NB: This essay has just been published in the latest issue of Outlook magazine. Happy Easter. DS Many years ago, in the mid 1990’s, I had occasion to hire a cab in Amsterdam. It was after dinner at a friends’ place. Once inside the cab it turned out the driver was an Indian immigrant. Or… Read More Khuda Hafiz
To be radical requires a theory of how this world, for all its problems, contains and is fostering the beginning of another, very different world. Jedediah Britton-Purdy All sorts of people had come to the Welsh countryside to spend the day talking about the history of labor radicalism: miners, organizers, researchers, politicians. But the star… Read More Raymond Williams’s Resources for Hope
First posted June 05, 2013 By Adam Johnson. Photography by Jungyeon Roh North Korea is a mythically strange land, an Absurdistan, where almost nothing is known about the people or, more important, their missile-launching leaders. There is, however, one man—a humble sushi chef from Japan—who infiltrated the inner sanctum, becoming the Dear Leader’s cook, confidant,… Read More Dear Leader Dreams of Sushi: What life was like serving Kim Jong-il and his heir
At least 996 women in Turkey have been killed by men since the country’s 2021 withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, an international treaty aimed at combating domestic violence, while 748 women have died under suspicious circumstances, Turkish Minute reported, citing a report by the We Will Stop Femicide Platform (KCDP). March 20 marks the third… Read More Femicides: 2000 Turkish women killed by men since Erdogan left Womens Rights Convention
NB: Observation by a psychoanalyst: The writer seems to know little about psychotherapy: what the latter does is validate the feelings of trauma, and provide empathy and support. How the person copes is best left to themselves and to whatever strategies, personal and collective they can creatively access or create. We all live through adolescence… Read More ‘We are all unwell’: a scholar’s radical approach to health
NB: Those of us who see the events of the late 1940’s in black and white terms ought to study the complexity of historical events as well as of the views of the actors in those events. Some may be surprised to read B. R. Ambedkar’s views on the transfer of population on a communal… Read More Jogendranath Mandal hoped for Dalit-Muslim unity in Pakistan. He’s remembered as a ‘villain’
NB: Anyone concerned about the intellectual health of their country should recall what Mao’s regime did to China’s academic life under the so-called Cultural Revolution in the late 1960’s. This was Mao Zedong’s motivated assault on academics, intellectuals and on his critics in the Communist Party leadership. Professor Frank Dikotter’s research study of this momentous… Read More Where Are the ‘Don Quixotes’ of Indian Academia?
First posted June 02, 2017 NB: Comrade Satyapal Dang (1920-2013), a stalwart communist, was one of the tallest figures of modern India. At the height of the Khalistani movement he and his wife comrade Vimla stood fast in the CPI’s trade union office in Ekta Bhavan, Amritsar, despite the threats to their lives. They upheld secular values and… Read More Comrade Satyapal Dang: Lessons of Punjab have relevance for Kashmir
We look for loneliness inside our heads when its source lies all around us, in the destruction of collective life, the erosion of communal bonds, the ruin of civil society, the squeezing of public spaces. Kenan Malik ‘The hope that political action will gradually humanise industrial society has given way to a determination to survive… Read More We think loneliness is in our heads, but its source lies in the ruin of civil society
End of Day 18 of #climatefast | Kya hum baimani se vishwaguru ban sakte hain END OF DAY 18 OF #CLIMATEFAST I’m feeling bit better today. But deeply disturbed at the breach of trust that Ladakh witnessed from the Home Ministry. This disrespect for written manifestos will set the worst precedence in the nation. Already… Read More Day 18 of Climate fast / Sonam Wangchuk on YouTube / Assam in solidarity with Ladakh
After the truth-shower 