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Category: English
The film is partly based on a novel titled Lockup by an auto driver Chandrakumar based on his own experience as a 17-year-old labourer in an Andhra police station and the second part of the film is based on a record of everyday policing events.
Remembering the birth anniversary of U Soso Tham, most celebrated poet of the Khasi Jaintia Hills, Raiot presents five of his most well known poems, translated into English by Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih.
I remember a time back when I was in Catholic school; I was speaking in my mother’s language, Khasi during break time. A teacher walked…
Scientists say nuclear workers, village residents, and children living near Uranium mines and factories in Jadugoda of Jharkhand are falling ill after persistent exposure to unsafe radiation
Up in the North-East, the Guwahati franchise already belongs to NorthEast United. And since Shillong Lajong have separated from the John Abraham-owned team, they became the front-runner for getting the Shillong franchise thanks to influence and money-power. That’s why Wahingdoh pulled out. They waited till November to do it so that AIFF don’t get to spin their withdrawal as “failing to meet licensing requirements” as they did with Pune FC and Bharat FC. They wanted it to be known loud and clear that they were walking out of the I-League as a protest;
Nepal is a land-locked nation. It is disproportionately dependent and ‘close’ to the Indian Union due to its geographical location and the presence of the Himalayas that, for now, limits smooth connectivity between Nepal and China. Delhi’s influence on Nepal is largely borne out of this unfortunate geography – an influence that sometimes is no different from political blackmail.
Before she made her millions of paisas, my mother was a hawker. Determined to make a better life for me, she took a huge leap of faith and moved from Aizawl to Shillong.
In most societies the acts of religious conversion do ruffle the feathers of those who take the task of policing group boundaries zealously. In India too the issue of proselytization has been a matter of immense anxiety for the majoritarian groups belonging to Hindu religion
ISIS fuels Islamophobia and leads to alienation of Muslims in many countries. As a result ISIS also capitalizes on the alienation of these disillusioned Muslims and easily recruits them.
The decay of traditional and ritualistic Hinduism is the reaping field of Sri Sri Ravishankar’s philosophy business. Ravishankar offers the Upper Middle Class and the wealthy an expectation that he will provide the balm for the frustrations in their lives. But what they get is a method of breathing and a manner of laughter wrapped in fake philosophy, marketed with a vengeance
Recently, Royal Wahingdoh – a Shillong-based football club of some repute – formally announced that they would be pulling out of the I-League, an All India Football Federation (AIFF) promoted initiative. This came as a rude shock to the fans who had been religiously following the club.
Rumi always has the same questions for him. The first one is, “Can you understand Farsi?” Avtar nods, even though he does not understand the language. When he is awake, it always torments him that he is a liar even in his dreams. Rumi continues in Persian, which Avtar now understands because he has lied about it, “Do you know what murder is?”
The entry of refugees in large numbers is never welcomed anywhere. Demographic balances in Northeast India were threatened, even overturned, by the influx. The Bengali refugee, competing for scant jobs in the already impoverished economy, was a threat. The next phase of violence and ethnic cleansing began.
Modi and his party and supporters have thrashed every logical and sensible critical narrative with illogical, foolish and non-democratic counter narratives.
There’s nothing innate to the Sith that makes them evil. Indeed, the values they hold are all about self-empowerment to bring about change and throw off oppression in all its forms. The Jedi, by contrast, are about stagnancy and suppression of the self.
MIA has sold over a million copies of her albums and god knows how many more downloads and in contrast to Bollywood actresses attempting crossovers, hers is really the story of a girl from south Asia making it big in the west. The fact that she made it by rapping about issues that most pop stars wouldn’t touch with a barge pole is all the more remarkable.
Clause wise critique of Delhi Janlokpal Bill by The National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information shows that how the Janlokpal is neither independent nor a workable institution.
With the sudden Chidambaram realisation that Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses must be unbanned in India, we tend to forget that there is something called…
Buying local is not about economic benefit alone. Its also about empowering communities in a real sense, beyond slick and shameless NGO-partnered “CSR” initiatives about street-children and “women”. Its about changing the paradigm of economic activity and getting the stake of the people back and putting one’s own surrounding first.
A guide to why carbon trading will not work in justly tackling climate change and what alternatives might. 1. What is cap and trade? 2.…
Don’t mention it to your school, college, etc. Most likely they are fanatical religious fundies of the Hindu, Christian or Islamic persuasion. 2. Tick the ‘others’…
For the wannabe celebrity hungry class of Shillong, arrival of wannabe rock musicians and super wannabe film auteurs to shoot sequel of one bollywood banality called #RockOn has been a page3 moment.
The decennial census data for the Naga Hills (later, Nagaland) between 1881 and 1981 shows that the most dramatic religious change occurred after 1947, when foreign missionaries had left the field.
In a recent Order of the High Court of Meghalaya dated 2.11.2015 has made a suo motu suggestion to the Central Government for the imposition of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, in the Garo Hills area of Meghalaya. It is shocking and deeply disturbing that a draconian law like the AFSPA is being sought to be imposed through a judicial order.
With all the world at stake, it’s not good enough for us to paste the word sustainable in front of the deceptive word development when what we really mean is “continue this exploitative and destructive way of life a little bit longer.” That destroys the words sustainable and development and, of course, contributes to the ongoing destruction of the world.
If I had not loved thee,
The days would seem brighter
and the nights less dark
Maybe I’d see the sun everyday
and feed the ducks at the park.
‘In Defence of our Present – On giving up the National Awards’ is a booklet released by Solidarity with FTII, a group of filmmakers who came together to protest against the blatant disregard by this government for plurality, tolerance and secularism in the country as well as their attempts to destroy the excellence of institutions like Film and Television Institute of India. The booklet brings together statements by filmmakers on returning their National Awards as well as essays on the struggle of FTII students. You can download the booklet
On 16th November 2015, I went to take part in the protest march called by the Garo Students’ Union (GSU), Thma U Rangli-Juki (TUR), CSWO along with a few other activists from Meghalaya. I went not because I was instructed to by ‘party high-command’, not because I was threatened or coerced by anyone…
On October 25 2015, the Editors of five Nagaland-based media houses were issued a notification by a Colonel of the General Staff for Assam Rifles. Given the gravity of the matters raised in the notification we, the Editors of various English and Indigenous language newspapers of Nagaland have taken the communication as an opportunity to reflect, consult and critically examine what our role is in these circumstances.
As India celebrates the National Press Day and the very freedom of press that has liberated us, we the Journalists, Newspapers and media houses in Nagaland faces a difficult challenge of delivering transparent and free communication and expression to our own people.
Although the buzz around TED has died down but its bastard lowbrow child called TEDx stalks the provincial countries and towns like a persistent salesman.
Shillong with its vanity number plates of ‘educational capital’, ‘rock capital’, ‘cliche capital’ has had many of these TEDx full of 18minutes of wannabe celebrities, failed politicians, music evangelists, development messiah, crumbling royalty with useless insights and bad powerpoint slides. It is high time to cap this crap.
We need a hundred Lalus. Without the willingness of leaders to change the structure of society, forcibly if necessary, there can be no development. Without Laloo, there would be no Nitish either.
Brutal attack by Meghalaya Police on the students of Kiang Nangbah College, Jowai, a government college, for demanding better educational facilities. Video via Wyrta and a statement by TUR
For the urban middle-class of Shillong, Indigenous Terre Madre (ITM) was a chance to enjoy themselves, flirt with foreigners, a day to relax and unwind, all-in-all an event to savour (literally). For the rural poor, it meant some money coming their way, some photos taken of them and for the rural elites it meant that they could show up their ”traditional” knowledge and open up ‘their’ villages to outsiders.
Raiot is excited at publishing first of the extracts from Eat Dust : Mining and Greed in Goa by Hartman de Souza. For a zine published from Meghalaya, the other frontier of Mining in India, it is fitting that we learn from Goa – that raving beach infested greed fest.
“Our land has a history of being ruled by tyrants and hypocritical regimes, but we Kashmiris have always voiced our opinion against that. I couldn’t stay silent on this issue. This is a protest song against a political gimmick set to undermine the kashmir issue and to influence our Kashmiri sensibilities through pseudo monetary packages. A shame full event done in the name of democracy.”
Ali Saffudin
It is fair to say that in any writing of the history of western music in India, Shillong would deserve a chapter. It is just that the writing of this chapter has become way too problematic – too many loose ends, too many grand unifying theories. The culture of western popular music in Shillong has no shortage of hagiographers. In fact most of the writing on this field has been gushy, uncritical and downright fallacious (there have been so many that it would be worthwhile to bring out a compendium of these).
National Film Award, Best Screenplay / In which Annie Gives it Those Ones, 1988 Although I do not believe that awards are a measure of…
We, the citizens of the Indian Union, cannot afford to forget the year 1965. The world we live in was shaped in no small way…
Newspaper: Say, Knock…Knock…Knock….Knock
Me: Knock…Knock…
Newspaper: Ask who has now turned non-vegetarian
Me: Who?
Newspaper: Cow. Today, she tried to eat two more men in Mainpuri (Uttar Pradesh).
While state seems in no mood to repeal bloody AFSPA and continue oppression on people by killing dissident voices with impunity, people are bound to revolt. A continuous humiliation and torture of people living under AFSPA is just unbearable. This colonial rule and bloody thrust of power and resources must end.
Only aspect of this work that depicts matriliny and what it does to girls lies in the context behind the pictures. Without that background, this is, sad to say, a blatant exhibitionism of the girls of the village, culminating in a series that doesn’t quite capture the empowered status of these girls but antithetically subjugates them to the desired outcome of the viewer who in this case is Karolin Klüppel.
How the workers of Nazareth Hospital, Shillong started a Union
On the evening of 19th November at Bethany Society, Shillong a momentous and unprecedented, if not historic event occurred. Those who congregated there witnessed the…
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