PERSPECTIVE

General

GHUMMAKAD & DARVESH

Footloose sage Satyarthi, the man who walked, talked, gathered, wrote our stories

28.05.20 - S Pal

This May 28th was the 112th birth anniversary of footloose sage, Devinder Satyarthi. People have prefixed Ghumakkad to his name, and lived to replace it with Darvesh. Author of classics such as 'ਗਿੱਧਾ' (1936), 'ਦੀਵਾ ਬਲੇ ਸਾਰੀ ਰਾਤ' (1941), 'ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਲੋਕ ਗੀਤ' (1960), 'ਸੂਈ ਬਜਾਰ', ...

JUSTICE & COURTS

My ideal Judge

09.05.20 - Markandey Katju

In today’s situation in India when the faith of the Indian people in our judiciary has been rudely shaken due to certain events, I would like to mention about a judge, Qazi Sirajuddin, the Qazi-e-Subah of Bengal, as an inspiration and beacon of hope for ...

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

All religions are superstitions and false

29.04.20 - Markandey Katju

I read Umer Farooq's article 'Will Pakistan's Mullahs ever stop opposing modernity' online. The writer has referred to the opposition by Mullahs to womens' empowerment, minority rights, and modern political ideas. Perhaps what was in Farooq's mind was the recent statement of Maulvi Tariq Jameel ...

The Pandemic Panic

A wildly exaggerated threat

20.04.20 - Nalamotu Chakravarthy

India has adopted one of the world's most draconian responses to fight the spread of Covid-19. The University of Oxford’s ‘Coronavirus Government Response Tracker’ gave India the worst possible ‘Stringency Index’ of 100.

The lockdown in India is having far reaching consequences, particularly bringing economic ruin ...

My Quarantine Diary

How everything changed in a month!

15.04.20 - CHETNA GILL

IT IS A few minutes before midnight on 13th April and I am immediately reminded that it has been a month since I boarded the fateful flight from Australia to India. As I sit to write my diary, I flip through the pages and look ...

'87% people likely to get affected in Punjab!'

COVID-19: Should You Believe What the Mathematical Models Say About India?

11.04.20 - Gautam I. Menon

The 21-day national lockdown that Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in his address to the nation on March 24 ends on April 15. What happens next?

Should we anticipate a rise in cases once the lockdown is lifted, so that we’re back to about where we ...

AFTER COVID-19

In what ways will the world be different?

09.04.20 - M Khudadad Chattha

COVID-19 has transformed our lives in ways that will leave a permanent mark on all of humanity. While it is impossible to predict the exact type of scar that Covid-19 will leave, we do know that the world after this catastrophe will look very different. ...

An appeal to Jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh

Can Jathedar Akal Takht negotiate with Afghanistan, Indian and UN authorities to check where the Sikhs in Afghanistan want to go?

09.04.20 - AMANDEEP SANDHU

In a dastardly attack, two weeks back, on March 25, at 7.45 am, 25 Afghanistan Sikhs, including women and one child, were gunned down in a Gurdwara in Kabul. The initial blame was on the Taliban Haqqani network but it denied its role. Soon, the ...

India’s Revolutionary Inheritance

Politics and the Promise of Bhagat Singh

23.03.20 - KARTHIK VENKATESH

Bhagat Singh, teri soch te, pehra deyange thokke!
(Bhagat Singh, we will guard your thinking vigourously)

Those corpses of young men,
Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets –
those hearts pierced by the grey lead,
Cold and motionless as they seem, live elsewhere
withunslaughter’d vitality.
They live in other young men, ...

LAWYER, JUDGE, TRANSFER

The Maruti Omni van lawyer: The guy whose transfer worries you

09.03.20 - Vivek Durai

IN A 2011 MOVIE, Mather McConaughey plays the role of a criminal defence lawyer who works out of the back of a Lincoln. The movie struck a chord with audiences and helped resurrect McConaughey’s career as an actor. For me it did more than that. ...

OF CORPSES IN BHAJANPURA & FLOWING LONG GOWNS

As dead bodies fell, this was LIVE from Vijay Chowk

28.02.20 - S Pal

LET ME START with a warning: This story contains sickening details, and you will feel like vomiting.

It was around 10:15 Tuesday night, February 25. A full blown riot was continuing in Delhi. The Indian news television was too busy in its relentless coverage of the ...

INNER CITY STING

The Root Of Protest At Shaheen Bagh Is Rural Distress

19.02.20 - CHARU SONI

"You can’t enter from here.”

"Why?”

"You can’t. This entrance is meant only for residents of Sharam Nagar.”

"Sharam Nagar?”

A new informal police code — Sharam Nagar or Shame City — has been invented for Shaheen Bagh (lit. Garden of Falcons) the site of anti-CAA, NPR, NRC protest ...

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

How to beat the censorship?

16.02.20 - Markandey Katju

In his YouTube interview ‘There is so much censorship’ the well known Pakistani journalist and fashion designer Mohsin Sayeed has lamented that today censorship in Pakistan is worse than in Genreal Parvez Musharraf’s time.

I have personal experience of this. Hardly any Indian newspaper publishes my ...

Bengaluru’s one week old Shaheen Bagh

Bilal Bagh: An Appeal to Bengaluru

15.02.20 - AMANDEEP SANDHU

15/02/2020
01.30 Hours

I have just returned from Bilal Bagh on Tannery Road in north Bengaluru. For a week now, it is here that women, supported by men, are in a sit-in protest against the NPR/NRC/CAA.

However, unlike many other protests I have gone to over the past ...

Landless in Panjab: An Appeal

28.01.20 - AMANDEEP SANDHU

Randeep’s film shows us a major issue and unless Panjab acknowledges it, understands it, empathises with it, we can’t even begin to solve it.

LAST EVENING I had the satisfaction of seeing my friend Randeep Maddoke's documentary Landless. A few years back, when I was travelling ...

ATROCITIES IN PAST

Can Kashmiri Pandits forget the past and move on?

20.01.20 - Markandey Katju

KASHMIRI PANDITS (KPs) were a small peaceful community living for centuries in Kashmir. They constituted of only about 400,000 people out of the 8 million people living in Kashmir i.e. about 5% of the total population.

In the 1990s they were selectively targeted during the militancy ...

THE CONTROVERSY

Is Faiz’s Poem 'Hum Dekhenge' Anti-Hindu?

10.01.20 - Markandey Katju

The Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur has set up a panel to consider whether the poem ‘Hum Dekhenge’ by the famous Urdu poet Faiz is anti Hindu. This followed the recitation of the poem by students of IIT Kanpur on December 17th, 2019 on their ...

A successful attempt to depict Panjab’s crises

Footsteps on a Journey gone Astray

04.01.20 - Yadwinder Singh

We Panjabis
Are a history lost through centuries
We are the scattered pages of
a sacred book
the aware, twinkling alphabet
on pages flying in the wind
- Afzal Aihsan Randhawa, Panjab di War

Amandeep Sandhu’s book Panjab: Journeys Through Fault Lines is an attempt to collect these scattered pages of the ...

WE, THE PEOPLE

Anti-CAA protesters must think over this

02.01.20 - Markandey Katju

The Citizens Amendment Act (CAA) permits non Muslim immigrants into India from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh to become Indian citizens if they have lived in India for at least 5 years, but it does not grant the same right to Muslim immigrants.

The justification for this ...

NEW YEAR 2020

Ray of hope in dark times

31.12.19 - Jawed Naqvi

SYMBOLISM sometimes becomes more real than the reality it shadows. Observing the dark times Indians are fighting against with a blend of grit and determination, I am reminded of the nattily dressed Omid, the blind man from Bamiyan in Afghanistan whose name spells hope.

Bamiyan is, ...

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NEWS LETTER

General

In today’s situation in India when the faith of the Indian people in our judiciary has been rudely shaken due to certain events, I would like to mention about a judge, Qazi Sirajuddin, the Qazi-e-Subah of Bengal, as an inspiration and beacon of hope for ...

I read Umer Farooq's article 'Will Pakistan's Mullahs ever stop opposing modernity' online. The writer has referred to the opposition by Mullahs to womens' empowerment, minority rights, and modern political ideas. Perhaps what was in Farooq's mind was the recent statement of Maulvi Tariq Jameel ...

IT IS A few minutes before midnight on 13th April and I am immediately reminded that it has been a month since I boarded the fateful flight from Australia to India. As I sit to write my diary, I flip through the pages and look ...

The 21-day national lockdown that Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in his address to the nation on March 24 ends on April 15. What happens next?Should we anticipate a rise in cases once the lockdown is lifted, so that we’re back to about where we ...

COVID-19 has transformed our lives in ways that will leave a permanent mark on all of humanity. While it is impossible to predict the exact type of scar that Covid-19 will leave, we do know that the world after this catastrophe will look very different. ...

In a dastardly attack, two weeks back, on March 25, at 7.45 am, 25 Afghanistan Sikhs, including women and one child, were gunned down in a Gurdwara in Kabul. The initial blame was on the Taliban Haqqani network but it denied its role. Soon, the ...

IN A 2011 MOVIE, Mather McConaughey plays the role of a criminal defence lawyer who works out of the back of a Lincoln. The movie struck a chord with audiences and helped resurrect McConaughey’s career as an actor. For me it did more than that. ...

LET ME START with a warning: This story contains sickening details, and you will feel like vomiting. It was around 10:15 Tuesday night, February 25. A full blown riot was continuing in Delhi. The Indian news television was too busy in its relentless coverage of the ...

"You can’t enter from here.”"Why?”"You can’t. This entrance is meant only for residents of Sharam Nagar.”"Sharam Nagar?”A new informal police code — Sharam Nagar or Shame City — has been invented for Shaheen Bagh (lit. Garden of Falcons) the site of anti-CAA, NPR, NRC protest ...

15/02/2020 01.30 Hours I have just returned from Bilal Bagh on Tannery Road in north Bengaluru. For a week now, it is here that women, supported by men, are in a sit-in protest against the NPR/NRC/CAA.However, unlike many other protests I have gone to over the past ...

Randeep’s film shows us a major issue and unless Panjab acknowledges it, understands it, empathises with it, we can’t even begin to solve it. LAST EVENING I had the satisfaction of seeing my friend Randeep Maddoke's documentary Landless. A few years back, when I was travelling ...

KASHMIRI PANDITS (KPs) were a small peaceful community living for centuries in Kashmir. They constituted of only about 400,000 people out of the 8 million people living in Kashmir i.e. about 5% of the total population.In the 1990s they were selectively targeted during the militancy ...