Monthly Archives: July 2019

'The criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism': Raosaheb Kasbe

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 outlined by Golwalkar, and exposed its authoritarianism. His study of the functioning of the RSS revealed its communal blueprint, its anti-modern views and anti-democra[...]

Grateful for Progress Publishers

The bookshelf in my mother's apartment in Kolkata is weighed down by an old history. There are books in the familiar blue and white spine, the old Progress Publishers volumes that include my volumes of Karl Marx's Capital, bought in 1981. Russian classics jostle for space, a bit of Lermontov here and a bit of Gogol there. There used to be children's books, but in the move from one apartment to the other, these might have been slipped into the bags of the kabariwallah. Running my hands over these[...]

Girish Karnad, the Playwright Against the Right

It is both apt and reductive that two images dominate others as Girish Karnad is remembered on social media: one, with Gauri Lankesh, protesting the killing of Karnad's fellow Dharwadian Prof. M.M. Kalburgi; the other, wearing the Me Too Urban Naxal placard, at the memorial to mark the first anniversary of Gauri Lankesh's own killing. Over the past few years, Karnad was seen as one of the most consistent, fearless and principled defenders of freedom of speech, cultural diversity and democracy. I[...]