It seems like a lot of the people disappear into thin air everyday,
and the newspapers don’t seem to notice there is anything missing.
RAIOT Posts
the national/anti-national debate has some relevance to it only when the informed Indian citizenry, and particularly its progressive opinion makers, learn to be sensitive to the plight of its oppressed people; learn to treat the Dalits and other marginal communities with dignity, not as favour, but as their genuine human right; accept the Indian Muslims as a people, who do not always need to put up a ‘progressive’ stance; and allow the Kashmiris their legitimate right to determine their political future,
We thought our 1936 Amateur Film about Shillong was the earliest moving image representation of Shillong, but we were wrong. Watch this most probably a…
I thought of writing my own account of carrying a ‘Muslim’ surname in India without having faith. This is a note of a personal journey but since, personal is political, this is a political note too.
It is time to ask if this movement led by JNU can integrate – not co-opt – the plurality of metaphors that can constitute various nationalisms or alternative visions.
It’s important to understand the anti-people ideology than lies beneath some apparently people-friendly initiatives, such as the 12 language tourist helpline.
“Ten years or so ago I spent a day with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and his followers on a Delhi to Agra road trip. I wrote a tongue- in- cheek story for the paper I was working for, but until then, I had not imagined his followers would be so touchy about any criticism of their Guru. “
“Can Indian Feminist Movement be granted a pat on the back yet? Despite the hundreds of women marching on the streets more than a couple of times in the past few months, have they really found the space their voice demands in the social stratosphere yet? Or have we critically failed to uphold the voices of subalterns?”
The various sporting venues around Shillong were decked up so nicely and the roads so smooth that it hardly felt like the Shillong we know, love and hate. This is exactly like the current government isn’t it? All façade and no reality!
I first heard the rhythmic chants of ‘Azadi’ in the narrow lanes of my town in south Kashmir in the winter of 1989-90.
There has been a lot of talk about what exactly ‘Azadi’ (freedom) means, especially in the wake of Kanhaiya Kumar’s post release midnight speech at…
To be brave you have to risk something. To be meaty, brilliant, and thorny you have to provide insights that don’t just voice what most of the people in the room would like to say, but that takes them to a different level of understanding or provokes them to investigate further. With great respect for Chris Rock’s career, I don’t think Oscar night he achieved either.
We see dialogue, debate and raising questions as crucial to resolution of Kashmir. If you do really care for ideals and freedoms like ‘right to free expression’ and right to dissent’ than we invite you to join us in asking for the same freedoms in Kashmir.
Although Comrade Kanhaiya Kumar has been granted Interim bail for six months, it is important that we peruse the order and opinions of Hon. Justice J. Pratibha Rani to understand deeply its ideological implications.
How about a little point about a man who is dead, the man who started it all? I want to make a point about Afzal Guru
Shillong, let us not kid ourselves further. We are too conservative and scared for any thing original and ‘dangerous’
In a shockingly partisan statement that blatantly misrepresents events, the Bar Council of India has issued a report that justifies the well documented attacks by a mob of lawyers on JNU students, teachers and media at Patiala House Courts over two days (February 15 and 17, 2016) as ‘a reaction to the incidents, which are grave in nature and very dangerous for the country’.
But radical positions alone do not make you radical. They only show that you understand what the correct position is. You become radical only when you follow up on what you understand and, therefore, get involved in some way in organising people for a radical movement on the ground.
Not only are your claims factually incorrect but they point to an utter lack of respect and sensitivity for the grieving family, friends, and students. You are clearly disconnected from the heart breaking grief of his friends palpable to anyone present that night or the accompanying anger knowing the injustice that led to this tragedy. Does it befit our honourable minister to implicate these very grieving people in the death of their beloved friend?
“If my mother tongue is shaking the foundations of your state, it probably means that you built your state on my land.”
Arif Ayaz Parrey imagines the questioning of Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya by the Delhi police A thulla (passive aggressive term for a Delhi policeman)…
The BJP’s election promises were false. Its nationalism was never meant to be democratic. So far the BJP had at least pretended to work with democracy; now the façade is gone.
As the events at JNU have unfolded over the past week, there has been a stunned silence from the upper echelons of corporate India.
While the use of words like Azadi and plebiscite in multiple struggles across India can potentially create grounds for meaningful solidarity, Kashmiris have repeatedly witnessed that the appropriation of such terms rarely creates a space to debate the political status of Kashmir or resolve the longstanding issue through political means.
Last few days have seen several #AssamWithJNU #JusticeForRohith protests and rallies demanding justice for Rohith Vemula and against the assault on JNU, police crackdown and arrest…
They did not just sing badly at the elite party, or got free money from Meghalaya govt., or pay local actors badly, or left Laitlum dirty but they even stole the famous song ‘ U Paid Khasi Baiar’ – Rock On 2 saga volume 9
Let your nation sing the Anthem
Not me, not this chinky guy
I hate it
I hate things being imposed on me
I am an ex-student of JNU. I am a single woman living alone in a Room-on-the-Roof in Munirka DDA. I am one of those ex-DSU members whose comrades are being telecasted with photographs since yesterday in ZeeNews as the most wanted criminals in primetime.
Perhaps this article is ill-timed. Perhaps in the current scenario with various Far Right groups actively seeking a Hindutva agenda it is not the best time to be writing things which they could use for their own benefit. This is particularly true after the recent maiden procession carried out by the RSS in Shillong which has evoked so much reaction.
Something seems to have happened in the last few years which provoked the Seng Khasi/Sein Raij to be vocal about discrimination where none existed, at least on paper.
The specter of Partition continues to loom large in the politics of the subcontinent. How one imagines the Partition and how it came about is…
NO I DON’T WANT TO BE ANOTHER MARTYR.
I DON’T WANT TO BE NINDU LANGTHASA.
NO I DON’T WANT TO BE AN ACTIVIST.
I DON’T WANT TO BE ROHITH VEMULA.
I WANT TO LOOK AT THE SKY AND STARS,
I AM JUST A LOVER AND A SINGER SONGWRITER.
GOODBYE!
Among all categories of workers in the globalised world economy, migrants have negligible or most limited capacity to exercise power to prevent or resist the multiplicity of oppression and exploitation. The underlying assumption is that owing to their vulnerability, social oppression and powerlessness, they cannot self-organize and hence, there is a need for trade unions of the host countries to organize them.
Before HIV funding oiled and co-opted “queer”, before it re-created and held in place caste hierarchies – Indian collective queer spaces were found in hamams, and bastis, and parks. It was found in villages where the only visible queer was the local (Dalitbahujan) transfemme community. She was the one that poor, Dalitbahujan queer femmes and trans men sought out and befriended and asked for help. Before the globalized repeal IPC-377 campaign cemented the meaning of what queer caste neutrality looks like – it was queer Dalitbahujans who were being beaten, tortured, raped and killed by the police, by the public and the state. While the sexuality rights consultancies and speaking engagements went to Savarna queers, it was Dalitbahujans who arrived in masses and protested police stations and courtrooms, and were lathi-charged, beaten and arrested.
Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis argues that the nation-state is dead and democracy in the EU has been replaced by a toxic algorithmic depoliticisation that, if it is not confronted, will lead to depression, disintegration and possibly war. He calls for a launch of a pan-European movement to democratise Europe, to save it before it is too late.
I remember hearing you speak after your release from prison after more than nine years. Keeping aside the mental and physical torture, those years gifted you solitude, within the cocoons of which you could read and write quite a lot, you had said. Yes, solitude is indeed the most cherished thing for a reader.
A season of “Anti”
“Anti” is a monarch of all it surveys. Anti- national, hindu, India, Modi, progress, development and the list can go on
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