Culture, Debates, Democracy, Religion, Right watch

Rightwing-Rightwing ‘Bhai Bhai : Who Fears Javed Akhtar?

Leave a comment

A ‘unity of purpose’ has been witnessed between Hindu and Muslim supremacists, who consider themselves the sole spokespersons of ‘their community’.

There are rare occasions when literary academies associated with governments wilt under mob pressure.

Rarer are occasions when they even cancel the very programme they had organised with much fanfare.

It has been more than 10 days that West Bengal witnessed such a spectacle, when the West Bengal Urdu Academy suddenly postponed a programme where it intended to discuss ‘Urdu in Indian Cinema’ for four consecutive. Javed Akhtar — one of the foremost living Urdu poets — was also invited as a key speaker in the programme.

Two prominent Islamist organisations in Kolkata, Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind and the Wahyahin Foundation, had protested the invitation, as they considered Akhtar’s views on religion problematic, labelling him as someone who “speaks against religion and God”.

Akhtar is a declared atheist and openly talks about it on public fora, and that had irked these people.

The organisations even threatened to launch a state wide agitation — much on the lines of their agitation against Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen which as everyone knows had forced her to leave the state (2007) — if the government did not heed their demand.

Mamata Banerjee, the West Bengal Chief Minister, did not want to take any risk as elections to the state Assembly are not too far.

( Read the full article here : https://www.newsclick.in/rightwing-rightwing-bhai-bhai-who-fears-javed-akhtar)

Capitalism, Debates, Empire/ Imperialism, Frontiers, Theory

Beyond Philosophical Gaslighting – Seven theses on Decolonization/ Decoloniality

12 Comments

[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.

Continue reading Beyond Philosophical Gaslighting – Seven theses on Decolonization/ Decoloniality →
Culture, Debates, Democracy, Politics, Right watch

RSS Centenary: In Search of an Icon!

Leave a comment

[Centenary celebrations of RSS – the biggest ‘self-proclaimed’ cultural organisation in the world — comprising of Hindus are on.

Much is being said about its longevity etc., and much will be said about it in coming days, it remains to be seen if it is ready to take a fresh look at some discomforting aspects of its own history when it is embarking on a journey towards what it calls as ‘new horizons’]

Ram Lila, the dramatic folk re-enactment of the life of Rama is still popular in Northern India.

Anyone who has watched this programme — especially in villages or towns — might have noticed a particular scene where god curses a sage for his misdemeanour that he will get a donkey’s face for his actions and will not even realise that he has got this new face.

One is reminded of this story — which tells us the great hiatus between claims and reality — whenever an individual or a formation starts bragging about its achievements that have no basis in reality.

Leaders of the Hindutva Supremacist movement in this part of South Asia look no different when they declare from the rooftops the “great role their political ancestors have played during the freedom movement”. It is a different matter that any objective student of India’s history — especially of the Independence struggle — is conversant with hundreds or thousands of pages, books, monographs written or documented to underline the contrary, their meek behaviour and compromising role during the very struggle. [https://www.newsclick.in/rss-centenary-search-icon]

Culture, Debates, Government, Law, Politics, Religion

Punjab: Why Proposed ‘Law Against Blasphemy’ Needs to be Discarded

Leave a comment

The CCG’s concern that the proposed PPOHS Act is ‘unconstitutional’ and is an ‘open invitation to ‘oppressive misuse’ needs to be heeded.

Image : Courtesy Fiickr

Whether history will repeat itself, that is the question being asked about Punjab government’s renewed attempt to enact a law supposedly against ‘sacrilege’?

Anyone who is a keen observer of the social-political developments in the state knows very well that it has a history of such efforts (2015 and 2018) where similar attempts were made to amend laws related to sacrilege, and both attempts proved unsuccessful as they failed on the yardstick of constitutionality.

As per reports, the proposed Punjab Prevention of Offences against Holy Scriptures Bill, 2025 (PPOHS Act), which was recently referred by the state legislature to a committee for further discussion, has come under the scanner of experts of the Constitution and concerned citizens.

A leading voice among them, namely the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG) — a platform of retired civil servants and diplomats– has in an open communication underlined how Punjab government’s proposed ‘PPOHS Act’ is ‘unconstitutional’ and is an ‘open invitation to oppressive misuse’ .

[ Read the full article here : https://www.newsclick.in/punjab-why-proposed-law-against-blasphemy-needs-be-discarded]

Debates, Left watch, Movements, Right watch, Theory

Sleeping With the Enemy? Postcolonialism, Misread and Misjudged: Shamayita Sen

9 Comments

Guest post by SHAMAYITA SEN

[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.

Continue reading Sleeping With the Enemy? Postcolonialism, Misread and Misjudged: Shamayita Sen →
Capitalism, Countryside, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Everyday Life

Teachers, Straw, and the Combine Harvester – Peasant Household’s Ecological Ledger in Assam: Bonojit Hussain

1 Comment

Guest post by BONOJIT HUSSAIN

I did not come to the village to do research. I came to farm for the market—and to do it without breaking the village’s social and ecological ledger. I returned as a nephew and a neighbour. For six years I have lived inside this world of muddy fields, failed pumps, anxious harvests, and commonsense wisdom passed across haat stalls. Six years on, I am only now seeing a glimmer of hope for a workable path.

Photograph by Bonojit Hussain of his own farm

What I write here is not sociology in the professional sense, but a testimony from within the living contradictions. My focus is on the choices and constraints of the khilonjiya peasant household—native, often subsistence-oriented communities whose economic logic is deeply tied to ecological and social reproduction. This is a distinct reality from the highly commercialized production systems found in some other parts of the state.

Continue reading Teachers, Straw, and the Combine Harvester – Peasant Household’s Ecological Ledger in Assam: Bonojit Hussain →
Bad ideas, Culture, Feminism, Government, Law, Left watch

Not Another Salacious Sex Scandal,  Please: Althea Women’s Collective Statement on Mainstream Public Discussions of Complaints against Rahul Mankoottathil

1 Comment

[ A translation of the statement from the Kerala Feminist Forum is appended to ours. Both are translated by Gayatri Devi, a member of Althea.]

The way political parties and mainstream media in Kerala have framed the public discussion on the complaints against Rahul Mankoottathil comes as a real shock to anyone who sees Malayali women as citizens with equal rights and equal dignity, and to those who are committed to the welfare of children.

Continue reading Not Another Salacious Sex Scandal,  Please: Althea Women’s Collective Statement on Mainstream Public Discussions of Complaints against Rahul Mankoottathil →
Culture, Debates, Democracy, Education, Government, Law

When Police Comes Visiting Bookshops!

Leave a comment

How saffron forces weaponise ignorance and stigmatise intellectauls

Silence gives consent

[Qui tacet consentire videtur – In Latin]

“Intellectual terrorists” are “more dangerous than cross-border terrorists”

These were the pearls of wisdom of the then Human Resource Development minister, who was addressing a conference of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (December 19, 2001).  Murli Manohar Joshi had even asked the ‘nationalist youths’ to counter ‘both types of terrorism effectively.’

…It would be 25 years soon since these objectionable remarks were targeted at India’s topmost historians, scholars, public intellectuals, even provoking followers to deal with them effectively’ like the way they deal with ‘cross border terrorists.’

Later commenting on these controversial remarks, the legendary historian Romila Thapar had famously said: ‘And then the government fell. But the books continued!”

Time for Thought Police?

As everybody can see, there is a sea change in the situation since the past more than a decade in this part of South Asia…

…..The target of attacks has now become broader, more expansive and more unpredictable. It is no longer restricted to ‘leftist’ ‘progressive’ writers, historians.

The recent move to ban 25 books on Kashmir history at a single go ‘for propagating false narrative and secessionism‘ — written by a spectrum of national and international scholars — which even do not share a similar world view, books which had been in circulation for years, even decades together is a case in point.

This list of authors includes, A G Noorani, Arundhati Roy, Anuradha Bhasin, Sumanta Bose, Victoria Schofield and several others… [Read the full article here : https://www.newsclick.in/when-police-comes-visiting-bookshops]

Capitalism, Debates, Democracy, Development, Ecology/Environment, Government

A Strategy for India’s Tryst with Its Destiny : Arun Maira

Leave a comment

Democracy Dialogues Lecture 41

Organised by New Socialist Initiative

Title: A Strategy for India’s Tryst with Its Destiny

Speaker: Arun Maira, Author, Thinker, Former Member of the Planning Commission of India

Date and Time: August 31, 2025, 6 PM IST 

The lectures are also live streamed at facebook.com/newsocialistinitiative.nsi

Abstract:

I will share what I have learned about the process of transforming complex systems, the changes necessary in ideologies, and in the way in which public policies are being made, for India to progress towards its vision of poorna swaraj. The following points indicate an outline of the argument I plan to make in the talk:

• Global governance has broken down. The world is in disorder.

• India is strategically vulnerable. It is a long way off from its ‘tryst with destiny’ of poorna swaraj.

• India must become much more self-reliant, and less dependent on the US and China to protect its strategic autonomy. It must find its own democratic path to strengthen its society and economy. The US (and the West) cannot provide a blueprint. 

• Development and progress are processes of learning.

• Nations are complex ‘self-adaptive’ systems.

• Power and wealth in a system accumulate by a process of cumulative causation.

• The process of change must be democratic for new ideas to emerge.

I have explained such ideas in my book, Reimagining India’s Economy: The Road to a More Equitable Society, published this year, and in some previous books.

About the Speaker:

Arun Maira is an eminent author, a strategic thinker and a former member of the Planning Commission of India. He had joined the Commission at the invitation of then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh himself. Mr. Maira has had a distinguished career as an enlightened business leader and management consultant. He worked as Executive Director on the Board of Tata Motors and later as the Chairman of Boston Consulting Group. He has authored many books including Transforming Systems: Why the World Needs an Ethical Toolkit; Transforming Capitalism: Improving the World for Everyone; Redesigning the Aeroplane While Flying: Reforming Institutions; Shaping the Future: A Guide for Systems leaders; and most recently, Reimagining India’s Economy: The Road to a More Equitable Society, published in June 2025.

Capitalism, Decolonizing Theory, Empire/ Imperialism, Islamophobia, Right watch

Genocide in Gaza – All the Perfumes of Arabia Will Not Sweeten These Hands…

Leave a comment

As the ongoing livestreamed genocide in Gaza reaches its most despicable and horrendous phase of killing masses people through forced starvation, I am posting here a piece that I wrote for the art journal Art Deal last year. It was also delivered as a talk in a discussion organized by the All India Students’ Association (AISA) in JNU in September 2024. I am publishing it here with some minor additions/ changes.

Israelis watch the bombing of Gaza in picnic mode outside a town called Sderot, in 2014, nine years before October 7, 2023. Image courtesy Menahem Kahana, Agence France-Presse.

‘Israel told U.S. officials in 2008 it would keep Gaza’s economy “on the brink of collapse” while avoiding a humanitarian crisis, according to U.S. diplomatic cables published by a Norwegian daily on Wednesday.

Three cables cited by the Aftenposten newspaper, which has said it has all 250,000 U.S. cables leaked to WikiLeaks, showed that Israel kept the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv briefed on its internationally criticized blockade of the Gaza Strip.’

 – Reuters, 5 January, 2011, Jerusalem.

I

No, it did not begin on 7 October 2023. Notwithstanding all the gaslighting by Israel and its guardians and arms-suppliers in the USA and Europe, the evidence says something else. The US cables leaked to Wikileaks show that not only had Israel been carrying out its genocidal activities for a very long time, its sponsors in the USA knew everything all along.

Continue reading Genocide in Gaza – All the Perfumes of Arabia Will Not Sweeten These Hands… →
Culture, Debates, Democracy, Government, Law, Politics, Right watch

Citizens as Infants? – Judiciary ‘Schools’ People in Patriotism

Leave a comment

Could it be argued that Bombay HC’s highly debatable decision on a peaceful rally against Gaza genocide is an attempt not to inconvenience the ruling dispensation?

It was the year 1763, when Genevaís ecclesiastical assembly ordered one Robert Covelle to genuflect and listen to a reprimand for having fathered an illegitimate child. Covelle refused to kneel and turned to Voltaire for help.

Voltaire, a leading light of enlightenment, outraged at the very idea that religious authorities daring to make a citizen kneel, wrote a pamphlet against genuflection comparing the act with a tyrant punishing slaves or pedant correcting children. The rest of the philosophes rallied behind Voltaire and after six years of agitation, the Genevaís ecclesiastical assembly was forced to abolish genuflection from its code 

Meera Nanda, writer and historian of science discusses, this episode in one of her monographs

Rereading this episode and seeing if around two-and-half centuries ago, the Church could be compelled to see incongruence, injustice and unreason in its own ruling, can a a similar thing be possible vis-à-vis the judiciary in the 21st century in the ‘biggest democracy in the world’?

This poser is related to a recent debatable decision of the Bombay High Court, which has rightly received enough opprobrium.

( Read the complete article here : https://www.newsclick.in/citizens-infants-judiciary-schools-people-patriotism_

Democracy, Government, Politics, Right watch, Scams

Restore independence of Election Commission of India: Citizens for Democracy

Leave a comment

The following is an appeal made by the Citizens for Democracy to the President of India to restore the independence of the Election Commission of India.

A public appeal to the Hon’ble President of India

The apex court is seized of the matter of Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls in Bihar, which the Election Commission of India (ECI) has ordered. The matter being sub judice, the Citizens for Democracy, as a responsible organisation, a defender of people’s democratic rights, would abide by the rules and traditions and refrain from commenting on the matter. In any case, several organisations, political parties and individuals have, as petitioners, already presented their point of view before the highest court of the land.   Needless to say, we are with the petitioners.

We, however, do not hesitate to do our duty to expose the sins of omission and commission of the ECI ever since the BJP government came to power in 2014. ECI, an independent constitutional body, has surrendered its autonomy to the ruling party and has become a willing tool in the party’s efforts to crush democracy in India. Things have taken many turns for the worse with every succeeding incumbent to the exalted position of Chief Election Commissioner.

EC – now a Government Department

In 2023 the Supreme Court suggested the appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner and other commissioners by a committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India and asked the government to amend the Act of 1991 suitably.  The government promptly amended the Act and, as if to mock the Supreme Court, did not include the CJI in the committee. Instead, it made a minister appointed by the Prime Minister as one of its three members. With the Prime Minister leading the Committee, and one of his appointees at his beck and call, the government effectively reduced the existence of the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in Parliament, the third member of the Committee, to a permanent minority. This has brought down the ECI’s status to that of a government department. One cannot expect fairness from such a body.

Continue reading Restore independence of Election Commission of India: Citizens for Democracy →
Culture, Debates, Democracy, Education

Why No ‘Gita’ Recitation in Schools ?

Leave a comment

Is a resistance of some kind slowly emerging from the teaching community to save the secular character of education and foil Supremacist designs?

Representational Image. Image Courtesy: Pexels

“To learn to read is to light a fire.

Every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” –

 – Victor Hugo

 Victor Hugo, (1802- 1885), the great French poet, novelist, and dramatist, once considered a national hero and a living symbol of republicanism in France, would not have imagined in his wildest dreams that a day would arrive where one of his famous quotes ‘“There is in every village a torch – the teacher; and an extinguisher – the priest”, would suddenly start reverberating across a section of learned people engaged in educating future generations in far away India, rather discreetly.

Close on the heels of an intervention by concerned citizens/activists on education in Uttar Pradesh, to stop Ramayana and Vedic workshops in Schools, as it violates Article 28 of the Constitution that specifically enjoins the State not to use public funds for religious instruction, one has come across two important and bold interventions from honourable members of the teaching community themselves, especially in the Hindi belt.

FIR For Asking ‘Light the Lamp of Knowledge’?

The police case against a school teacher from Bareilly for a Kanwad song is a case in point. The ‘offence’ of the teacher, Rajneesh Gangwar, is that he was singing a song in front of students asking them “not to bring kanwars“, instead “go light the lamp of knowledge’. A purported video of the incident, has gone viral. [ Read the complete article here : https://www.newsclick.in/why-no-gita-recitation-schools]

Capitalism, Development, Everyday Life, Politics, Public health

The Man Who Died at Gate Number Three: Avantika Tewari

Leave a comment

This is a guest post by AVANTIKA TEWARI

It was night when the man died.

In the thick, humming night of a city that never truly sleeps — only flickers. Flickers between traffic signals and app pings, between delivery promises and the quiet violence of exhaustion.

He collapsed just beyond Gate Number Three in a residential colony in Delhi, somewhere between the parked dumpers and the weary under-construction site of the Metro.

He fell softly, without spectacle. The kind of death a city absorbs without noticing, like rain into dust.

In a few days, the Resident Welfare Association had drafted a statement — not out of grief, but out of inconvenience: “What if it had been one of us?”

The question hung in the air like a perfume of moral panic. A swift and bloodless message was delivered — the dumpers, it was agreed, would no longer be stationed near Gate Number Three. Continue reading The Man Who Died at Gate Number Three: Avantika Tewari →

Culture, Debates, Democracy, Government, Politics, Theory

South Asian Futures in a Tri-Polar World : Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy

Leave a comment

Democracy Dialogues Series – Lecture 40
Organised by New Socialist Initiative

Theme :
South Asian Futures in a Tri-Polar World

Speaker :
Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy
Eminent Physicist, author, public intellectual

Time and Date :
6 PM (IST)
Sunday , 27 th July 2025

The lecture is also live streamed at facebook.com/newsocialistinitiative.nsi

Abstract:

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.

Capitalism, Countryside, Democracy, Development, Ecology/Environment, Government, Identities

Oppose The Inhuman Eviction in Dhubri: Hiren Gohain et al

1 Comment

Following is a statement on the violent displacement and dispossession in Dhubri, Assam by some leading civil society members of the state who were also the conveners of the Assam United Citizens Convention.

We strongly condemn the  inhuman, brutal and cruel eviction of more than thousands of farmers and labourers from  Chap Revenue Circle of Dhubri district by the government of Assam. Such atrocities against innocent people are unusual and indicative of a perverted mind. We don’t know who could be the next victims of such atrocities.  The government says the people are ‘encroachers’. However, the attitude of the ruling classes  towards land has been exploitative since the colonial times. Although the direct use of land is for settlement, agriculture, and other productive livelihoods of citizens, but for the government it is primarily a means of generating revenue. Since the colonial era, the government has not focused on the leasing and resettlement of landless indigenous people and other legal residents. However, the preceding governments at least allowed the people residing on government land to live in peace with some degree of humanitarian sympathy. But the BJP government has evicted these citizens like heartless zamindars. They are planning to hand over the land of the indigenous  residents of Assam to the big capitalists at home and abroad. Thus, the poor tribals, backward castes and char people have been turned into s beggars on the streets within a day. It is supposed to be a step forward for  ‘development’ and ‘industrialisation’. The ‘development’ of the state by killing people has assumed a demonic form now. We have also seen an anti-Muslim propaganda campaign openly and sometimes subtly launched  day and night by the government-owned media to cover up this evil character. Therefore, we demand the government to stop such evictions and warn the people to be vigilant against this evil government conspiracy.

Hiren Gohain, Harekrishna Deka, Ajit Kumar Bhuyan, Paresh Malakar, Abdul Mannan, Santanu Borthakur
Conveners, Assam United Citizens Convention

Culture, Debates, Democracy, Government, Law, Movements, Politics, Right watch

Democracy For The Few ?

Leave a comment

Is Bihar being turned into a test case of disenfranchising people?

Representational Image. Image Courtesy: Flickr

India pledged to usher in a democracy with universal adult franchise.

It was the late 1940s, when India, a newly independent nation, whose less than 10% population was then literate, embarked on this unique experiment, unheard of in those times.

The architects of Independence rejected all the Western prescriptions that openly said that .’.. India had no democratic future‘ (Winston Churchill) or ”monarchial arrangement best suited the Asian people‘ (British Prime Minister Clement Attlee to Nehru, 1949), and (to quote a student of history) ‘met the imperial argument on direct terms, firmly believing in the possibility of creating democratic citizens through democratic politics.’ (India’s Founding Moment: The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy by Madhav Khosla)

What is worth emphasising is that all those great leaders who shaped a forward-looking Constitution were on the same page when it came to granting the right to vote. For example, B.R Ambedkar, who was chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution, firmly believed that ‘To limit the franchise, was to misunderstand the meaning of democracy ... ‘

None of them dithered over this provision despite knowing well that even the Western countries had not fully adopted universal adult franchise. Remember, Switzerland granted the right to vote to women only in 1971.

Much water has flown down the Ganges, the Jhelum, the Brahmaputra, the Godavari or the Kaveri.

A good 75 years after the adoption of the Constitution (1950), today we are faced with a challenge that at first looks unbelievable, the present ruling dispensation seems to have embarked on a journey in an exactly reverse direction. [Read the full article here : https://www.newsclick.in/democracy-few]

Democracy, Development, Politics, Right watch, Scams

After Garukhuti Scam – Towards United Assam Citizens Convention: Hiren Gohain et al

Leave a comment

Following is a statement issued by some eminent citizens of Assam, issued in Guwahati on 3 July 2025. It calls for a civil society intervention, via the Assam United Citizens Convention to be held today and tomorrow (5 and 6 July), following the Garukhuti cow scam.

We have seen how our state is being run by the present government. The Garukhuti episode has made it amply clear how this government had thrown all the norms of government functioning to the winds and how favouritism and corruption have eaten into the core of governance. We have also seen how the chief minister of Assam is reacting to the situation and what he has been saying all the time. We think that the Garukhuti incident is not a single and isolated one. Garukhuti symbolises the basic character of Himanta Biswa Sarma government.

Continue reading After Garukhuti Scam – Towards United Assam Citizens Convention: Hiren Gohain et al →
Bad ideas, Capitalism, Culture, Debates, Democracy, Education, Government, Left watch

Dark Shadows of Emergency! 

Leave a comment

How they have become arsenal for the majoritarian Hindutva forces to convert the sovereign, independent, secular, socialist republic into a Hindu Rashtra.

25 th June 2025 happened to be the fiftieth year of the internal emergency imposed by the then Indira Gandhi regime. Much has changed during all these years but till date we are still far away from a balanced review of that period.

What really prompted Indira Gandhi to declare emergency , whether drive for personal power was the key factor, as has been reiterated multiple times…..

On the other hand, whether it could be said that she correctly perceived how sinister forces in the subcontinent were hell bent on sabotaging the democratic experiment at the behest of imperialist powers , who were even found to be provoking police and security forces to pursue their dubious agenda.

No doubt such a holistic review is a need of the hour but one thing cannot be denied that the biggest beneficiary of this whole exercise has been the Hindutva rightwing forces who are keen to transform India into a Hindu Rashtra

[ Read the full article here : https://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article15924.html]

Debates, Democracy, Empire/ Imperialism, Identities, Islamophobia, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Conversations on Palestine: Teredide Mane O Baa Athithi

1 Comment

Conversations on Palestine with an activist, a poet, a scholar

Teredide Mane O Baa Athithi (Come in, I have opened my doors dear guest) is an offshoot of Mere Ghar Aakar Toh Dekho, a national campaign in India, in Karnataka. It aims to counter the forces of hate, bigotry and polarization that have gained ground in the country by redrawing boundaries and expanding notions of trust and community. The campaign involves participants from diverse backgrounds opening their own homes and hearts to guests from equally varied locations. Teredide Mane has grown as a community, learning and unlearning through practice the concepts of guest and host, home and house, consent and comfort, celebration and sharing, listening and observing—both commonalities and diversity. [Content and editing by Madhu Bhushan, Winnu and Anita Cheria. Illustrations and design by Winnu]

We invite you into this moving and powerful conversation that has been reproduced largely in the speakers’ own words, and hope that you will add to it and take it forward. Read the whole conversation here (https://shorturl.at/JzvI5). Or a shorter note on the conversation here (https://shorturl.at/NkLHz).

Over the past months, the genocide in Palestine has come up multiple times in our meetings. Apart from engaging in acts of protest and solidarity, there was a need to go beyond ‘news noise’, and meet people engaged with and from Palestine. We decided to create a virtual space, one that was safe and intimate, to be able listen deeply to friends we had connected with in the course of our work and life journeys. This conversation, with Lisa Suhair Majaj, Smadar Lavie and Issa Samander in October, 2024, came about as a result of this intention.

Lisa Suhair Majaj is a passionate Palestinian American poet whose writings and poetry echo with the spirit of the land and people that she was herself exiled and alienated from.

Continue reading Conversations on Palestine: Teredide Mane O Baa Athithi →
Debates, Democracy, Government, Identities, Law, Politics, Refugee crisis

Assam: Arms Licenses to ‘Vulnerable Citizens’

Leave a comment

How saffrons are engaged in militarising Indian society not so surreptitiously.

Representational Image. Image Courtesy: Flickr

“…though this be madness, yet there is method in it“?

-Polonious, in ‘Hamlet’ by William Shakespeare

Pushback of ‘alleged foreigners’ It was May end, when the Assam government led by Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Himanta Biswa Sarma, was in the news for its policy of pushback where it was found literally pushing what it termed as ‘illegal foreigners’ into Bangladesh.

What was noticeable was that when its controversial pushback policy came under the scanner of national and international human rights organisations, the Assam government approved another scheme that has raised new questions?

This was a ‘special’ scheme to make the border areas, especially those inhabited by indigenous people living in “vulnerable and remote areas”, safe. ..

.. ..it was basically to give arms licenses to people and those along the border with Bangladesh to “help them protect themselves.” [ Read the full article here : https://www.newsclick.in/assam-arms-licenses-vulnerable-citizens]

DISSENT, DEBATE, CREATE