‘I Made No Compromise in Any of My Films’—Adoor Gopalakrishnan
The great filmmaker, who turned eighty on 3 July, says he never made films just to please his audience or producers and has no regrets.
From State to Civil Society, how Bengal Responded to Covid
During the peak of the second surge of the deadly killer virus in summer this year, when patients in several parts of India were literally gasping for breath, the situation in West Bengal was much better managed.
The Cinematograph Act Always Gave the Govt Too Much Power. That’s Why We Challenged it.
As we stand at the intersection of freedom and state control, the judiciary is the only hope. Though that hope has also faded in recent years, our challenge is to not give up the Sisyphean fight to set governmental authoritarianism at naught.
Let’s Have Some Power with Our Pride
Every civilised country grants dignity, rights and protection to citizens regardless of identity. It is about time India does so too. For this, it is important that LGBTQIA+ leaders enter electoral politics because without political power their pride will always be challenged.
Critique of the Misunderstanding Concerning Marx’s Base-Superstructure Spatial Metaphor
A clarification of the famed and famously misinterpreted spatial metaphor of the economic foundation and the political-legal superstructure.
Rabindranath – Finding Peace and Acceptance Through Art
His life and philosophy is the anthem that calls to every human and tells them to keep hope, to find peace in solitude, to accept the anguish and embrace the distress, and to finally find a home in the ship of creativity, that aids this tormented mind to find its happy place in the confines of four walls.
Three Poems
You Will Not Speak; One Day I Saw My Girl; A Spark
Kashi ka Kabir: Reinterpreting a Poet’s Life and His Times
One cannot ‘read’ Kabir without ‘reading’ the genius of the indigenous mind on the one hand and the impact of colonial intervention on the other. The author says he realised this only gradually, during the long, painful and adventurous journey in search of his own relation with Kabir.
Culture | Online Blog | USA
A Letter to My Nephew
James Baldwin’s thoughts on his nephew’s future (in the USA)—in a country with a terrible history of racism— first appeared in The Progressive magazine in 1962. Over 50 years later his words are, sadly, more relevant than ever.
Caste | Culture | Online Blog
The Laughing Bard: In Memory of Siddalingaiah
Siddalingaiah, who passed away on June 11, was not only a poet, but also an activist and public intellectual all his life. A key figure in the Dalit movement of the 1970s and 1980s, he was one of the co-founders of the Dalit Sangharsha Samiti in Karnataka.