The Cult of the Nation is the professionalism of the people. This cult is becoming their greatest danger, because it is bringing them enormous success, making them impatient of the claims of higher ideals. The greater the amount of success, the stronger are the conflicts of interest and jealousy and hatred which are aroused in men’s… Read More Rabindranath Tagore’s essay on the cult of the nation
NB: This is a moving and valuable historical document. It is published on a Leninist portal, with whose politics I disagree, so my posting this speech does not imply my endorsement of the doctrines of Socialist Worker; or the KPD or the CPSU. (A detailed analysis of Bolshevism may be read here). Nonetheless, the brunt… Read More Clara Zetkin: Fascism must be defeated (1932)
[This article by Mahatma Gandhi was published towards the end of March 1930. It was part of a series of Gandhi’s articles and was a prelude to his arrest in the first week of May 1930] There is no halfway house between active loyalty and active disloyalty. There is much truth in the late Justice… Read More Duty of disloyalty. M. K. Gandhi (1930)
Deeply researched and lucidly written, Gandhi’s Assassin does a good job in its portraiture of Nathuram Godse and in reporting details of the plot to kill MK Gandhi NB: The murder of Gandhiji has been immersed in ideological sophistry ever since 1948. Thousands of Sangh Parivar allies celebrate his assassination on the one hand (especially… Read More Gandhi’s Assassin. By Dhirendra K Jha
The Christmas truce, 1914 – Steven Johns A short history of the widespread but unofficial truce between British and German troops on the Western front over Christmas, 1914 during World War I. Despite the mass slaughter orchestrated by European governments, rank-and-file soldiers during World War I often attempted to resist the war effort and refuse… Read More The Soldiers’ Christmas Truce 1914 / Armistice Day, November 11, 1918: In Pictures
First posted May 02, 2015 She was described admiringly by Vladimir Lenin’s wife as the “primeval force of the Black Earth”, a revolutionary firebrand with sparkling brown eyes whose natural aroma was of “fresh meadow grasses”. It is no wonder then that the search for an image of Apollinariya Yakubova, considered by some to be… Read More Apollinariya Yakubova: The face of the woman Vladimir Lenin loved most is revealed
First posted June 19, 2014 Martin Heidegger’s Schwarze Hefte; Black Notebooks – 1931-1941 – first published March 2014 Reviewed by Richard Wolin In the anti-philosophical arguments of the Black Notebooks, Heidegger views reason, individualism, and democracy through the prism of modern humanity’s utter and wholesale “abandonment by Being.” His obscure point of departure leads to equally obscurantist forms… Read More National Socialism, World Jewry, and the History of Being: Heidegger’s Black Notebooks
First posted May 26, 2019 NB: Ambedkar’s book is a crucial archive for the climate of the times in which it was written. A noticeable feature is the extensive research, done in short time, soon after the Muslim League’s Lahore Resolution in March 1940. It is also noteworthy that he used stereotypes, fairly common in… Read More Extracts from B. R. Ambedkar’s book on Pakistan (1940, 1945)
Comrade-proletarians, and toilers of all countries: We, Russian workers and soldiers, united in the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, send you warmest greetings and announce the great event. The Russian democracy has shattered in the dust the age-long despotism of the Tsar and enters your family of nations as an equal, and as… Read More CALL BY THE PETROGRAD SOVIET TO THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD; March 28, 1917
The documents contained in the link below are a replica of Delhi Police Criminal Investigation Department (CID) files on RSS activity and plans October-December 1947. They are part of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library archive; and listed as (click for access): D P Records 5th Instalment Home-47 File 138 Among other places, the files have been cited… Read More Delhi Police Archive on RSS activity in October-December 1947
After the truth-shower 