South Asia Citizens Web

The most disturbing finding in the judgment of the trial court in the Naroda Patiya mass murder case is not only the active involvement of a prominent senior BJP leader, Mayaben Surendrabhai Kodnani, who hatched the conspiracy and instigated the rioters to commit the crime, but the fact that she was sought to be shielded by the state investigating agency by making every effort to see that her involvement did not come on record. Two questions arise here: first, can the leaders of a ruling political party be allowed to indulge in crime against members of another religion? And, second, what is the role assigned to the investigating agency of the state when a serious, cognisable offence takes place?

This book is an account of the broader rationalist movement in India of which Sanal Edamaruku is a prominent member, and a vivid description of its origins, practices and beliefs. A monograph on the radical avowal of scientific reason, it fills a much needed lacuna in the annals of modern India.

Since 2005, the tribal areas in central-eastern India have plunged into a ‘slow war’, between security forces and Maoists. Underlying this, and a key reason for Maoist recruitment in these areas, is the displacement of millions of adivasis (indigenous or tribal people) from their land and resource base. The leadership on both sides is non-tribal, but the foot-soldiers are mainly adivasis – on the Maoist side, motivated by outrage at multiple injustice, and on the security force side through the system of SPOs – adivasis recruited as ‘Special Police Officers’ for a small salary in an area where numbers of displaced unemployed are growing – a recipe for civil war. Links between India’s mining companies and arms manufacturers are well known. For example, Nalco (National Aluminium Company) has close links with military aircraft factories run by HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd), and Balco (Bharat Aluminium Company) has had a contract to supply India’s nuclear missile programme, probably inherited by Vedanta.1 In January 2007, an agreement was drawn up for Indo-Russian collaboration on BrahMos missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, aimed at selling ‘about 1,000 missiles in the near future to clients in India, Russia and some friendly countries’.2 India’s President Abdul Kalam, who worked on his country’s nuclear missile programme, devotes space in his book India 2020 (Kalam and Rajan 1998) to emphasizing the importance of India developing aluminium-lithium alloys, to keep up with the arms race.

A memorandum drafted by women’s rights activists to the Chief Justice of Karnataka regarding Justice Bhaktavatsala’s shocking remarks in the Karnataka High Court legitimizing the criminal act of domestic violence.

Manesar has been much in the news, with worker violence being blamed for the disruptions in production. Not so, say the workers who claim it’s part of a management plan to scuttle their efforts to form a union.