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Mythily Sivaraman (1939-2021).

LeftWord Books pays tribute to Mythily Sivaraman (1939-2021), author of Haunted by Fire: Essays on Caste, Class, Exploitation and Emancipation. On Tamil Nadu’s western border with Kerala lies the town of Valparai, where the plantation workers went on strike in May 1972. Meenakshi, a worker in her forties, worked at the Periakarumalai Tea & Produce Company. When the police attacked the striking workers, Meenakshi was arrested by them and severely beaten up in the police van. As the po[...]

We Stand with Palestine

Since 1948, Israel has tried to erase the Palestinians from their lands and to erase the possibility of a Palestinian homeland. For good reason, the Syrian academic Constantine Zurayak published a book that year called Ma’na al-Nakba (Meaning of the Catastrophe). The ‘catastrophe’ was the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homes, which since then has expanded to the apartheid conditions for Palestinians inside Israel, to the occupation of Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem, Gaza[...]

हम फ़िलिस्तीन के साथ खड़े हैं

ऐजाज़ अहमद, अरुंधति रॉय, गीता हरिहरन, मोहम्मद यूसुफ़ तारिगामी, नसीरुद्दीन शाह, नयनतारा सहगल, प्रभात पटनायक, रत्ना पाठक शाह, सुभाषिनी अली, सुधन्वा देशपांडे और विजय प्रसाद. 1948 से इज़राइल ने फ़िलि[...]

Red Dragon

The bourgeoisie reacted physically to Bolshevism. As I have written before, Bolshevism in the British imperial intelligence reports during the most intense phase of the Russian Civil War (1918-20) was often depicted as an alien biological threat. This threat could be a mutating virus and a pandemic, necessarily the harbinger of mass death and with the potential to destroy the world order. The ‘carriers’ were seen as dangerous deviants of various sorts with shifting, multiple racial features.[...]

THE STORY OF A MUMBAI MILL

For Datta Iswalkar (1949-2021) It was the talk of the townTill they closed it downThe simple reason was, when all had their fillThey terminated the New Great Cotton Mill So what is the problem – you will sayThe way of the world – you will say The workers were not paid their gratuityThey wanted their dues, not your sympathyInstead they had to rely on their wivesThe others, generally speaking, lost their lives Memory is life, and life is strife – you will sayAll this has happened to othe[...]