Bengal Imam who lost son to communal clashes calls for peace / Students Across India Rise Up To Protest Citizenship Act And Police Brutality

First posted December 15, 2019 His appeal to the protesters not to cause discomfort to ordinary people or harm public or private properties has been circulating on social media since Sunday morning. NB: This gentleman deserves our respect, gratitude and admiration. I would like to salute him and ask that we all learn from him. His… Read More Bengal Imam who lost son to communal clashes calls for peace / Students Across India Rise Up To Protest Citizenship Act And Police Brutality

Enemies in Love

First posted September 06, 2020 NB: This is an example of how the micro-history of ordinary people can subvert all our stereotypes about animus based on race, ideology, religion and identity. Worth reading. DS. A love story between a 23 year-old black Army nurse and a 19 year-old white German POW during World War II? You… Read More Enemies in Love

‘The Kashmir Files’ Has Fascist Features: Israeli Filmmaker doubles down. ‘Someone has to speak up’

NB: Here’s my post on the same theme some months ago. DS Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, whose critical remarks on ‘The Kashmir Files’ movie at a film festival have raised a storm, has stood by them and said “someone has to speak up”. Mr Lapid, the head of the international jury at the International Film… Read More ‘The Kashmir Files’ Has Fascist Features: Israeli Filmmaker doubles down. ‘Someone has to speak up’

Protests spread across China amid zero-COVID anger

William Yang “The Communist Party, step down. Xi Jinping, step down!” Those were the slogans chanted by hundreds of protesters in China’s commercial capital, Shanghai, on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, as they gathered to demand the Chinese government end the strict pandemic control measures that have been imposed on several cities across the world’s second-largest economy. The protest… Read More Protests spread across China amid zero-COVID anger

Accounts by J&K Pandits rip BJP’s Valley veneer

Muzaffar Raina    A public interaction between BJP leaders and Kashmiri Pandit and Dalit employees from Jammu who have left the Valley following a spate in targeted killings turned into an embarrassment for the party, with the participants’ accounts shredding its all-is-well line in Kashmir. Speaker after speaker at Thursday’s live-streamed meeting in Jammu described how the… Read More Accounts by J&K Pandits rip BJP’s Valley veneer

Another time, another mosque

Gandhi’s Last Fast: January 13-18, 1948 First posted March 30, 2012 This article is based on a lecture I prepared for university students, named Mahatma Gandhi’s Legacy. It includes the text of the Delhi Declaration on communal harmony, January 18, 1948. Citations are from Gandhi’s Collected Works Gandhi’s Last Fast: January 13-18, 1948 From September 1947,… Read More Another time, another mosque

हरिशंकर परसाई: महात्मा गाँधी को चिट्ठी पहुँचे (1977)

First posted January 31, 2015 यह चिट्ठी महात्मा मोहनदास करमचंद गाँधी को पहुंचे. महात्माजी, मैं न संसद-सदस्य हूँ, न विधायक, न मंत्री, न नेता. इनमें से कोई कलंक मेरे ऊपर नहीं है. मुझमें कोई ऐसा राजनीतिक ऐब नहीं है कि आपकी जय बोलूं. मुझे कोई भी पद नहीं चाहिये कि राजघाट जाऊँ. मैंने आपकी समाधि… Read More हरिशंकर परसाई: महात्मा गाँधी को चिट्ठी पहुँचे (1977)

Julian de Medeiros: Trump’s wall isn’t a state of emergency but a state of exception (2019)

First posted February 19, 2019 NB: This is an important commentary. Carl Schmitt’s elevation of animosity to a metaphysical dimension is much admired by intellectuals across the political spectrum, and commands influence (sometimes unacknowledged) left to right. An example of Schmitt’s ‘the political‘ as applied to the historiography of communal politics in colonial India may be… Read More Julian de Medeiros: Trump’s wall isn’t a state of emergency but a state of exception (2019)