South Asia Citizens Web

Excerpts from ’The Phoenix Moment: Challenges Confronting the Indian Left’

The African Asian Writers Union supported by all its members from the two continents wish to take position in favor of Indian writers who by their act of courage have taken position and have expressed and defended their opinions and their convictions.

resorting to [. . .] "godmen" is not quite proper in the secular republic that is India. But this has been a routine practice for decades and this hidden face of politics in India — yet another — is surprisingly under-reported.

The League presents itself as a guardian of secular values, but that claim is wearing thin in the party’s meek response to the attacks blighting our country. The government’s failure to protect targets on public hitlists is bad enough. Its half-hearted pursuit of criminals after the event is worse. But its strategic failure shows most deeply after each terrible incident when some minister moans about the need not to offend “religious sentiment”.

Praful Bidwai, noted Indian journalist and author, who passed away in June 2015, was able to combine the qualities of being a public intellectual and activist with a rare distinction. For his many friends, admirers and readers, his premature death is a gap that is hard to fill. They continue to miss his incisive journalistic and scholarly observations on contemporary concerns, both in India and the world. His much acclaimed last book, ‘The Phoenix Moment’, is a magisterial look at the challenges confronting the Indian Left. We need to work together to keep that legacy alive and it is in that spirit that it has been decided to institute a Memorial Fund in his memory which will undertake, among other interventions, to institute an annual prize to recognize a promising scholar-journalist from the region, whose work is marked by a zest for investigation, a commitment to social justice and a capacity for critical analysis.