Category Archives: Debates

Capitalism, Culture, Debates, Government

Young Women in Kerala : Between Empowerment and Death? — Part I

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[This was a note titled ‘We Still Need Feminism’ which I wrote on March 31 on my Facebook page; I thought it relevant to re-post it here as it appears that an ‘honour killing’, of a sort — an ‘honour suicide’ — may have actually surfaced in Kerala. More on that in the next post]

In JNU, last week, some of us were noticing how there seemed to be a notable increase in the numbers of students, both women and men, from the Hindi heartland. It is interesting, said one of my friends, that the deterritorialised university spaces in Delhi can no longer back off from directly confronting the tensions through which these societies now live through. “Look at that girl,” she said, pointing to a sprightly young woman, a bright student who I’d briefly met earlier,”she comes from a family that’d kill her if she married out of her gotra. And she is involved with a young man who’d not even of her region. We must fear the worst and prepare to confront evil.” For a brief moment, in my fright, I thought, well, at least we don’t have honour killings in Kerala. Honour kidnappings, yes, but I haven’t heard of too many honour killings. Maybe honour killings are still on their way here (like dowry deaths were, in the 1980s, when I was growing up into a young woman). We have some time to rally against them. Continue reading Young Women in Kerala : Between Empowerment and Death? — Part I →

Capitalism, Debates, Left watch, Politics, Violence/Conflict

We Are Where We Know Not What Befalls Us… in Bengal!

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Kahan le Chale ho... (image courtesy Small Strokes)
Kahan le Chale ho... (image courtesy Small Strokes)

Ham wahaan hain jahaan se hamko bhee
kuchch hamaaree khabar naheen aatee

Roughly translated literally, this famous couplet of Ghalib’s would mean: “We are at that place from where we do not get any news about ourselves”. A somewhat surreal place to be in! It is not just that you are holed in, a place where you are cut off from the world and no longer get any news of the outside – say Plato’s Cave. This descent is into a Cave from where you get no news about yourself! You are in a state of incommunicability with your own self. Clearly, a Self that is deeply at odds with itself.

This is clearly the place where the Bengal communists have descended. Else, who could not have seen the avalanche coming? Even when they lost the 2009 parliamentary elections, they thought that they lost because those sitting in Delhi’s AK Gopalan Bhawan chased the chimera of the Third Front (and they have been repeating this till yesterday, everyone from Buddhadeb to Gautam Deb)! Of course that was a chimera but to delude yourselves that your defeat had nothing to do with your own doings, that ‘the people’ oh love you soo – that is only possible when you have descended into that surreal space.  The interesting thing is that apart from the self deluding communists of the CPM brand, even the ordinary person on the street knew what was coming. Continue reading We Are Where We Know Not What Befalls Us… in Bengal! →

Capitalism, Debates, Everyday Life, Genders

Choice in the labour market – sex work as “work”

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The summary of preliminary findings of the first pan-India survey of sex-workers is now available on-line.  3000 women from 14 states and 1 UT were surveyed, all of them from outside collectivised/organised and therefore politically active spaces, precisely  “in order to bring forth the voices of a hitherto silent section of sex workers.”

The significant finding is this: About 71 percent of them said they had entered the profession willingly.

(The data on male and transgender sex workers has not been processed yet).

The study was conducted by Rohini Sahni and  V Kalyan Shankar under the aegis of the Center for Advocacy on Stigma and Marginalisation (CASAM),  supported by Paulo Longo Research Initiative (“a collaboration of scholars, policy analysts and sex workers that aims to develop and consolidate ethical, interdisciplinary scholarship on sex work to improve the human rights, health and well being of women, men and transgenders who sell sex.”). The study was supported by a large number of groups, organizations and individuals in each state, who helped to conduct the surveys.

This background is important, because it appears to be a study that is well grounded, and drawing on large networks of local interconnections.

Continue reading Choice in the labour market – sex work as “work” →

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Centre watch, Debates, Government

A government that wants to destroy its own airline?: Susmita Dasgupta

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Guest post by SUSMITA DASGUPTA

Many moons ago, when our sweet little dupleix in Dover Lane was enlarged into a three storey house to make space for a tenant, our first tenant was an Indian Airline pilot. Similarly, many modern condominiums in our locality were being rented out to pilots and air hostesses. This was a mark of Dover Lane having arrived as a respectable colony in Ballygunje from its rather modest middle class veneer. The airlines are always looked upon as a creamy layer of the middle class; offering prospects and possibilities that are matched only by the IT, bureaucracy and the army. It has the class of being high salaried, élan of professional excellence and the allure of a closed group cadre. In other words, it has the best of all worlds notwithstanding the attraction of international travel with sops like free tickets for dependent members of the family. The pilots, who are the core of this sector, are on strike in India’s only public sector in the aviation sector, namely Air India. Continue reading A government that wants to destroy its own airline?: Susmita Dasgupta →

Capitalism, Debates

The Middle-class and the State: Shashank Kela

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Guest post by SHASHANK KELA

These fragmentary reflections on the historical relationship between the middle-class and the state may help to place the brouhaha over Anna Hazare in a fresh perspective.

No one celebrates capitalism quite as enthusiastically as your average (well, all right, above average) Marxist historian. Few conservative encomiums on the subject have the lapidary elegance of Perry Anderson’s Lineages of the Absolutist State, or the remorseless logic of Robert Brenner’s celebrated paper on the origins of capitalism.[1] This line goes back all the way to Marx in whose work praise of capitalism and execration of its effects are perpetually balanced.

Capitalism’s motor is the bourgeoisie or the middle-class. Its ancestors – the burghers of the medieval west European town and large landowners in the countryside – transformed the crisis of feudalism into opportunity with the help of the state. The result: mercantilism, enclosures, poor laws; the reorganization of agriculture on rational, commercially profitable lines. The cumulative effect of these developments was to extinguish avenues of subsistence hitherto available to the poor, throwing them on the market as sellers of their labour. Continue reading The Middle-class and the State: Shashank Kela →

Debates, Excavation, Left watch, Mirror Worlds, Theory

A Few Lessons on Marxism and Politics

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“At a certain point in their historical lives, social classes become detached from their traditional parties. In other words, the traditional parties in that particular organizational form, with the particular men who constitute, represent and lead them, are no longer recognized by their class (or fraction of a class) as its expression” – Antonio Gramsci, Prison Noteboooks, International Publishers, New York, 1971, p. 210. Emphasis added)

This is how Gramsci, sitting inside Mussolini’s fascist prison, began his now celebrated discussion of the ‘crisis of hegemony’. I cite this here apropos of the discussion that has gone on some of the previous posts by Monobina Gupta, Sankar Ray and myself on the CPM/Left in West Bengal, in the course of which, I have been accused of ‘coming out’ as a supporter of the Trinamool Congress, which some have also termed as a fascist or even ‘super-fascist’ organization! Clearly, these gentlemen neither know the history of fascism nor indeed of Marxism. Fed on pamphlets of a certain marxist catechism, they have learnt only one thing: the division of the world into two camps where ostensibly, battle lines are permanently drawn between parties that apparently have a ‘mandate from heaven’ of bearing a particular class character, either bourgeois or working class. I hope none of those who have learnt their ‘dialectics’ or their ‘historical materialism’ from marxism-made-easy pamphlets of Emile Burns, Maurice Cornforth and Stalin will jump to pronounce Gramsci a postmodernist who denies this supposed ‘class essence’ of parties . (I am told though that these too are passe now; ‘cadres’ these days are not meant to read beyond party resolutions and ‘theoretical’ essays of Prabhat Patnaik, whose own world has stopped with Michal Kalecki).

Continue reading A Few Lessons on Marxism and Politics →

Bad ideas, Debates, Genders, Sex

Modest? Sexy? Or just an athlete?

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By goddess, it’s that spot again – at once familiar and deeply uncomfortable. Us feminists in the same rage as the patriarchs and religious right, over the same damn thing. For very different reasons, we bellow (cutely), but is anybody listening?

The  Badminton World Federation has announced its new dress code that requires women players to wear skirts  “to ensure attractive presentation of badminton.” Almost every Indian woman player has objected, saying that dress should be one’s personal preference.

Of course most workplaces have dress codes.  So this is about more than simply an infringement of individual tastes. This is about the utter blatant sexism of this particular requirement. Basically, what’s the BWF saying quite shamelessly? That they expect more people to come to the sport if they can see suggestively flying skirts (on women). Even if there are shorts beneath, which they have grudgingly permitted. It’s not enough to show legs, skirts have to fly. Continue reading Modest? Sexy? Or just an athlete? →

Debates, Left watch, Mirror Worlds, Politics

Did You Say ‘US Imperialism’, Prakash Karat? Sankar Ray

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Guest post by SANKAR RAY

The CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat and the Left Front chairman Biman Bose deserve thanks for referring to the WikiLeaks revelation about the US enthusiasm in seeing a change of guard at the Writers’ Buildings, the seat of the Government of West Bengal.

Prakash Karat, CPM general secretary
Prakash Karat, CPM general secretary, courtesy rediff.com

Quoting the cable no 230353 10/20/2009, Mr Karat conveyed the gist of it as follows: “Since the May 2009 parliamentary elections elevated West Bengal’s regional party, All India Trinamool Congress, from obscurity to the second largest constituent party in the United Progressive Alliance, its leader, Mamata Banerjee, has conscientiously sought to re-brand herself as West Bengal’s Chief Minister-in-Waiting. She is using the considerable administrative resources at her disposal as Railway’s Minister, political resources as leader of the state opposition party, and personal resources to initiate this transformation. Supporters and critics acknowledge the new image, but question whether it is indeed a new product, or simply new packaging. Backed by a large parliamentary constituency and allied with the ruling Congress party, Banerjee’s Trinamool is well placed to win the 2011 state assembly elections if she can continue along her current path of self-restraint and avoid making any mistakes along the way.” For details, the reader has to visit http://pragoti.org, even though it’s unabashedly pro-CPI(M).

The CPI(M) supremo observed that the AITC brass “is very much within private outreach. I’m in no position unfortunately to investigate and tell you what they are doing to fulfill this general direction they’ve given in the cable”.

Continue reading Did You Say ‘US Imperialism’, Prakash Karat? Sankar Ray →

Centre watch, Debates, Everyday Life, Government, Identities, Politics

The gospel according to a divine identifier – An essay on the biblical origins of UID: Taha Mehmood

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Guest post by TAHA MEHMOOD

1.

Simon Bar Jona was a fisherman based in small town called Bethaida. They say one day Simon’s brother, Andrew, led him to a man who called himself Jesus. They say Simon and Andrew became disciples of Jesus.

One day Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you think I am?”

His disciples looked at each other. They did not know anything about him. They did not know who he was. Some disciples said Jesus was actually John the Baptist: some said he was Elijah; and others though he was Jeremias. Jesus could have been any of these or none of these. But Jesus was not satisfied with the answer, so he asked again, “Who do you think I am?”

At that point Simon Bar Jona, the fisherman answered, “Are you not Christ, the Son of the living God?’“

Jesus was pleased, he replied, “Bless you, Simon Bar Jona: for flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” Continue reading The gospel according to a divine identifier – An essay on the biblical origins of UID: Taha Mehmood →

Capitalism, Debates, Government, Movements, Politics

Chronicle of a Bail Foretold: Saroj Giri

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Guest post by SAROJ GIRI

Till very recently it was not possible to discuss Binayak Sen without referring to the corporate land grab and state repression in Chhattisgarh. Somehow Salwa Judum, the displacement of thousands of adivasis and the Maoist movement would come in the picture. Above all, what would come out is Sen’s work in the specific context of the suffering of the adivasis. Indeed soon after the bail order was granted, it came so naturally for Sen’s beaming wife to state that he will of course go back to resume his work in Chhattisgarh.

Upon his release from Raipur Central Jail on April 18 2011, Sen immediately called for a dialogue between the Maoists and the government and reminded us of so many other political prisoners languishing in the country’s jails. In the video showing Sen being greeted by his supporters after his release he enthusiastically joins in giving slogans saying, ‘Shankar Guha Niyogi Zindabad’. But the supporters soon after break into ‘Binayak Sen Zindabad’. You could immediately see this embarrassed look on his face, totally disapproving this iconisation.

Indeed, Sen seems very far off from celebrating his release as a major victory for democracy or a boost forIndia’s image as a modern democracy and so on. He seems really far off from the dominant discourse which seeks to cleanse the ‘Binayak Sen issue’ of the harsh realities of India’s dirty war, the inequality and the injustice towards the adivasis and their suffering. Continue reading Chronicle of a Bail Foretold: Saroj Giri →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Debates, Government, Law, Politics

Is It Nineteen Eighty Four Already?

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On 9 April 2011, 11 members of the English Department of Delhi University (almost the entire Department) resigned from various (non-statutory) work committees within the Department. They carried on all their other duties, including teaching, regardless. This mass resignation followed repeated requests from them to their Head of Department to call a meeting of the Department Council of the English Department. By resigning (only from the non-statutory committees), the members of the Department were hoping to bring largely symbolic and moral pressure to bear on the Head, to perform his duties!!

You know something is seriously wrong with a workplace when members of Department have to bring pressure to bear on a Head to perform his or her regular, statutory duties. You should really smell a rat when it’s not the minions and juniors but the bosses at the highest levels that are bending and twisting rules to their advantage; publicly ignoring long-standing statutes and conventions; inventing new ones almost overnight; and practising selective amnesia about procedures.

Continue reading Is It Nineteen Eighty Four Already? →

Debates, Media politics, Movements, Politics, Scams

Anna At Nehru Place?!: Aditya Sarkar

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Guest post by ADITYA SARKAR

On the afternoon of 25 March, Nehru Place felt different. The rectangular maze of shops and offices wore its usual air of busy activity, but instead of being concentrated around a million acts of individualized consumption as it normally is, the energy humming through the place circulated around a public spectacle. Visitors, bystanders, and low-paid office and shop employees clustered in the central square, and on the balconies of the first floor, their gazes fixed on a street play taking place right outside the central Bajaj office. About twenty young men and women, all dressed in black, raised fists, shouted slogans, and mocked the usual suspects – MNCs, netas, and plutocrats, in the name of the aam aadmi. Shop after shop emptied out. Hundreds of people watched, many applauding loudly. The specific target of this public campaign, though, seemed opaque to most, as the publicity leaflets circulated rather more sluggishly than the sentiments evoked by the performers.

Continue reading Anna At Nehru Place?!: Aditya Sarkar →

Countryside, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Movements

The Making of an Authority: Anna Hazare in Ralegan Siddhi

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(I am posting a much longer version of my previous article that will also respond to some of the queries and comments. This article is based on my research, field work and interviews in Ralegan Sidhi since 1991.)

This article is focussed mainly on understanding how exactly the rural environmental works in the journey of Anna Hazare and Ralegan Sidhi are articulated within a coherent ideological framework, to acquire their legitimacy and authority, which are fed by, and fed into, some dominant political cultures of the state. Any political theory and practice, built on this framework, can open the possibilities of a strengthening of the conservative and nationalist forces. Certainly, the ideology of a rural organisation or a movement and its appeal is not based on a single plank. In the case of Anna Hazare and his programme, though the developmental and the environmental works form the core of its ideological structures, it includes other issues as well. At times it provides a different scale of activities to its audience, but eventually reinforces its principal ideological framework. Some understanding of the ideological DNA of the green villagers and the fellow environmental travellers also gives us an idea as to what elements of this endeavour and ideology motivate villagers and environmentalists.

The Historical Context of Maharashtra
Anna Hazare and Ralegan Siddhi are not a new addition to the social history of the Maharashtra state. Indeed, the movement has borrowed many features from the historical evolution of the region, and the political culture of the state, with which it negotiates at different levels. There are many factors at play, though three are of prime importance in the context of this paper: (i) nativism and regionalism in Maharashtrian culture and politics (ii) structure and nature of caste and class and (iii) agrarian economy and local environmentalism.
Continue reading The Making of an Authority: Anna Hazare in Ralegan Siddhi →

Debates, Excavation, Mirror Worlds, Politics

Joseph Lelyveld’s “Great Soul” or How to Damn with Faint Praise: Mridu Rai

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Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India by Joseph Lelyveld; Alfred A. Knopf, 425 pp., $28.95

Guest post by MRIDU RAI

Joseph Lelyveld’s book was banned in Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s native state of Gujarat a day after its publication in the United States. On 30 March 2011, the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party that rules the state, led by its chief minister Narendra Modi, charged Lelyveld with committing “the most reprehensible act by hurting the sentiments of millions of people and demanded that he tender a public apology”. The provocation for this proscription was the mention in some reviews that Lelyveld had suggested Gandhi was bisexual and racist. At the very least, it is surprising that the first public outcry in India against the review — the book has not yet been released in India — should come from the Hindu Right, the political constituency of Nathuram Godse who assassinated Gandhi on 30 January 1948. This must join the many ironies Lelyveld’s book brings out, not least that of latter-day politicians in India (and South Africa) claiming to be his heirs and yet honouring his teaching, if at all, only in their most diluted and least recognizable versions. As Lelyveld writes in his author’s notes, ‘‘[I]t was hard to see what remained of him beyond his nimbus”. Continue reading Joseph Lelyveld’s “Great Soul” or How to Damn with Faint Praise: Mridu Rai →

Countryside, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Movements, Politics, Scams

The Making of Anna Hazare

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[This piece is based on my extensive field work on Anna Hazare and his movement in Ralegan Sidhi over some years and is also a part of my forthcoming book Green and Saffron: Hindu Nationalism and Indian Environmental Politics. MS]

The anti-corruption movement, spearheaded by Anna Hazare, and the passage of the Lokpal Bill have generated unprecedented interest amongst a wide spectrum of society about the ideas, politics and organisations of civil society in general, and Anna Hazare in particular. Hazare’s anti-corruption crusade merits attention not only for its importance in ensuring a corruption-free society, but also due to its multifaceted nature. Hazare’s politics however has to be seen in a larger framework and in a wider historical context. Howsoever laudable the goals of anti-corruption movement in India today, the movement is not beyond the categories of gender, caste, authority, democracy, nationalism and ultra-nationalism. Far from transcending them, the movement is transforming and being transformed by the implicit deployment of such categories. I wish to place Hazare in the larger context of his environmental journeys, where the elusive but crucial element is one of authority that is exercised due to a large degree of consent and conservatism. Yet, almost all accounts on him, largely celebratory in nature, do not examine the ideology and politics of his works. These are crucial not only to critically assess the present and the future of our anti-corruption movements, but also to interrogate certain brands of civil society activisms and environmentalisms. Continue reading The Making of Anna Hazare →

Culture, Debates, Government, Media politics, Movements, Scams

‘Anna Hazare’, Democracy and Politics: A Response to Shuddhabrata Sengupta

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In an earlier post, (hits to which have broken all records on Kafila), Shuddhabrata Sengupta has raised some extremely important points in the context of the media-simulated coverage and celebrations around the ‘Anna Hazare’ movement. I agree with the central argument made by Shuddha – which is about the authoritarian, indeed totalitarian implications of the proposed Jan Lokpal Bill (though, as many commentators to the post have pointed out, the Bill really remains to be drafted and passed in parliament).

I have no doubt whatsoever that any demand that simply seeks a law of the sort that has been raised by the movement (even in the proposed form), is completely counterproductive. Indeed, it is naive. Matters like corruption or communalism cannot simply be legislated out of existence through tougher laws. Inevitably, they will lead us up to China type situations where you will end up demanding summary trials and executions. Even in the best of cases, a law and state-dependent mode of addressing such problems, adds to the powers of a corrupt bureaucracy. I also agree with his (and Bobby Kunhu’s) criticisms of some aspects of what they have both chosen to designate as ‘mass hysteria’ of sorts – I certainly do not agree with this description but that need not detain us here. I am  interested in something else here and that has to do with the way the movement has struck a chord among unprecedentedly large numbers of people – mainly middle class people I am sure, but the support for it is not just confined to them. In fact, on the third day of the dharna at Jantar Mantar I received an excited call from a CPM leader who works among the peasants in villages of northern India in the Kisan Sabha, about the response to the movement he had encountered in his constituency. I doubt that this was a support simulated either by the government or by the electronic media. Continue reading ‘Anna Hazare’, Democracy and Politics: A Response to Shuddhabrata Sengupta →

Culture, Debates, Media politics, Movements, Politics, Scams

Of a Few, By a Few, For the Few: Bobby Kunhu

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Guest post by BOBBY KUNHU, carrying the debate on the Anti-corruption movement forward

I am distinctly uncomfortable with predictions – using either scientific or unscientific tools. For me it smacks of charlatanry – from astrology to psephology to stock market speculation. But with the charade that was unleashed for the past few days on news television by the mainstream media and of course at Jantar Mantar and a few other town squares across the “mainstream” Indian political landscape by Anna Hazare’s fast – I did dare to make an attempt – both at prediction and more comfortably with dissent. I foretold the outcome of the fast tableau at an emergency meeting that was convened by some co-travellers at the Salem Citizen’s Forum to debate on whether and how to show solidarity to Anna Hazare…

…Well, it is not just Anna Hazare and his team who won this match comfortably. All actors who joined the show have won the match. Everyone – the “civil society” that sat on fast at Jantar Mantar and other places, the Corporate media, the glamour world, the Government, political establishment of all hues and shades – everyone who bothered to join the game. It was like bathing in the Ganges during the Maha Kumbh – everyone’s sins were washed away. And of course nobody in their right minds regardless of political affiliations or ideologies could take a position “for corruption”!!! A veritable Bush-ian position — either you are with Anna Hazare or you are with corruption. And yes, India Incorporated has won the match and it is time for celebrations!

Read the full post on Countermedia

Bad ideas, Debates, Government, Law, Media politics, Politics

At the Risk of Heresy: Why I am not Celebrating with Anna Hazare

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At the risk of heresy, let me express my profound unease at the crescendo of euphoria surrounding the ‘Anna Hazare + Jan Lokpal Bill’ phenomenon as it has unfolded on Jantar Mantar in New Delhi and across several hysterical TV stations over the last few days.

This time around, I have to say that the print media has acted (upto now) with a degree of restraint that I think is commendable. Partly, this has to do with the different natures of the two media. If you have to write even five hundred words about the Jan Lokpal bill, you run out of platitudes against corruption in the first sentence (and who can speak ‘for’ corruption anyway?) and after that you have to begin thinking about what the bill actually says, and the moment you do that, you cannot but help consider the actual provisions and their implications. On television on the other hand, you never have to speak for more than a sound-byte, (and the anchor can just keep repeating himself or herself, because that is the anchor’s job) and the accumulation of pious vox-pop sound bytes ‘against corruption’ leads to a tsunami of ‘sentiment’ that brooks no dissent. Continue reading At the Risk of Heresy: Why I am not Celebrating with Anna Hazare →

Centre watch, Debates, Identities

Corruption has its Caste in the Judiciary: All India Confederation of SC/ST Organisations

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This press release come from the ALL INDIA CONFEDERATION OF SC/ST ORGANISATIONS

New Delhi, April 4, 2011.

Dr. Udit Raj, National Chairman of All India Confederation of SC/ST Organisations, said that corruption has its caste. The way the former Chief Justice of India, K. G. Balakrishnan and former Chief Justice of Karnataka, P.D. Dinakaran, are being treated, there is no doubt that corruption knows the caste. Here argument is not to absolve these people but to expose hypocrisy and double speak. The Supreme Court hastened to admit petition against K.G. Balakrishnan but why not in other cases? Continue reading Corruption has its Caste in the Judiciary: All India Confederation of SC/ST Organisations →

Culture, Debates, Everyday Life, Identities, Left watch

Why so serious?: Anuj Bhuwania

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Guest post by ANUJ BHUWANIA

Cellphone videos of the celebrations at India Gate after India won the semi-final against Pakistan

 

So cricket is the opiate of the Indian masses, and India’s left-liberals (henceforth LLs) can’t deal with it. Or with popular cinema or religion, for that matter. All of which are things that these oh-so-serious people can’t quite seem to fathom. The only cinema you should enjoy are art house/multiplex films with the right ‘social message’, the only religion you can profess is Sufism and the only cricket you are allowed to enjoy is West Indies winning a test match, because CLR James has apparently said it’s ‘empowering’ or  ‘anti-imperialist’ or some such. These trivialities – cinema, religion, cricket – are just there to distract people from the really important issues. We should all only obsess about ‘important’ topics like nuclear energy, the 2G spectrum scam or the UID. Continue reading Why so serious?: Anuj Bhuwania →

Debates, Empire/ Imperialism, Frontiers, Identities, Mirror Worlds

Why Bangladesh?: Jyoti Rahman

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Guest post by JYOTI RAHMAN

Singing Amar Shonar Bangla with the whole stadium — the highest point during a cricket match attended by fellow blogger Rumi Ahmed.

For those of us born in Bangladesh, which turns 40 today, along with the red-and-green flag, there is an instinctive, natural identification with Amar Shonar Bangla. Less recognised is the fascinating history of the song, which also tells us the twists and turns in the history of the 20th century Bengal. Continue reading Why Bangladesh?: Jyoti Rahman →