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 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
Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth Ideology – that is what… gives the evil-doer the necessary steadfastness and determination . . . the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good… in his own and others’ eyes From this point the roads go to the right… Read More The Gulag Archipelago: An Epic of True Evil
First posted January 20, 2016 The non-violent soldier of Islam, Bharat Ratna, died 28 years ago, on January 20, 1988. The assault on the university named after him in Pakistan is yet another attack on his legacy. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988) is better remembered in India as Frontier Gandhi, and in Pakistan as Bacha… Read More Mukulika Banerjee: Remembering Bacha Khan. The beleaguered legacy of Frontier Gandhi, Abdul Ghaffar Khan
First posted December 18, 2016 Total responsibility in total solitude – is this not the very definition of our liberty? Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most important philosophers and writers of the 20th century. He lived through World War II first as a French prisoner of war, then as a professor of philosophy associated… Read More The Republic of Silence: Jean-Paul Sartre on the Aftermath of War and Occupation
NB: The RSS and BJP are inventing ever new avatars of communal politics, mixed with a generous dose of an Orwellian nightmare. A theocracy is the use of the state by religious leaders (self-styled representatives of God); and civil religion the use of religion by the state as in Japanese State Shinto. However, Caesaropapism (Caesar+Pope)… Read More Madhavan Palat: The Sengol Is a Symbol of ‘Divine Right’ to Power. It Does Not Belong in Parliament. सेन्गोल के रास्ते नेहरू की एंट्री | Sengol debate & Nehru’s return
To transform himself from imperial policeman to writer, Eric Blair set aside both his name and the trappings of respectability his family cherished. Orwell: The New Life; By D. J. Taylor Reviewed by Dominic Green George Orwell, the inventor of the Ministry of Love and Room 101 in “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” was married for the second… Read More ‘Orwell’ Review: A Fresh Biography of Truth’s Champion
The authoritarian government led by Marshal Pétain participated in Jewish expulsions and turned France into a quasi-police state Lorraine Boissoneault On November 8, 1942, in the thick of World War II, thousands of American soldiers landed on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, while others amassed in Algeria, only to take immediate gunfire from the French.… Read More Was Vichy France a Puppet Government or a Willing Nazi Collaborator?
First posted July 14, 2012 The word ‘nationalism’ itself dates from the early nineteenth century and marked the increasing use of national identity in order to make political claims. So to argue that national identity is pre-political is itself a political statement. It is becoming chic among some of Europe’s young elites to call for… Read More Alternatives to the nationalism of the conspicuously ignorant: Markha Valenta
After the truth-shower 