South Asia Citizens Web

Under the Modi regime What one is witnessing is more than cultural McCarthyism. To the witch-hunt, we are adding a cultural uprooting, inquisition-style. To the overt brutality of violence, one has to add the deeper violence of cultural disruption.

The Indian Cultural Forum interviewed historian Gopinath Ravindran about the current establishment’s agenda for Indian historical research. Ravindran, who teaches at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, was Member Secretary of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) till he resigned halfway through his term in 2015.

patriarchal prejudices ingrained for centuries have been tough to shake loose despite a growing clamor for change — and continue to affect life from the village water pump to the judicial system and beyond

On 16 May, 2014 Narendra Modi was elected with a resounding majority to Parliament. And on 26 May, he was sworn in as India’s Prime Minister. Two years later, has Modi managed to deliver on the promises that made people vote him to power? Excerpt from Commentary by Bharat Bhushan

Victor Serge (1890–1947) spent the last six years of his life in Mexico, joining the exodus from Marseille in 1941 and remaining behind after the War. Here he completed his two most celebrated works. Memoirs of a Revolutionary evokes his vagabond anarchist youth, passage to revolutionary Russia, years as assistant to Zinoviev in the Comintern and Left Oppositionist, prison, exile; a cast of thousands from the Old Bolshevik generation recalled in vivid detail. The Case of Comrade Tulayev was the most powerful of his ‘documentary novels’ on the turmoil of the inter-war years. Extracts from Serge’s 1944, 45 and 47 diaries had appeared in Les Temps modernes in 1949