Category: Opinion

An installation by Sudipta Das. Photo by author. West Bengal must choose between BJP’s tall claims, Left’s cluelessness and TMC’s governance by gamble. The elections in Bengal seem to have become something of a national pastime. I cannot recall a period when the national media has spent this much time pondering over Bengal’s future. This must surely be an anomaly. The word future in the context of Bengal challenges even the most resolute. The once-mighty Bengal’s perceived fall from grace…

An etching that puns on the Kali figure. There cannot be a three-way election in 2021. That would mean an advantage for BJP, as it will cannibalise on the factionalism in the TMC and on the irrelevance of the CPIM. The dictionary meaning of blunderbuss is two-fold. The more archaic meaning stands for a gun with a short, large barrel, to be fired only at close range. The second meaning refers to an action lacking subtlety and precision. Either…

Photo by Md Shairaf on Unsplash AAP’s post-ideological vanity is far more damaging when it stands on the face of a gargantuan right-wing machinery at these times. The Aam Aadmi Party’s blitheness about the Delhi riots has tempered the trust of much of India, except perhaps those who thrive in a bloodbath. So has its decision to allow prosecution against JNU students in a four-year-old manufactured case of sedition. In its defence of the first case, the party…

A painting titled Typewriter, 2019. (co-authored with Rajendran Narayanan) In spite of his so-called popularity, Modi has never been the Prime Minister of India. And now, he is not even pretending to be one. A senior functionary of Boston Consulting Group India, Janmejaya Sinha, wrote a piece in the Indian Express last month extolling the virtues of Narendra Modi as a political leader. He has wallowed in Modi’s capacity to lead, to take strong decisions and to instil confidence in the citizenry.

A painting by Laluprasad Shaw It would be wrong to say that the BJP is taking the Left’s place in Bengal. (co-authored with Anirban Biswas) Jayanta Ghosal’s article ‘Among the believers in Bengal’ (IE, March 26) is so full of cocky generalisations and mistaken observations that it needs a riposte. To begin with, his argument bestows a monolithic identity on the “Bengali”, while using bhadrolok and “Bengali” as interchangeable nomenclature. To remind that within the overarching umbrella of the linguistic…

Red deluged. Photo by author. In Bengal, the party turned institutions into fiefdoms, just like the RSS now wants to make JNU and the government bureaucracy its own.  There is no reason to mourn the death of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). One did hear such laments after the Tripura results came last week. Some on social media and in newspaper columns asked the CPI(M) to introspect. They urged the party to ‘emerge again’ as the chief custodian of…

Photo Sumit Chakraborty on Unsplash Modi’s India is a faith-based economy where all the apparent democratic means –principles of liberty, free speech and equality –are bartered for an autonomous institutionalisation of vacuous moralism. The eye-popping misogyny and vicious violence from the followers of the faith-based economic empire run by Gurmeet Singh at his Dera Sacha Sauda carries one strong lesson. It should draw our attention to the idea of what faith- divorced from logic, objectivity and accountability – can do to its…