2013

EDITORIAL
After having crossed half-a-century of its chequered existence last year, this journal is now entering its fiftysecond year at a time when the scenario around us has turned out to be more daunting than before. And yet there are unmistakable signs of hope in the midst of gloom.
Why was this weekly launched in 1962? In its first issue itself it was explained in the editorial that while “faith in the people of India is our shield and armour” and “determination to resist all (…)

by E.S. Reddy
Introduction
Fifty years ago, on December 10, 1963, police unleashed dogs against Indian women who came to Pretoria in a peaceful demonstration to present a petition to the South African Government against the Group Areas Act.
People in South Africa were perhaps too preoccupied to pay sufficient attention to this crime of the apartheid regime—two months after Nelson Mandela and other leaders of the people were charged in the Rivonia Trial. There was no international (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Like M.K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela marked his century with his imprint. While each of them played a seminal role in the shaping of his country’s history, all of them transcended their national confines to become statesmanly figures honoured around the world. Gandhi and King were felled by bullets of intolerance. Mandela remained a beloved figure without, as it were, a foe. Flights of angels sang him to his rest.
Mandela had his woes. Married thrice, his (…)

TRIBUTE
I thank the President of the General Assembly for organising this ceremony.
I extend a warm welcome to today’s special guests from many walks of life.
Those guests include Mr Enuga Reddy, a retired staff member who was among the many UN Secretariat officials who played invaluable roles in the struggle against apartheid.
We join in this global assembly to honour our era’s greatest ambassador for human dignity.
Nelson Mandela was a human being with flaws and frailties like (…)

TRIBUTE
by Vivek Kumar Srivastava
Nelson Mandela was released from prison on February 11, 1990, a day of liberation of humanity. He had spent a long time in Robben Island. His life was full of struggles. At the age of only twentynine years in 1940, he participated in a strike with Oliver Tombo and helped to organise the ANC Youth League in 1944. His participation in the ‘M Plan’, development of underground cells from the ANC branches, was an important event as it gave a new dimension to (…)

The performance of the Aam Aadmi Party in the just concluded Assembly elections in the Capital city of India has been, however you look at it, a phenomenal event, and very likely a watershed departure in the political culture of Indian democracy. Indeed, India’s Left parties must wonder at the circumstance that where they have failed election after election to make a dent in Delhi’s hitherto customary two-party political structure, a fledgling new force should have out of nowhere succeeded (…)

by Arun Srivastava
The former BJP chief, Nitin Gadkari, has described the Aam Aadmi Party as Right-wing Maoism. Probably through coining this phrase he intended to send the message across that the AAP was an anarchist organisation, as the Maoists are being described by them and other political parties. But sorry to say he is mistaken; in fact his attribution makes it clear that he does not know what Maoism is. Undoubtedly the AAP leadership would prefer to maintain distance from this (…)

MUSINGS
If the deadline for filing this column wasn’t coming in the way, this Wednesday afternoon—the day I’m filing this column—I would have been at the AAP office in New Delhi’s Connaught Place. In fact, the last two days I have been in and around there.
On Monday morning I boarded the Metro from Gurgaon to CP, then hopped into an auto to reach the AAP office on Hanuman Road. And as I’d got chatting with the auto driver—believe me, rickshawallahs and auto drivers are the best source of (…)

by Vasundhara Sirnate
In leading discussions today in newspapers, political campaigns and on television, most party spokespersons opposing Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate use one standard argument that revolves around condemning the post-Godhra communal violence in Gujarat in 2002. In response, the spokespersons of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its supporters on online forums respond: “What about 1984?” Both sides use this as a ploy. The Congress uses this ploy to (…)

The man who belonged to the whole country has now been abducted by Narendra Modi, a pracharak of the RSS, the communal organisation who the Sardar fought against throughout his life. ..The only purpose of the construction of the Sardar Patel statue which was declared by Narendra Modi after he was anointed as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate is to collect votes for the 2014 elections in the name of this leader of India’s freedom struggle. It is therefore a downright irony that the RSS (…)