First posted July 11, 2015 “I have never in my life ‘loved’ any people or collective – neither the German people, nor the French, nor the American, nor the working class or anything of that sort. I indeed love ‘only’ my friends and the only kind of love I know of and believe in is… Read More Hannah Arendt: pariah and 21st-century cosmopolitan
Her brave struggle has come with tremendous personal costs. Altogether, the regime has arrested her 13 times, convicted her five times, and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison, and 154 lashes The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi for “her fight against the oppression of women… Read More Nobel Peace Prize won by Narges Mohammadi for fight against the oppression of women in Iran
The largest earnings gap is based on gender, with women reporting earnings at only 40% of those of men in self-employment, followed by 64% of men in casual wage jobs, and 76% of men in regular wage jobs. Social identity plays a significant role in determining the type of employment a person is likely to… Read More Report Reveals Stark Disparities in India’s Labour Market Based on Caste, Gender, and Religion
First posted May 13, 2016 NB: Etel Adnan, writer, poet, artist and musician was born in 1925 and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Her mother was a Greek from Smyrna, her father, a high ranking Ottoman officer born in Damascus. This prose poem is the final chapter of her book In the Heart of the Heart of Another… Read More Etel Adnan: To Be In A Time Of War
NB: I post this as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his 154th birthday. DS First posted December 31, 2018 “There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth… Read More Against the Illusion of Separateness: Pablo Neruda’s Beautiful Nobel Acceptance Speech. By Maria Popova
Donna Ferguson In 1493, Christopher Columbus wrote a letter that would change the landscape of the modern world. “I sailed to the Indies with the fleet that the illustrious King and Queen, our sovereigns, gave me, where I discovered a great many islands, inhabited by numberless people,” he wrote after his return to Europe to royal treasurer… Read More Original letter from Columbus announcing ‘discovery’ of America goes on sale
Indian responses to Trudeau’s allegations have ranged from furious official denial to online trolls celebrating this new willingness to take out India’s enemies Mukul Kesavan The murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in a suburb of Vancouver has caused a nervous breakdown in Indo-Canadian relations. Justin Trudeau’s very public suggestion that the Indian State was complicit… Read More Modi vs Trudeau
By Dilip Simeon NB: This is an extended reminiscence of a conversation about Ranajit Guha and the Naxalite movement. The conversation was arranged at the request of the Bangla journal Anustup; and took place between me and a History honours student at the University of Delhi. (I am obliged to Anustup for having prompted this… Read More A Political Man: Memories of Ranajit Guha
Atikh Rashid , Shalmali Bhagwat The signboard at the entrance of Pune’s Aga Khan Palace provides directions to two places of interest within the 13-acre complex – the three-storey palace built in the late 19th century, and the Samadhis. To visit the Samadhis, one needs to descend a flight of stairs located at a distance from the… Read More How Mahatma’s ashes travelled: In Pune lingers traces of Gandhi family’s 1948 decision to engage a nation in mourning
Rob Hirst Whistleblowers get a raw deal in Australia. They risk their health, careers and reputations to bring the rest of us the truth about Australia bugging East Timor during critical oil and gas negotiations, about SAS war crimes in Afghanistan, about US gunship murders of civilians in the Middle East. Like the other songs… Read More The Strongest Memory
After the truth-shower 