A Daughter’s Plea For A Better Way to Die: Gowri Parameswaran

11/02/2015 Aarti Sethi 5 Comments

This is a guest post by Gowri Parameswaran on behalf of her mother Sulochana

“Life changes in the instant, the ordinary instant” wrote Joan Didion in her book The Year of Magical Thinking. Didion wrote about her attempts to cope with her husband’s death and her reference was to the moment of his passing. I had picked up the book in JFK and had completed it by the time I reached Chennai. I needed the sustenance that the book seemed to offer; I was coming to see and take care of my mother (Amma we called her) who had been admitted to the hospital with decompensated lungs for the third time in two months. Her heart was too sluggish to pump her blood through the arteries and the fluid had backed up into her lungs; her lungs were decompensated. I remembered the ominous prognosis that one book on Heart Failure had spelled out about this turn of events in her health – that this was a seminal indication that the heart had reached the end of the road. She seemed so normal when I left her in October. The doctor had pronounced her heart healthy under the circumstances.

“Life changes in the instant,

The ordinary instant”. Continue reading A Daughter’s Plea For A Better Way to Die: Gowri Parameswaran →

Bad ideas, Feminism, Right watch, Sex

Open Letter to Hindu Mahasabha – we’ll be there on February 14th!

11/02/2015 Nivedita Menon 15 Comments

GET READY TO MARRY!

To the National President, Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha

Dear Chandra Prakash Ji,

It has come to our notice that you and your self-appointed brigade of protectors of ‘Bharatiya Sanskriti’ have openly vowed to undertake a massive programme on the 14^th of February where you promise to marry off anyone who openly expresses their love, whether on the streets or on Facebook. Since you have taken on this gigantic task of marrying so many people on a single day, we would like you to answer some questions that have ‘unnaturally’ crept into our heads as a result of ‘westernization’.

5d67984a9261b26c3a10a7214ddf55d3

Will you marry a boy to a boy he likes, or a girl to a girl? Will you acknowledge their love for each other, repeal section 377? Or will you send them to jail or Baba Ramdev? Continue reading Open Letter to Hindu Mahasabha – we’ll be there on February 14th! →

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Everyday Life

Fact-Finding Committee on Lay Offs at Tata Consultancy Services Releases Report

11/02/2015 Aditya Nigam 6 Comments

The following is the text of the report released by the Fact Finding Committee that investigated the issue of lay-offs at the Tata Consultancy Services. The committee, which released its report on 6 February in Chennai, consisted of the following members:

Fact finding committee press conf , Chennai

Mr. BRP. Bhaskar, Senior Journalist and Human Rights Activist, Thiruvananthapuram;

Dr. M.Vijayabaskar, Assistant Professor, MIDS, Chennai;

Adv. Bobby Kunhu, Legal Expert, Salem;

Ms. Chandrika Radhakrishnan, Software Professional and Labour Rights Activist, Chennai

Continue reading Fact-Finding Committee on Lay Offs at Tata Consultancy Services Releases Report →

Countryside, Identities, Violence/Conflict

Adivasis in Assam – Extermination without a Camp: Suraj Gogoi and Prasenjit Biswas

11/02/2015 Nivedita Menon 1 Comment

Guest Post by SURAJ GOGOI AND PRASENJIT BISWAS

Repeated genocides in Assam and justification and rationalization of the same can be seen as the severest form of crime against humanity that one can imagine. It is the most reprehensible form of hatred that is committed and perpetually pushed under the carpet. Located in the foothills of Bhutan, the villages where 81 or so Adivasi persons were exterminated in the recent killings by the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit faction) is no less than a genocide. Apparently the motive for such killing is attributed to Adivasi villagers helping the army and police in busting camps of Bodo militants. Seemingly they turn out to be the easy targets for insurgent firepower.

The adivasis, therefore, remain in a state of being exterminated. If camps mark the predicament of a modern fragmented society, one might say that the Adivasis are permanently thrown into shelters and camps as internally displaced. An estimated 2.75 lakh people of Adivasi origin are settled in about 250 camps across Udalguri and Chirang. They are decamped before the act of being camped and by the very act of remaining in the state of being camped they are rightless and defenseless. Herein we find a sense of perennial othering which subverts any democratic attempt to empower them with right and dignity. They are othered in a state of displacement and pushed form their settlements to an uncertain destiny. This continual displacement completes the fate of marginality. The process marks an inner othering of the marginalized that actualizes fragmentation of mainstream social identities of Assam. Continue reading Adivasis in Assam – Extermination without a Camp: Suraj Gogoi and Prasenjit Biswas →

Bad ideas

Modiji suniye, jo Dilli ka mood hai, vohi desh ka mood hai!

10/02/2015 Nivedita Menon 4 Comments

10983414_921021707917116_5374565183841541049_n

Image courtesy Kumar Sundaram

Everyday Life, Politics

My elections days, 2015: Sivamohan Sumathy

09/02/2015 Ahilan Kadirgamar 2 Comments

Guest Post by SIVAMOHAN SUMATHY

campaigning, exciting, tense, nervous, delirium-invested, holding training sessions on the verendah for the immediate neighbouhood, as nobody but appa had voted in any previous presidential election, strangely agreeing with appa on politics for once, passing on all the wild gossip about the mr family, nightmare riddled pre election nights, sleeplessness, inducing drinking, exhilarating, liberating, cautionary, educating vasuki’s children about the elections ( they are keenly interested), near addiction to fb and quarellling with totally unknown friends on it, while another plethora of unknown persons writing in to befriend me, baila sessions, holding candle lit vigils for assassinated journalists, being connected to the universe on election night through thiru, who was on every tweet, every note, every social bleep, planning, writing, tasking for the future, doubts, setting off crackers, taking to singing, questions, pondering profound political questions on the nature of the state, reforms or revolution, gramsci’s historic bloc, not stopping at paradigm shift as most liberal commentators have done with this over used and abused term, not bothering with muslim bashing in europe over charlie whatever, in fact, just a wee bit short of visionary.

no paradigm shift,
no revolution, it is toward …….

they cut the jak tree down in our backyard,
the day after elections.
the parrots displaced again.

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Government, Left watch, Metropolis, Politics, Right watch

An Election of Hope Versus Fear

09/02/2015 Sunalini Kumar 7 Comments

Yes it’s a simplistic dichotomy, but there is really no better way to describe the current Delhi elections. On the one hand, a little ragtag army of Davids behind “Mufflerman”, as his faithful supporters affectionately call him, a person in baggy sweater and sneakers, one you wouldn’t look at twice if you passed him on the road.

Mufflerman Business Standard

Kejriwal

On the other hand, a massively funded, aggressively confident Goliath, openly backed by the corporate bodies and full-page ads, riding a national “Wave” higher than most Tsunamis, topped by the 56-inch chest of “Modiman”, even if recently modestly covered by a 12-lakh rupee vest.

56-inch Modi 78c0d4d3-be9e-4afb-b034-1247529df720wallpaper1

On the one hand, a fearful and awed media establishment donating PR for free to the seemingly invincible King of Gujarat, and on the other, an aam aadmi, a volunteer-cadre run campaign and a palpable vibe of trust and openness on the ground. I know I know, some will say it’s all ‘perception management’ and PR, but barring the googly of the 2 crores party donation thrown at the opportune moment, if Mufflerman’s party was any cleaner, it could have given Lalita ji’s Surf a run for its money. Whatever the result on the 10th (and there is reason to be hawk-eyed about the possibility of tampering as Nivedita Menon’s post has urged), how does anybody not get what a miracle this alone is, in a political economy with a black economy of a size that is higher than the GDPs of most smaller countries? Perhaps this is in fact about hope and fear after all, however clichéd that sounds.

Continue reading An Election of Hope Versus Fear →

Politics

BJP’s bravado on exit polls – do they know something about EVMs that we don’t?

08/02/2015 Nivedita Menon 16 Comments

BJP says exit polls will fall flat on counting day – I wonder where this confidence comes from. Are they counting on the fact that in many booths, whatever party voters selected, their votes were registering in the BJP’s account? After the murkiness of Lok Sabha results especially in Banaras, with EVMs found in officials’ homes before election day and 3 lakh duplicate voters on the lists, the Election Commission’s ‘clarifications’ raising more questions than they answered, such possibilities no longer seem paranoid.

(The Election Commission said that in Banaras it found 6.47 lakh duplicated names, all of which are repeated at least once across the state. The official said, however, that these are not all necessarily fake entries in the rolls. They could be people who share a name. “For instance, a ‘Rajesh, son of Ramesh’, might be found several times in UP,” he said. “We are in the process of checking whether these people are same or different.”

The question is, when the process was to compare both the voter’s as well as his/her father’s name with other voters, how were 6.5 lakh duplicate names found in a constituency with 17 lakh voters?)

But my point in this post is not about electoral rolls, and a growing suspicion among many that the EC is not entirely un-compromised.

My point is that Electronic Voting Machines are extremely problematic from the point of view of exercising the democratic right to vote (not to mention costs) and have been given up by many ‘advanced’ countries after trying them out for some years. Whatever happens in this particular election, it is time for Indian citizens to think seriously about whether EVMs should be retained. Continue reading BJP’s bravado on exit polls – do they know something about EVMs that we don’t? →

Debates, Government, Media politics, Politics

Challenging the West’s Narrative on Sri Lanka’s ‘Victory for Democracy’: Devaka Gunawardena

06/02/2015 Ahilan Kadirgamar 2 Comments

Guest Post by DEVAKA GUNAWARDENA

Of the many pieties that have been promoted in the Western media in the aftermath of Maithripala Sirisena’s victory over incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa in the recent Sri Lankan presidential election, none has been more cherished than the notion that Sri Lanka is now on board with “democracy.”[1] This claim is counter-posed to Sri Lanka’s recent cozy relationship with China and other authoritarian countries. A new Cold War is supposedly being fought, with Sri Lanka’s election reduced to its strategic relevance to policy makers.

At the same time the dominant narrative promoted by Western media and diplomats has been conveniently ignored in other places where it is considered politically unfeasible to support democracy. The same diplomats and officials that criticized the previous Rajapaksa regime have often argued that equally if not more repressive governments in places such as the Middle East are “on the path to democracy.” This claim temporizes the same political expectations that have been applied to Sri Lanka. Continue reading Challenging the West’s Narrative on Sri Lanka’s ‘Victory for Democracy’: Devaka Gunawardena →

Government, Media politics

चुनाव दिल्ली का:बाज़ी मात नहीं!

06/02/2015 apoorvanand 2 Comments

अब यह बात नई नहीं रह गई है. लेकिन है इतनी निराली भारतीय चुनावी राजनीति में कि दुहराने में हर्ज नहीं. दिल्ली के आम जन ने अपना पक्ष चुन लिया है. उसके बारे में खुलकर बोलने में उसे झिझक भी नहीं. आम आदमी पार्टी या झाडू छाप .अब वह किसी छलावे और भुलावे में आने को तैयार नहीं. उसे राजनीति में असभ्यता बुरी लगी है.

उसे यह बात नागवार गुज़री है, जैसा मेट्रो स्टेशन ले जाते ऑटो वाले ने कहा, “दूसरे देश से बुला लिया 26 जनवरी को और केजरीवाल को न्योता नहीं दिया! फिर कहा कि अगर निमंत्रण चाहिए तो हमारी पार्टी में आओ.”

वह बहुत पढ़ा-लिखा नहीं, लेकिन इतना उसे पता है कि आज तक भारतीय संसदीय राजनीति में यह बदतमीजी नहीं की गई.

आपका हो तो 13 दिन का भी होकर भूतपूर्व प्रधानमंत्री हो जाता और दूसरा 49 दिन के बाद भी भूतपूर्व मुख्यमंत्री के लायक शिष्टाचार का हक़दार नहीं! Continue reading चुनाव दिल्ली का:बाज़ी मात नहीं! →

Media politics, Right watch

Statement protesting arrest of Shirin Dalvi, Editor, Awadhnama

05/02/2015 Nivedita Menon 4 Comments

We, members of the Mumbai based human rights group Hum Azaadiyon Ke Haq Mein are disturbed at reports of the multiple cases lodged against Shirin Dalvi, the editor of Awadhnama, Mumbai, and her arrest by Thane district police on January 28, for publishing a news-item on the Charlie Hebdo issue and one of the covers of the magazine on January 17, 2015. We are also shocked at the reports of the continual harassment of Shirin Dalvi.

Responding to readers’ views, she issued a clarification denying any intention to hurt religious sentiments and tendered a public clarification the very next day. However, cases have been registered against her in different police stations in Mumbra and Rabodi (Thane district), Malegaon and Mumbai on charges of violating Sec 295 of the Indian Penal Code (outraging religious feelings by insulting a religion with malicious intent).

While she has sought, and obtained, anticipatory bail in one set of cases from Mumbai Additional Sessions Court judge S D Tekale on January 23, she was arrested in Mumbra, Thane district, and granted bail the same day on Jan 28.

The Mumbai based human rights group Hum Azaadiyon Ke Haq Mein is disturbed at the attempts made to defame her character. Baseless statements appeared in several Urdu newspapers that a colleague had tried to dissuade her from using the Charlie Hebdo cover but the colleague identified was actually not even in office on that day and had resigned a few days ago. Other attempts to defame her included statements that she had joined the RSS women’s wing and was a ‘follower’ of Bangladeshi writer in exile Taslima Nasreen!

Shirin Dalvi is a respected journalist with more than 20 years of experience in Urdu journalism. She is perhaps the only woman editor in Urdu journalism in India, has written on issues concerning women’s rights and politics and is well-known for her literary skill and learning.

The manner in which she is being hounded bodes ill for free debate and discussion and for peaceful resolution of controversy. Besides, the incident is also being used as a pretext to ratchet up polarized public opinion, which is a dangerous game and detrimental to freedom of speech and expression in a democratic society, besides causing immense personal harm and a threat to her life and safety.

We request those who have filed cases against her to accept her clarification in the right spirit with which it has been given and to withdraw all the cases against her.

We also demand that Shirin Dalvi be provided necessary protection forthwith.

sd/-
Hasina Khan
Dr. Ram Puniyani
Adv.Irfan Engineer – Director, Centre for Study of Society and Secularism
Javed Anand – General Secretary, Muslims for Secular Democracy
Sukla Sen
Ammu Abraham
Sameera Khan
Nasreen Fazalbhoy
Mario D’Penha
Divya Taneja
Kamayani Mahabal
Geeta Seshu
Brinelle D’souza – Tata Institute of Social Science
Teesta Setalvad, Editor, Communalism Combat
Rukmini Sen, Hillele Combat TV
Veena Gowda
Anjali Kanitkar
Saaz Shaikh
Rohini Hensman
Chhaya Datar
Susan Abraham
and members and organisations of Hum Azaadiyon ke Haq Mein

Bad ideas, Government, Language, Media politics, Right watch, Scams

Beware BJP’s Filthy Campaign and Desperate Bid to Steal the Elections!

04/02/2015 Aditya Nigam 3 Comments

Avam characters

As the AVAM drama unfolds and much more detective work remains to be done, some other disturbing news has also started trickling in. A journalist friend got a mail from an official yesterday, who confided to this journalist:

Dear Sir,
We would like to bring to your notice that our volunteer Mr. XYZ (name withheld for obvious reasons) has attended the preparation of Electronic Voting Machine on 31st January & 1st February and he noticed some discripencies in the EVMs of Booth No. 26, 47A, 75 & 87.
Whichever button he was pushing the vote was being casted in favour of BJP only.
However, after his objection the EVM machines were replaced.

We of course, do not know how many such machines there are.

Meanwhile, another friend – an academic – sent this mail, which tells us something of the sense he got from a tour around Delhi areas – along with his deep suspicion that once again, through some machinations, the elections may be stolen:

This is just to tell you that I accompanied two journalist friends to go on an election tour of Delhi (targetting trader bases with BJP support) and most of the people that we talked to openly supported AAP. Attitudes to Modi ranged from indifference to criticism for blabbering away and not doing anything to plain abuse. Many have started identifying the BJP as a “syndicate” party i.e. as a party of rich businessmen. Above all people think that the 49 day government was a period they felt empowered – and they compare it to the lack of any improvements under Modi for the last 8 months!

This still does not let me lose my belief in the worst: But it gives me a warm feeling when I keep my fingers crossed!

Continue reading Beware BJP’s Filthy Campaign and Desperate Bid to Steal the Elections! →

Right watch, Violence/Conflict, Politics

Indian Democracy and the Current Political Dispensation: Ram Puniyani

04/02/2015 Nivedita Menon 1 Comment

Guest Post by RAM PUNIYANI

Text of the Dr Asghar Ali Engineer Memorial Lecture

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.

In this regard, he may have been among the first persons who realized the dangers of divisive communal politics. It was he who set the trend seeking the causal factors behind communal violence, doing his own meticulous investigation after such riots. He contributed massively to reforms that took place in the Bohra community, on the issues of secularism and finally, in the interpretation of Islam. We need to learn a lot from him in order to strive for a society that values peace, amity and compassion.

Where are we standing today? What are the major threats to Indian democracy, today, even more menacing with the coming of the Modi Government?

The factors contributing to his victory have been several. The unstinted support given to him by India’s corporate; the fanatical zeal of the RSS and its lakhs of volunteers; the role of a corporate controlled media; the false projection of the ‘Gujarat model of development’; and the polarization of society along religious lines

The promise of Achhe Din – Good Times – has vanished into thin air. Despite the steep fall in the prices of crude oil in the world, the overall ‘cost of living’ continues to going up. The promise that all the black money stacked abroad will be brought back within six months or so and that we would be surprised to see 15 lakh deposited in our accounts, has been forgotten. The pattern of (good?) governance is only visible in the centralization of power around one person, Modi. Gradually the cabinet system of governance is giving way to one man’s autocratic ways, with secretaries of Government departments reporting directly to the PM. Continue reading Indian Democracy and the Current Political Dispensation: Ram Puniyani →

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Identities, Law, Media politics

Murdering Democracy in Kerala : the Latest

02/02/2015 J Devika 4 Comments

Secularism and socialism can be thrown out, so says the Hindutvavadi. Among those who protested against this suggestion were, of course, the Congress. But then, increasingly, many of us who live in Congress-ruled Kerala are unable to tell the Congress from the BJP as they have thrown out not just secularism and socialism but even minimal forms of liberalism. For our rulers seem as adamant as the BJP in forcing down our throats at least a softer version of Hindutva, reinforced with protection to shameless plunder of public resources and repressive police measures. Now young people and activists in Kerala, many of who were active in many protests including the Kiss Protests, are being pursued and hounded by the police. Apparently, a few people who participated in the latest edition of the Kiss Protests, the Lovefest, were hounded by the police for having been seen in the vicinity of a police station repeatedly! The most convenient excuse is pursuing the Maoists, a fear that is easily excited in our fattened and lazy middle classes. By the way, I am actively considering saving some money by ending my subscriptions to newspapers. In fact it is not being on FB which makes me feel out of touch with the world these days. Two leading human rights activists, Thushar Sarathy and Jaison Cooper, have been arrested and the papers are busy covering that shameful and utterly criminal waste of our common resources, the opening ceremony of the National games.

I am not surprised at all, having been an observer of local politics. In Kerala, after the Left-Right differences in politics came to an end, what we have seen is the transformation of our politics into a neofeudal space inhabited by powerful male leaders and their craven followers vying for power. Because the discourse of social development still lingers and the oppositional civil society has not yet given up, entry of predatory capital from national or global sources has not been easy. However, a whole generation of NRI — Malayali –capitalists based in the Gulf countries who essentially manage the wealth of the rulers there have been able to enter Kerala unimpeded.It is this group which is increasingly taking over our resources in overt and covert ways, legally and illegally. These capitalists themselves are interesting — their transnational belonging needs to be studied. They have apparently managed to become part of the non-democratic political systems in the Gulf countries, entering the lower levels of the court there, as juniors who help manage the rulers’ wealth. And from that position of strength, they now work to systematically undermine everything that Malayalis hold dear : our welfarist democracy, social development achievements, our rich ecology. Continue reading Murdering Democracy in Kerala : the Latest →

Capitalism, Politics, Right watch

Modi, Barack and a once sovereign nation

01/02/2015 Nivedita Menon 13 Comments

The sheer misery, the excruciating embarrassment, of watching the Prime Minister of a sovereign (but not secular or socialist) nation desperately, inappropriately, capering about to show off his imagined intimacy with an American President who steadfastly kept his distance and his dignity, is now passing. Time does heal all wounds. (And hopefully, as Groucho Marx put it, Time will also wound all heels) [1]

But the burning question remains – is Modi more shameless than he is ignorant? Much has been said about Modi’s suit that exceeds the worst excesses of the late unlamented Marie Antoinette. Vrinda Gopinath points out:

While the last world leader to don such a suit (it costs around 15,000 sterling pounds or Rs 15 lakhs today) was deposed Egyptian tyrant Hosni Mubarak, it certainly out-dazzled Obama’s working dark grey suit (to cut down on non-vital decisions, the US Prez only wears grey and blue ). However, if Modi was thinking hip-hop bling and ice accessories (his fave diamond Movado watch), it certainly got Obama to make a mention at the President’s banquet when he foxily pointed out how a newspaper back home wrote, “Move aside, Michelle Obama. The world has a new fashion icon.” It must have not passed Obama’s notice that Modi had changed his attire thrice that day.

securedownload

Continue reading Modi, Barack and a once sovereign nation →

Bad ideas, Feminism

Women Strike Back!

01/02/2015 Nivedita Menon 3 Comments

Just to share with Kafila readers two wonderful performances against misogyny by two cool young women, Rene Verma and Vasundhara Kaul, putting down sexism with a light touch that cuts very deep indeed – take a look at the string of comments that follow Vasundhara’s performance , from scared and threatened men unable to deal with it.

These are already ‘going viral’ as they say – just wanted to add Kafila’s contribution to viralizing them!

Here’s Rene Verma taking on Honey Singh. Unfortunately we cannot skip the compulsory advertisement for Modi and His Technicolour Dream Coat That Costs as Much as a Small Village Hospital.

(Oh, okay, the ad seems to have gone now, but that coat – that coat!! Ain’t going nowhere, to use the slang of the land of Modi’s new unilateral BFF).

Here’s an interview with Rene Verma on The Ladies Finger:

I’ve always been invested in performance art and its relation to policy and society. My piece was never intended to be a takedown of an individual rapper or two, it was a beleaguered response to a culture that privileges narratives of violence, restrictive norms, and ideals of beauty that are often untenable. Pop music, and pop culture at large has been perceived as a sanitized area of operation, where anything and everything goes, but songs and the discourses they promote operate in insidious ways. There is a silencing of body diversity, queer voices, dissent, and anything perceived as ‘not-the-normative’, both in overt and covert ways. I love rap, but I often find myself confounded over the lyrics packaged within these catchy, and annoyingly pervasive songs. This piece was actually part of an inter-college competition where I was given an hour to prepare a spoken word piece on the theme, “Portrait of a ‘Lady’”. And I thought it would be nice to construct a normative portrait of a ‘lady’ through a rap parody and deconstruct it through contrasting voices.

And here is Vasundhara Kaul, telling “Men With their Big Penises – rahendo beta, tum se nahin ho payega…”

Bad ideas, Culture, Government

Gandhi’s Assassins

31/01/2015 subhash gatade Leave a comment

“It is far too early to dismiss the possibility of a future Hindu State in India. However, the possibility does not appear a strong one. The secular state has far more than an even chance of survival in India” (India as Secular State, 1963).

It was the early sixties when American political scientist Donald Eugene Smith commented about the “possibility of a Hindu state in India”. Today, even to a layperson, the secular state in India seems to be standing on very weak foundations, and the possibility of a Hindu State is far stronger than it was half a century ago, in 1963.

Perhaps, a pertinent expression of this transformation of India is the metamorphosis we witness in the image of Nathuram Godse – the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, as part of a conspiracy which was hatched by many bigwigs of the Hindutva Supremacist movement. The makeover in the image is for eveyone to see: from a murderer, a conspirator, terrorist to a ‘martyr’ who supposedly ‘deserves’ a temple in his name everywhere. We also learn that after the ‘successful’ run of a drama in Marathi called Me Nathuram Boltoy (I Nathuram Speak) for the last few years, plans are afoot to have a movie made on him, supposedly to communicate his ‘viewpoint’. With the changed political situation, where even the censor board of the country is populated by rightwing people, one can guess that it won’t have any difficulty in release. And with an ambience which is more prone to illiberal ideas, one can as well prophesy that it will have a good run.

Read the full text here.

Culture, Debates, Education

Confronting Gandhi’s Ghost

30/01/2015 apoorvanand 12 Comments

” I imagine you believe that he was for the most part adored; in fact he was hated and he is still hated today. Hatred is still alive in India and he died of it. Those who were for mostly from those what is called the scheduled castes, those who belonged to the gutters with whom he had sided. Yet he did not ask anything of anyone; he simply went his own way….But the simple fact that he lived according to his own law—which was ascetic and demanding of himself was something people could not tolerate.” French writer Helene Cixous turns to Gandhi to compare his life with the ways of writing that “may hurt, may dissatisfy and give the feeling that something is taken away.”

Continue reading Confronting Gandhi’s Ghost →

Capitalism, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Mirror Worlds

Climate Change – Keep the Climate, Change the Economy: Sagar Dhara

29/01/2015 Aditya Nigam 4 Comments

Guest post by SAGAR DHARA

Contrasting outcomes of recent global warming meetings

Two recent meetings on global warming, one scientific and the other political, are of great public interest as they have a bearing on human society’s future course to become a sustainable global community. The meetings stand in sharp contrast with each other in terms of the clarity of their outcomes.

The first meeting was held by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body of over 2,000 scientists. IPCC released its fifth assessment’s synthesis report in Copenhagen end-October 2014. The report states unequivocally that “Human influence on the climate system is clear.” Further, it warns that the emission of another 1,000 Giga tonnes¹ (Gt) of carbon dioxide (CO₂), referred to as the carbon space, is likely to raise average global surface temperatures by 2^oC above pre-industrial times. This is considered dangerous to the environment and human society.

Since the industrial revolution began in the mid-18^th Century, humans have used 35% of the known 1,700 Gt of conventional fossil fuel reserves, and cut a third of the then existing 60 million km² of forests to emit 2,000 Gt CO₂. The consequent 0.85^oC average global temperature rise over pre-industrial times has triggered significant changes in the physical, biological and human environments. For example, rainfall variation has increased, extreme weather events are more frequent, pole-ward migration of species is noticeable and their extinction rate is higher, human health, food and water security are at greater risk, crop yield variations are higher, a 19 cm mean sea rise and a 40% reduction in Arctic’s summer ice extent have occurred over the last century, glaciers have shrunk by 275 Gt per annum in the last two decades, and social conflicts have increased. Continue reading Climate Change – Keep the Climate, Change the Economy: Sagar Dhara →

Debates, Education, Everyday Life, Frontiers

Storm in a Kahwa Cup: Organizers of the Kashmiri Food Counter at the International Food Festival, JNU 2015

25/01/2015 Shuddhabrata Sengupta 13 Comments

Guest Post by Organizers of the Kashmiri Food Counter at the International Food Festival, JNU 2015

Universities are supposed to be the centers of free inquiry, speech and expression. However, in the recent months universities and other democratic spaces have been under attack from right wing fascist elements across India. University authorities under the influence of right wing forces have increased surveillance on sections of students and have started to monitor and control campuses. As a premier institute of learning Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has always has preserved its democratic culture and has resisted such attacks tooth and nail. However, in recent days even JNU is experiencing pressures from the right wing fascist forces.

Every year, JNU organizes an International Food Festival (IFF) where students from diverse cultures and nations displaying their flags come together to offer global cuisines. This year on 20^thJanuary, a group of students from Kashmir booked a counter at the IFF. After completing necessary formalities and depositing security amount the festival organizers allotted space for Kashmir food counter along with the Tibet food counter. However, International students association (ISA), body that organizes the festival started receiving threats from the ABVP goons. The president and other members of the organization were harassed and intimidated. The organizers received open warnings from ABVP threatening them with disrupting the festival in case Kashmiris were allowed to open their food counter. International students who organize the festival were threatened with legal action and deportation. Just two days before the festival the booking for Kashmiri food counter was cancelled by the organization. Continue reading Storm in a Kahwa Cup: Organizers of the Kashmiri Food Counter at the International Food Festival, JNU 2015 →

	Dr. Prabo Mihindukul… on Remembering Rajani and Re-Read…
	The Missing Link… on The “massive mandate…
	7 yrs in jail, charg… on Disinheriting Adivasis –…
	SC hears plea by hum… on Disinheriting Adivasis –…
	Surendra Gadling’s p… on Disinheriting Adivasis –…

KAFILA – COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006