Between The Lines
What relevance does Gandhi have for our times of climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental destruction, and last but not least, the COVID pandemic? Kishore Saint, Ashish Kothari, Aseem Shrivastava find out . …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Vinay Lal’s new publication is a visual delight and an invigorating look at how dynamic history is, and how political imagination, historical sources, and national narratives can be constantly reread and reinterpreted. Pooja Sancheti engages in a critical reading.…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
On the fiftieth anniversary of the historic Chipko Movement that caught popular imagination and became almost a household name in India Bharat Dogra who was closely associated with it does a recap of its strategic role in asserting peoples’ rights through satyagraha and its overall takeaways we need to remember as we ponder the devastation in the eco-sensitive Himalayan regions.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Given the critical evidence of the risks and harm attending GM crops not just in India but worldwide, an unbiased appraisal and regulatory system would not entertain such farming practices, even as corporates try to further their agendas, holds Bharat Dogra. …[Read More]…
That’s Life!!!
As India races towards oligopolistic capitalism, workers are being stripped of even those path-breaking benefits legislated upon years ago says Bharat Dogra in two accompanying meditations…[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
The Forgiven is a dark film that has drama, suspense, and visual artistry, at first glance, homage to Bertolucci and Antonioni. More importantly, it asks: What rules or norms of truth determine our burden of responsibility? Then, the central puzzle: Who has the power to forgive? Is forgiveness the end of punishment? Padmaja Challakere reviews.…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
A short story about love, remembrance woven as a dream fantasy by the Ganga river by one of India’s foremost fiction writers Zakia Mashhadi. Translated from Urdu by Faruq Hassan …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Even as the government readies the nation for the introduction of GM Mustard and oilseeds with the discourse of import substitution and self-sufficiency, it does so by ignoring the rich corpus of scientific evidence about their irreversible hazards. Bharat Dogra outlines some of them. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
The seductions of GM crops in the name of food security have once again found traction with the government as the recent bend towards GM Mustard’s ”environmental release” suggests. Two warnings by eminent scientists/doctors should make us all sit up…[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
Morocco’s Football team exceeded wildest expectations at the World Cup in Qatar. H Masud Taj celebrates with calligraphy and a Found Poem based on the words of their coach Walid Regragu…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
The tragic suicides of three teenage candidates studying at coaching classes in Kota point to what is ugly in our education system for sure. But more than that it indicts a development discourse that homogenises learning to turn young minds into bots, says Ashoak Upadhyay…[Read More]…
That’s Life!!!
At the Mumbai Press Club’s annual RedInk Awards 2022 this month, Justice B. N. Srikrishna laid out his warning of the dangers to democracy when the fourth estate falters or is endangered. …[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
Calligraphy and Found Poem by H Masud Taj, based on the words of Osama Manzar, to coincide with ’20 Years of Digital Empowerment for All’ symposium that was held in Guwahati on December 16, 2022. Osama Manzar’s mission is to teach rural Indians the use of the Internet and create livelihoods.…[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
As Qatar, hosting the FIFA World Cup, is inviting the world to Islam, H Masud Taj reciprocates by inviting Qatar too.…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Two poems by Huzaifa Pandit, a poet , translator and university teacher from Kashmir that express the range of emotions felt by a sensitive soul at the violence wrecked on his land and people. …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Bharat Dogra and Kumar Gautam map the roads taken, despite criticsl opposition, towards unsustainable farming. They offer solutions but the question remains: who will bell the cat? Review by Ashoak Upadhyay…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
: With the Centre bent on carrying through its intention to introduce genetically modified mustard, Bharat Dogra lays out, in two companion essays, the reservations raised by the Supreme Court and the strong critiques by non-partisan scientists…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
A poignant story of a professional man’s decline into homelessness, loss of self-worth and family who finds unexpected enlightenment and recovery of the self. By Balwant Bhaneja…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Falsifications of history, erasures of the past are not the bailiwick of authoritarian ultra-nationalistic states or communist regimes alone. Democratic-liberal nations too whitewash their past as Patrick Lawrence tells us about the recent developments in Germany..…[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
H. Masud Taj celebrates the arrival (der aaye, durrust aaye) of Surya Kumar Yadav with poetry and calligraphy, and cautions the BCCI not to drop the ball.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Recent pronouncements about the dangers of the brain and pens wielded by so-called “anti-national” intellectuals signal open declarations against reason and breed an infantilism that indulges in aggression and submission says Jyotsna Kapur. And yet adulthood and, radical democracy prevail.…[Read More]…
Personal Notes
H. Masud Taj takes a leaf out of The Matrix and swallows the red pill to delve into the unsettling truth about Partition and the unlearnt truth about Hindu-Muslim unity, embodied in the life and work of Maulana Azad.…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
A short fiction by Mridula Garg, rendered into English by Pooja Sancheti that opens the doors to differing perceptions on life-expectations, and nature’s vicissitudes leading up to a denouement that reflects the whimsical nature of male behaviour …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Sri Aurobindo was a prolific writer and engaged with the multiple dimensions of living: political thought, historical inquiry, cultural critiquing, literary and aesthetic thinking and Vedic exegesis. But he never let go of poetry that afforded him the unique blending of inspiration and expression, says Murali Sivaramakrishnan delving into his philosophy and poetics.. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Poetry is one of the fields with which science is experimenting with Artificial Intelligence (AI); various projects and the sites using technical means ‘produce’ poetry. Can computers programmed just to execute orders create what the human creates-Self-awareness among other things, wonders Christina Linardaki …[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Sami Ahmad Khanoffers a critical reading of Indian Science Fiction (ISF) based on mythology (M), ideology (I) and technology (T) that shape it and its fictional re-imaginings as an alternative to a male Eurocentric perspective of the genre. …[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
H. Masud Taj reminds us through his art that language can become the vehicle of colonization and decolonization; but songs of resistance can also turn into dog-whistles. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
At Matri Sadan ashram in Haridwar, saints have for years resorted to satyagraha as resistance to the despoliation of the mighty river before it reaches the plains. It has been a lonely battle. Bharat Dogra pleads for wider support for such deep commitment to saving our environment. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
A searing allegory on the horrors attending the birth of the two nations, seen from the lowest depths up as a prostitute offers the founding fathers a unique option for redemption through compassion, by Krishn Chander. Translated from Urdu by Ayesha Kidwai. …[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
H. Masud Taj bases his Calligraphy and Found Poem on the letter of jailed rights activist Umar Khalid, in response to a letter of Rohit Kumar, author of “Tales from the Jail: Christmas in Tihar”…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Social critic Max Haiven argues that extractive capitalism’s exploitation and ecological destruction is still evident in palm oil, marked by sacrificial violence against human and non-human life in the name of the market and profits. He argues for a post-capitalist just society based on global “commoning”…[Read More]…
That’s Life!!!
Bolivia’s President Luis Arce used his platform at the United Nations recently to propose an alternative, 14-point program to what he called “a wide-ranging, systemic capitalist crisis that increasingly endangers the life of humanity and the planet” Ben Norton of Multipolarista breaks it down for us. …[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
Thallumaala is an action-comedy film loaded with ‘a string/chain of fights’. Izza Ahsan reads the film dominated by the male gaze, against prevailing hyper-masculinity and homoeroticism. What does a film fuelled by testosterone with a female face that has very little to do with the plot, add up to?…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
During a stint at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, social anthropologist Smita Tewari Jassal held a variety of religious conversations in different contexts over six years seeking insights on how religious practices adapt to and accommodate with Turkey’s specific brand of secularism. Her focus? The headscarf, and a Turkish Islamic practice called sohbet. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Manjula Padmnabhan’s play Harvest (first published in 1996) that won the first Onassis prize for the best new international play in 1997, is an exploration of the ways humans are commodified in biomedical and capitalist discourse. Pooja Sancheti offers a deep reading of its relevance today.…[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
Architect, poet and calligrapher H. Masud Taj dreams of an India that might have been. His art evokes a South Asian culture that is. …[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
H. Masud Taj contemplates Gandhi’s last words with a Found Poem that draws an ironic and brutally honest take on our hypocrisies…[Read More]…
Bookshelf
Amitav Ghosh makes us aware of contemporary geopolitics regarding the environmental crisis and connects the dots drawing attention to the migrant experience during the Covid pandemic, the lives of people who suffered in the hands of market forces and European colonialism. Pradeep Trikha reviews..…[Read More]…
Literary Trails
In this riveting tale of life on the ghats of a lake, Sundaram, doyen of Gujarati letters, portrays more than just caste hierarchies as he weaves local myths and quotidian chores into gothic fantasy, laced with eroticism, tantalizingly ambiguous in its denouement. Translated by Hemang Ashwinkumar. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
Considered a “poet’s poet” for the standards he set in the genre of Hindi-Urdu modern progressive poetry, Shamsher Bahadur Singh, in this poem translated by Alok Bhalla from Hindi, draws sly distinctions between faith and religion.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
A bestseller in Japan, bastion of capitalism no less, Kohei Saito’s work shows that capitalism’s perpetual pursuit of growth is the underlying cause of the intensifying climate crisis. He rejects the possibility of ‘green growth’, arguing that only degrowth – a planned reduction of material use – can ensure a sustainable future …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
In this poetic dialogue with a marginalized present, Gandhi’s truth of ahimsa gets through to the unborn, holding out the promise of redemption. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Ending racism is essentially about making each person equal, respectful and dignified as the other. To achieve this to the fullest, the fight has continued globally in tackling racism at the international, national and individual levels. Bill Bhaneja provides an overview of anti-racism and peace-building through the lens of Universal Rights, Nonkilling and Human Dignity …[Read More]…
That’s Life!!!
In an age of the atomized individual, where learning is stripped of moral values and respect for differences, the encounters between the atheist Gora and Gandhi the believer, provides a shining example of the power of listening to the ‘other.’…[Read More]…
That’s Life!!!
IIn this age of power politics that breeds delusions and falsehoods we dance to the roiling chants of communal hatreds and war, stripped of all humanity, Mohandas K.Gandhi, appears with a lantern. Do we see him asks Ashoak Upadhyay. …[Read More]…
Visual Spaces
Stepwells are subterranean water structures – vavs, baulis and so on – that dot India, (especially western India) quite prolifically. The pre-modern vavs (stepwells) in Gujarat, however, are distinctive for their spatial, functional as well as ornamental refinement. Riyaz Latif ruminates on one of these structures, the exquisite stepwell at Adalaj (ca. 1499), in close proximity to Ahmadabad.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Late August, Salman Rushdie was subjected to a near-fatal knife attack by a Lebanese-American. That incident raises the ghost of the fatwa on Satanic Verses and the West’s sense of Muslim ‘fanaticism’ and its own fealty to ‘free speech.’ Padmaja Challakere critiques both as ‘lazy‘ binaries, evidence of liberalism’s own failings. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Zooming inequality in America in the last forty years is an unfortunate outcome of technological change; what can one do? Economist and public commentator Dean Baker breaks this popular consensual view down to show how workers are getting shafted. …[Read More]…
Literary Trails
China recently announced it would forgive 23 interest-free loans to 17 African countries and redirect $10 billion of its IMF reserves to nations on the continent in addition to a series of cancellations and restructuring of debt in Africa between 2000 and 2019. This disproves the West’s accusations of China’s ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ says Ben Norton …[Read More]…