India’s oldest Socialist Weekly!
Editor: Dr. G.G. Parikh | Associate Editor: Neeraj Jain | Managing Editor: Guddi
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,…
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…
A drop of your love had blended in So I drank the entire bitterness of life … Born in pre-partition Punjab and schooled in Punjabi, Amrita Pritam’s words stand witness to the upheavals of the 20th century wherein she was born. Destined to be a poet, the main concerns of her writing were love, freedom,…
[Recently, the Undergraduate Curriculum Revision Committee of Delhi University asked the English Department of the University to remove poet Meena Kandasamy from the syllabus. The English Department has refused to accept this. We are publishing a poem by her below.] Have you ever tried meditation? Struggling hard to concentrate, and keeping your mind as blank…
In his book Raga Mala, Ravi Shankar, the great musician, argues that had Rabindranath Tagore “been born in the West he would now be [as] revered as Shakespeare and Goethe.” This is a strong claim, and it calls attention to some greatness in this quintessentially Bengali writer—identified by a fellow Bengali—that might not be readily…
Every day is worse than the one before a killing of all that was legislated to be kind, helpful, healthy for all living creatures, prisoners of this earth. The meanness of it gets me, the hatred of who have less money and things and thus count less and should be punished or simply pushed into…
31st July is Premchand Jayanti. The greatest of Hindi novelists and short story writers was born on this day. As a small boy, I grew up in two small towns of Bihar—Begusarai and Darbhanga, to be precise. And Premchand was an integral part of my growing-up years. I was a bright boy. I loved my…
Eminent theatre director from Karnataka S. Raghunandana on July 17 declined the Sangeet Natak Akademi award for 2018, a day after it was announced, in protest against incidents of “mob lynching in the name of God and religion” and the frequent attempts to stifle dissenting views of public intellectuals and activists. Full Text of S…
(This paper was first presented at a five-day conference on ‘Indian Constitution and Social Justice’ held in Mysore in 1995, under the joint auspices of Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla and Dhwanyalok Center for Indian Studies, Mysore. It generated considerable controversy then, as the author had written and presented it in Hindi, even though…
Bertolt Brecht the playwright appears to have overshadowed his other artistic identities nearly completely, though, in truth, Brecht wore more creative hats than most other artists of his time. He was a theatre-producer, essayist, critic, novelist, short-story writer, drama theorist and film-script writer. And, above all, he was a poet. Indeed, Brecht was a poet…
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