English । ইংরেজি

On the 8th of September this year, Jains observed Michchhāmi Dukkaḍaṃ (मिच्छामि दुक्कडम्) and 10 days later the Digambar Jains end this period with Kshamavani. This period of Paryushan is for daily fasting, inner reflection and confession — when they greet all saying: “Please forgive me with your full affection.

On the 8th of September this year, Jains observed Michchhāmi Dukkaḍaṃ (मिच्छामि दुक्कडम्) and 10 days later the Digambar Jains end this period with Kshamavani. This period of Paryushan is for daily fasting, inner reflection and confession — when they greet all saying: “Please forgive me with your full affection".

Thiruvonam represents the peak of the ten-day celebrations of Onam in Kerala and by Malayalis of all communities, all over the world. It is more than a festival of joy for it represents the core of the great reconciliatory heart of India wherein all religions have pooled in.

What started as a protest against a heinous rape and murder of a junior lady doctor in a government hospital in Kolkata attached to the famous RG Kar Medical College has snowballed into an unprecedented movement for justice and the safety of women. 

Of all the Hindu deities, Shiva may be the most complex but Lakshmi is certainly one of the most amorphous — when one attempts to capture her within a definitive framework. She is undoubtedly one of the oldest deities and one can claim, quite confidently, that she has survived for three full millennia,

Though Narendra Modi and his cohorts swore before the elections that they would surely cross 400 seats, it was clear during the different phases of polling that the INDIA bloc parties would certainly do well. The new-found unity among the opposition parties had evoked enthusiastic popular support.

There is no doubt that today, the 24th of August, is a landmark day when the modern colonial city of Calcutta or Kolkata came up. True, there were human settlements in this area that were part of a zemindari possession of the famous family of Sabarna Roy Choudhury— but the great metropolis of Calcutta surely owes its founding to Job Charnock — who set up camp here.

During the UPA years, 2004 to 2014, Narendra Modi, CM of Gujarat, led the brigade of States on each and every issue that he felt militated against the federal structure of the Constitution. Thus, when he was elected prime minister of India in 2014, we had naturally expected him to strengthen the rights of states and were certain that he would take away several controversially acquired powers of the Centre.

In 1967, when I was just 15 years old, I was attracted to Ram Manohar Lohia’s brand of desi socialism that targeted the nexus between caste and class in India. The Congress had been in power for 20 years and appeared quite invincible. But socialist leaders such as George Fernandes, Madhu Limaye, Rabi Ray and Kishen Pattanayak believed that the mighty Congress could be dislodged.

Narendra Modi has begun his third term in 2024 with the inglorious distinction of leading the “least productive parliament session” – the just-concluded monsoon-cum-budget session. Conversely, his first session after his second innings in 2019 was proudly declared by the Speaker as the “most productive” one since 1952. Along with the Rajya Sabha, it had passed a record 36 bills – demonstrating, in no uncertain terms, the cocky spirit of that phase.

The INDIA front, that Narendra Modi and his acolytes had scornfully dismissed as divided and doomed, had managed to give the Bharatiya Janata Party a real fright, with its 237 seats so perilously close to the BJP’s 240.

When a short, lanky 22-year-old Malayali lad from Ernakulam got off the Madras Mail at Howrah Station, he could never have imagined that he would become famous as the “barefoot historian of Old Calcutta”.

Many people in Kolkata, which includes my wife and I, are shattered to learn that our dear P.T. – P. Thankappan Nair – the barefoot historian of Kolkata, is no more. He was 91 and died in his home in Aluva, Kerala.

As I switched on the TV for a brief while to watch Narendra Modi’s third swearing-in ceremony, my mind flashed back to his first, in 2014. I was a bit nervous as I was sure to be the fall guy, as the CEO of Prasar Bharati, if any glitch occurred in the television and radio coverage. A few days earlier, he had alleged that Prasar Bharati had mischievously cut off parts of his last interview on Doordarshan.

History will look back at the 2024 elections to the 18th Lok Sabha as an exciting landmark— somewhat like 1967 or 1977 or even 2014. There is no doubt that it marks the beginning of the end of the Modi era, though one cannot predict how badly he may react to the writing on the wall or how or viciously he may tighten his stranglehold over a battered democracy. It is a major blow to Narendra Modi’s ego and his hold over his flock that he has fallen 32 seats short of the absolute majority figure of 272 seats.

What started as a completely one-sided election has slowly but surely turned into an interesting one, with all sorts of possibilities. Liberals, rationalists, pluralists, democratic, leftists and all others who have not accepted a regime that is openly opposed to these values enshrined in the Indian constitution have suffered repeated defeat, demoralisation and humiliation for 10 long years.

I am sad that while every major city of India has a proper public-sponsored art gallery, Kolkata does not. Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore have great facilities called the National Galleries of Modern Art (NGMAs),

Today, as we celebrate the Mahavira Jayanti, I am reminded of his association with the western tract of Bengal, known since ancient times as the Rarh or Radh. When I served as the Additional District Magistrate of the Asansol-Durgapur belt of Burdwan (now known as Paschim Barddhaman district) in 1980-81, I had visited the ruins of a famous Jain temple at Punchra.

When Narendra Modi attacked Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav recently for violating the ‘strict norm’ of vegetarianism during the Ram Navami period, he was directly inciting voters in the northern Hindi belt, and of course, in adjunct areas like Gujarat.

Nothing could sum up better the transactional relationship between big capital and authoritarian rule than these words of William E. Scheuerman, Professor of Political Science at Indiana University in the ‘Boston Review’, under the catchy title Why Do Authoritarians Win?