South Asia Citizens Web

Protest song by Poojan Sahil in Punjabi adapted to the tune of Bella Ciao

On the island of Bundal, off Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast, people gather in their thousands, as they have done for decades, to honour their saint, Baba Yousaf Shah. As the sun shines on the festivities around the shrine, colourful flags flutter energetically as the air fills with the vibrant clamour of music, singing and feasting. But this may be the last festival held by the fishermen here. Last month, the federal government issued an order, taking over the twin islands of Bundal and Buddo ... The government plans to build a city to “surpass Dubai”, and attract investment of about $50bn (£37.5m), creating 150,000 jobs, claimed Sindh governor Imran Ismail at a news conference in Pakistan’s capital last month. Local people do not intend to go without a fight.

This report is an attempt to provide a comprehensive and critical overview of the state of contemporary rural India. It focuses on the key structural factors, especially policies and trends, that have marked rural India’s economic and ecological conditions. Through this report we wish to share alternative ideas, paradigms and methodologies to address these entrenched problems and challenges.

When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, they announced the overthrow of a world scarred by exploitation and domination. In the very moment of revolution, however, these sentiments were put to the test as antisemitic pogroms swept the former Pale of Settlement.

Based on his new book Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution, Dr Brendan McGeever examines the Bolshevik response to this unprecedented wave of antisemitism. He reveals the campaign to have been led by a group of Jewish radicals – Bundists and Marxist-Zionists – who mobilized around a Jewish political subjectivity. By examining pogroms committed by the Red Army, McGeever also reveals the explosive overlap between revolutionary politics and antisemitism, and the capacity for class to become racialized in a moment of crisis.