The liberal dream will always have losers BY TERRY EAGLETON Here’s a conspiracy theory of my own invention. Why did Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald? Readers under the age of 80 may need to know that Jack Ruby was a Dallas bar owner and small-time crook who shot dead Oswald, the alleged assassin of President… Read More Conspiracies are the price of freedom
Few traditions are as admirable as that of self-taught working people, including the women mill workers in Victorian Lancashire who would rise an hour before work in order to read Shakespeare together. It was for these patronisingly named “autodidacts” — a category which sometimes included anyone who hadn’t been to Oxbridge — that Ruskin College,… Read More The workers were never ignorant
First posted January 19, 2013 Once again art pushed the boundaries of diplomacy, just that much further. Pakistani theatre group Ajoka, who many believed had packed their bags and gone home, performed Saadat Hasan Manto’s Kaun Hai Yeh Gustakh to a packed auditorium on Saturday. At the end of the play, audience and members of the crew broke… Read More Delhi celebrates Pakistani play ‘Kaun Hai Yeh Gustakh’ (2013)
The declaration proclaimed on June 25, 1975, under Article 352(1) of the constitution that a grave Emergency existed whereby the security of India was threatened by internal disturbance was the declaration of a phoney Emergency. Its real cause was the erosion of Indira Gandhi’s hold on power. The occasion to declare it on that day… Read More Ashok H. Desai: How the Judiciary Defied the Government to Uphold Constitutional Values During the Emergency
PUCL Bulletin, June 2001 – A.D.M. Jabalpur vs Shukla Supreme Court overrules Emergency era Habeas Corpus verdict April 28th, 1976 is a day never to be forgotten by any of us Indians who love the pledges of Justice and Liberty which we gave to ourselves in the Preamble of our Constitution. It was on this day… Read More EMERGENCY Archive / When the Supreme Court struck down Habeas Corpus
Recently, Lal Krishna Advani, one of the leaders imprisoned by Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime, rang a warning bell. He said we, as a country, are still not Emergency-proof. This could be seen as a strange statement because post-1977, many safeguards have been created in the Constitution to ensure a repeat of 1975 does not happen.… Read More Suhas Palshikar: There are many ways India mirrors the Emergency now
INTOLERANCE THROUGH THE YEARS: 1934 to 1975 to 2015 By Anil Nauriya Day Against Intolerance – 25 June 2015 The 25th and 26th of June mark not only the declaration of the internal Emergency at the behest of the Indira Gandhi regime in 1975. June 25 is also the day in 1934 when a lethal bomb was… Read More Anil Nauriya: Intolerance through the years, 1934 to 1975 to 2015 / Mahatma Gandhi’s Statement on Bomb Incident June 25, 1934
Anisha Dutta India may prevent the declassification of papers from 1947 related to Kashmir as it fears the “sensitive” letters could affect foreign relations, according to internal government documents seen by the Guardian. The letters, known as the Bucher papers, are believed to include political and military arguments for why India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, called… Read More GoI reluctant to declassify ‘sensitive’ 1947 Kashmir papers
The Nobel laureate argues that we have reached a time in which there is no culture The intellectuals, the supine media, the political class have abandoned substance and discrimination and with treacherous enthusiasm adopted the idea of the image as truth. The liberal revolution of the 1960s, especially the events of 1968 in France, and… Read More ‘Notes on the Death of Culture’ by Mario Vargas Llosa
In a wide-ranging discussion, the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist ponders why other journalists were hesitant to report on the notorious My Lai case. Seymour Hersh’s work has been published in numerous publications, including The New Yorker and The New York Times. He won a Pulitzer for his reporting on the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. His book… Read More Seymour Hersh on Witnessing American War Crimes in Vietnam
After the truth-shower 