As a young man, Partha Banerjee was on course to become a senior member of the RSS, the organisation that has pushed Indian politics towards extreme religious nationalism. Then, after 40 years within its ranks, he quit. Why?…. He thought of the writer Aldous Huxley’s description of an ideal totalitarian state, a condition he thought… Read More Partha Banerjee: An insider’s book on the RSS
NB: Attacking Hadid feels like a great distraction from the (US taxpayer-funded) hell on Earth that is Gaza. It’s fascinating to see which media outlets have chosen to write about this fake shoe controversy, but have ignored recent stories such as a 24-year-old man with Down’s syndrome being attacked by an IDF dog in Gaza… Read More Why is Bella Hadid in the headlines? Because it distracts from the hell on Earth that is Gaza
(NB: An interesting letter and an interesting archive. The comment “The Western view, undoubtedly biased by the Soviet contribution to the Allied victory in 1945, has undoubtedly minimized the terrible dictatorship that Stalin imposed on Russia” is misleading – Churchill began using the phrase ‘Iron Curtain’ as early as 1946; and the animosity was demonstrated… Read More Rare archival materials from the Stalin era
National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM)National Office: A/29, Haji Habib Bldg., Naigaon Cross Road, Dadar (E), Mumbai – 400014 Social Media: @napmindia | E-mail: napmindia[[at]gmail.com |Web: www.napm-india.org NAPM condemns the horrific spree of mob lynchings across the country after the Lok Sabha election results United Resistance needed against hateful communal politics, mob lynching of religious minorities… Read More NAPM condemns the horrific spree of mob lynchings across the country after the Lok Sabha election results
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Incensed crowd facing riot police set BTV building on fire as students demand end to discriminatory job quotas NB: What is needed now is international democratic solidarity, across frontiers, age, language and religion. Solidarity for justice, peace, and renewed communication. Stand up for the embattled students of Bangladesh. In 1971, General Yahya Khan sent tanks… Read More Fierce anti-government protests in Bangladesh, 39 dead; thousands injured
Heinrich Heine, arguably one of the most famous of German authors, had prophetically announced that wherever they burn books, they will one day burn humans. Pramod K. Nayar German cultural production, as is well known, in the decades leading to Nazidom set about creating a ‘national’ culture by destroying Jewish, communist, humanist and other artwork,… Read More Burning Books and The Nazification of Literature
The gulf in voter turnout between haves and have-nots has widened. The result is no politics for those who can’t afford it Nesrine Malik It’s weird isn’t it, this bit? That period right after a new government has taken over with its all-new faces and fresh starts. The imperative to celebrate feels almost mandatory. Even… Read More Hidden behind Labour’s ‘landslide’ win is a depressing disfranchisement
The history of many centuries, including our own, shows that the default state of politics is not redistribution and general welfare, but a spiral of accumulation by the very rich, the extreme exploitation of labour, the seizure of common resources and exaction of rent for their use, extortion, coercion and violence. Normal is a society in which… Read More Things are not going to get better as long as oligarchs rule the roost in our democracies
First posted July 06, 2012 As one distraught friend of mine once prayed: ‘May Allah save Islam from Pakistan.’ The self-claimed ‘bastion of Islam’ has gradually mutated into becoming a bastion of deluded messiahs and mindless, violent ranting machines to whom anything, from incoherent malangs to the reopening of Nato supply routes, are conspiracies against Islam. On… Read More EXIT GOD, ENTER MADNESS: Nadeem Paracha on religious extremism in Pakistan (2012)
After the truth-shower 