The Time Has Come to Bring Ambedkar and Gandhi Together

The Time Has Come to Bring Ambedkar and Gandhi Together

ByJanataWeekly

Ramachandra Guha   In an interview that he gave last year, the Kannada writer (and activist), Devanur Mahadeva, urged democrats not to view Ambedkar and Gandhi as rivals and adversaries. In the journey towards true equality, he said, they should rather be seen as colleagues and co-workers. Thus, as Mahadeva remarked:   “Ambedkar had to…

100 Years of Mooknayak, Ambedkar’s First Newspaper

100 Years of Mooknayak, Ambedkar’s First Newspaper

ByJanataWeekly

Prabodhan Pol   In India, despite the presence of peculiar social institutions like caste, the role of the newspapers in social reforms movement was not just limited to articulation of specific concerns of individual reformers. But they also laid the foundations of a mass churning that aspired for democratic values.   On January 31, 1920,…

Statement Before the US House of Representatives, Washington D.C.
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Statement Before the US House of Representatives, Washington D.C.

ByJanataWeekly

Sandeep Pandey   Personal Experience   In 27 years of working as an activist, I’ve experienced unprecedented curbs on the fundamental rights of freedom of expression, to assemble peaceably and to move about anywhere within India over the past 6 months. I was put under house arrest in Lucknow, the capital of the north Indian…

How the Rich Plan to Rule a Burning Planet
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How the Rich Plan to Rule a Burning Planet

ByJanataWeekly

James Plested   The climate crisis isn’t a future we must fight to avoid. It’s an already unfolding reality. It’s the intensification of extreme weather—cyclones, storms and floods, droughts and deadly heat waves. It’s burning forests in Australia, the Amazon, Indonesia, Siberia, Canada and California. It’s melting ice caps, receding glaciers and rising seas. It’s…

The Climate Decade: A Global Crisis Unveiled, a Global Movement Unleashed
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The Climate Decade: A Global Crisis Unveiled, a Global Movement Unleashed

ByJanataWeekly

Erika Spanger-Siegfried   We’ve all just lived through a most consequential ten years.   Some decades, like the 1860s for the Civil War and the 1960s for the Civil Rights Movement, are seismic and stand out in history for generations. The 2010s weren’t like that (though politically it’s been one long mixed-martial arts cage fight)…

Closer Than Ever: It Is 100 Seconds to Midnight
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Closer Than Ever: It Is 100 Seconds to Midnight

ByJanataWeekly

John Mecklin   Editor’s note: Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to…

Women at Kolkata’s Park Circus Prove the Indian Republic Has Come of Age
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Women at Kolkata’s Park Circus Prove the Indian Republic Has Come of Age

ByJanataWeekly

Kavita Panjabi   A republic truly comes of age when its women too claim it. The 71st Republic Day of India marked a proud year for this nation when its republic truly came of age.   When millions of women begin to insist that the state is a matter of res publica, a public affair,…

Flag This Extraordinary Moment—A Symbol of Power Has Become a Totem Of Resistance
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Flag This Extraordinary Moment—A Symbol of Power Has Become a Totem Of Resistance

ByJanataWeekly

Chitra Padmanabhan   In The Black Jacobins, a classic work on the Haitian Revolution (1791–1803)—the only successful slave revolt in history, which erupted in the wake of the French Revolution—C.L.R. James describes a fascinating moment in the confrontation between Napoleon’s army and the slaves of the colony:   “The soldiers still thought of themselves as…