Has the Constitution Failed Us or Have We Failed the Constitution?
The rhetorical question posed by former President KR Narayanan saved the Constitution from a previous assault. We need to raise it to ourselves and the State once again.
Probity Personified
Today, when a party that is an RSS-front organisation is in power, the need for all who love democracy to appreciate Jawaharlal Nehru’s acute understanding of fascism is particularly urgent.
Curricular Wars and Averting Auschwitz
Education through rewritten textbooks, proscription of materials and textualised hate towards the Jews was central to the Nazi plot and storyline. The war for global domination and extermination began, as it were, in curricular battles.
History Is Calling Us! Unite in Struggle to Defend the Values of the Freedom Struggle
Why this call? People of India today face the onslaught on the basic values of the Constitution from a regime that is determined to impose a socio-political system of Hindutva chauvinism on the multicultural, multi-religious, multilingual society thus violating the constitutional commitment to equality of all citizens.
Death Merchants?
The fact that there are people profiting from mass slaughter has been expunged from our political consciousness. Not even the most lucid and disenchanted commentator would dare affirm, as Anatole France did in 1922, that ‘We think we are dying for our country; we are dying for the industrialists’.
First Books, Then People: How a Barbarous Nazi Act Resonates Even Today
Ninety years ago in Germany, Nazis in many cities burned books by writers deemed “un-German”.
Earthly Birthday Greetings to Stan Swamy in Heaven
Dear Stan, It is your birthday today here on earth! You would have completed eighty-six years, if you were around. Well, that was not to be; on 5 July 2021 you were murdered by a brutal and fascist regime. Here on earth dear Stan you are missed very much …
An Ordinary Man in an Extraordinary Situation: Defying Hitler by Sebastian Haffner
Kamayani review’s Sebastian Haffner’s “Defying Hitler”, a memoir of a non Jew German in the Third Reich. While doing so, she makes a case for reading and learning from this book in relation to the present Indian context.
Media and Free Voice: Review of Ravish Kumar’s Book
Ravish Kumar in his book ‘The Free Voice: On Democracy Culture and Nation’ critically evaluates the role being played by the media in contemporary times. Journalism in contemporary times has turned out to be uncritical of the government, rather it has become its mouthpiece.
The Constitution Was Envisioned as a Living Document. But Can Our Leaders Keep It Alive?
On Constitution Day, we need to ask whether we, as a people, have proved equal to the expectations that it has from us. We need to ask why people who tried to emulate the ideals of that living document are in jail and how others are in positions to extinguish its spirit.