If hanging were a solution to violence against women, we wouldn’t have enough rope in this world to execute men who have committed acts of violence directly or indirectly against women. We can exclude this option for lack of rope more than anything else. We still could keep most men in the “deserve to be hanged” category. I think that would help in bringing about some awareness of the violence being done against women. Continue reading
Freud notes that emotional unhappiness is at the root of contradictions in a culture that in turn fuels the human craving for fame, power and money. The cruelty of war stems from a morbid need to deprive the world of what one is deprived of. Thus Gloucester will say in some of the most famous opening lines from Shakespeare’s The Life and Death of Richard the Third “since I cannot prove a lover,/ To entertain these fair well-spoken days,/ I am determined to prove a villain/ And hate the idle pleasures of these days.” Continue reading
I’m far more convinced that Narendra Modi is singularly guilty for the Gujarat riots of 2002 that killed close to one thousand Muslims than I am of Afzal Guru’s guilt in the Indian Parliament attack of 2001. Yet, if life must continue to be unfair, Narendra Modi might actually be the prime minister of India if he has to oppose a political Lilliputian such as Rahul Gandhi who simply does not have the wherewithal to run a country of India’s magnitude. Continue reading
In India the law exists to protect the servile, the wicked and the dishonest, irrespective of the caste they belong to, and not to serve the needs of the poor and the powerless. Continue reading
I refuse to be cynical or pessimistic about a political party with a name like “India against Corruption” which has a strikingly Bollywood simplicity about it. The problem with the simplicity is that like in the Bollywood movie—the title is often not original and the plot and theme along with the subplots and subthemes are predictable enough to kill any sense of uncertainty or doubt you might possibly have. What is even more predictable is that there are heroes and villains; everyone who is outside the corridors of power qualifies to the dubious state of heroism; everyone in power is automatically promoted to villainy with or without his or her choice. This is not really about choice; this is more about scripted roles and how well you are able to play the role as long as you are in it. Continue reading
If I did not have an SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act (a law meant to prevent Dalits from being harassed or victimized by non-Dalits in one form or the other) case filed against me a year and half ago in the nearest police station by my well-meaning Dalit student friends, merely because when in an official position, I attempted to prevent them from being deliberately provocative towards believing Hindus from communities other than the one to which they belonged, perhaps I would’ve been in a state of doubt. Continue reading
The distinction George Orwell makes between nationalism and patriotism in his essay “Notes on Nationalism” is true of the media as well. A nationalist according to Orwell is basically a power-monger and nationalism an ego-centered discourse whereas patriotism stands for “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally.” Continue reading
I’ve always thought I must thank them. Continue reading
As important as the nationalization of the commercial banks by Indira Gandhi in 1969 is the current need to nationalize healthcare—which means that private hospitals should be brought under the purview of the state. The state hospitals are generally believed to be a veritable nightmare. However, when I visited the state-run Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad fairly recently to check on an ill neighbor who could not afford corporate treatment, I was impressed by the general behavior of the young doctors and realized how much more the poor could gain by being given the opportunity of free healthcare. This hospital had the potential of being a very good hospital with a little more support from the government and the public at large. Continue reading
It didn’t come as a shock when Salman Taseer the governor of the Punjab province was assassinated by one of his own security guards on January 4, 2011. What was truly shocking were the bouquets offered to Taseer’s assassin from the so-called “true” believers—the sheer inhumanity of it and the disrespect to a man’s life! Salman Taseer’s “guilt” was clear to the assassin. Taseer may not have committed blasphemy but he was “guilty” of defending the Christian Asia Bibi who allegedly did so. The evidence against her is so blatantly cooked up that you would laugh if only you did not know that the joke would be such a cruel one. Continue reading
A Palestinian Arab student and friend of mine says: You can have a pack of dogs led by a lion but you cannot have a dog leading a pride of lions. That is the truth of the Arab world he added: we’re nations of lions being led by dogs. The end of the dog-regimes in the Middle East is nowhere in sight. But the Tunisians and the Egyptians just made a beginning, a beginning that’ll free West Asia of families of curs who live as if the world is without an end. Continue reading
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What activism is
Posted on May 2, 2013 by Prakash Kona
When a colleague of mine told her students she was more an activist than an academic I was amused to say the least. If, in all naivety, she thought being an activist was enough reason to neglect academic duties I think it’s a time-honored excuse for insincerity and laziness. Reading and preparing for classes is hard work. Making sure students are able to meet specific standards of reading and writing is labor. To say one is an “activist” in the “comfortable” zone of a state-run university is euphemism to expressing distaste if not contempt for academic work. Continue reading →