By Jacob Mikanowski DECEMBER 18, 2023 What distinguishes war from genocide? When does state violence tip over from horrific yet legally sanctioned displays of military force into “the crime of all crimes,” according to both international law and the popular imagination? This question has been much on Omer Bartov’s mind in recent months. A professor at… Read More A historian of genocide sounds the alarm
“If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country.” — B.R. Ambedkar In a recent talk in Bengaluru, the writer, Parakala Prabhakar, made a perceptive observation about the changing language of political discourse. In the late 1980s, when the Bharatiya Janata Party was first becoming a… Read More Ramachandra Guha: Reign of faith
Bharat Bhushan The protestors in the Parliamentary attack of December 13, 2023 were clearly naive, and their method patently criminal. But even while policing failures are examined threadbare, their political message should not be lost. Ignoring caste and regional affiliations, they just wanted to send a message to the entire political class about youth unemployment. They appear… Read More No jobs and a bleak future: Has the political class failed India’s youth?
Despite the violence it has unleashed on Palestinians, Israel is failing to achieve its political goals. TONY KARON and DANIEL LEVY It may sound daft to suggest that a group of armed irregulars, numbering in the low tens of thousands, besieged and with little access to advanced weaponry, is a match for one of the world’s most… Read More Israel Is Losing This War
US-Russian journalist Masha Gessen won Germany’s Hannah Arendt prize for political thought. Supporters of Gessen, who is Jewish, and whose grandfather and great-grandfather were among family members murdered by the Nazis, have been quick to point out the irony of suspending a prize awarded in memory of Arendt, the German-born Jewish-American historian, philosopher and antitotalitarian… Read More Award ceremony suspended after writer compares Gaza to Nazi-era Jewish ghettos
These professors had to finish their doctoral research, write papers, present in conferences, and yet miraculously also had time for that extra reading that a student requested, or for lunch at D-School Canteen to give a serious answer to a question. Abinash Dash Choudhury Education as the practice of freedom—as opposed to education as the… Read More An Ode to the ‘Ad-Hoc’ Teachers of Ramjas English Department
How the politics of memory in Europe obscures what we see in Israel and Gaza today By Masha Gessen Berlin never stops reminding you of what happened there. Several museums examine totalitarianism and the Holocaust; the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe takes up an entire city block. In a sense, though, these larger structures… Read More In the Shadow of the Holocaust
Louis Althusser – an Intellectual Adventure (2017) This documentary traces the development of the thought of the Marxist French philosopher Louis Althusser (1918-1990), who influenced a whole generation of philosophers, including Lacan, Foucault, Derrida, Badiou and Zizek. Famous for his Definition of ideology and ideological state apparatuses. Althusser is credited with reinterpreting Marx in a… Read More Louis Althusser: An Intellectual Adventure (2017)
Piers Morgan Uncensored is joined by lawyer and author Alan Dershowitz and author and political scientist Norman Finkelstein as the pair unite for their first live television debate in over 20 years. The pair debate the Israel and Palestine conflict in Gaza, whether Hamas and the IDF are terrorist organisations, whether Israel is committing genocide… Read More Norman Finkelstein vs Alan Dershowitz On Israel-Palestine War With Piers Morgan / Full Debate
Seizing electronic devices in the absence of proportionality checks violates the right against self-incrimination Soutik Banerjee On 6 December 2023, in the hearing of a petition filed by the Foundation of Media Professionals, Additional Solicitor General S.V. Raju told the Supreme Court that the central government will issue “some guidelines” for the seizure of electronic… Read More Constitutional principles go for a toss in the criminal law of search and seizure
