The Folly and Vanity of the Project to Redesign Delhi
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The Folly and Vanity of the Project to Redesign Delhi

Ramachandra Guha Six years ago, the then editor of the Hindustan Times invited me to write a fortnightly column. I agreed, on condition that there would be no censorship. While occasionally some changes to my text were made without my consent, there was no attempt to get me to rewrite my column or change its…

Raja Dhale: A Renaissance Figure in Dalit Literature and Art
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Raja Dhale: A Renaissance Figure in Dalit Literature and Art

Yogesh Maitreya    If there is one man who deserves to be called a renaissance figure in dalit literature and art, it is Raja Dhale. Many may have heard of him only recently, when he passed away in July, 2019. Dhale was a remarkable poet; an occasional but refined translator; a fiery yet incisive critic…

Police Brutally Attack JNU Students
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Police Brutally Attack JNU Students

Courtesy: Countercurrents Collective Thousands of students from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, India, who were marching to parliament to protest the massive hike in hostel fees were detained and baton-charged, leaving some of them grievously injured yesterday. The students continued their march but were stopped at many places. The protesters said they would…

‘Deshgaan’

‘Deshgaan’

Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena (We give below the English translation of Hindi poet Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena’s celebrated poem, Deshgaan (An Ode to the Nation), to commemorate his 36th death anniversary. Deshgaan was part of a poetry collection written between 1976 (when the Emergency was still on) and 1981. The political and moral concerns voiced in this…

‘The Criticism of Religion is the Premise of All Criticism’
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‘The Criticism of Religion is the Premise of All Criticism’

[When Raosaheb Kasbe’s Zot was published in Marathi in 1978, RSS cadres made a public bonfire of it at the Janata Party convention in Pune that year. The book presented an incisive critique of M.S. Golwalkar’s Bunch of Thoughts, the main ideological treatise of the RSS. Kasbe traced the historical roots of cultural nationalism as…

Pash: Life and Works of a Revolutionary Poet

Pash: Life and Works of a Revolutionary Poet

Avtar Singh Sandhu, popularly known by his nom de plume, Pash, was arguably the most influential political Punjabi poet of the 20th century. His works include Loh-Katha (Iron Tale, 1970), Uddian Bazan Magar (Following the Flying Hawks, 1973), Saade Samiyan Vich (In Our Times, 1978), and the posthumously published collection Khilre Hoye Varkey (Scattered Pages,…

Remembering M.M. Kalburgi

Remembering M.M. Kalburgi

Translated by Aniruddha Nagaraj & Ali Ahsan [Four years ago, academic and activist M.M. Kalburgi was gunned down at his residence in Dharwad by two people linked to Sanatan Sanstha, a Hindutva outfit. Kalburgi was a vocal critic of idol worship and superstition, which often got him locking horns with Hindutva groups like the Vishwa…