South Asia Citizens Web

It is a measure of the mood in today’s India that archaeology, genetics and racial purity have now been co-opted in a debate about current politics. Not since the middle of the 20th Century has racial purity been as important in the politics of a major nation. And yes, the term ‘Aryan’ is being bandied about with a worryingly familiar ease.

This court verdict recognises homosexuality, the right freely conduct one’s sexual life and stands up for equality of all citizens as enshrined in the constitution and gives hope for new jurisprudence challenging the thousand and one discriminations and exclusions that shape the realities of everyday life in India.

Saral Sarkar’s Eco-Socialist Blog
At the beginning of the journey stood the most famous two sentences of Marx, which I read as a college student:
“Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it.”1
I was immediately faced with a dilemma. There was no need for me to interpret the world; that had already been done for us by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin et al. But, I thought, in order to be able to contribute to changing the world, I (…)

We learnt that on the night of 5 September, around 3 am, a large group of Maoist cadre went to two paras of Phulpad (Koyalanpara and Markampara) and woke people up saying that “sab ko jama hona hai”. Men, women and children all gathered at one place. Meanwhile the Maoists caught nine persons, including one woman who had tried to interpose when they caught her son. Some were beaten in front of the crowd, others some distance away. Many had their hands tied behind their back.

It’s always been easy for power-seeking Pakistani clerics and politicians to set our simple-minded religious masses on fire. But, as Prime Minister Imran Khan just discovered, jumping on to a man-eating tiger’s back is one thing; getting off is another. The saga of the Economic Advisory Committee appointment of Prof Atif Mian, a distinguished economist at Princeton University, tells of this.