Between The Lines
Dear Reader! Please allow David Shulman to introduce you to two outstanding examples of love and compassion from a region being sundered by vicious nationalism and state sponsored terror: Daniel Barenboim and Ali Abu Awwad, a Palestinian: both peace activists…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Are texts, metaphysical, literary, scientific, technical, spiritual, incantatory, political, cutting across all genres cast in stone, open to only a literal articulation? Or are they interpretive, open to multiple ways of reading asks Bharani Kollipara and centralizes discourse and its legacies in every act of ‘reading-as-interpretation’.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Folklore is the artifice of enchantment; liminal, it includes the sites of both sorrow and joy; death and life but boundaries are fluid, forest-covered, unmapped. Alok Bhalla on folklore as gateway to life’s renewal.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Raimundo Panikkar (November 02 1918-August 26 2010) of Indo-Spanish descent was a theologian whose views on religion, the relationship between the divine and the human, on pluralism particularly, need to be studied for us to cope with the current narrow mindedness and toxicity. James L. Fredericks*
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Between The Lines
To correct a flawed policy of reliance on imports of palm oil the current policymakers opt for expansion of its domestic cultivation in the Northeast and Andaman Islands. That can only spell all-round disaster, warns Bharat Dogra…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Contrary to its loud rhetoric of ‘national interest’, the current administration is all gung-ho on opening the doors to global corporates into the farm sector with an alacrity never witnessed before. The Bayer-ICAR pact is one such instance says Colin Todhunter.
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Between The Lines
Despite all the claims of protecting an Indian way of life, the government is all too ready to embrace global capitalism and multinational seed firms in its push for GM crops and commercial farming. The Bayer-ICAR collaboration project is another sign of the way the government intends to go says Bharat Dogra.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
As the nation transforms into an eyeless, brainless crowd, so the crowd turns into an institution that sustains the ruling dispensation’s hegemony and falsification says Riyaz Latif with “seething sadness” at this usurpation of agency for thought and compassion”…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Current day Nationalism/ majoritariaanism provides grounds for imagined /fantastical history that cannot explain the complexities in which those facts intersect to create multi-faceted histories. A lecture by Romila Thapar …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
No phrase has acquired as much currenccy in contemporary India as “Offending Sentiments” that allows citizens take offence at the most benign things, punish those “offenders” by dragging them to courts, beating them up or trolling them on social media. Saumya Baijal and Indranil Bhattacharya examine this “republic of the offended”…[Read More]…
Reading the Great Wave
by H Masud TajBetween The Lines
Poet-Calligrapher H Masud Taj contemplates the wave as a form and phenomenon in our lives via a woodblock print of the Japanese Master: Hokusai.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
How the hill state ignored environmental rules and traditions to fill its coffers—and those of the ‘connected’ miners. Report by Tapasya & Aggam Walia.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
In a misguided ‘development’ push for more housing and four-lane highways, the state is going down the same road as Uttarakhand, and will pay a heavy price, unless…warns Avay Shukla …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum reports, “In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces killed as many as 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from the town of Srebrenica. It was the largest massacre in Europe since the Holocaust.” Calligrapher-Poet H Masud Taj recalls verses from Song for the Besieged that he composed while killings were in progress in 1992-1993 simultaneously in Mumbai and Sarajevo, along with a found poem, The Butcher of Bosnia, based on the subsequent ruling of UN: The International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague…[Read More]…
“Electronic voting is unconstitutional because the average citizen could not be expected to understand the exact steps involved in the recording and tallying of votes by the electronic voting machines …[Read in full]…
Between The Lines
Nehru was convinced that India’s salvation lay in social and economic change. “The alternative is fascism,” he insisted, “the last weapon which vested interests can employ to keep what they have” Sounds familiar! …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Wildlife and conservation journalist/film-maker and writer .Swati Thiyagarajan. dwells on what it means to be a Hindu, a Brahmin no less and offers up a portrait of a composite, historically-rooted woman and an Indian. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
The Sanskrit word saha, meaning ‘together’, ‘in togetherness’, is a prefix to a very large number of words in that language that denote relational contexts of every variety; perceived as the natural foundation of all relationships, personal and collective, not just in Indian civilisation. Saha opens up the whole history of human living, says. Chaturvedi Badrinath. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Extra-judicial killings in ‘encounters’ draw applause on social media (and indifference among the general public) especially when the target is from the minority community. Mohd Asim Khan finds recent Bollywood films playing a major role in creating endorsements of the ‘trigger-happy cop’ …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
While celebrating the birth of their daughter Zahra, with jalebis, Architect-Poet-Calligrapher H Masud Taj had an epiphany… …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
In dialogic encounters that recall a ‘looking glass world,’ Asghar Wajahat conjures up a grim reality where words and meanings are their own masters, painting the grotesqueries of our contemporary landscape. Alok Bhalla translates.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
What relevance does Gandhi have for our times of climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental destruction, and last but not least, the COVID pandemic? Kishore Saint, Ashish Kothari, Aseem Shrivastava find out . …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Given the critical evidence of the risks and harm attending GM crops not just in India but worldwide, an unbiased appraisal and regulatory system would not entertain such farming practices, even as corporates try to further their agendas, holds Bharat Dogra. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Even as the government readies the nation for the introduction of GM Mustard and oilseeds with the discourse of import substitution and self-sufficiency, it does so by ignoring the rich corpus of scientific evidence about their irreversible hazards. Bharat Dogra outlines some of them. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
The seductions of GM crops in the name of food security have once again found traction with the government as the recent bend towards GM Mustard’s ”environmental release” suggests. Two warnings by eminent scientists/doctors should make us all sit up…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
: With the Centre bent on carrying through its intention to introduce genetically modified mustard, Bharat Dogra lays out, in two companion essays, the reservations raised by the Supreme Court and the strong critiques by non-partisan scientists…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Falsifications of history, erasures of the past are not the bailiwick of authoritarian ultra-nationalistic states or communist regimes alone. Democratic-liberal nations too whitewash their past as Patrick Lawrence tells us about the recent developments in Germany..…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Recent pronouncements about the dangers of the brain and pens wielded by so-called “anti-national” intellectuals signal open declarations against reason and breed an infantilism that indulges in aggression and submission says Jyotsna Kapur. And yet adulthood and, radical democracy prevail.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Poetry is one of the fields with which science is experimenting with Artificial Intelligence (AI); various projects and the sites using technical means ‘produce’ poetry. Can computers programmed just to execute orders create what the human creates-Self-awareness among other things, wonders Christina Linardaki …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
At Matri Sadan ashram in Haridwar, saints have for years resorted to satyagraha as resistance to the despoliation of the mighty river before it reaches the plains. It has been a lonely battle. Bharat Dogra pleads for wider support for such deep commitment to saving our environment. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Social critic Max Haiven argues that extractive capitalism’s exploitation and ecological destruction is still evident in palm oil, marked by sacrificial violence against human and non-human life in the name of the market and profits. He argues for a post-capitalist just society based on global “commoning”…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Manjula Padmnabhan’s play Harvest (first published in 1996) that won the first Onassis prize for the best new international play in 1997, is an exploration of the ways humans are commodified in biomedical and capitalist discourse. Pooja Sancheti offers a deep reading of its relevance today.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
A bestseller in Japan, bastion of capitalism no less, Kohei Saito’s work shows that capitalism’s perpetual pursuit of growth is the underlying cause of the intensifying climate crisis. He rejects the possibility of ‘green growth’, arguing that only degrowth – a planned reduction of material use – can ensure a sustainable future …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Ending racism is essentially about making each person equal, respectful and dignified as the other. To achieve this to the fullest, the fight has continued globally in tackling racism at the international, national and individual levels. Bill Bhaneja provides an overview of anti-racism and peace-building through the lens of Universal Rights, Nonkilling and Human Dignity …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Late August, Salman Rushdie was subjected to a near-fatal knife attack by a Lebanese-American. That incident raises the ghost of the fatwa on Satanic Verses and the West’s sense of Muslim ‘fanaticism’ and its own fealty to ‘free speech.’ Padmaja Challakere critiques both as ‘lazy‘ binaries, evidence of liberalism’s own failings. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Zooming inequality in America in the last forty years is an unfortunate outcome of technological change; what can one do? Economist and public commentator Dean Baker breaks this popular consensual view down to show how workers are getting shafted. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
The Edict Project, by TM Krishna, in collaboration with Ashoka University aims at creating vibrant academic, socio-political and aesthetic conversations around the edicts of Ashoka. The first edition came out in 2020. In this Edition the theme of Ashoka and Memory is explored through T.M. krishna’s musical enditions, conversation with historian, Professor Nayanjot Lahiri and a play by MK Raina in Kashmiri shot in Kashmir that reimagines Ashoka’s words. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Jawaharlal Nehru’s telegrams from the soul: “The roots of that present lay in the past and so I made voyages of discovery into the past, ever seeking a clue in it, if any such existed, to the understanding of the present” …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Three men from Pune, India, pad yatrees crossed the border into Pakistan carrying the message of love, love for life, for the universe, meeting people from various sections of society. Beena Sarwar and Priyanka Singh report. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Paul Schwartzentruber, a Canadian pays tribute to “one of the great blessings of my life that I encountered and then came to know—even though in my later years—Dr. S. Jeyapragasam”. JP, for the author, a seeker, “was not just a ‘Gandhian’ in the loose way that iconic metaphor is still tossed around in India. He embodied, like a true disciple, the values, sympathies and beliefs in human self-transformation that Gandhi himself had embodied.” …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Bilingual poet Asif Raza ponders Melissa Chimera, artist and eco-activist query in her talk with poet Pat Matsueda: “Is our prevailing human-centered perspective the only reality?” His reply opens the door to Arne Naess’ “Deep Ecology’ and Gandhi. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
The new environmentalism in the form of ‘Deep Ecology’, very closely mirrors Gandhi’s philosophy. Thomas Weber analyzes the Mahatma’s contribution to the intellectual development of Arne Naess, arguing that an informed study of ‘deep ecology’ and particularly the philosophy of Naess, should go back to Gandhi for a fuller picture.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Facts are fragile; they tell no story in themselves. So wrote Hannah Arendt decades ago. This leaves them vulnerable to the manipulations of storytellers…and falsifiers. Patrick Lawrence finds such falsehoods in the mainstream media’s takes on the Ukraine crisis. …[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Throwing the word “fascist” to denounce Russia and even China to justify wars in distant lands is unlikely to restore a sense of the common good at home; more likely it serves as a diversion, an excuse to avoid matters of more immediate relevance to the waning health of our democracy, Andrew Bacevich warns.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
The shooting in Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a small town, largely Hispanic, where one-third of the people live below the Federal poverty line, exposes yet again, the decisive inaction and callousness of the administration even as trauma among children spreads, finds Padmaja Challakere…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
In this speculative fiction set in India in 2047, Tarun K. Saint has his protagonists participate in a virtual exhibition of the Partition of August 1947. And the immersive experience is traumatic as memories bubble up from the lowest depths of time.…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
The struggles against the farm laws did not just end in the farmers pushing back corporatized farming. They were the sites for an expression of religious fraternity, a secularism enshrined in the Constitution but also engraved in our hearts and minds writes Manoj Kumar…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
The unprecedented farmers’ struggle that began at the borders of India’s capital Delhi on November 26, 2020, and which won a historic victory over corporate communalism a full one year and fifteen days later was by far the largest, the longest and the most powerful nationwide farmers’ struggle in history. Ashok Dhawale on its distinctive features…[Read More]…
Between The Lines
Paul Zacharia remembers Kamala Das (March 1934-May 2009) as not just a major poet in both Malayalam and English but a fierce iconoclast whose feminism shocked conservative opinion as did her conversation to Islam. …[Read More]…