history

  1. Danish Husain: The only way to fight Modi's grammar of deception is that you continue to be relevant
    11
    Jan

    Danish Husain: The only way to fight Modi's grammar of deception is that you continue to be relevant

    Danish Husain is an actor, poet, storyteller as well as a theatre director. He runs his own theatre company called the Hoshruba Repertory. He is known for his revival of Urdu storytelling through the Dastangoi form and later inventing the multilingual storytelling project Qissebaazi. He has appeared in a number of films, including Peepli Live (2010), Ankhon Dekhi (2013), Newton (2017) and Manto (2018). Danish is also our author. He wrote a brilliant fable on Indian PM Narendra Modi in our [...]
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  2. The Killing of History (Guest Post by John Pilger)
    24
    Sep

    The Killing of History (Guest Post by John Pilger)

    John Pilger is an Australian journalist, author of a number of important articles and maker of some crucial documentaries (including about Cambodia, Indonesia and the indigenous peoples of Australia). I have long been a fan of John Pilger's work - it is well-researched, honest and powerful without being sensational. There is a dignity to his prose that I very much admire. In a lecture he gave at Columbia University, Pilger spoke of 'censorship by omission'. In that lecture, Pilger pointed to[...]
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  3. Three Cyclists from India and Encounters of Empire
    11
    Aug

    Three Cyclists from India and Encounters of Empire

     ‘In China, the people did not believe they were Indians, because they were clean-shaven…’ (RGASPI 542/1/5, 68).   The continual mining of the Comintern Archive in Moscow, either by visiting the archive or consulting the online digital archive, furthers our understanding of (as in my case) anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements and experiences in the interwar period. By perceiving these movements as circulations of experience, and, transnational in scope and nature, the documen[...]
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  4. “Exiles From the Future”: Why Communist Histories
    18
    Aug

    “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[...]
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