Battle for India’s Soul: A Century-Long Struggle Against the Mahatma’s Vision 
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Battle for India’s Soul: A Century-Long Struggle Against the Mahatma’s Vision 

Harsh Mander    A hundred years have passed since a battle was launched for the soul of this ancient land. At stake was the country we would together build after the British left our shores.   This was the time when Mahatma Gandhi returned from South Africa to join India’s freedom struggle. In his leadership…

Poets: Ridiculous to Paint Faiz’s ‘Hum Dekhenge’ as Anti-Hindu
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Poets: Ridiculous to Paint Faiz’s ‘Hum Dekhenge’ as Anti-Hindu

Courtesy: The Wire and PTI   Top poets and writers including Javed Akhtar, Rahat Indori and Vishal Bhardwaj have described attempts to paint Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s revolutionary “Hum Dekhenge” as anti-Hindu and pro-Islam a “ridiculous” and “narrow-minded” attempt.   They were responding to IIT-Kanpur forming a committee to inquire into a complaint against the recitation…

Kakori Martyrs Also Symbols of Communal Harmony
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Kakori Martyrs Also Symbols of Communal Harmony

Bharat Dogra   The week December 16–22 has a very special significance in the history of the freedom movement in India. During this week in 1927, four extremely brave and exceptionally talented revolutionary freedom fighters were executed by the colonial government.   Ramprasad Bismil was hanged in Gorakhpur, Ashfaqullah Khan in Faizabad, Rajindernath Lahiri in…

India’s Muslims are Asserting their Citizenship
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India’s Muslims are Asserting their Citizenship

Apoorvanand   ‘The protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act at Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University have given the Bharatiya Janata Party something it always wanted. Now it has become easier for them to term the opposition to the Act as sectarian, communal and essentially Muslim.’ This is the lament of many well-wishers of…

How Did Savarkar, a Staunch Supporter of British Colonialism, Come to Be Known as ‘Veer’?
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How Did Savarkar, a Staunch Supporter of British Colonialism, Come to Be Known as ‘Veer’?

Pavan Kulkarni   Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966)—mythologised in popular imagination as ‘Veer Savarkar’—not only refrained from participating in the freedom struggle after the British released him from prison on account of his relentless pleas for mercy, but also actively collaborated with the English rulers to whom he had declared his loyalty.   At the time…

Stand Up for the Constitution! Scrap CAA! No NRC!
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Stand Up for the Constitution! Scrap CAA! No NRC!

Citizens for Justice and Peace   We, the people of India, protest against the move to question our citizenship. We believe that this is an attempt to divide India on religious lines. Our citizenship has been granted to us by law and constitution and we will defend it till our last breath. Over the past…

The Spectre of Jamia: Violation of a Safe Space
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The Spectre of Jamia: Violation of a Safe Space

Ushosee Pal & Sanchari Basu Chaudhuri    Time and again, students have shown the way to dissent peacefully and demand change. And, Friday, the 13th of December, 2019, was no different.   Three to four teachers were giving a speech about NRC and CAB inside the campus while a number of students (around fifty) listened….

Partition Lies and Amit Shah’s Theatre of the Absurd
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Partition Lies and Amit Shah’s Theatre of the Absurd

Prem Shankar Jha   During the Lok Sabha debate on the Bill amending the Citizenship Act, Union home minister Amit Shah suddenly lost his temper and blurted: “Is desh ka vibhajan agar dharma ke aadhar par Congress na kari hoti to is Bill ka kaam nahin hota (Had the Congress not partitioned this country on…

Unite – To Fight the Nefarious Schemes of the Modi-Shah Government 
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Unite – To Fight the Nefarious Schemes of the Modi-Shah Government 

G.G. Parekh, Neeraj Jain Being a citizen is the supremest identity that a person has; in contrast, being declared non-citizen (or a foreigner) effectively means the person becomes stateless, which condemns him/her to civil death—a person becomes deprived of almost all his civil rights. The Indian Constitution granted citizenship by birth to all people; after…