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).
EDITORIAL: HOW LYING, AUTOCRATIC BEHAVIOR, STUPIDITY AND OFFICIAL MALFEASANCE ARE TENDING TO DESTROY INDIA’S DEMOCRACY
Vinod Mubayi
Whichever result the Indian election delivers on June 4th, the conduct of the entire campaign by the ruling BJP party led by Narendra Modi has seriously shamed the country and diminished the future prospects of electoral democracy in the country if the BJP, as widely forecast, manages to win. As the book How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt reminds us: “Democracies may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders—presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power.” One way of subversion these leaders use is to tell outright lies about their opposition, whether politicians or policies, that serve to polarize the electorate and divide them into hostile camps eroding the boundaries of toleration and acceptance needed to preserve a democratic polity. Donald Trump, who served as US President from 2016-2020 was often cited as a champion liar, accused of telling an average of a dozen lies every day. Modi is a close follower of this practice.
Read more…RELIGIOUS AMPLIFICATION VERSUS FRAYING CHARISMA: DECODING LOK SABHA ELECTIONS 2024
Arjun Appadurai
As India heads towards the home run of its 18th General Election-with just the last of the seven phases to be held on June 1, the slogans, posturing, and promises held out by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) point to a shifting of what was till recently taken as solid electoral ground beneath the party’s feet. At this stage of the election, Arjun Appadurai, Professor Emeritus, Media, Culture and Communication, New York University, connects the dots between popular political discourse, the approach of the ruling party to governance, its furtherance of its ideological agenda in a plural India, and the manner in which it has read the electorate.
Read more…FOR THE LOVE OF LANGUAGE, A MULTINATIONAL QUEST TO KEEP URDU ALIVE AND THRIVING
Abdullah Zahid
The Persian literary masterpiece ‘Gulistan-e-Saadi’, a collection of moral tales and aphorisms by the revered 13th-century poet Sheikh Saadi Shirazi has a new lease of life with the bilingual publication of three of Saadi’s classic tales.
Read more…NEHRU’S OTHER INDIAS
Priya Satia
Had Nehru’s commitments to federalism, internationalism, socialism, and secularism been purely principled rather than partly tactical, had they offered a vision of what it meant to be free or to be Indian or to be civilised in a post-colonial world, they might have indelibly defined a culture.
Read more…BAIL CONTINUES TO EVADE UMAR KHALID’S NAME
Gursimran Kaur Bakshi
Umar Khalid, an activist and former Jawaharlal Nehru University student, who was arrested on September 13, 2020 sought bail on the grounds of delay and parity with his co-accused who was granted bail in June 2021.
Read more…HINDUTVA’S CONSOLIDATION OF A VARNA AUTOCRACY IS DESTROYING THE REPUBLIC
Hartosh Singh Bal
We have never had an election like this before, with the people split between elation and foreboding. The majority eagerly anticipates the result, with many among them unconcerned about what it would mean for India or for the compact under which the country came into being. The smaller fraction hopes for, at best, any possible reduction in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s numbers that might bring a temporary respite to its betrayal of constitutional values.
Read more…VIVEKANANDA HELD HINDUISM IN HIGH ESTEEM BUT THE RSS AND SANGH PARIVAR’S CLAIM TO HIM IS MISGUIDED (BOOK EXCERPT)
Govind Krishnan V
The RSS and the Sangh Parivar claim Vivekananda as an inspiration; Vivekananda is most important in the Sangh’s pantheon of cultural figures. However, Vivekananda had no influence on the RSS in its formative years when it developed its political ideology of Hindutva, or in the years immediately following Independence.
Read more…LEAFLET BY LEAFLET, A FEW AGING ACTIVISTS FIGHT INDIA’S TIDE OF BIGOTRY
Sameer Yasir
One recent morning, Roop Rekha Verma, an 80-year-old peace activist and former university leader, walked through a north Indian neighborhood prone to sectarian strife and parked herself near a tea shop.
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