Monthly Archives: August 2016
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27AugNamo's Readings
We know a lot about Namo. We know of his incessant foreign trips, of his sartorial preferences, his love of his own voice. But we don't know what he reads. Namo's pal Barack recently released his music playlist. We can picture Namo's smirk when he heard this. Not for him such trivial pastimes. He is the leader of a great ancient nation. The nation which invented, in the hoary past, plastic surgery and aeroplanes and whatnot. Namo says so. He must have read it somewhere. The nation[...] -
Dalits & The Holy Cow
An atrocity took place on 11 July 2016. In Una Block of Gir Somnath district, dominant caste youth attacked four dalits. The incident took place between the villages of Mota Samadhiyala and Bediya. The four dalits - Vasharambhai Balubhai Sarvaiya and his brother Rameshbhai Bhalubhai Sarvaiya as well as their cousins Becharbhai Ugabhai Sarvaiya and Askokbhai Bijabhai Sarvaiya had been skinning dead cows. The dominant caste youth – in the name of gau raksha – attacked them. The father (Balu[...] -
What's new on leftword.com?
These are exciting times at leftword.com. We've just added two new functionalities to the site. The red circle If you've come to the leftword.com site over the last three or four days, you've probably noticed this little red circle with a question mark: This is a help desk icon. It appears on every page. What it does is enables you to send in your questions to us. When you click on it, this is what you'll see: All you need to do is fill up the email id field and subject line, and then [...] -
18Aug“Exiles From the Future”: Why Communist Histories
[courtesy counterpunch.org] Prof. Vijay Prashad is one of the most impressive scholars today. His recent anthology Communist Histories Volume 1 gathers together a series of essays by historians from across the globe that creates a new vision of Indian history and a Communist Party that was simultaneously aligned with the Soviet Union and a populist mass movement. I sat down for an interview with Prof. Prashad wherein we discussed this new volume and what it can teach activists today. The audi[...] -
The Big Picture: A review of The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution
[courtesy frontline.in] I was reading this book when the failed coup of July 15 occurred in Turkey. The book helped me much to understand what happened after the coup when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, claiming that it was a “God-given” opportunity for him to “cleanse” the system of the cancer that has set in, proceeded to dismantle democracy in his country. This is the primary merit of this book written by Vijay Prashad, blessed with an extra-large dosage of wanderlust. He travels [...]