Truth, and the memory of truth, are public enemy number one for authoritarian governments today. The most relentless Swachh Bharat programme has been a campaign against Sachh Bharat. Mitali Saran The guiding principle of the Modi government is ‘If you can’t fix it, bury it.’ Information is power, so suck up as much of it… Read More One nation, one version
SUCHET VIR SINGH Param Vir Chakra recipient Captain Bana Singh (retd) joined Congress leader Rahul Gandhi as the Bharat Jodo Yatra entered Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) Friday. Referring to Captain Singh as the “Param Vir Chakra recipient who hoisted the Tricolour on Siachen’s icy heights”, Gandhi took to Twitter to post a picture of himself walking beside… Read More Param Vir Chakra recipient Capt Bana Singh joins Bharat Jodo Yatra
URMI CHANDA A lot of literary writing recognised as peace literature is retrospective, as few writers set out with the intention to write about peace. However, in a couple of new releases, the intention is rather palpable. Sahana Ahmed’s Amity, which released in December 2022, is an anthology of 95 poems by 47 writers from France,… Read More Peace literature is the new boom in South Asia
Bharat Bhushan Bharatiya Janata Party’s governors in opposition-ruled states have been controversy’s favourite children as they amplify the BJP’s ambitions for complete political control of India. However, even among them, Tamil Nadu governor RN Ravi stands out. No other governor has gone to the extent of censoring tributes to well-established political icons, told the Tamils… Read More Tamil Nadu governor is lighting fires the BJP cannot control
Resist the Executive’s Attempt to Discredit & Undermine Independence of the Judiciary Founder: Jayaprakash Narayan; Founding President: V M Tarkunde General Secretary: Dr. V. SureshE.mail: puclnat@gmail.com & pucl.natgensec@gmail.com As the Modi government reaches the final stretch of its second five-year term, one can see the beginnings of its new priorities. The drumbeats against the judiciary, the lone institution which… Read More People’s Union for Civil Liberties calls on Indian citizens to resist the government’s attacks on judicial independence
Bharat Bhushan Bhagwat claims that the ‘1000-year war’ against ‘foreign aggressions’ has now been transformed into a war with the “enemy within’ It is a measure of the marginalisation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) under the Narendra Modi regime that its head Mohan Bhagwat is compelled to symbolically reassert his authority time and again. His latest… Read More Two Popes: Mohan Bhagwat’s feeble attempts to reassert himself
The outcry in Bareilly last month over students singing an Iqbal poem reminds us that we live in a hyper-nationalist time, where leaders glorify territorial nationalism beyond measure and deliberately concoct insidious ancillaries anchored in religion, language, race or colour. As I read about the furore in Bareilly over Iqbal’s poem “Bachche ki Du’a” (“A… Read More A child’s prayer. By C. M. Naim
NB: This article was posted recently on social media under the title ‘The murder of a divine geography’; and was written by Amitabh Pande. His lines ring very true. Thanks are due to the writer. The video report below by Hridayesh Joshi is also a valuable piece of journalism: A sinking city: Fear and anger… Read More The sinking of Joshimath and the commercialisation of sacredness
SIMRIN SIRUR Joshimath: The land below their feet sinking, helpless residents of Joshimath town were gathered in front of the battered Malari Inn hotel for a second consecutive day of protests Wednesday. They were demanding “fair compensation” for being driven out of their homes and possibly the town itself. Tensions between the displaced residents on the one… Read More ‘Only place we’ve ever known’: As Joshimath crumbles, the displaced demand ‘fair compensation’
By Soutik Biswas and Raju Gusain Early in the morning of 2 January, Prakash Bhotiyal woke up to a “loud sound” in his house in Joshimath, a small Himalayan mountain town in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. The 52-year-old tailor switched on the lights and surveyed his newly-built, double-storey house to find gaping cracks… Read More Joshimath: The trauma of living in India’s sinking Himalayan town
