South Asia Citizens Web

Thousands of NREGA workers from at least eleven states assembled again at Jantar Mantar in Delhi today for the second day of a five-day dharna called by NREGA Sangharsh Morcha from 11-15 Sept 2017.

Well known Kanada journalist Gouri Lankesh was murdered outside her house in Bangaluru on 5th September. Like the murder of Prof MM Kalburgi in 2015, the killers came on a two wheeler, and without any warning shot her dead at point blank. Spontaneous protests against the murder were held next day in many parts of Karanataka, as well as in many cities outside. Lankesh was a trenchant critic of Hindutva politics and did not mince words in her writings against its majoritarian authoritarianism.

National Alliance of People’s Movements is deeply shocked and shattered at the cowardly and cold-blooded murder of well-known journalist, editor and fearless firebrand activist, Gauri Lankesh who, time and again, locked horns with divisive, communal and casteist forces, in particular the right-wing Hindutva brigade. We have enough reason to believe that her political assassination is a direct consequence of her publicly expressed progressive positions as well as the lack of conviction of the murderers responsible for the calculated political killings of M M Kalburgi, Govind Pansare and Narendra Dabholkar, even after months and years!

At her speech at the last interwar congress of the International Working Men’s Association (IWMA) in 1938, Emma Goldman pointed out how “anarchists ... were a sore in the eye of an entire school of Marxists and liberals.”[1] Goldman’s remark still applies for the postwar era as the Spanish anarchist movement has been vilified by both Marxist and liberal historians.

The Star Weekend interviewed Professor Jalal over email about her work and insights on the 70th anniversary of the partition.