South Asia Citizens Web

In this Walk the Talk on NDTV 24x7, author Salman Rushdie, who is in India to promote the screen adaptation of his novel, The Midnight’s Children, speaks to The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta about the making of the movie, the ban on The Satanic Verses and the role of history in education

Dr. K Satyanarayana: "First of all, I’m really upset at the way this whole discussion is taking place. I am not upset so much about Ashis Nandy’s comments, but I am upset at the way that Dalits as a community, including myself, are implicated in this discussion. First, as corrupt people, then as people who are intolerant, then as people who have no sense of humour;
(we are implicated) in innumerable ways, as this discussion is showing. In this campaign to defend Nandy, they’re really damaging the image of the community. "

Qamar Hashmi died on February 1, 2013

With the stopping of Rushdie’s visit to Calcutta, the city finally completes its downfall to a spirit-crippled provincial town

Yes, the dominant political culture of the left had been marked in the 19th and 20th centuries by practices based on the hierarchical vertical organization of parties, trade unions and associations. In the circumstances of the period the movements they stimulated – radical and reformist social transformations, revolutions, national liberations – transformed the world, in a direction generally favourable to the working classes.