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).
AAP DERAILS THE MODIi-SHAH RATH
Editors
For the first time in almost a year, the victory of the AAP over the Modi-Shah cabal, whose pictures were defacing every billboard and bus stop in the nation’s capital in January 2015, has given some small measure of hope that the defeat of the nightmare known as Hindutva is actually possible. The outcome of the Delhi election in terms of its wider national significance can be summed up by a line from the Urdu poet Faiz: “roshan kahin bahar ke imkan hue to hain” (the possibilities of the emergence of spring have brightened). Read more…
THE JUGGERNAUT HASN’T ONLY BEEN HALTED, IT HAS CRASHED
Praful Bidwai
There isn’t just one big story in the Delhi election; there are two. The first is the staggering victory of the Aam Aadmi Party, which polled 54.3 percent of the vote, even higher than the Janata Party’s 52.6 percent in the landmark post-Emergency “wave” of 1977. No party outside Sikkim has ever matched AAP’s Delhi seat-score of 95.7 percent. Read more…
INDIA DEMOCRACY AT THE CROSSROADS UNDER CURRENT POLITICAL DISPENSATION
Ram Puniyani
I begin this lecture paying tribute to my very dear friend, Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer, with whom I had the rare privilege of working with for close to two decades. Dr. Engineer was a unique scholar-activist, totally committed to the dream and vision of a humane society that honours the values of diversity and where human rights for all are the defining point. Read more…
NUCLEAR ENERGY DEBATE – MUCH HYPED MODI-OBAMA BREAKTHROUGH A MISNOMER
Vinod Mubayi
Dedicated anti-nuclear activists oppose nuclear power everywhere so their critique of the Indian nuclear program is expected. However, it is possible to have a somewhat different perspective on the Indian nuclear program as well as offer a critique of the hyped Obama-Modi “breakthrough” that is supposed to lead to a number of Westinghouse and GE designed reactors being constructed and operated in India in the near future. Read more…
INDIA
Daya Varma
I joined the Communist Party of India (CPI) a few years after the expulsion of P.C. Joshi; Joshi was readmitted but never thereafter in influential position. The Telangana peasant struggle had come to an end. The January 27, 1950 article titled “Mighty advance of the national liberation movement in the colonial and dependent countries” in the official journal of the Comintern “For a Lasting Peace and People’s Democracy”, was under debate; although this article pointed to the anti-imperialist role of the Indian ruling class led by Nehru, there was sufficient ambiguity, which sharpened the debate in favor of the official line adopted in the 1948 Calcutta Congress; the essence of this line was “Telangana’s path is our path” and “Yeh azadi jhooti hai (this independence is fake)”. Read more…
TRIBUTE: GOODBYE COMRADE! ALVIDA MEHDI CHACHA!
Noor Zaheer
What can one write about an uncle who pampered one with hot chocolate and insisted on presenting a book on Marxism with it? What can one say about him who gets you the first proper job, the one that you love doing, and performs a detailed autopsy of all that you write, one who does not fear giving away his contacts and is convinced that Marsiakhwani is a one-man theatre, whose eyes glistened with knowledge through thick spectacles and a warm smile played on his lips as he conjured up a new jibe at politicians, society, religion and even himself? One who wrote to think, thought to analyse and analysed to remain a comrade. Read more…
THE LAST OF HIS GENERATION: S.M. MEHDI
Bilal Hashmi
Radical Urdu playwright S.M. Mehdi, who has passed away aged 92, was the last of his generation—urbane man of letters, public intellectual, skillful raconteur, unrepentant Marxist. A veteran of the Indian People’s Theatre Association, he was among the guiding lights of experimental and purposive theatre in the country. Read more…
HRDA-INDIA: STATEMENT IN SUPPORT OF TEESTA SETALVAD AND JAVED ANAND
Henri Tiphagne
Honorary National Working Secretary
Human Rights Defenders Alert – India
The Human Rights Defenders Alerts – India [HRDA], is shocked to hear about the denial of anticipatory bail to renowned human rights activists Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand by the Gujarat High Court on February 12, 2015. Read more…
SOLIDARITY WITH TEESTA SETALVAD – Demonstration in Mumbai
A large number of activists gathered outside Dadar Railway Station in Mumbai on Sunday (15-2-2015) evening for a public demonstration of solidarity with Teesta Setalvad & Javed Anand who are being hounded by Gujarat police with false cases. Famous film maker Anand Patwardhan, renowned writer-activist Dr. Ram Puniyani, AIDWA Maharashtra Secretary Sonya Gill, CITU leader Dr.Vivek Monteiro, Dolphy D’souza, Subodh More, Vandana Shah, Sumedh Jadhav and several eminent citizens of Mumbai participated in the meeting organized by Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) Maharashtra committee. DYFI state president conducted Adv.Bhagavan Bhagwan Bhojne, Secretary Preethy Sekhar and State committee member Moin Ansar also spoke. Read more…
WHY I STAND BY HER: SUPPORT FOR TEESTA IS SUPPORT FOR ACCESS TO JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS OF A POGROM
Indira Jaising
Victims of crime are known to get so tired of legal processes that they drop out from fatigue. Often, they are bought over by the accused. This is likelier when the accused is a powerful person, with the ability to mobilise finances and wield political clout. Read more…
DR. AMARTYA SEN’S LETTER TO BOARD MEMBERS OF NALANDA UNIVERSITY
(Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen recently resigned from the governing board of Nalanda University – Eds.) Read more…
AMIT SHAH CASE – COMPLETE MOCKERY OF JUSTICE SYSTEM
Mainstream, VOL LIII No 9, February 21, 2015
Once again the Indian Investigating agencies and Judiciary have failed the people of India by letting out a powerful political leader despite having enough evidence of involvement in a henious crime. Amit Shah has been acquitted by the Special CBI Court, Bombay, in the Sohrabuddin murder case even before the trial for the case could start. Read more…
GOVIND PANSARE AND WIFE SHOT
Communist Party of India (CPI) leader Govind Pansare (82), who was critically wounded by gunshots in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, was airlifted to Mumbai for advanced treatment. Unfortunately, Pansare who was shot in the lungs, did not survive. Read more…
SILENCING DISSENT
The Hindu, February 23, 2015
Maharashtra’s prominent educational, social and cultural institutions have been insidiously infiltrated by forces of the Right that brook no pluralistic dissent. Read more…
NO COMPROMISE ON DEMAND FOR REPEAL OF LAND ORDINANCE
Land Ordinance is Anti Farmer, Government Engaging in Propaganda
Land Ordinance to Impact Food Security Adversely Read more…
BANGLADESH: POLARIZATION, POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND UNDECLARED CIVIL WAR
ACHR Press Release February 18, 2015
NEW DELHI: Asian Centre for Human Rights in its report, “Bangladesh: Polarisation, Political Violence & an Undeclared Civil War” (http://www.achrweb.org/reports/bangla/Bangladesh2015-01.pdf), released today stated that about 90 people have been killed and more than a thousand were injured in the ongoing violent anti-government protests by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led 20-party alliance demanding resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League Government and holding of mid-term elections under a neutral caretaker government since 5 January 2015. Read more…
WRITER AVIJIT ROY HACKED TO DEATH
Dhaka Tribune 26 February 2015
His wife blogger Bonna also sustains severe injuries in the attack
Blogger and writer Avijit Roy has been killed and his wife, blogger Rafida Ahmed Bonna, severely injured when unidentified miscreants hacked them at TSC of Dhaka University on Thursday night. Read more…
SYRIZA: THE GREEK SPRING
Costas Douzinas
The 2015 Greek elections mark the beginning of the end of a cycle that started in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. We are now witnessing the end of the “end of history” metanarrative. Read more…
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