Dear friends, comrades,“Never again!” the call of the Hibakusha or Japanese A-bomb survivors reverberates across the decades, reminding us of the need to keep working for peace in a region with two nuclear-armed countries. This award-winning film by Karachi-based filmmaker and Sapan founding member Aisha Gazdar captures the tragedy and the resolve to “never forget” the bombing… Read More Never Again!
from Himal, October 2011 The Mind of Brahma Dilip Simeon In 2009 I undertook what was to be the most memorable journey of my life. I have made other journeys as momentous in their implications, but I would have to think of a reason. The trip to Tibet by air, road and foot was unmistakably different.… Read More The Mind of Brahma
n July 14, 2022, Sri Lanka’s parliamentary speaker announced that he had accepted the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, sent by email from Singapore where he had fled via The Maldives. That this former military commander—known as “the terminator” due to his propensity to get critics assassinated—was forced to resign by an overwhelmingly nonviolent mass movement marks this… Read More Rohini Hensman: Sri Lanka’s democratic revolution. The latest episode in a decades-long drama
First posted August 06, 2013 This paper was researched and written by Rashmi Singh as part of AMAN’s ongoing research on informal labourers. The paper was presented at the Ninth International Conference of the Association for Indian Labour Historians in Delhi. In 2007, following the brutal rape and murder of a fourteen year old school… Read More Rashmi Singh: Migrant Workers in the Kashmir Valley
In the depths of winter I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer – Albert Camus; The Stranger Heroism isn’t much… happiness is more difficult – Letters to a German friend Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only goal worth struggling… Read More Invincible Summer – Albert Camus
NB: The game is quite easy to understand, really. The Sangh Parivar and its allies wish to set themselves up as sole representative of Hindu ‘sentiment’; and the sole interpreter of what Hinduism is. They dream of becoming the Head Quarters of Religious Truth for the Indian people. It is a replica of the harassment of… Read More Hindi Writers Slam Police Complaint Against Author Geetanjali Shree / For the first time ever, a book in an Indian language has won the Booker Prize
NB: To this excellent commentary on justice I will add a few lines from J.P. Stern’s book, Hitler: The Fuhrer and the People (1992). They are taken from pages 113-114; a chapter called The Spirit of National Socialist Law: “National Socialist law is not, as in Dickens, ‘an ass’: that is, extravagant, purblind, and pompously remote from the… Read More Gautam Bhatia on The Executive(’s) Court: Notes on the Legacy of Justice A.M. Khanwilkar
The Sophists taught, rather publicly, that the summit of happiness is to combine the appearance of justice with actual injustice: G. A. McBrayer; On the origin of the Idea of Natural Right; in Brill’s Companion to Leo Strauss, 2005; p 44 Actor Ashutosh Rana की आवाज में Poet Aalok Shrivastav की ये Hindi Ghazal “that… Read More Socrates: If the whole is ailing the part cannot be well / Kautilya: Disaffection among Subjects / Darkness at noon, felled by the judiciary
NB: The spirit of these lines conveys the purpose of my blog. Freedom of the mind and the striving toward truth and wisdom are the underpinning of human life. In a time when the ruthless pursuit of power and mindless rhetoric is in danger of destroying the integrity of social life, co-operation and even speech,… Read More Where The Mind Is Without Fear
A highly perceptive analyst and a close reader of Alexandre Koyré, Hannah Arendt described totalitarian regimes as being “secret societies established in broad daylight.” (see Koyre, pp 296-7, Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, p 492). By imitating the apparatus of secret societies without ever trying to keep their own goals a secret, these movements, just like… Read More Alexandre Koyré: The Political Function of the Modern Lie (1943) / John Keane: Lying, journalism and democracy
