Justice R. A. Jahagirdar  During the freedom struggle and during the deliberations of the sessions of the Indian National Congress, prior to independence, there was little, if any, debate on secularism and on what character the State of India was to take. It was no doubt accepted that India, inhabited by many religions, will not…

Ram Puniyani The spectacular performance of Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi Assembly elections (November 2013) has changed the perceptions and anticipations about the forthcoming general elections to be held in 2014. It has also led to rethink about the equations of electoral politics in general. While BJP emerged as the single largest party and could…

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya Sebastiano Timpanaro One of the novel and surprising concepts proposed by Sebastiano Timpanaro (1923-2000), the well-known Marxist philologist-cum-philosopher, is that of ‘materialist pessimism’ (p.66). His plea is to recognize this concept as a part of the Marxist worldview. Time and again he comes back to it in his book, Sul Materialismo (1970, translated…

Ram Puniyani   Those gripped by religious nationalism are unable to understand the regional-ethnic aspirations of the people. Many an ultra-nationalists of different hues also fall into this trap many a times. With formation of Indian nation the integration of regions like Himachal Pradesh, North Eastern States and Jammu& Kashmir created some challenging situations. Though…

Ram Puniyani In the last week of October-first week of November, we saw two contradictory processes. On one side the foundation stone was laid for the statue of first Deputy Prime Minister of India, Saradar Vallabhbhai Patel, being called as Statue of Unity. On the other side the BJP in Bihar was taking out ‘Asthi Kalash’ (Pitcher…

Ram Puniyani The Politics of Modi’ parent organisation RSS is based on distortion of history, medieval history in particular. to begin with the projection of kings through the prism of religion, to demonise Muslim kings based on distortions and falsehoods of History, and then in turn spreading hatred against Muslims of today has been the…

Ram Puniyani The country is yet to recover from the aftermath of Muzaffranagar violence (October 2013). This violence was engineered over a period of time in the areas of Western UP, where Jats and Muslims had thick social interaction, despite belonging to different economic strata. Communal violence has been instigated, engineered earlier on various issues…

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya The book that has come down to us under the title Dialectics of Naure is strictly speaking not a book but an edited version of four folders containing miscellaneous notes and jottings left unfinished by their author, Frederick Engles. The material was never published in Engles’s life time although parts of it were…

Ram Puniyani Friends, Violence under the garb of religion has been the major expression of the politics in current times. Sharad Sharma, and myself are working on ‘Explained Series’. The aim of the series is to present the phenomenon in the form of graphic presentations, Comic Books. Two books in this series are already out…

Ram Puniyani In his letter to all the Chief Ministers Sushil Kumar Shinde’s Centre’s Home Minster (30, 09, 2013), wrote that Government has been receiving complaints of harassment of innocent Muslim youth by Law enforcement agencies. He asked the state authorities to ensure that no innocent Muslim youth should be arrested or wrongfully detained in…

We reproduce an email received from Mr. Prabhakar Nanawathy, Editor of “Thought & Action”, the organ of Andhashradda Nirmoolan Samiti (ANiS, founded by Dr Narendra Dabholkar), which was instrumental in getting the anti-superstition bill passed by the Maharashtra Assembly. The Samiti is now planning to have a similar bill passed by our Parliament. You may…

Jawaharlal Nehru I must express my gratitude to the many hon. Members who, in the course of this debate, have spoken generously about the policy that the Government has pursued in regard to the State of Jammu and Kashmir. While we have had an abundance of generous acknowledgement of our policy, we have had criticism…

Ram Puniyani Identity issues are at the fore in current times. Those basing their politics on the identity issues have lot of assertions about who the ‘others’ are. There is a constant ongoing attempt to assimilate them in the umbrella of their religion and culture. Current times, where religious nationalism dominates, the scene is that…

Jawaharlal Nehru The house will remember that a few days ago I made a fairly lengthy statement in this House about the affairs of Jammu and Kashmir State. I do not propose to weary the House by a repetition of what I said then. But at this stage, I should like to emphasize certain aspects…

Ram Puniyani Our society has seen severe turmoil’s in the name of religion during last three decades in particular. While on one side we see that issues related to religion’s identity are trying to occupy the center stage, we also are witnessing the emergence of thousands of self proclaimed ‘Godmen’, supposed to be having divine…

Ram Puniyani The brutal killing of Dr. Narendra Dabholkar (20th August 2013) is a big jolt to the social movement against blind faith and superstitions. During last few decades the tendency for promotion of rational thought parallel to social change came up as Popular Science movement. In Maharashtra it took shape in the form of a movement, Andh Shraddha Nirmoolan…

Ram Puniyani Currently (August 2013) Narendra Modi is trying to dominate the media, print social and TV through his carefully constructed propaganda machinery and his potential of being nominated as the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate by RSS-BJP. Modi has openly used the words like puppies dying under the car wheel, while referring to the victims…