“If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country.” — B.R. Ambedkar In a recent talk in Bengaluru, the writer, Parakala Prabhakar, made a perceptive observation about the changing language of political discourse. In the late 1980s, when the Bharatiya Janata Party was first becoming a… Read More Ramachandra Guha: Reign of faith
HARTOSH SINGH BAL The transformation of the relationship between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Sikhs embodies the problems the community faces in a climate where the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s worldview prevails in the country. The story begins with a photo the Bharatiya Janata Party would once display with great pride, of a turbaned Modi disguised as… Read More Sikhs are the proverbial bone stuck in the RSS’s gullet
The ancien regime”, as applied to 18th-century France, always sounds like such a solid proposition. It speaks of arbitrary power, stiffened with protocol, girded by gold, topped by a dusting of icing sugar (you could always spot a noble by their terrible teeth) and utterly stuck in its ways. Until, that is, revolution arrived in 1789… Read More The Revolutionary Temper by Robert Darnton review – a nation at breaking point
There is a time for judgment, a time for love, and even a time for silence. Livatino knew when and how to practice each… he saw the duty to promote justice as a personal call. A visible sign of this call was the acronym used by Livatino in many of his texts: S.T.D, standing for… Read More Rosario Livatino: the judge killed by mobsters who is on his way to sainthood
After her son was killed, Yazdani publicly condemned the regime’s attacks on protesters and called for justice for her son and others killed in the demonstrations. Her trial and sentencing came very soon after she was arrested at her home on 22 August. Mohammad Javad Zahedi with his mother, Mahsa Yazdani. She was jailed after… Read More Ayatollah’s justice: Iranian mother jailed for 13 years after denouncing the murder of her son
“Dionysus is the god of decisive mob action. Once stated, it should be easy to see why such a god is called for and why he is revered. He claims legitimacy” not from his ability to disturb the peace but from his ability to restore the peace he has himself disturbed – thereby justifying, a… Read More Violence, desire and the sacred: Remembering René Girard (1923-2015)
Iranian authorities have arrested a prominent lawyer and human rights defender as she attended the funeral of a teenage girl who died after a disputed metro incident, her husband has said. Nasrin Sotoudeh was arrested on Sunday in Tehran during the funeral of 16-year-old Armita Garawand, who died a day earlier after nearly a month in intensive… Read More Iran arrests lawyer at funeral of girl who died after metro incident
NB: This essay brings us closer to the irredeemable racism of the rulers of the ‘free world’; and their habit of transferring their guilt and responsibility for mass crimes onto the shoulders of others. Here is another argument, directed at thoughtful Israelis (the AV is at this link). It is made by someone who is… Read More Michael Brenner: Europe-Jews-Muslims
The driving out of peoples was ‘a thoroughly bad and vicious solution, for which the world will pay a heavy penalty for a hundred years to come’: Lord Curzon, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, commenting on the exchanges between Greece and Turkey in 1923. Cited in R. M. Douglas, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans… Read More The Agony of Palestine
One of Iran’s foremost public intellectuals and critics of the Iranian regime was taken to prison in handcuffs on Saturday to start serving a five-year sentence. Majid Tavakoli, who has a three-year-old child, was found guilty of spreading propaganda against the state. His dispatch to jail had been deferred for three weeks, but security officials… Read More Iranian intellectual calls on opposition to unite as he is again sent to prison
After the truth-shower 