Today, exactly 266 days after it began, the ASHA workers’ protest led by the Kerala ASHA Health Workers’ Association vowed to continue the protest in a new form. Since the evening before, news channels and in the morning, newspapers, were claiming that the protest had ‘ended’ or was going to be ‘wound up.’ The meeting the KAHWA organised in front of the State Secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram was both a celebration of the victory the workers had secured over the hubris of the CPM and its lord and master, the Chief Minister of Kerala. But more importantly, it was a declaration of the workers’ determination to continue the struggle. The local body elections are imminent, and the protesting workers intend to turn their grievance into a campaign issue.
Continue reading We Will Fight, We Will Win: ASHA Workers Vow to Continue the ProtestIs Kerala a Destitute-free State or Extreme Poverty-free State?
[Below is the English Version of a Public Statement in Malayalam released by a group of concerned economists and social activists that appeared in the Malayalam and Kerala-based English Newspapers today (31 October 2025)]
Background: The Government of Kerala have been preparing to declare the State of Kerala as India’s First Extreme Poverty-Free State on 1 November, 2025 being the State formation day. Th government claims that this achievement was attained through sustained efforts to eradicate extreme poverty in the state since July 2021, with just 64,006 extremely-poor families identified through a survey conducted by the Kudumbashree Mission and the Panchayats and Municipalities. The criteria used, as the government claims, were (i) households with no income, (ii) not even food for two times a day, (ii) those unable to cook food even with food articles available from ration shops, and (iv) those with very bad health conditions. This makes Kerala the first state in India to attain the two Sustainable Development Goals of No Poverty and No Hunger. However, this raises a number of crucial questions. It is in this background the following public statement was issued.
Continue reading Is Kerala a Destitute-free State or Extreme Poverty-free State?Countering Propaganda against the ASHA Workers’ Struggle in Kerala: A Response by Anamika A. and others
Rejoinder written collectively by Anamika A, Archana Ravi, Ayana Krishna D, J Devika, Divya G S, Gayatri Devi, Shraddha Jain, Shradha S and Srimanjori Guha
[This piece was written in response to a flagrant misrepresentation of the ASHA workers’ ongoing struggle in Kerala, by Binitha Thampi and Varsha Prasad, which appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly early this month, titled “Labouring on the Margins: ASHA Workers’ Protests in Kerala and Working-class Solidarities” (Oct.4, 2025, LX, 40, 13-17). A group of us — scholars, activists, artists and others who have been closely following the struggle since its beginning — wrote a rejoinder to it. The EPW editor verbally agreed to consider it, but the edit desk insisted that it be subjected to the same peer-review process (as their special articles, it seemed). Commentary pieces, as those who have published in the EPW earlier know, were dealt with at the editorial desk, and the editor was back then obviously competent to judge whether a rejoinder to a commentary piece was a fair one or not. Now that seemingly requires a review process! That does not suit us simply because this atrocious piece of slander is aimed at an ongoing struggle, at the lives of struggling women workers, by other women steeped in academic, social, and political privilege. There is, then, the need to respond quickly, to defend the struggle from the verbal equivalent of a shower of stones thrown at it. At the same time, the very fact that B Thampi’s and V Prasad’s piece, which parrots the CPM troll position in each line and trips over themselves several times empirically and theoretically, has clearly not been subjected to peer-review by the same EPW editorial, for it would definitely would not have got published like it is now — biased in the extreme.
Continue reading Countering Propaganda against the ASHA Workers’ Struggle in Kerala: A Response by Anamika A. and othersLeft, Right, Left – Notes on Radical Post/De-Coloniality: Gita Chadha
[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
Rising international Student migration from India: ‘Mad rush’ or reflection of the domestic labour market situation? : Shraddha Jain
On 21 September 2025, The New Indian Express published an interview with Professor Irudaya Rajan about migration patterns from Kerala where the Professor characterised the rising trend of student migration from Kerala as a ‘mad rush’ and said that young people fail and don’t benefit much from migration. He also said that overseas employment as care providers, a growing form of employment in the developed countries, was a form of ‘slavery’.
Continue reading Rising international Student migration from India: ‘Mad rush’ or reflection of the domestic labour market situation? : Shraddha JainDo not Steal Our Voices, Mr Vijayan! The ASHA Workers’ March to the Chief Minister’s Residence
Dear Mr Vijayan
Yesterday, the protesting ASHA workers marched to your residence in the pouring rain, seeking to rouse you from your utterly inexcusable stupor. Yes, over the past eight months, you tried to first crush the strike, and then to kill it by ignoring it. Who does not know that the worst form of violence is indifference?
Photo credits : Shradha S, Harsh, Ashna Thambi, Santhosh Nilakkal.
When Decolonisation turns Inward – On the Dangers of Methodological Nationalism: Sabah Siddiqui
[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.
Rotting Civil Society, Mounting Insecurity: Understanding Hijabophobia in Kerala
Last week, when most mainstream media was in the middle of yet another paroxysmal bout of Islamophobia over a thirteen-year-old child’s wish to wear the hijab to school, I was thinking: why is hijabophobia the most acceptable manifestation of the hatred of Islam in Kerala? Why is it that it seems to provoke many non-Muslim women to the point of anti-Muslim hysteria?
Continue reading Rotting Civil Society, Mounting Insecurity: Understanding Hijabophobia in KeralaPostcolonial Theory and the “Decolonization of the Indian Mind” : Professor Meera Nanda
Indian Diaspora Washington DC lecture series
Topic: Postcolonial Theory and the “Decolonization of the Indian Mind”
Speaker: Professor Meera Nanda
Finally, an Answer to Why Kerala’s CPM-led Government is Determined to Break the ASHA Workers’ Strike
Finally, I am able to understand why the government of Kerala, led by a leading communist party, the CPM, is so doggedly against the demands of Kerala’s internationally-celebrated ground-level women health workers — the ASHA workers — who have been on strike since February 2025.
Continue reading Finally, an Answer to Why Kerala’s CPM-led Government is Determined to Break the ASHA Workers’ StrikeColonialism, Modernity and Science: K. Sridhar
[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
JNU – The State of the University: JNU Teachers’ Association
Report prepared by Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Association
(October 7, 2025 – updated version of report first released in September 2023)
Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has suffered terribly under the effects of the concerted attack it has faced since February 2016. The vicious campaign slandering the image of the institution, its faculty, and its students, that was unleashed at that point of time was only the beginning of a long drawn process of sapping the institution of the vital energies that underlay its remarkable achievements and earned the institution such great prestige across the country and the world. What followed that attack has been a systematic process of undermining the institution from ‘within’, with the office of the Vice Chancellor serving as its hotbed. The current and the previous occupant of that office have shared the responsibility for this. Even as old wounds continue to fester, new injuries continue to be inflicted on the institution’s body politic – whereby JNU is being subjected to a process of death by a thousand cuts. This is happening despite the current Vice Chancellor being an alumna of the University.
In the last one decade, the terms ‘governance’ and ‘leadership’ have been turned on their heads to acquire rather ominous meanings, whereby they have in effect become synonyms for their antonyms. From being a ‘public’ institution in which the quest for knowledge and learning in all its dimensions thrives through the lives of its students and faculty, the University has been steadily pushed in the direction of being reduced to being an expression of the Vice Chancellor’s persona, into a fiefdom in which the writ of the occupant of that office reigns supreme. Displaying utter contempt for institutional norms and statutory provisions that made for democratic self-governance and orderly functioning, a centralised, arbitrary and dictatorial mode of (mis)governance was put in place, which tolerated no questioning of decisions. Currently, the JNU Administration under the leadership of the Vice Chancellor is waging a war against the University faculty. Continue reading JNU – The State of the University: JNU Teachers’ Association
Javed Akhtar, Bollywood and Urdu’s Ghostly Existence – Rashid Ali
Guest post by RASHID ALI
Javed Akhtar’s recent ‘exile’ from the West Bengal Urdu Academy event did more than generate headlines. It dwarfed a bigger debate about Urdu in Hindi cinema, which was the event’s main theme. The media precipitately reduced the whole issue to the conflict between the lyricist and the Urdu Academy. The controversy carried a tinge of ‘Muslim fundamentalism,’ reflecting today’s cultural and political ideologemes. However, the discussion on Bollywood’s uneven relationship with Urdu was lost in the sound and fury of cultural climate of the country. Et tu, Brutus?’ finds a new stage – ‘Et tu, Bollywood?’ You speak against the very world that gives you voice. Continue reading Javed Akhtar, Bollywood and Urdu’s Ghostly Existence – Rashid Ali
Red Dreams, Saffron Marches – Longue Durée of India’s Struggles and Strategies of Power: S. M. Faizan Ahmed
Guest post by S.M. FAIZAN AHMED
[The author writes about the current scenario, reflecting on the one hundred years of the communist movement as well as of the RSS. In these important reflections Ahmed recounts the great achievements of the communist Left, while at the same time speculating on where the RSS scored over it – leaving us with a number of questions to seriously ponder about. – AN]
On October 1, 2025, a day before Gandhi’s birth anniversary, long revered and associated with ahimsa and moral conscience, the government unveiled a ₹100 coin at the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre, 15 Janpath, marking a century of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. A day earlier, as if to turn ideology into spectacle, a Shakha parade, named Path Sanchalan, traced its way through Jawaharlal Nehru University—once a fortress of dissent and the audacious poetry of thought. The rhythmic march of uniformed bodies through corridors once alive with debate did more than display ceremony; it signaled a shift in the republic’s moral conscience, where the choreography of discipline seeks to mute the dialectic of doubt, and the university—once a sanctuary of questioning minds—becomes a stage for the theatre of obedience. Continue reading Red Dreams, Saffron Marches – Longue Durée of India’s Struggles and Strategies of Power: S. M. Faizan Ahmed
Decolonizing the ‘Colonial-Brahmanical’ – Thinking outside Modernity: Sunandan K N
[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
Books as Crime ? – Whether J and K High-court Will End the ’Unprecedented Situation’ ?
‘So you are the little woman who wrote the book that made this great (American) civil war’
— Abraham Lincoln to Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
The Writers’ Police !
Bruno Fulgini, a nondescript employee at the French Parliament, would not have imagined in his wildest dreams that his tedious and boring job at the Parliament library would lead him to a treasure hunt of another kind.
Nearly two decades back one witnessed him metamorphose into an author and editor, thanks to the sudden discovery of old files of the Paris police, which provided details of its surveillance work done way back in 18 th century. A report filed by AFP then, quotes Fulgini tell us that ’Beyond criminals and political figures, there are files on writers and artists. In some cases, they go far in their indiscretions.’….
It was clear to these protectors of internal security of a tottering regime that the renowned literati then viz. Victor Hugo, Balzac or Charles Dickens, might be writing fiction, but their sharp focus on the hypocrisy of the aristocrats or the livelihood issues of ordinary people is adding to the growing turmoil in the country. They knew very well that they might be writing fiction for the masses but it is turning out to be a sharp political edge that hit the right target and is becoming a catalyst for change.
The Parisian police was engaged in tracking down the daily movements of the writers, was more subtle in its actions; its present-day counterparts in the West do not seem to have such patience.
The strongest democracy in the world namely the US has of late become a site of an ’unprecedented’ ’Multi-level barrage of US book bans’ as per PEN America [1]….
And now there are indications that the biggest democracy in the World namely India is keen to follow the footsteps of the strongest democracy ?
Or it is too early to say that .[ Read the full article here : http://mainstreamweekly.net/article16227.html
Protest Assault on Adivasi Youth Leader Rama Kankonkar, Lawless Casino-based Development in Goa: NAPM
Statement by NATIONAL ALLIANCE OF PEOPLE’S MOVEMENTS demands principled investigation to establish command responsibility. It also demands that Govt review the unsustainable and unjust ‘development’ model fuelled by land mafias and casino interests in Goa .
National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) unequivocally condemns the heinous assault on adivasi youth leader, Rama Kankonkar on 18th September, the subsequent intimidation against another activist Swapnesh Sherlekar, and the alarming descent into lawlessness that these incidents in Goa exemplify. We extend unwavering solidarity to Rama Kankonkar, Swapnesh Sherlekar and the people of Goa who continue to fight for justice, environmental protection, and the preservation of their collective identity. We also demand adequate protection to these activists, principled investigation to establish command responsibility and a review of the current unsustainable, unjust and unsafe ‘development’ model; fuelled by land mafias and casino interests. Continue reading Protest Assault on Adivasi Youth Leader Rama Kankonkar, Lawless Casino-based Development in Goa: NAPM
The Struggle for a ‘Coloured Modernity’: Meghna Chandra and Archishman Raju
[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 The Wire 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.
Continue reading The Struggle for a ‘Coloured Modernity’: Meghna Chandra and Archishman RajuALIFA Condemns Rape and Death Threats to Naga Women’s Rights Leader Prof. Rosemary Dzuvichu
Statement by the All India Feminist Alliance – NAPM calls upon the State to ensure her safety, bring perpetrators to justice and uphold Naga women’s right to reservations in municipal bodies.
NAPM (All India Feminist Alliance – National Alliance of People’s Movements), a pan-India collective of feminist, grassroots organizations and individuals strongly condemns the threats of death and sexual violence made on social media to Kohima-based women’s rights activist and academic, Prof. Rosemary Dzuvichu, Advisor, Naga Mothers’ Association (NMA). The vile, violent and vicious threats on Facebook by one Mr. WJ Longkumer warn her to desist from advocating for women’s political reservation – a hard-won right of Naga women, also upheld by the Supreme Court. We demand immediate legal action against the perpetrators and call upon the state to ensure the safety of Prof. Rosemary as well as other Naga women, facing similar threats.
Prof Dzuvichu is no stranger to intimidation. Back in 2017, she was among those leading the struggle to ensure the long-delayed implementation of the Nagaland Municipal (First Amendment) Act of 2006, or the “Nagaland Reservation Bill of 2006″. Through this amendment of the 2001 Municipal Act, women were allotted 33% reservation in urban local bodies (municipalities and town councils), in accordance with the 74th Amendment to the Constitution of India. Article 243 T (3) of the Indian Constitution, mandates that at least one-third of all directly elected seats in every municipality in India must be reserved for women. Yet, all was not smooth as quotas for women in political bodies was posited as ‘going against the customs and culture of Nagaland’, and women who defied these customs were seen as legitimate targets of ire.
Continue reading ALIFA Condemns Rape and Death Threats to Naga Women’s Rights Leader Prof. Rosemary DzuvichuThe hopeless quest for a pure incorruptible knowledge – decoloniality and its discontents
[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
Finally we will ask the question – when Hindutva claims to be “decolonising”, what is it doing exactly? Continue reading The hopeless quest for a pure incorruptible knowledge – decoloniality and its discontents
Whose Forest is it Anyway? The Forest Rights Act (FRA) and its unintended consequences: Sandeep Menon
Guest post by SANDEEP MENON
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. That’s the first, visceral reaction that many passionate wildlife conservationists have, when you utter the 3 letters: FRA. The Forest Rights Act (2006) aims to give native tribal and forest dwelling populations ownership of, and decision-making rights over what happens in the wildlife areas that they are residents of. But many conservationists see it as a gateway for rampant encroachment into protected areas.
I was initially a bit more circumspect, having been a longtime advocate for community-based conservation. Having always believed that ivory tower conservation can never work, without putting the people involved at the center of it. But I have also had to temper my position over time, as I witnessed the complexities of how it was playing out on the ground. (ref- https://india.mongabay.com/2020/07/commentary-making-communities-central-to-conservation/ )
Continue reading Whose Forest is it Anyway? The Forest Rights Act (FRA) and its unintended consequences: Sandeep Menon
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 