Contrary to the expectations of his killers – part of the rightwing fanatic movement in the country who had hatched a conspiracy to eliminate him – the mission he initiated, the work he led continues unabated. Thousands of new activists have joined the movement.
Here focus of the discussion is on ‘ Challenges before Rationalist Movement in the Country ‘
This essay pursues the question of how people shaped by multiple, overlapping civilizational strands, different histories, and different conceptions of the true and the good might learn to inhabit a common political world through the formation of civic dispositions. It is thus about a process of the formation of subjectivity animated by the need to inhabit a common political world. In doing so, it explores the crossroads in a modern Indian city as an allegory of some of the problems and possibilities.
At the beginning, there was no chaos. People went about their quiet ways, across each other, sometimes meeting, sometimes not. Vehicles were few and paths were naturally chosen. Increasing traffic brought paved roads and intersections where people went about their different goals crossing paths. Continue reading Policing the Crossroads – Exploring a Political Allegory: R Srivatsan→
Ravi Sinha is an activist-scholar who has been associated with progressive movements for around five decades. Trained as a theoretical physicist, Dr. Ravi has a doctoral degree from MIT, Cambridge, USA. He worked as a physicist at University of Maryland, College Park, USA, at Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad and at Gujarat University, Ahmedabad before resigning from the job to devote himself full time to organizing and theorizing. He is the principal author of the book, Globalization of Capital, published in 1997, co-founder of the Hindi journal, Sandhan, and one of the founders and a leading member of New Socialist Initiative
Theme :India in the World – Mostly Through Lens of Iran War
Speaker : Ravi Sinha
Abstract : The unipolar world that came into existence at the end of the Cold War is on the way out and a new world order, potentially a multipolar one, is in the offing. This epochal change, as evidenced in the miraculous rise of China and the re-emergence of Russia on the world stage, appears to have gained acceleration with the war in West Asia in which the Iranian nation has handed an astonishingly courageous response to the aggressors. A broad framework to understand this epochal transition was presented in a study group by Comrade Ravi Sinha
Part 1 of this video contains the basic presentation followed by further elaboration of the argument in the Q/A session in Part 2. New Socialist Initiative (NSI)
[This concluding essay of the series in Kafila titled Decolonial Imaginations. Links to the previous essays are given at the end.
The terms ‘decolonization’ or ‘decolonial’ have become quite critical now, given that the impulse of justice lies at the core of these concepts. Neither postcolonial nor decolonial perspectives are compatible with right-wing ideologies but the fact that Hindutva ideologues in India and the rightwing globally are now trying to appropriate that language makes it seem to some that the very idea of the postcolonial or decolonial is suspect. We believe that this demonizing of decolonial theory from a position defensive of the European Enlightenment needs to be unpacked in the interests of a mutually productive debate. Kafila has been publishing a series of interventions on what the idea of the decolonial imagination involves, locating decolonial theory as speaking from the margins, drawing attention to identities which the orthodox Left subsumed under ‘class’ and which the rightwing in India seeks to assimilate into Brahminism. Additionally the orthodox Left’s rejection of spiritual beliefs and inability to engage with them is also a factor that may have produced the space for right wing appropriations of a field marked “religion”.
We hope that these interventions will clear the ground for productive conversations on the Left rather than polarised and accusatory claims that mark some spurious claims to ‘correctness’.]
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In a superbly crafted, and provocative, essay titled ‘In Defense of Presentism,’ the historian David Armitage (2023) has tried to re-present the prospects of ‘presentism’ for historians particularly (even though the essay has its lessons for various practitioners across domains, critical or otherwise). As he notes: ‘Historians are trained to reject presentism: we are likely to argue that our duty is to the past and its inhabitants – and not to the present and certainly not to the future.’ But, as he shows with great analytical acuity and detail, historians are deploying the word ‘presentism’ in a variety of ways, which he then goes on to unravel, while making a case for what historians ought to be opposing and what about the present they can comfortably be accepting. My brief is surely not to detail the intricacies of Armitage’s argument for my readers here – although I would urge them to read and absorb the essay themselves (even as my moves here have been made possible by it). Rather, my effort is to quickly address some critical aspects of the ‘presentism’ that underwrites contemporary scholarship in India (and elsewhere) – although, again, for the purposes of this formulation, I shall limit myself to Meera Nanda (2025) and the terms of her critique of postcolonial and decolonial theory (henceforth PDT). My own relationship with PDT has been an ambivalent one – and, hopefully, a recent contribution will clarify that (Hegde 2025) – and there are also aspects of the critique mounted by Meera Nanda that I agree with. But this is not the ground that I will be traversing here in this short note. Continue reading A Shadowed Present and the Onus of Thought – Remarks, Non-Polemical or Otherwise: Sasheej Hegde→
[This post is the ninth – and penultimate – essay of the series in Kafila titled Decolonial Imaginations. Links to the previous essays are given at the end.
The terms ‘decolonization’ or ‘decolonial’ have become quite critical now, given that the impulse of justice lies at the core of these concepts. Neither postcolonial nor decolonial perspectives are compatible with right-wing ideologies but the fact that Hindutva ideologues in India and the rightwing globally are now trying to appropriate that language makes it seem to some that the very idea of the postcolonial or decolonial is suspect. We believe that this demonizing of decolonial theory from a position defensive of the European Enlightenment needs to be unpacked in the interests of a mutually productive debate. Kafila has been publishing a series of interventions on what the idea of the decolonial imagination involves, locating decolonial theory as speaking from the margins, drawing attention to identities which the orthodox Left subsumed under ‘class’ and which the rightwing in India seeks to assimilate into Brahminism. Additionally the orthodox Left’s rejection of spiritual beliefs and inability to engage with them is also a factor that may have produced the space for right wing appropriations of a field marked “religion”.
We hope that these interventions will clear the ground for productive conversations on the Left rather than polarised and accusatory claims that mark some spurious claims to ‘correctness’.]
Much has already been said in this set of essays on the difference between two kinds of Indian responses to colonial western modernity. These responses can be classified as the left leaning post(de)-colonial theories and the right-wing responses that may also be classified, by some, as post(de)-colonial theory. This set of essays are in conversations around the allegation that the former feeds into the latter. It is evident to many of us doing post(de)-colonial theory on the left that the difference between the two is unmistakable. Yet, this is missed by many on the left, leading to much misrepresentation; and by many on the right, leading to much appropriation. We also know that the responses to modernity from post(de)-colonial theories on the left are fractured on multiple axes, religion and faith being a major one. Due to the common worlds we inhabit, it is indeed possible for much confusion to occur. I think the act of demarcating the players, the fields, and the actions of the oeuvres, the right and the left is important, especially for a pedagogic purpose. Each generation seeks clarification in the classroom on several of these confusions and debates. While demarcating the difference regularly and rigorously is an important intellectual exercise for everyone in the discourse, doing this is also an ethical responsibility, particularly for those who do not wish to be either misrepresented or appropriated, which is basically those who are not bedfellows with the orthodox left and definitely not with the orthodox right. The demarcation is required to be done in multiple domains of theory as well as practice. This set of essays seeks to precisely do that. Continue reading Left, Right, Left – Notes on Radical Post/De-Coloniality: Gita Chadha→
[This post is the eighth essay of the series in Kafila titled Decolonial Imaginations. Links to the previous essays are given at the end.
The terms ‘decolonization’ or ‘decolonial’ have become quite critical now, given that the impulse of justice lies at the core of these concepts. Neither postcolonial nor decolonial perspectives are compatible with right-wing ideologies but the fact that Hindutva ideologues in India and the rightwing globally are now trying to appropriate that language makes it seem to some that the very idea of the postcolonial or decolonial is suspect. We believe that this demonizing of decolonial theory from a position defensive of the European Enlightenment needs to be unpacked in the interests of a mutually productive debate. Kafila has been publishing a series of interventions on what the idea of the decolonial imagination involves, locating decolonial theory as speaking from the margins, drawing attention to identities which the orthodox Left subsumed under ‘class’ and which the rightwing in India seeks to assimilate into Brahminism. Additionally the orthodox Left’s rejection of spiritual beliefs and inability to engage with them is also a factor that may have produced the space for right wing appropriations of a field marked “religion”.
We hope that these interventions will clear the ground for productive conversations on the Left rather than polarised and accusatory claims that mark some spurious claims to ‘correctness’.]
When I first encountered postcolonial theory as a young scholar, it felt like an opening into a new way of understanding the world. Much of my introduction came through Indian thinkers, some of whom were not located in India, yet their work spoke powerfully to questions of colonial legacies, subjectivity, and the politics of knowledge. These early engagements helped me grasp the goals of postcolonial scholarship: to make visible the structures of power that colonialism left behind and to explore the ways in which it continues to shape our systems of knowledge and self-representation. Over time, however, I noticed a subtle shift; the language of postcolonial studies seems to have receded somewhat, while the term decolonial has gained prominence as a way to address questions of knowledge and authority in the present moment. Other contributors to this blog series have traced the rise and relative decline of postcolonial thinking in South Asia. I still resonate with postcolonial analysis, and have used it within my own work, but for the purposes of reflecting on the current politics of knowledge in Indian universities, I am choosing to engage now with the decolonial project.
[This post is the seventh essay of the series in Kafila titled Decolonial Imaginations. Links to the previous essays are given at the end.
The terms ‘decolonization’ or ‘decolonial’ have become quite critical now, given that the impulse of justice lies at the core of these concepts. Neither postcolonial nor decolonial perspectives are compatible with right-wing ideologies but the fact that Hindutva ideologues in India and the rightwing globally are now trying to appropriate that language makes it seem to some that the very idea of the postcolonial or decolonial is suspect. We believe that this demonizing of decolonial theory from a position defensive of the European Enlightenment needs to be unpacked in the interests of a mutually productive debate. Kafila will be publishing a series of interventions on what the idea of the decolonial imagination involves, locating decolonial theory as speaking from the margins, drawing attention to identities which the orthodox Left subsumed under ‘class’ and which the rightwing in India seeks to assimilate into Brahminism. Additionally the orthodox left’s rejection of spiritual beliefs and inability to engage with them is also a factor that may have produced the space for right wing appropriations of a field marked “religion”.
We hope that these interventions will clear the ground for productive conversations on the left rather than polarised and accusatory claims.]
It is impossible to think of modernity and colonialism, without thinking of their third sibling – science. They are not just siblings, in fact, but a set of triplets which took birth within the same western context and period – and hence, the adjectives ‘modern’ and ‘western’ are used to qualify science, often by the colonizers themselves. Just as the notion of ‘savage native’ was a part of colonial construction, so was the idea of ‘modern science’. Not only did the colonial powers conquer people and knowledge systems across the world, but they also established hegemony within their own societies, colonizing them from within. This was done using complex mechanisms of power, control and appropriation. Continue reading Colonialism, Modernity and Science: K. Sridhar→
[This post is the sixth essay of the series in Kafila titled Decolonial Imaginations. Links to the previous essays are given at the end.
The terms ‘decolonization’ or ‘decolonial’ have become quite critical now, given that the impulse of justice lies at the core of these concepts. Neither postcolonial nor decolonial perspectives are compatible with right-wing ideologies but the fact that Hindutva ideologues in India and the rightwing globally are now trying to appropriate that language makes it seem to some that the very idea of the postcolonial or decolonial is suspect. We believe that this demonizing of decolonial theory from a position defensive of the European Enlightenment needs to be unpacked in the interests of a mutually productive debate. Kafila will be publishing a series of interventions on what the idea of the decolonial imagination involves, locating decolonial theory as speaking from the margins, drawing attention to identities which the orthodox Left subsumed under ‘class’ and which the rightwing in India seeks to assimilate into Brahminism. Additionally the orthodox left’s rejection of spiritual beliefs and inability to engage with them is also a factor that may have produced the space for right wing appropriations of a field marked “religion”.
We hope that these interventions will clear the ground for productive conversations on the left rather than polarised and accusatory claims.]
This short essay builds on the articles published in this series and has already explored the various ways in which the concept of de-colonization is articulated, appropriated and adapted in various historical contexts in India and elsewhere. This note aims to map, in a preliminary fashion, the divergent engagements with questions concerning caste across three key groups – colonialists, nationalists (including the Hindutva nationalists), and postcolonial and decolonial practitioners in the last two centuries. This note does not purport to break new empirical ground but instead assembles and juxtaposes existing academic and public arguments to construct a focused framework for comparison.
It is important to begin with the now established argument that concepts are not static but dynamic entities, formed, transformed and deployed along historical processes. In larger Humanities and Social Science disciplines, historians, philosophers, anthropologists and linguists have increasingly shifted the question from ‘what does a concept or a category or just a noun mean’ to ‘what does it do’. This shift posits that meaning is not a stable core but a secondary effect created from practice through a process of ‘densification’. We can observe this in Foucault’s inquiries into the concept of madness or Wittgenstein’s exploration of the performative nature of language. While the dominant forces have the power to deploy a category more widely and to limit its interpretations or in other words have the power to solidify and concretize the uses and effects of the category, they cannot guarantee to reduce this category to a singular use/meaning or limit its interpretation. Hence the importance of the analysis of the travel and transformation of categories in various routes, its adaptations and mutations across various historical contexts and times. Continue reading Decolonizing the ‘Colonial-Brahmanical’ – Thinking outside Modernity: Sunandan K N→
[This post is the fifth essay of the series in Kafila titled Decolonial Imaginations. Links to the previous essays are given at the end.
The terms ‘decolonization’ or ‘decolonial’ have become quite critical now, given that the impulse of justice lies at the core of these concepts. Neither postcolonial nor decolonial perspectives are compatible with right-wing ideologies but the fact that Hindutva ideologues in India and the rightwing globally are now trying to appropriate that language makes it seem to some that the very idea of the postcolonial or decolonial is suspect. We believe that this demonizing of decolonial theory from a position defensive of the European Enlightenment needs to be unpacked in the interests of a mutually productive debate. Kafila will be publishing a series of interventions on what the idea of the decolonial imagination involves, locating decolonial theory as speaking from the margins, drawing attention to identities which the orthodox Left subsumed under ‘class’ and which the rightwing in India seeks to assimilate into Brahminism. Additionally the orthodox left’s rejection of spiritual beliefs and inability to engage with them is also a factor that may have produced the space for right wing appropriations of a field marked “religion”.
We hope that these interventions will clear the ground for productive conversations on the left rather than polarised and accusatory claims.]
The excerpt published in TheWire of Meera Nanda’s “Decolonising Ourselves into a Hindu Rashtra” argues that postcolonial and decolonial theorists bear the blame, at least in part, for the rise of Hindu nationalism in India. In eschewing “Enlightenment Secular Humanism”, Nanda argues, these theorists have opened epistemic space for right wing ideologues to justify reactionary politics. Furthermore, she argues that the ideas of postcolonial theory have their roots in the “neo-Hindu revivalist strains of anti-colonial nationalism.”, who she identifies with “Gandhi, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, and even Tagore”. These thinkers were apparently seeking an escape from the idea of modernity present in the “legacy of the British Raj”. This, apparently against the “enlightenment thinkers” of India in which she presents a bizarre counter grouping of “Ambedkar, Periyar, Nehru, M.N. Roy, and Narendra Dabholkar”. This opposition that Nanda sets up is so ludicrous to someone who has even spent a minimal amount of time studying our freedom struggle or any of these thinkers that it requires little comment.
[This post by Nivedita Menon is the fourth essay of the series in Kafila titled Decolonial Imaginations. Links to the previous essays are given at the end.
The terms ‘decolonization’ or ‘decolonial’ have become quite critical now, given that the impulse of justice lies at the core of these concepts. Neither postcolonial nor decolonial perspectives are compatible with right-wing ideologies but the fact that Hindutva ideologues in India and the rightwing globally are now trying to appropriate that language makes it seem to some that the very idea of the postcolonial or decolonial is suspect. We believe that this demonizing of decolonial theory from a position defensive of the European Enlightenment needs to be unpacked in the interests of a mutually productive debate. Kafila will be publishing a series of interventions on what the idea of the decolonial imagination involves, locating decolonial theory as speaking from the margins, drawing attention to identities which the orthodox Left subsumed under ‘class’ and which the rightwing in India seeks to assimilate into Brahminism. Additionally the orthodox left’s rejection of spiritual beliefs and inability to engage with them is also a factor that may have produced the space for right wing appropriations of a field marked “religion”.
We hope that these interventions will clear the ground for productive conversations on the left rather than polarised and accusatory claims.]
Introduction
As Hindutva ideologues and the rightwing globally, appropriate the idea of “decolonising”, it seems to many opposed to these trends, that scholarship around decoloniality is itself the problem. Such arguments tie in with earlier ongoing attacks on postcolonial scholarship since the 1990s that virtually accuse it of directly contributing to the rise of the right. Decolonial scholarship is relatively a new arrival in the Anglophone world (since the 2000s), and ever since the rightwing started using that language, the same charges are laid at its door as well. Indeed, the implication (and sometimes outright allegation) is that decolonial/postcolonial scholars were secretly rightwing all along.
This charge I will address in a somewhat different way in the first section, by way of analogies with other bodies of knowledge.
The second section will address another related critique of decolonial thought, that it is “merely epistemic” and does not consider the materiality of structures of power
[This post is the third essay of the series in Kafila titled Decolonial Imaginations. Links to the previous essays are given at the end.
The terms ‘decolonization’ or ‘decolonial’ have become quite critical now, given that the impulse of justice lies at the core of these concepts. Neither postcolonial nor decolonial perspectives are compatible with right-wing ideologies but the fact that Hindutva ideologues in India and the rightwing globally are now trying to appropriate that language makes it seem to some that the very idea of the postcolonial or decolonial is suspect. We believe that this demonizing of decolonial theory from a position defensive of the European Enlightenment needs to be unpacked in the interests of a mutually productive debate. Kafila will be publishing a series of interventions on what the idea of the decolonial imagination involves, locating decolonial theory as speaking from the margins, drawing attention to identities which the orthodox Left subsumed under ‘class’ and which the rightwing in India seeks to assimilate into Brahminism. Additionally the orthodox left’s rejection of spiritual beliefs and inability to engage with them is also a factor that may have produced the space for right wing appropriations of a field marked “religion”.
We hope that these interventions will clear the ground for productive conversations on the left rather than polarised and accusatory claims.]
Introduction
Anti-colonial thought is under attack. Some scholars have accused decolonial and postcolonial theories of nativism. Interestingly, the phenomenon that provoked this accusation is stranger than the accusation itself. The global North and the global South have witnessed an unlikely alliance of anti-colonial rhetoric and right-wing discourse. While the Hindu Right in India deems Muslims to be colonial invaders, the Right Wing in Europe constructs the influx of refugees as a colonial invasion, which will lead to a ‘great replacement’ of White Europeans by West Asian and African refugees. The solution – ‘decolonise’ by expelling the colonisers and reviving the ‘glorious’ ‘indigenous’ past. This invokes several questions: How do European right-wing groups lay claims on decolonisation? Are there common links between these right-wing ‘decolonisation’ projects? More importantly, does the presence of anti-colonial language in right-wing discourse automatically translate to the conclusion that postcolonial and decolonial theories are inherently nativist?
I undertake two broad tasks. First, I lay forth the ‘anti-colonial’ rhetoric of these right-wing projects. Secondly, I condense their similarities and use them to show why anti-colonial thought should not be seen to be irredeemably polluted by this misappropriation.
Before I trace the right-wing appropriation of anti-colonial language, a caveat about the usage of the terms anti-colonial, postcolonial and decolonial is in order. I use anti-colonial thought to broadly bundle postcolonial and decolonial theories. The reason being that both theoretical schools present varying critiques of the socio-cultural and intellectual legacies of colonialism. The difference in the kind of critique separates postcolonialism from decolonial theory. Continue reading Anti-colonial Thought and the Global Right – An untenable alliance: Ishan Fouzdar→
[This post by Aditya Nigam is the second essay of the series in Kafila, titled Decolonial Imaginations. The first essay can be read here.
The terms ‘decolonization’ or ‘decolonial’ have become quite critical now, given that the impulse of justice lies at the core of these concepts. Neither postcolonial nor decolonial perspectives are compatible with right-wing ideologies but the fact that Hindutva ideologues in India and the rightwing globally are now trying to appropriate that language makes it seem to some that the very idea of the postcolonial or decolonial is suspect. We believe that this demonizing of decolonial theory from a position defensive of the European Enlightenment needs to be unpacked in the interests of a mutually productive debate. Kafila will be publishing a series of interventions on what the idea of the decolonial imagination involves, locating decolonial theory as speaking from the margins, drawing attention to identities which the orthodox Left subsumed under ‘class’ and which the rightwing in India seeks to assimilate into Brahminism. Additionally the orthodox left’s rejection of spiritual beliefs and inability to engage with them is also a factor that may have produced the space for right wing appropriations of a field marked “religion”.
We hope that these interventions will clear the ground for productive conversations on the left rather than polarised and accusatory claims.]
The question of decolonization/ decoloniality keeps surfacing periodically in ill-informed writings and tracts. The target may be postcolonial studies or more recently, decolonial theory, but the attack is always launched in the name of “the Enlightenment” (notice the definite article). The idea behind making what was the European Enlightenment into “the Enlightenment” for the whole world is to claim – as has been done for a couple of centuries since – that the world was lying in “darkness” and “superstition” before the dazzling light of the Enlightenment rescued the inhabitants of the different continents. What were Latin Christendom’s (Europe) “dark middle ages” became the convenient and imagined dark ages of all societies in the world.
[This post is the first of a series in Kafila, titled Decolonial Imaginations.
The terms ‘decolonization’ or ‘decolonial’ have become quite critical now, given that the impulse of justice lies at the core of these concepts. Neither postcolonial nor decolonial perspectives are compatible with right-wing ideologies but the fact that Hindutva ideologues in India and the rightwing globally are now trying to appropriate that language makes it seem to some that the very idea of the postcolonial or decolonial is suspect. We believe that this demonizing of decolonial theory from a position defensive of the European Enlightenment needs to be unpacked in the interests of a mutually productive debate. Kafila will be publishing a series of interventions on what the idea of the decolonial imagination involves, locating decolonial theory as speaking from the margins, drawing attention to identities which the orthodox Left subsumed under ‘class’ and which the rightwing in India seeks to assimilate into Brahminism. Additionally the orthodox left’s rejection of spiritual beliefs and inability to engage with them is also a factor that may have produced the space for right wing appropriations of a field marked “religion”.
We hope that these interventions will clear the ground for productive conversations on the left rather than polarised and accusatory claims.]
This article comes as a response born from a deep sense of intellectual anguish and frustration. It is a rebuttal to a YouTube video titled The Left’s Accidental Gift to Hindu Nationalism posted by one of India’s leading independent news portals, The Wire on 14th August 2025. The video attempts to summarize Meera Nanda’s critique of Postcolonial Left as elaborated in her latest treatise, Postcolonial Theory and the Making of Hindu Nationalism: The Wages of Unreason (2025). While I have read the newly published work, including the excerpt published in The Wire which have been shared widely in popular social media platforms, this piece restricts itself to the Video which comprehensively outlines Nanda’s arguments. An extensive engagement with the critique that Nanda mounts is reserved for some other time.
The Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union are long behind us, and we’re now hurtling toward a tri-polar world dominated by America, Russia, and China. These three powers vy to shape global influence, often competing but sometimes colluding. As the saying goes, “When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.” So, the central question for this lecture is: What path are the nations of South Asia—including Afghanistan and Iran—likely to take? What alternatives and tools do they possess to navigate this landscape? Most importantly, what vision of society and power should guide them toward a viable future?
Speaker :
Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy is a nuclear physicist, author, and a prominent activist who is particularly concerned with promotion of freedom of speech, secularism, scientific temper and education. He is the founder-director of The Black Hole in Islamabad and as the head of Mashal Books in Lahore, he leads a major translation effort to produce books in Urdu that promote modern thought, human rights, and emancipation of women.
Prof Hoodbhoy received his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from MIT and has taught physics and mathematics at Forman Christian College-University in Lahore, at the Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) in Islamabad and later at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).
He is a recipient of the Baker Award for Electronics and the Abdus Salam Prize for Mathematics. He was visiting professor at MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Maryland. In 2003 he was awarded UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for the popularization of science.
Here is a list of a few of his publications :
– Pakistan: Origins, Identity and Future, published by Routledge (London, New York), 2023. – Confronting the Bomb – Pakistani and Indian Scientists Speak Out, (edited) Oxford University Press, 2013. – Education and the State – Fifty Years of Pakistan, (edited) Oxford University Press, 1998. – Islam & Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, published by ZED Books, London, in 1991 with translations in Turkish, Malaysian, Indonesian, Arabic, Spanish, Sindhi, and Urdu. – Proceedings of School on Fundamental Physics and Cosmology, co-edited with A. Ali, World Scientific, Singapore, 1991.
[ YouTube links of Ravi Sinha’s Informal talk in Lucknow in April 2025 on “Indianity and Modernity”. Credits to Kumar Sauvir for recording, editing and posting. The title and intro are also by him ]
[ Ravi Sinha is an activist-scholar who has been associated with progressive movements for around five decades. Trained as a theoretical physicist, Dr. Ravi has a doctoral degree from MIT, Cambridge, USA. He worked as a physicist at University of Maryland, College Park, USA, at Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad and at Gujarat University, Ahmedabad before resigning from the job to devote himself full time to organizing and theorizing. He is the principal author of the book, Globalization of Capital, published in 1997, co-founder of the Hindi journal, Sandhan, and one of the founders and a leading member of New Socialist Initiative.]
Theme: Class, Inequality, and the Current Political Moment in China and India
This talk is based on a recently published book by the Oxford University Press – Class and Inequality in China and India, 1950-2010. China and India have seen a significant revival over the last three decades in terms of their place in the world economy. Two and a half centuries ago, they contributed 50 percent of the world output; after suffering a decline thereafter, their share fell to a paltry 9 percent in 1950 but has since resurged to over 25 percent today. Their growth and inequality experiences diverged for three decades following India’s independence (1947) and the Chinese revolution (1949). Thereafter, there are remarkable underlying similarities in the experiences of both countries, especially in terms of their rising inequality patterns analyzed through a class lens. Vamsi demonstrates that the mutual interconnectedness between Chinese and Indian growth and inequality dynamics and the transformation and evolution of global capitalism is key to understanding the within-country inequality dynamics in both countries over the 1950-2010 period. Based on this analysis of class-based inequalities, Vamsi reflects on the current political moment in both countries, from a political economy perspective.
Speaker :Prof Vamsi Vakulabharanam Vamsi Vakulabharanam is Co-Director of the Asian Political Economy Program and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has previously taught at the University of Hyderabad (2008-14) and the City University of New York (2004-07). His recent research focuses on inequality in India and China and the political economy of Indian cities through the axes of gender, caste, class, and religion. In the past, he has also worked on agrarian change in developing economies, agrarian cooperatives, and the relationship between economic development and inequality. Vakulabharanam was awarded the Amartya Sen award in 2013 by the Indian Council of Social Science Research.
,,The rewriting spree has not left untouched RSS’s own history itself.
The biggest manifestation of this exercise is evident in the way we have before us a new look Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar (1888-1940) founder member of RSS and its first Supremo.
He is being called as ’‘born patriot’’, one amongst the ‘great revolutionaries who fought for India’s independence, ’’social reformer’ , ’maker of Modern India’ etc etc. disregarding the fact that all his life he focussed his attention to build Hindu Unity, to usher India into a Hindu Rashtra and never once gave a call to the organisation he founded with others – namely RSS – that it joins the anti colonial struggle. He did go to jail during the anti colonial struggle but not as a member of the RSS but as a member of Congress Party.
Many monographs, books .. – are also before us which are trying to emphasise this new image, obliterating many inconvenient aspects of his tumultous life or maintaining tactical silences over them. The latest in series is the way he is being projected as a leader of the “jungle satyagraha” at Pusad, Maharashtra which was organised as part of the Civil Disobedience Movement led by Congress. [10]
आस्था और गंदगी सहयात्री रहते आए हैं। आस्था के तमाम जाने-माने केन्द्रों पर या अपनी आस्था को सेलिब्रेट करने के नाम पर मनाए जाने वाले समारोहों में-प्रचंड ध्वनि प्रदूषण और रौशनी का प्रदूषण आदि के माध्यम से-इसकी मिसाल अक्सर देखने को मिलती है। प्लास्टर ऑफ पेरिस की मूर्तियों से भरे गंदे जलाशय-जिनकी मौजूदगी पानी के ऑक्सीजन की मात्रा पर विपरीत असर डालती है, पानी में ही फेंकी गयी सूखे फूलों की मालाएं आदि आदि से महानगर भी अछूते नहीं रहते हैं।
इस सम्बन्ध में ताज़ी मिसाल महाकुंभ के बहाने से उजागर हुई है, जब केन्द्रीय प्रदूषण नियंत्रण बोर्ड (CPCB) की रिपोर्ट ने इस बात को उजागर किया कि किस तरह प्रयागराज के पानी में उन्हें उच्च स्तर पर मल के जीवाणु मिले हैं, जो किसी भी सूरत में नहाने योग्य नही है। इस सिलसिले में नेशनल ग्रीन टिब्यूनल ने उत्तर प्रदेश प्रदूषण नियंत्रण बोर्ड (UPPCB) के अधिकारियों को तलब भी किया है कि ‘प्रयागराज/इलाहाबाद में गंगा, यमुना के पानी की गुणवत्ता के उल्लंघन को लेकर-उन्होंने जो दिशानिर्दश जारी किए थे उस पर उन्होंने अमल नहीं किया है।
गौरतलब है कि राष्ट्रीय ग्रीन टिब्यूनल (NGT) ने उत्तर प्रदेश प्रदूषण नियंत्रण बोर्ड की इस बात के लिए भी आलोचना की है कि अपनी जो रिपोर्ट उन्होंने प्रस्तुत की है, उसके सैम्पल पुराने है और सभी 12 जनवरी के पहले के-अर्थात कुंभ मेला शुरू होने के पहले के है। ….
…निस्संदेह महाकुंभ के अवसर सीवेज युक्त पानी को लेकर उठे सवाल अब दबना मुश्किल है। सरकार जो भी प्रचार करे, अधिक से अधिक लोग अब इस बात का अनुभव करेंगे कि गंगा किनारे उन्होंने जो ‘पवित्र स्नान’ किया उस वक्त वह पानी कत्तई शुद्ध नहीं था। यात्रियों का एक छोटा सा हिस्सा अब यह कहने का साहस भी जुटाएगा कि किस तरह सत्ताधारी समूह ने उनकी धार्मिक आस्था का दोहन किया है। [ Read the full article here :https://janchowk.com/beech-bahas/the-other-aspect-of-the-holy-bath/]
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 