Bulletin

Articles

• Modi Government: The Proverbial Snake with a Frog Stuck in its Throat
  26 June, by Sumanta Banerjee

  India’s prime minister Narendra Modi seems to have taken on something that he can neither chew and gulp down, nor disgorge. The recent confrontation with China at the ambiguously demarcated LAC (Line of Actual Control) has led to a stuck- in- the throat situation for India. The face off between Indian and Chinese soldiers at the LAC has ended up in results that have reduced India to the humiliating position of a subordinate fighter in the contest - with the loss of lives of some twenty (...)

• Renaming India as Bharat: The Longstanding Hindutva Agenda
  29 June, by Pritam Singh

  Though the Supreme Court refused to entertain on June 3 a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) for renaming India as ‘Bharat’ or ‘Hindustan’, it does not put an end to the longstanding Hindutva agenda on this issue. The Supreme Court decision was purely on technical/legal grounds namely that ‘Bharat’ as one of the names of the country is already stated in India’s Constitution. Further, the Court opened the way further for this pro-Hindutva move by suggesting that those bringing the PIL to the Court (...)

• Health Workers: From Praise to Protection
  16 June, by Sam Gindin

  Crises sometimes bring out the best in society, and sometimes – or even at the same time – they clarify what is so darkly wrong within. In the particular case of the commitments and risks taken by the front-line workers that we apparently value so deeply now, the contrast lies in how little they were valued before. And even now as so many praise these workers, the response falls so wretchedly short of protecting them as best we collectively can.
  Of the many dilemmas that emerged from the (...)

• All of Us Began with Marta Harnecker
  26 June, by Miguel Enrique Stédile

  In memory of Marta Harnecker, who passed away on June 14, 2019.
  During an interview, then-Bolivia Vice-President Álvaro García Linera and Spanish state parliamentarian Pablo Iglesias were exchanging ideas on classic texts and their own initiation into politics when the Spanish activist proclaimed: “All of us began with Marta Harnecker.” This statement is not only true for today’s young leftists but for thousands of people who have defended Marxism and socialism in the past four decades.
  It is (...)

• A Long History of Dehumanizing The “Darker Brother”
  29 June, by Messaoud Romdhani

  I am the darker brother and “I, too, sing America”
  When the Black American poet, Langston Hughes (1902-1967), wrote his beautiful poem, “I, too, sing America”, Harlem Renaissance or “the New Negro Movement” as it was called in the 1920’s, was in vogue. Most Black artists, even though proud of their African origins, tried to integrate their experience within the American cultural history. The message conveyed through the poem is his right, as a black person, to feel patriotic, to be American, and (...)

• The Statues of our Discontent
  20 June, by Boaventura de Sousa Santos

  Statues look a lot like the past, which is why, whenever they are called into question, we turn to historians. The truth is that statues are a thing of the past only as long as they stand quietly in squares, as indifferent to us as we are to them. At such times, which may actually last centuries, they are visited more intentionally by pigeons than by humans. But when statues come under assault, they leap from the past to become part of our present. Otherwise, how could there ever be any (...)