad’, it is Khera Sadhan in Agra. And that’s because of its peculiar history. During the rule of Aurangzeb (1658-1707), villagers there were asked to either convert to Islam or leave their homes. Faced with such a threat, almost all of them had changed their religion at that time. After Independence, a group of local leaders exhorted the townsfolk to go back to Hinduism. Some did, others didn’t. But religion since then hasn’t mattered to the people here. Read more…
GREEN CLEARANCE TEST FOR NDA
Sunita Narain
Environmentalists are rightly alarmed that the NDA government is busy dismantling the environmental regulatory system in the country. Over the past two months, the media has reported that clearances for projects, from mining to roads, have been fast-tracked. While the website of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) has not been updated in August, in the two months till July end, forest clearance was granted to over 92 projects, which will divert some 1,600 hectares of forest. More recently, it was reported that the National Board for Wildlife has processed many projects located near or in sanctuaries and national parks. Read more…
LEFT BEHIND – WHERE ARE THE COMRADES WHEN ONE NEEDS THEM?
Mukul Kesavan
Where’s the Left when you need it? Time was when you didn’t have to be a party member or a fellow traveller to admire its virtues. After Indira Gandhi’s assassination, when Sikhs were being attacked and killed in their thousands at the Congress’s prompting, Jyoti Basu’s steely peace-keeping in Calcutta was the stuff of urban legend. This was 1984; the Left Front government’s great experiment in land reform, Operation Barga, was yet to run its course. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) was a redistributionist, social democratic party, committed to secularism: every parliamentary system ought to have one. Read more…
ON THE FRONTLINES OF THE WAR ON NAXALISM: Four Women Lawyers Offer Hope To Those Without Any
Jagdalpur, Parakram Rautela
The Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group, tasked with documenting what might be happening to the innocents caught in the crossfire between the Maoists and in Chhattisgarh, ends up taking on the toughest legal cases. The ones that nobody else seems to want. Read more…
MAMATA BANERJEE SEEKS ESCAPE ROUTE AMIDST SARADHA CBI TSUNAMI\: READY TO CONSIDER ALLIANCE PROPOSAL WITH CPIM
Excalibur Stevens Biswas
Sardha scam CBI enquiry tsunami has greater impact on the number one self declared enemy of communism,specifically CPIM and what a turnaround,Mamata Banerjee indicated in a television interview that she is no more averse to an alliance with the CPI-M to counter the BJP in Bengal. Read more…
THE HATE “FOREIGNER” JIHAD OF HINDU NATIONALIST ORGANIZATIONS PART – I
There is an interesting pattern in which the Hindu Nationalist Organisations (HNOs) exploit a non-issue to stigmatize communities which were declared by them as “foreigners”. V D Savarkar wrote in his tract on Hindutva, “Nothing can weld peoples into a nation and nations into a state as the pressure of a common foe. Hatred separates as well as unites.” Savarkar located the common foe in Muslims and Christians whose holy lands were outside Sindhustan, or land running from Indus to Arabian Sea. Read more…
MODI’S 100 DAYS: INDIA TOWARDS DOLDRUMS?
Ajaya Kumar Singh (Countercurrents.org, August 31, 2014)
It is three months since Narendra Modi took over the leadership of India . Never before India ‘s debate on secularism is as intense and frightening as it is today. Minorities are on edge. Bharat Bhusan, a senior journalist writing for news daily, Business Standard captures the mood of the nation and state of affairs minoriites in India , “S omething has changed in our society after Narendra Modi became the prime minister. Read more…
OBITUARY: BIPAN CHANDRA (1928-2014)
Special Correspondent
Eminent `Modern India’ historian Bipan Chandra died on Saturday morning after a prolonged illness. He was 86. Survived by two sons, he left behind an unfinished work on Bhagat Singh and an “army of students’’ of varied ideological persuasions mourning the end of their animated discussions. Read more…
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