Assam politics, specifically Ahom politics, is at a crossroad. While Assam’s politics typically does not matter in the Indian Union’s ‘national scene’, for people of Assam, it means the world.
RAIOT Posts
As the city of Shillong mourns the brutal attack on the teenager girl from 4 -1/2 miles Upper Shillong, East Khasi Hills District, Meghalaya, many are outraged and angry and crying for justice. Rape cases in Meghalaya seem to see a slow death as cases linger, with trauma to the victims and their families right from the beginning. It is disturbing that there is selective outrage against crimes on women and children in our state. This incident could very well not have occurred had the outrage being displayed now been there all along for each heinous crime of rape that occurred in the state including those in far flung villages which often go unreported and are silenced due to the influential links of perpetrators. We need to question this erratic display of solidarity.
Assamese exceptionalism and the ambivalence of the Assamese Muslim to the Sangh Parivar’s designs against all Muslims regardless of ethnicity or descent could prove to be at the root of BJP’s rise in the Assam polls.
ELECTION IS COMING! (Song inspired by Imphal Talkies and The Howlers) SHALL WE GO TO MONGON? SHALL WE GO TO MAIBONG? SHALL WE GO TO…
Radhika Vemula, the mother of deceased dalit scholar and Ambedkarite activist Rohith Vemula was on one side enslaved in anguish and on the other side has radically transformed herself by associating with the ambedkarite movement
We found a startling fact in the National Family Health survey for 2010-2011 about Indians and contraception. 83 million Indian women use the emergency pill as if it is a regular contraceptive. Only 1/5 of that number, 16 million Indian men use condoms. So learn about this Emergency Pill
“Ironically, one of the most salutary features of the intellectual and activist work of the communists was its insistence on inclusiveness, its desire to involve people across religious, political, gender and class divides. “
This or That Particular Person is a documentary film that examines the relationship between the State, identity and notions of personhood.
Easterine Kire, who won the Hindu Literary Prize 2015 for her novel When the River Sleeps, beating stiff competition from heavyweights like Amitav Ghosh and Amit Chaudhuri, among others, talks to Dibyajyoti Sarma about her ‘spiritual’ book, and about being a writer from Nagaland
I think it is important to talk about, given how glibly people say, “let the law take its course,” “if so and so is innocent, then justice will be done,” and such like things. What do we do, if the law taking its (long and winding) course itself acts as punishment, how do we undo that damage, should the final outcome be acquittal?
There are many mistakes all around, as we are increasingly infected by a whataboutery discourse that involves very lazy uses of the term fascism
“Manu”Smriti Irani was there yesterday in Shillong for the convocation of North Eastern Hill University (NEHU). If she thought she can get away from the…
“Kaba i jakhlia khamtam kam dei ki dur jong kine ki thei hynrei ka ktien jong kine ki nong post ba ki da pyndonkam shisha da ka ktien kaba khlemakor, ka ktien ka ba i ma, haduh ba ki da byrngem ban batbor bad pynthombor ia kine ki kynthei. Ka dei shisha mo kum kane ka jaitbynriew kaba ong ba pdiang ia ki kynthei kum ki ‘equals’?”
Safe, affordable and informed access to gender affirming procedures is a fundamental human reproductive health right. This basic right extends to self-determining which gender transitioning procedures feel safe, feel affirming (and for how long) within a context that is not medically coercive, manipulative and ultimately harmful.
The fear of criticism breaking solidarity is an enveloped fear; well cushioned in caste hierarchies and privileges. It is an arm chair fear, resulting from the fear of doing the boring but radical work of patiently explaining, convincing and converging.
Feminism isn’t about whether a vagina is better than a penis, it is about how all genders are equal.
What good is a life without a question?
What good is a life with all the same answers?
Why do we live?, Why do we love?
Why can’t we give some love back to this world again?
I reached the protest site after the initial violence had taken place. Large number of students were staging a protest inside the premises of VC’s guesthouse.The students demanded the sacking of VC Appa Rao for his involvement in the institutional murder of Rohit Vemula. Earlier that morning Appa Rao resumed the post after ensuring support from the state and ABVP.The students were provoked by ABVP students who were already stationed in support of the VC because of which violence escalated and chaos prevailed.
Scenario 1: A student leader in Delhi is arrested on charges of sedition, days after an event in a university triggers right-wing ire. The student…
For the past three days the news media has been circulating widely, stories about ‘vandalism’ by students of the University of Hyderabad that led to the police crackdown. Surprisingly little information is actually there on the actual context, timing, duration and nature of the vandalism. It appears that the claim that a group of students indulged in acts of vandalism is enough to justify a full scale war on the entire campus community of over 5000 students. Yet this charge of vandalism is no more than a fig leaf
Understanding the current crisis of agriculture, requires a study of the history of global development since the second world war.
The Gospel of love reinforces the idea of Justice. Love demands justice, whereas the high priests, Pharisees, Sadducees and the scribes in connivance with the Roman rulers were known for their acts of exploitation and discrimination against the poor.
“We condemn any kind of violence that tries to suppress freedom of expression and seeks instead to spread fear. Let all students and citizens debate to make India the safest example of a real grassroot democracy. Let them speak for a just world where everyone feels safe to just be.”
DO ME NO FAVOUR, LET’S PLAY HOLI.
DHONI WAS THE HERO OF THE MATCH LAST NIGHT.
WHAT A WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY.
HYDERABAD UNIVERSITY,
STUDENTS ARE LOCKED UP AND HUNGRY.
After 45 long years of neglect, the people of the Pohchnong locality in Changpung village in West Jaintia Hills District of Meghalaya, stirred their spirits to awaken their long neglected traditional marriage system in an attempt to revive their culture and to infusing in the upcoming generation the importance of traditional family values as propounded by the ancestors.
Raiot will keep updating these reports from Hyderabad Central University where an unprecedented attack by the State on students and staff continues
Taken from Chittibabu Padavala’s Facebook post The regime not long ago couldn’t take the fierce and sustained student resistance of UoH, the enormous energies required…
It is a matter of debate whether my lack of belief in the existence of an Omnipresent, Omniscient God is due to my arrogant pride and vanity. It never occurred to me that sometime in the future I would be involved in polemics of this kind.
THE usually unflappable Javed Akhtar was in an angry froth last week. He shouted ‘Bharat mata ki jai’ not once but three times in a row.
The university and the nation are antithetical entities. Historically speaking, the idea of the university emerged much before the emergence of the idea of the nation-form.
We have heard a variety of opinions from the Left about the events surrounding JNU, Kanhaiya, Umar and Anirban, the Patiala House assault etcetera. Our…
No one is demanding the banning of Manusmriti’s publication or trying to block its publication. Burning it in public is actually, at least in effect, an invitation to read it and reject its message.
Ballad of a Hangman is a poem about a hangman who arrives in a town and executes the citizens one by one. As each citizen is executed, the others are afraid to object out of fear that they will be next. Finally there is nobody remaining in the town except the hangman and the narrator of the poem. The narrator is then executed by the hangman, as by then there is no one left who will defend him.
LOVE HAPPENED IN TAMIL NADU A BOY AND A GIRL HAD A LOVE MARRIAGE. THEY HACKED HIM TO DEATH, IN THE ROAD. THE GIRL’S FATHER…
The Aadhaar Bill opens the door to mass surveillance. This danger needs to be seen in the light of recent attacks on the right to dissent. No other country, and certainly no democratic country, has ever held its own citizens hostage to such a powerful infrastructure of surveillance.
In a significant judgment delivered today, Supreme Court on 18th March 2016 came down heavily on a Meghalaya High Court verdict staying certain provisions of the eligibility…
The made-up secular icon, litfest fixture, re-formed messenger of peace and amity, and an all-purpose son of India we know today as Javed Akhtar
Delhi, for all its self-righteousness over us “regionals” and with its moody earnestness, wont fight our battles. The fact that solidarity in and from Delhi matters in the “national narrative” is part of the problem and not part of the solution. Delhi and its ideologies represent, what we in Bangla call, the ghost in the mustard.
Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani—he-who-must-not-be named, is present with us through a spectre of vital absence. All we know is that he has been taken into judicial custody on charges of sedition, criminal conspiracy and unlawful assembly in connection with an event held at the Press Club of India on February 9, 2016. No information or update about the extension of his remand, his bail options, his financial travails, the treatment meted out or questions asked of him in custody, the position or anxieties of his family and so on, have been forthcoming.
Have you ever thought about #ConnectingDots between our economic, political and societal oppressions? Watch the video
We do not need “outsider” organizations to come and perform charity puja. In our need for political allies and powerful friends we seem to forget that we have more in common with each other (Christian and non-Christian) than Right wing nut-jobs who seek to further widen the schism. This is as true for the Hindutva as it is for the Evangelical Fundamentalists.
India through a kaleidoscope
The refusal of Khilnani to question the very idea of India that somehow makes all 50 lives part of a large nationalist story indicates the limits of the entire endeavour. This is the limit set by a belief in the modern nation state of India. It is a limit because it then shapes the choices of the lives made, as well as the stories that are told about them.
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