A Battle Over Meanings: Jayaprakash Narayan, Rammanohar Lohia and the Trajectories of Socialism in Early Independent India

A Battle Over Meanings: Jayaprakash Narayan, Rammanohar Lohia and the Trajectories of Socialism in Early Independent India

Daniel Kent-Carrasco Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, UNAM, Ciudad de México, México 1. Introduction In the 1950s and 1960s, the meaning of socialism became a crucial matter for thinkers, politicians and ideologues across the Third World. The goal of socialism was central to a broad transnational movement that sought to alter the balance of geopolitical and…

Big Lies

Big Lies

David Barsamian [Over the last decade, far-right nationalist movements have grown in power around the world. Citizens in England, Germany, Italy, France, Hungary, Poland, Brazil, and the United States are increasingly rejecting international partnerships, opposing immigration, and choosing blunt authoritarianism over messy democracy. To Benjamin Carter Hett, award-winning author of four books about Nazis and…

What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism

What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism

Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster For those concerned with the fate of the earth, the time has come to face facts: not simply the dire reality of climate change but also the pressing need for social-system change. The failure to arrive at a world climate agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009 was not simply…

Gandhiji and Lohia: An Intimate and Fruitful Relationship – Part 2
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Gandhiji and Lohia: An Intimate and Fruitful Relationship – Part 2

Prem Singh Lohia’s critique of Gandhiji has been a significant contribution to Gandhian studies in the post-Gandhi era. Lohia as a heretic Gandhian makes perhaps the most revolutionary interpretation of Gandhiji’s philosophy and modes of action. He left incomplete his long essay “Economics After Marx”, that he had begun in 1943–44 (the essay is compiled…

Who’s Afraid of the Word ‘Dalit’?
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Who’s Afraid of the Word ‘Dalit’?

Courtesy: Sabrangindia Following a Central government ‘directive’ last year asking all state governments to refrain from using the word ‘Dalit’ in official communication, the Devendra Phadnavis-led Maharashtra government has asked all its departments not to use the word “Dalit” in “all official transactions, matters, dealings and certificates and instead use Scheduled Caste or its appropriate…

Capitalism and Mental Health
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Capitalism and Mental Health

A mental-health crisis is sweeping the globe. Recent estimates by the World Health Organisation suggest that more than three hundred million people suffer from depression worldwide. Furthermore, twenty-three million are said to experience symptoms of schizophrenia, while approximately eight hundred thousand individuals commit suicide each year. Within the monopoly-capitalist nations, mental-health disorders are the leading…

In the Idea of an ‘All India NRC’, Echoes of Reich Citizenship Law
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In the Idea of an ‘All India NRC’, Echoes of Reich Citizenship Law

The Ministry of Home Affairs issued a notification on July 31, 2019, stating that the Central government has decided to prepare and update the population register in the rest of India other than the state of Assam. Meaning that the exercise to update the National Citizenship Register (NRC) in Assam will now be implemented throughout…

India, Pakistan, Kashmir: Taking the War Option off the Table
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India, Pakistan, Kashmir: Taking the War Option off the Table

There is great concern about the increasingly hostile relationship between India and Pakistan. At the heart of the matter is the more than 70-year-old dispute that has led the two countries, born out of the partition of British India in 1947, to lay claim to and eventually divide, occupy, and dominate the people and land…

A Frontal Attack on Labour in the Shadow of Hindutva
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A Frontal Attack on Labour in the Shadow of Hindutva

The class function of Hindutva is becoming clearer by the day. In the lee of Hindutva, the Modi government is embarking on a massive programme of privatisation of the public sector, and of attack on the working class. Such a programme could not have been launched under the “normal” circumstances of capitalist rule; it would…