Mrinal Kumsar Biswas   The icy hand of death has been laid on Sudhakar Prabhudesai. It was a cruel joke that he could not leave this world peacefully. I was told excruciating sufferings awaited him before he breathed his last. Sudhakar did not deserve that. I knew him for decades, he never caused pain to…

As protests raged over the rape of minors and violence against marginalized communities, dalits, students, the climate for free speech reflected both a menacing intolerance for dissenting viewpoints and a crackdown on civil rights. Apart from the dangerous attacks on journalists, others were harassed and their personal details shared online, they were threatened and became…

[Sign Citizens’ Appeal on 20 Years of Nuclear Tests] We, the citizens of South Asia and beyond, urge India and Pakistan in the 20th year of the 1998 nuclear tests to put an immediate end to the arms race and competitive belligerence, and negotiate nuclear disarmament at the earliest. Far from providing any security, these…

A barely noticed anniversary slid by on March 20th. It’s been 15 years since the United States committed the greatest war crime of the twenty-first century: the unprovoked, aggressive invasion of Iraq. The New York Times, which didn’t exactly cover itself in glory in the run-up to that invasion, recently ran an op-ed by an…

Islam in popular perception is a very orthodox, conservative and even fundamentalist religion which brooks no change. Sections of Muslim community are not entirely free from the blame for this perception. They resist reasonable changes in accordance with changing times. However, the fact is that there have been many reform movements within the Muslim community…

Pannalal Surana At the press conference on 13th April 2018, Meenakshi Lakhi, national spokesperson of BJP, said, “One Zakir Hussain aged 19, and two boys of 13 had gang-raped a minor girl in Nagaon in Assam, but none of the secularist parties or any of the candle-march experts had uttered a word of protest about…

Justice Rajindar Sachar, April 15, 2017 The results of the UP State Assembly elections have come as a shock to all parties including the pollsters. The appointment of Yogi Adityanath as the Chief Minister of UP is the worst outcome. I feel that it requires all political parties, the secular parties and the Leftists (I…