The Adivasis of India have been trying to protect their lands and assert their collective right to self-determination since India’s Independence and long before. The Pathalgadi movement is the most powerful recent mass expression of self-determination, which is pre- sumably why its participants have been terrorizedandcriminalizedbythe Indian state. This also why it is vital that more and more people understand[Read More...]
This unfamiliar term means ‘Scence of Place Names’ and traces origins and histories of place-names.The current saffron craze for changes in place-names purportedly associated with Muslim rule actually plays havoc with Toponymy,and by association,with history Originating in a thirst for revenge against alleged ‘historical wrongs/injustices’, this mania actually sins against history.Colonial rulers sometimes failed to pronounce native names correctly,and changed[Read More...]
In the middle of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections the Bhartiya Janta Party published a full front page advertisement a day before and on the day of polling for fourth and fifth phase. This advertisement is basically electoral promises. According to Section 126 of the Representation of Peoples Act all campaigning must stop 48 hours before the conclusion of polling.[Read More...]
Karnataka Government has passed the Anti-Conversion Bill in the Assembly despite stiff opposition from civil society and political parties. The Bill is expected to be tabled in the upper house to be made into a law. The Anti-Conversion Laws affect Christians, Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis and Women. It restricts the rights of an Indian citizen to choose one’s religion. It violates[Read More...]
by Admiral L Ramdas and Lalita Ramdas Twenty years ago, in end February 2002 we were in Palo Alto with our daughter towards the end of a successful lecture tour organised by friends –to build a coalition of groups and voices prepared to stand up against the proliferation of Nuclear weapons. It was with horror and disbelief that we watched[Read More...]
On 20th anniversary of one of the biggest genocides since 1947, we must dip our blood in memory of all the victims and pledge to disarm the breeding ground of Hindutva fascism. It is ironical that this event was staged on February 27th, the very day the Nazi storm troopers set fire on the Reichstag, which lit the first spark[Read More...]
How is it that even as Uttar Pradesh goes to the polls, even as desperate youth go on a rampage to demand employment, their Chief Minister remains focused on evoking violent fantasies around the ‘M’ of the Mafia. How is it that the facts of Kairana matter so little when Adityanath evokes the “Kashmir-like” Hindu exodus? How is it that[Read More...]
The election tempo in Uttar Pradesh is getting more communal with every phase of voting, thanks to the virulent communal campaigning of incumbent BJP. With its sizeable population, existence of diverse caste groups, active identity politics, considerable muslim minority population, the mandate of Uttar Pradesh resulting from the 403 assembly seats will be decisive in understanding the future course of[Read More...]
To Shri K Chandrasekhar Rao Chief Minister Telangana Dear Shri Chandrasekhar Rao garu, I had earlier written to you on 8-2-2022 welcoming your opposition to the Centre’s unilateral proposal to privatise the Singareni Collieries. Considering it from the point of view of federalism, in that letter I had suggested that the States should come together to counter the growing threat[Read More...]
In August 2018, India’s Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) government renamed the historic Mughalsarai Junction Railway Station in the state of Uttar Pradesh after the right-wing Hindu ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, most likely because the existing name referred to the Indian Muslim Mughal dynasty. Three years earlier, in May 2015, the ruling BJP officially changed the name of the[Read More...]
