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  1. The Left Loses an Election in Tripura, but it Has Not Been Defeated
    03
    Mar

    The Left Loses an Election in Tripura, but it Has Not Been Defeated

    The BJP and its ally – the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT) – have won the 2018 elections to the Tripura state legislature. The alliance of the BJP and the IPFT will now form a government. The Left It is the first time in twenty-five years that Tripura, a state of four million people in India’s northeast, will be without a government of the Left. The outgoing chief minister – Manik Sarkar of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI-M] – has been in that office since M[...]
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  2. AG Noorani and Hindutva
    09
    Jan

    AG Noorani and Hindutva

    We, at LeftWord Books, have been proud to publish the thoroughly-researched and laser-sharp writings of AG Noorani. Born in 1930, Noorani is a renowned advocate in the Bombay High Court and in the Supreme Court of India. It is that lawyer’s eye that Noorani brings to his historical and political studies, careful to map out the dynamics of human events but also to judge them based on a moral standard that oscillates between the barometer of common sense and the liberal constitutional tradition.[...]
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  3. Is Fascism Imminent?
    30
    Sep

    Is Fascism Imminent?

    A few weeks ago, CPI(M) leader Prakash Karat wrote a brief article in the Indian Express that assessed the character of the RSS and the BJP. He argued that the BJP is not capable of fascism because the conditions that would require the ‘terroristic dictatorship of finance capital’ – as the Communist International put it – do not exist. At the Sabrang website, historian Jairus Banaji responded tartly, saying that indeed the BJP-RSS is a fascist ensemble. Joining the debate then was LeftWo[...]
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  4. Are we living under fascism already?
    18
    Sep

    Are we living under fascism already?

    Newsletter this Week..   In the latest post on the LeftWord Blog, Vijay Prashad points towards his rejoinder to Jairus Banaji's ad hominem attack on Prakash Karat. Karat makes a distinction between a fascist and an authoritarian regime, and Banaji, rather than engaging with the substance of Karat's argument, makes an ill-toned attack on what he considers 'Stalinism'. In fact, Banaji displays the very sectarianism he asks the Indian Left to shed.Vijay Prashad's rejoinder draws from his[...]
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  5. Dalit Resistance and the Role of the Left
    09
    Sep

    Dalit Resistance and the Role of the Left

    A fundamental and core feature of India’s socio-economic structures is its caste system. Birth and descent determine positions in immutable social hierarchies. When Rohith Vemula penned his tragic yet passionate suicide note he described his Dalit identity as a ‘fatal accident’. And it is true. Had he been born into another caste, he would not as a child has had to witness his mother Radhika facing caste based indignities. Nor would Rohith and his sibling Raja have faced discrimination in [...]
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