Note: The two links below are recordings of public lectures given by me under the kind auspices of The Raza Foundation (October 4, 2019), titled The Compass We Lost; and ANHAD Collective, titled Love at Work, Mahatma Gandhi’s Last Struggle (January 14, 2017). Dilip Simeon: The Compass We Lost <— link to AV Love at… Read More The compass we lost
NB: The mind-numbing historical illiteracy and moral vacuity of some of our artists and members of the intelligentsia is embarassing, were it not also predictable. Adolf Hitler is much admired amongst many educated persons, Mein Kampf is freely available even though Rushdie’s Satanic Verses is banned. The ideological icon of India’s current ruling dispensation –… Read More Bollywood film accused of trivialising Holocaust with Auschwitz scenes
First posted August 14, 2017 NB: Outlook asked me to write an article on ‘the decline of idealism’, with a focus on the Left. Here is what I wrote – it has appeared under the title The Idea and its Mutant – DS Before discussing the idealism of the Left, it would be a good idea to think… Read More The decline of idealism
Dilip Simeon First posted on March 24, 2015 NB: This paper appeared in a volume entitled Communalism in Post-colonial India Changing Contours; by Mujibur Rehman (ed; 2015). I discuss why our understanding of communal politics is constrained from the outset by the faulty concepts we use, which only serve to re-inforce communal ideologies. DS The Philosophy of Number [1]… Read More The Philosophy of Number
NB: Is India an empire? The British Raj certainly was, and the RSS/BJP ideologues who constantly denouce the Macaulay tradition in education; don’t seem to mind the continuance of colonial police codes and the divide and rule method of governance. Do they imagine that a combination of communal ideology and colonial policing will keep them… Read More Modi preaching peace abroad as Manipur burns reinforces historical alienation of the North East
Dilip Simeon NB: This work-in-progress paper was my contribution to a conference hosted by the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Bergen, Norway. The conference( May 31-June 2, 2023) was titled 200 Years of Socialism: Revisiting the Old Dilemmas: First Annual Global Research Programme on Inequality Lecture Abstract: The Bolshevik confiscation of the… Read More Militant capitalism, bad infinity, and the longing for total revolution
First posted June 27, 2012 A Hard Rain Falling by Dilip Simeon He went to bed, turned on the BBC World News and switched it off again. Half-truths. Quarter-truths. What the world really knows about itself, it doesn’t dare say: John le Carre, in Our Kind of Traitor A baleful feature of contemporary Indian politics is the subjugation… Read More A Hard Rain Falling: on the death of T. P. Chandrasekharan (EPW, June 2012)
First posted December 15, 2011 This article appeared in the India International Centre Quarterly special issue titled India and China: Neighbours, Strangers, edited by Ira Pande; 2010. Glory Daysby Dilip Simeon Many years ago, when some of us argued about the ills of the present and, more to the point, the ills of contemporary India, we… Read More Glory Days, or remembering how Indians love(d) China
First posted December 22, 2013 Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth By Reza Aslan Reviewed by Dilip Simeon (Biblio, November-December 2013) This is a fascinating account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. I suspect it will also be disturbing for believers. The argument rests on the distinction between the historical Jesus and… Read More Jesus the man
First posted Tuesday, April 09, 2013 Letter from Members of the CPI (ML) See the facsimile of the original here: http://www.sacw.net/article4164.html Explanatory Note 1./ This is an open letter I wrote in December 1971, as a Naxalite cadre (among many) who experienced the political crisis accompanying the disintegration of Pakistan in 1970-71. It was anonymous, and I was the… Read More An Open Letter to the world on the Bangladesh crisis of 1971
After the truth-shower 