Tag: Dilip’s notes and articles

Jair Bolsonaro’s assault on the Amazon rainforest

First posted January 2, 2019 NB: Two things arise from these and related developments for us to think about: 1./ The nation-state as an institution is detrimental for the health of the environment. Environment and ecological issues are global, but nationalism makes us think that natural resources like clean air, water and forests are somehow the… Read More Jair Bolsonaro’s assault on the Amazon rainforest

Dilip

The law of killing: A brief history of Indian fascism / Arthur Rosenberg: Fascism as a Mass Movement / Kannan Srinivasan: A Subaltern Fascism?

First posted July 20, 2013 The life-impulse can exist without fascism, but fascism cannot exist without the life-impulse. Fascism is the vampire leeched to the body of the living, the impulse to murder given free rein, when love calls for fulfilment in spring..  Wilhelm Reich in The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933): The essays below are part of a… Read More The law of killing: A brief history of Indian fascism / Arthur Rosenberg: Fascism as a Mass Movement / Kannan Srinivasan: A Subaltern Fascism?

Dilip

The search for new time: Ahimsa in an age of permanent war

Dilip Simeon First posted April 11, 2017 Lecture presented at the Champaran Satyagrah centenary celebrations, Patna, April 10, 2017 A pdf of the lecture is available here. A fuller argument on satyagrah and nihilism may be read here  The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it: Mary Catherine Bateson Nihilism doesn’t stand… Read More The search for new time: Ahimsa in an age of permanent war

Dilip

Naxalites should lay down their arms and challenge the ruling class to abide by the Constitution

Dilip Simeon First posted June 4, 2017; published in The Indian Express, June 5 NB: This is the third piece I have written concerning the 50th anniversary of Naxalbari. It appeared today -June 5, 2017 – in the Indian Express website. The first was entitled Annihilation. The second, Yesterday once more-50 years after Naxalbari, was published in Outlook. Here is a post… Read More Naxalites should lay down their arms and challenge the ruling class to abide by the Constitution

Dilip

Society of the Spectacle / इमेज – Image: A Poem on Deaths in the Age of Covid

First posted on May 16, 2021 “The spectacle is the guardian of sleep”: Guy Debord   – ‘But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence… illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be… Read More Society of the Spectacle / इमेज – Image: A Poem on Deaths in the Age of Covid

Dilip

The Bolshevik Heritage. By Dilip Simeon

First posted November 3, 2017 NB: This essay has appeared in EPW’s special number commemorating the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution, which falls on November 7. (A Word file is downloadable here). The revolution began on February 23, 1917, (March 8 according to the new calendar adopted in 1918); but for complex reasons, tended to be identified with the… Read More The Bolshevik Heritage. By Dilip Simeon

Dilip

Book review: The State as Faction: Mao’s Cultural Revolution

First posted May 8, 2018 NB: This is a longer version of my review of this book which appeared in the April 2018 issue of Biblio. DS The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962–1976 By Frank Dikötter; Bloomsbury Press, 2016 The GPCR was yet another example of the totalitarian impulse, the open secret that motivates all… Read More Book review: The State as Faction: Mao’s Cultural Revolution

Dilip