U Thlen is a symbol of greed that is a human heart and greed can make people do thing which is even against the common good people of the and even their own will for the sake of wealth. The Khasi-Pnar believed that they had killed the beast and did away with greed from the heart of the people except from some of the rich families, but that is not so. Our ancestors may have killed the beast, but greed prevails in the heart of the people. It is difficult to satisfy greed because greed knows no bound. We know this because our ancestors have lived with whatever is underneath the ground for ages and live happily on these rolling hills till we start exploiting the minerals.
Category: English
BACHCHA PRASAD SINGH, alleged CPI(Maoist) Central Committee member who has been recently released after Six years and Four months in various prisons, in a lengthy interview to Shailza Sharma in Kafila talks of prisons and political prisoners, analyses the international and national situation and indicates What is to be Done. On a personal note he concludes: “I was always a part of the radical movement, I am a part of the radical movement and will always be a part of the radical movement”
In the recent decades right wing politics has appropriated not merely tribal historical figures like Rani Gaidinliu in Nagaland/Manipur but also many such tribal icons across the country. A similar story emerges within the context of the Indal offerings associated with the tribal Barela and Bhil tribal communities of Western Madhya Pradesh.
After the martyrdom of Commander Burhan Wani, the Indian state was in the mood of jubilation ‘to eliminate the most wanted terrorist’. But it soon turned into its nightmare. It was not the first time that the funeral of a rebel was attended by thousands but the immediate response across Kashmir through demonstrations and funerals in absentia made the civil and military establishment of Indian State frustrated. The immediate response that it resorted to was putting the whole valley under seize by imposing curfew and clamping down of internet services.
Jashn-e-Azadi
Kashmir is no longer yours
Kashmir is no longer mine
Kashmir is for those
who are alive
in the breathe of Kashmir
It is a popular belief that women who live together synchronise their menstrual cycles, and that it’s mediated by their pheromones – the airborne molecules that enable members of the same species to communicate non-verbally.
Man, don’t you know I’d be hard to stop
When I find that big uranium rock
Money-money honey, the kind you fold
Money-money honey, rock ‘n’ roll
Rake it in, bale it up like hay
Have a rockin’ good time and throw it all away
The debate arises whether it is feasible to allow Uranium mining in Domiasiat/Mawthabah in Meghalaya considering the percentage of nuclear energy as a source of electricity and the ramifications faced by communities like Jadugoda, Jharkhand in the past four decades.
Recently during my college break, a heavy boredom overcame me and I decided that it was time to get out of the house and enjoy nature. My inability to drive at the time greatly limited my range, but luckily for someone who lives in Shillong, the Shillong Reserve Forest offers a wonderful location to bask in nature’s glory without travelling too far.
“We are wont to reminding the people of Kashmir, the “freedom(s)” that India affords them, and promptly mention the horrors that await them if they chose (as they deserve) to go to Pakistan. Time and again, we pose as a free people. This comes with a string of Whatabouts. A fellow traveller to Kashmir retorted to my mention of militarization in Kashmir, “What about North Korea? What about Saudi Arabia? What about Pakistan?!” It is amusing to see the average Indian entertaining such delusions of freedom when every day, Kashmiris are being tortured, killed, encountered, disappeared, raped in their names.”
Kashmiris know the occupation is chronically violent, persistently vindictive, and is going to remain so as long as it exists. The state that denies a people their right to self-determination can be nothing but repressive. How could Burhan not have shared the same understanding of the Indian control over Kashmir? Is it misplaced to think so? And is it then an accident that Burhan became Commander Burhan Wani?
I have this to say to those super patriots who keep bringing up the bogey of “jihadis”, “radical Islamists” or “Pakistani proxy” while justifying all atrocities against Kashmiri Muslims.
Behdieiñkhlam is often defined by its literary meaning which comprises of three words beh-dieñ-khlam. ‘Beh’ literarily means to chase or to rid off and ‘dieñ’ means wood, tree or log and ‘khlam’ means plague, epidemic or pestilence. So literarily Behdieñkhlam means the festival to get rid of epidemic, plague and pestilence but is that what Behdieñkhlam is all about?
This video report from “Headlines Today/Aaj Tak/12/12/2004″ exposes the harsh reality of the people being affected by the operation of uranium mining in and around Jadugoda being run By Uranium Corporation Of India, Government of India Limited(UCIL) . Although the company claims radiation stories as ” myths “, Headlines Today documents the evidence where the entire environment, community and the future generation has been put to risk by the sheer negligence of the company.
The support that propelled BJP to power in Assam merits an analysis because the distribution of political allegiance ahead of the election defied the conventional logic of communal polarisation.
Finally, having received the go ahead from PMO and CBFC. Proud to present brand new Digital Suicide music video #AMNESIA featuring MODI on drums.
A friend said in a post, “Eminent citizens Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey, Annie Raja, Kavita Srivastava and Shiv Visvanathan were present during the jan sunwai/public hearing”. His post left me wondering what makes some of us use this phrase ‘eminent citizen’ so innocuously…
“Indian Security Forces attack the ambulances and the hospital” : Kashmir Under a State of Emergency
Since the extra-judicial execution of Commander Burhan Wani and two other members of Hizbul Mujahideen, Indian armed forces and Jammu and Kashmir Police have used excessive force to thwart the mourners from protesting and participating in the funeral processions of the slain militants. So far, around 17 civilians have been killed in Islamabad, Kulgam, Shopian and Pulwama districts, while as more than 350 people have been injured from across all districts of the Kashmir valley. There are reports that CRPF and Police have been involved in the destruction of movable and immovable properties. Curfew has been strictly imposed in all districts of Kashmir, but people are defying the curfew at various places.
In our society speaking about religion (forget criticizing it) is considered taboo. Heads turn around, eyebrows are raised and legs are shuffled uneasily whenever religion is mentioned. This atmosphere of terror around any public mention of religion is partly because of the mistrust and paranoia that has been (and is being) propagated and mostly due to the severe indoctrination of religious views, the fear of having them refuted, ridiculed or judged. Nobody ever likes to have public debates about God or religion here, because the “other” opinion is simply not allowed to exist. And yet, ironically, religion dictates the everyday life of society.
In Pnar, Myntdu is known as “katawiarkatakan,” meaning “our guardian angel.” Ironically, the “guardian angel” today is lifeless; decades of coal mining in the Jaintia Hills have all but destroyed this once thriving river. Elders, who are founding members of Borghat-Jaliakhola Aquatic Life Welfare Association (BJALWA), are hosting the riverine festival to take a stand for the health of their “mother” in deep peril.The mission of BJALWA is to reconnect tribal communities with Myntdu, revitalize their culture and to spark action and dialogue for restoration efforts.
“Write simplistically about “North Eastern” stuff like villages, mountains, sacred groves, tribal customs, you know pristine crap like that ” and nine other tips
“As kids we would go in a big group every night and watch jatra,” quips my maternal uncle. Then he launches into telling me about how jatras or Bengali folk theatre used to be the main attraction in Raas melas.
The Indian Emergency of 1975-77, time and again, reminds us the fate of democracy and raise questions against the unchecked and unregulated powers of the executive which suspended the very basis of parliamentary democracy -constitutional rights, freedom and rule of law.
My roots, and house and home and forest, my village –
All that I had left behind, in the folds of lost time.
Where was it that my traces were once alive –?
Medinipur or Bankura or was it Kalahandi?
Where else?
he street vendors/hawkers are not the problem, they are in fact the solution in many ways than one can possibly imagine. But right now they are being used as a punching bag by those who have a stake in keeping the real issue hidden and the state economically backward. There are close links between the right of street vendors/hawkers and that of the general public on the city’s spaces while imagining a more humane city and a just development for all. Is it then wrong to stand for the right of the street vendors/hawkers?
In the second part of the ongoing series of interviews with Varavara Rao, founder member of Virasam, by playwright Ramu Ramanathan, the Maoist ideologue and Telegu poet narrates his revolutionary journey, about people’s movements in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, about writing and publishing revolutionary literature and how the movement has produced some great writers
The lathi charge against the Kiang Nangbah College came right after the Terra Madre festival where crores of rupees have been invested. Here again we see the misplaced priorities of the Congress led government at the state. It is against these issues that students groups, civil society and organisation have become critical. The issues affecting the students are not only national but local.
In the first of the two part interview with Varavara Rao, founder member of Virasam (Revolutionary Writers’ Association), by playwright Ramu Ramanathan, the Maoist ideologue and Telegu poet reaffirms the role of an intellectual and reflects on the history of repression of the Indian states, and on the issues surrounding the statehood of Telangana
“I remember Bah Kelly Lyngdoh playing the song ‘Ramona’ in the dead of the night in the streets of Jaiaw and one would see the lights coming on through the windows just so people can listen to the melody coming out of his Viola while Bah Syndor blew the clarinet”
In the beginning was Ayurveda. Then came Baba Ramdev, and all Things were made by him. And begat he a shampoo-to-noodles empire, and all around him were vanquished.
Avner Pariat of Raiot Collective talks to Patrick Rogers about various lives of Living Root Bridges of Meghalaya
” Isn’t it the bitterest irony of all that a town that likes to call itself ‘Rock Capital’ has largely forgotten or remains ignorant about a period of their history that might actually measure up to some claim of exceptionalism?”
For a significant period of my youth, I used to live in the United States of America. While I was there, I, a Bengali from West Bengal, was exposed for the first time to real people from East Bengal, as opposed to their caricature that I was exposed to when I was growing up. The eastern part of Bengal, whose political form is the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, is where a greater proportion of my people live. A significant minority lives in West Bengal. While I interacted with “them”, I became close very fast, for, to be accepted and welcomed, I did not have to participate in Diwali (quite an alien thing to Bengalis in West Bengal), Holi (another such alien thing), Hindi antaksharis or be conversant with the latest Bollywood films in a distant language, their heroes-heroines or contort myself in other ways into something I was not. I felt strangely liberated.
I was a reclusive geek back in college. Every day during the off period of two hours, I would tread peacefully from Shillong College to the State Central Library to sit there and read. There was a classmate of mine who would accompany me there.
The streaming begins and what you witness through Ranjan Palit’s lens is never a linear story. In Camera – Diaries of a Documentary Cameraman places before a viewer, collages—haunting landscapes and lives—from the fault-lines of Indian democracy.
Vivekananda’s views on caste are instructive in that they sum up the views of today’s defenders of the caste system. Even among people who don’t defend the caste system, you will find rich echoes of thoughts that Vivekananda puts forth.
There is much to talk about when it comes to hawkers in our town and many have argued that they are a ‘problem.’ But are they really? Or are they just part of the same screwed up system everyone else is stuck in?
In the latest survey conducted by India Human Development Surveys (IHDS) II in 2011 to 2012 which is a continuation of their last survey IHDS I held in 2004 to 2005 tells a staggering claim on inter-caste marriages. The survey is a collaboration between National Council of Applied Economic Research and University of Maryland funded by the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the Ford Foundation, and it is headed by sociologists and economist[i]. The analysis of the survey as reported by IndiaSpend[ii] presents data on inter-caste marriages in India. The findings tell that 95 per cent of marriages took place among same caste, and the remaining 5 per cent practiced inter-caste marriages. Break-up of this data places Mizoram as the state with highest incidence of inter-caste marriages at 55 per cent of its population, and Madhya Pradesh at the opposite end with same caste marriages at 99 per cent of its population. The data portrays the whole population of India under Hindu society by overlooking various communities who fall outside ‘caste system’ especially tribal communities.
A profile of Hoshang Merchant, poet, teacher, male, gay, who says he ‘seeks the queer in each one of us’
It has been seven years since the brutal gang rape and murder of Asiya Jan and Neelofar Jan, aged 17 years and 22 years respectively during the year of the incident, in Shopian District of Kashmir. Seven years of enquiries, legal processes, statements by Justices, police officers and bureaucrats which have led to nothing.
Rochelle Pinto reviews Filipa Lowndes Vicente’s ‘Other Orientalisms – India between Florence and Bombay 1860-1900’, a book tracing the interaction between Florence and Bombay
Kashmir’s blank political canvas seems to be generating more intrigue than the impending suspense created by the Game of Thrones’ Season Six poster. While the winter is yet to come to Westeros; Kashmir is already in the throes of it. Mufti Mohammad Saeed’s death has frozen the political landscape of Kashmir, and his political heir, Mehbooba Mufti, is in no hurry to thaw it back to life.
How (not) to talk about Salafism
Any careful analysis of Salafism must take into consideration the diversity within the movement before lumping all self-identified or suspected Salafis or Salafi personalities together and expressing a blanket demonization of a monolithic Salafism
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