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).
We wish our readers Revolutionary May Day Greetings!
EDITORIAL: GLOBAL WARMING FROM FOSSIL FUELS IS A VIRULENT SYMPTOM OF THE UNDERLYING DISEASE: GLOBAL CAPITALISM
Vinod Mubayi
For the last three decades, there has been an increasing recognition of the extremely damaging and deleterious effect on the earth’s climate and environment of the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG), such as carbon dioxide, from anthropogenic activity that poses a severe threat to the long-term survival of the human species. While discussions of this phenomenon used to be carried out a few decades earlier mostly in scientific journals, the words global warming are now ubiquitous in the popular media and the word “green” is now attached to all kinds of technology or activity as an attribute of environmental virtue.
Read more…SPEECH DELIVERED AT HSF EVENT IN VANCOUVER ON APRIL 1, 2023
Vinod Mubayi
Dear Brother Zahid, distinguished guests, old comrades and friends:
I feel very honored and privileged to be invited to attend and address this gathering this evening. Insaf Bulletin, that now has a record of 21 years of uninterrupted monthly publication was started in April 2002 by our much loved departed comrade Prof Daya Varma in April 2002. I joined him as co-editor two months later. After Daya’s passing in 2015, Raza Mir joined me as co-editor and along with Feroz Mehdi our circulation manager in Montreal have been integral to keeping the Bulletin going.
Read more…OBITUARY: VIVAN SUNDARAM (1943-2023)
Peter White
Vivan Sundaram, an artist whose leadership was instrumental for the deep commitment of recent generations of Indian artists to a secular and pluralist state, passed away at age seventy-nine on March 29 in New Delhi. As his fellow artist Nalini Malani said in tribute, Sundaram was “an artist who truly lived the ideology he believed in.”
Read more…STATEMENT BY HISTORIANS AND CONCERNED SCHOLARS ON RECENT CHANGES MADE BY NCERT IN TEXTBOOKS
Aditya Nigam
Received via Maya John, the following statement was issued by over 250 historians and concerned scholars, protesting against the blatantly ideologically driven agenda of the present government in deleting chapters and sections of the school textbooks.
Read more…‘RATIONALIZATION’ OF TEXT BOOKS OR COMMUNALIZATION OF POLITY?
Ram Puniyani
Text books of schools are also a site of contestation between differing versions of nationalism. The two inheritors of colonial India, India and Pakistan show this in a parallel and opposite ways. In Pakistan since the country came up in the name of Islam, it taught a history in schools which began with Mohammad bin Kasim ruling in Sind in eight century. The Hindu kings and Hindus are shown in a poor light to the extent that an average child in Pakistan school will refer to a Hindu in a very derogatory way.
Read more…PAKISTAN: THE EROSION OF UNIONS
Zeenat Hisam
Unions perform multiple economically valuable functions… — Richard B. Freeman
IN times of erosion of trust in our institutions — parliament, the judiciary, army and the state — it is challenging to talk about labour unions struggling on the fringes for decades and held in low esteem by our elite and in mass opinion.
Read more…LONG READ 1: THE BIG CON: MODI’S INDIA AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER
Pankaj Mishra
Early in January, Gautam Adani, an Indian businessman and associate of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, was the world’s third richest man. By the end of the month he had lost much of his fortune, after being accused by the US-based research investment firm Hindenburg Research of pulling the ‘largest con in corporate history’.
Read more…LONG READ 2: THE GENERALS AND THEIR CAPTAIN: WHAT IMRAN KHAN’S ASCENT DID TO PAKISTAN
Khurram Husain
By all standards, it was a tumultuous day in Pakistan’s parliament. Less than a month earlier, in July 2018, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf, led by cricket-captain-turned-politician Imran Khan, had won a majority in the National Assembly elections. On 17 August, Khan rose to make his inaugural speech before the house as its newly elected prime minister.
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