The long dark tea time of the soul

Before proceeding further, I request the reader to undertake this simple exercise. Ananda Bazar Patrika is one of the most popular bengali newspaper. Visit their archives section and search for 15th march issue of the newspaper. You will find the page missing. So is the edition of 16th march. (the original source of [...]

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When 12 villagers were killed by Orissa police, to facilitate the tatas to set up their steel plant in Kalinganagar, we thought that this is a hard lesson for the state machinery, that the policies of neoliberalism will be toned down, that the rulers will respect the rights and concerns of the dispossessed. In [...]

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NDTV is running a poll for the “Person of the year”, urging its viewers to vote for the most influential Indian for the year 2006. The list has famous achievers from all sections of the society, and there is nothing wrong with the list. Except the glitch that the list starts with the name of [...]

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We in India, the masses, the intellectuals and the politicians are yet to be outraged at the ongoing conference on holocaust denial in Teheran, Iran. There is absolutely no justification for India adopting a stoic silence at the latest attempt of revisionism, which says that the six million Jews killed between 1930 to 1945 was [...]

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Suddenly the government of India, various state governments are competing with each other in excelling in their new job profile. And what might that be? The state governments of West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, all of them have donned the role of what the underworld used to do [...]

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This is the first part of my three part essay on naxalism. I have already posted the second part in this blog, where I have presented a seven-point program for the naxalite central committee. In the present essay, I discuss the origin of the movement, the issues of ideology, politics and and [...]

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The government of India has issued an order putting travel restriction on high profile and daring Tibetan activist, Mr. Tenzin Tsundue. He has been confined to his exile hometown, Dharamshala and warned against
leaving the place till November 25th. Failing which, he will be deported to Lhasa in Tibet under Chinese occupation. Friends of [...]

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More than 60000 people (mostly tribals) attended a rally in Dantewada today. The rally was called by CPI (Communist Part of India) to protest against illegal land acquisition by essar steel in two villages of Dantewada district, namely Dhurli and Bhansi. The people also protested against Salwa Judum. The rally was entirely peaceful and people [...]

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The naxalites are a confused lot these days. The last one year has been quiet eventful for them. On the one hand, they got the best compliment of their lives when the prime minister acknowledged that “naxalism is single biggest internal security challenge” ever faced by our country. They have made significant gains post [...]

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APJ Abdul Kalam’s tenure as the president of India ends in july next year, and a search has already started to find India’s next head of state. The political temperature is already heating up, with names being propped up from left (Somenath Chatterjee), right (B.S. Shekhawat) and center (Karan Singh). And somebody actually [...]

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