GABRIEL WINANT While academic historians generally divide political economy, political history, and social history into three separate fields—the study of markets, the study of the state, and the study of ordinary people and communities—they were irreducibly fused for Davis. He certainly could do political economy with the best of them: I return often to his… Read More Mike Davis (1946-2022); lonely pillar of a more open Marxism
George Monbiot So what do we do now? After 27 summits and no effective action, it seems that the real purpose was to keep us talking. If governments were serious about preventing climate breakdown, there would have been no Cops 2-27. The major issues would have been resolved at Cop1, as the ozone depletion crisis… Read More Embrace what may be the most important green technology ever. It could save us all
First posted June 15, 2020 NB: Since the Black Lives Matter movement, some intellectuals have begun (yet again) their campaign to slander Gandhiji as a ‘racist’. An interview published in The Caravan in January 2019 reiterated this. Much can be said about the prejudices of various leaders, and I have appended some comments beneath that interview. Leaving India… Read More Martin Luther King on Mahatma Gandhi: “My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence”, September 1958
First posted June 13, 2014 ‘A persuasive and a totally new way of thinking about a difficult subject, a truly significant achievement‘ Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia, Past and Present (2013) by Sumit Guha Reviwed by Tirthankar Roy EPW vol – XLIX No. 24, June 14, 2014) Three building-blocks structure this book.… Read More Book review: Sumit Guha’s new book on the history of caste
NB: Jail without trial for 4 years and counting. Stan Swamy died in custody, without interrogation or a trial. This is Indian justice today under the BJP-RSS government, a political group that weeps crocodile tears about the victims of the 1974 Emergency. They also criticize the retention of colonial era education and justice. Preventive detention… Read More A Professor’s Supreme Court Bail Hearing Is A Bellwether Case For Govt’s Use of India’s Anti-Terror Law
Sima Ayan November 15 24 of Aban 1401, all video clips of today begin with the date The strikes begin in earnestShops in many neighborhoods, many shopping centers shut downMost significantly the great bazaar of TehranInternet is not down yet so we watch shuttered shops all over the countryDay time things are pretty normal in… Read More Hopes, dreams and fears in text messages from Tehran
Amrit Dhillon When Ram Yadav fled India’s strict countrywide lockdown imposed in March 2020, he was one of the lucky ones, managing to hitch rides from Delhi on trucks going in the direction of his village near Kanpur, 400km (250 miles) away. An estimated 10 million workers were forced to walk home, travelling on foot via fields, forests… Read More The migrant workers struggling in wake of India’s Covid response
Oliver Holmes Iran’s repression of anti-regime protests appears to have entered a dangerous new phase, with activists accusing state forces of deploying heavy weapons and helicopters and a UN official describing the situation as “critical”. A nationwide uprising has convulsed the country since the death in September of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was allegedly beaten into… Read More Iran enters ‘critical’ phase as it tries to quash anti-regime protests
First posted May 31, 2014 “The epitaph for the RSS volunteer will be that he was born, he joined the RSS and died without accomplishing anything.”-V. D. Savarkar: D.V. Kelkar, The R.S.S. Economic Weekly (4 Feb 1950: 132); p. 36; The Brotherhood in Saffron; Andersen and Damle,Vistaar, 1986, Delhi) I / Celebrations at the central hall… Read More Subhash Gatade. Foot-soldiers in Search of an Icon
First posted September 06, 2020 Born on September 9, 1950 at village Talwandi Salem in Jalandhar, Avtar Singh Sandhu wrote under the pen name of Pash. Inspired by the Naxalite movement, he was known for his poetry of resistance. The four volumes of his poetry – ‘Loh Katha’, ‘Udadiyan Bazan Magar’, ‘Saddey Sameyaan Vich’ and… Read More Pash, my father: Winkle Sandhu remembers the revolutionary Punjabi poet / Sonia Mann’s emotional letter to her father Baldev Singh Mann
After the truth-shower 