Driving down Prithviraj Road, one of New Delhi’s famously leafy avenues, I passed a lane that opened on to it. The street sign said “Aurangzeb Lane”. Aurangzeb Road might have morphed into A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Road, but the emperor lives on, if only in a little feeder lane. Of the roads that commemorate Mughal emperors, all… Read More Mukul Kesavan: Delhi’s roads tell the story of the republic
Against The Dying of The Light: Bharat Ratna Frontier Gandhi, Badshah Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988). This note is being circulated for the attention of the Presidential candidates in the forthcoming elections for the offices of President and Vice President of India and the electoral college in this election. Recently, taking advantage of Covid lockdowns,… Read More Anil Nauriya, Against The Dying of The Light: Frontier Gandhi, Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988)
“Reshuffling cat shit on a litter tray.” “A Shakespearian tragedy: written by monkeys on typewriters” ‘Leave it to a comedian to give a far more honest commentary on the situation than any of the actual media’ Bye Bye Boris : Jonathan Pie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKrLBPmRsrM Boris Johnson: any democracy should look to his case and ask if… Read More Bye Bye Boris
Blaming the failings of an entire political culture on the moral deficiencies of one leader might make us feel righteous, but most of us know that the rot goes rather deeper than one flamboyant character. The fall of Johnson could be taken as a historical juncture to be built upon and not just in the UK.… Read More Boris Johnson: any democracy should look to his case and ask if it is enabling machiavellian leaders
The arrest of human rights activist Teesta Setalvad and R.B. Sreekumar, the former additional director general police, by the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad on the basis of a first information report (FIR) that copiously draws on the Supreme Court judgment in the Zakia Ehsan Jafri case is patently malafide. The arrest came close on the heels… Read More Prashant Bhushan: Another ‘Arresting’ Judgment in Favour of BJP and Narendra Modi
Just about every lousy U.S. foreign policy escapade from the 1950s to the late ‘70s traces back to the CIA. From the catastrophic1953 coup of Iranian president Mohammad Mossadegh, the 1954 regime change of Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz for daring to step on United Fruit’s toes, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the many, some of… Read More Eve Ottenberg: Abolish the CIA
Only breaking at midday to refuel on peanuts and palm wine, the village works methodically as a unit to grow fonio – a precious grain crucial to their diets that only takes days to germinate and can be harvested in as little as six weeks. Though laborious, growing fonio, one of Africa’s oldest cultivated grains,… Read More ‘Fonio just grows naturally’: could ancient indigenous crops ensure food security for Africa?
There is an adjective that all too invitingly describes the wildly optimistic endeavours of the American book collector, the Hungarian-British explorer and the two Kashmiri pandits who, almost a century ago, took it upon themselves to translate Don Quixote into Sanskrit for the first time. Today, the same word might equally be applied to the… Read More Sanskrit translation of Don Quixote rescued from oblivion
When I began work as an environmental journalist in 1985, I knew I would struggle against people with a financial interest in destructive practices. But I never imagined that we would one day confront what appears to be an ideological commitment to destroying life on Earth. The UK government and the US supreme court look… Read More George Monbiot on Democracy vs plutocracy: Endgame for our planet / Tom Engelhardt: Life in This Literal Hell
Turkey should face charges in front of the international court of justice for being complicit in acts of genocide against the Yazidi people, while Syria and Iraq failed in their duty to prevent the killings, an investigation endorsed by British human rights lawyer Helena Kennedy has said. The groundbreaking report, compiled by a group of prominent… Read More Turkey should face international court over Yazidi genocide, report says
