Category: Perspectives

শিল্প-বিপ্লব, ফটোগ্রাফি, ইমেজের নতুন ধারণা। এবং গোদার।…

Protest drawing of a student at Shaheen Bagh, December 2019. Photo by author. The Young Against The New Partition: Why The CAA & NRC Are The Biggest Tests For Independent India Several public intellectuals, commentators and those who contribute to public opinion in India have compared the current political crisis in India as the biggest test facing us since Independence. At the heart of this crisis is the newly-minted Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which proposes to give sanctuary in…

Biplab Sarkar, Be Waiting. Watercolor and pen on paper, 2019. Shot by the author at the Art Fair, Delhi, 2020. (co-authored with Rajendran Narayanan) The prime minister has taught people to measure their state exclusively against others’ miseries, tricking them into forgiving his many sins – from demonetisation to jobs to Swachh Bharat. There’s an old folktale that goes like this: to redeem his ills, a man prayed hard and long. His prayers bore fruit when god appeared and granted…

Charlie Chaplin in a still from Modern Times. May Day is no more than a forgotten sentiment for the burgeoning-middle classes and whatever be the discourse of change in Bengal, the working classes are unlikely to find much mention in its political rhetoric, writes Sayandeb Chowdhury “Ten thousand times the labor movement has stumbled and bruised itself. We have been enjoined by the courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, traduced by the press, frowned upon in public…

Representative image of a retro television set with antenna This election is a landmark event not just because of the possibility of a long-overdue change but also because the parties may have understood the difference between mass and polity, writes Sayandeb Chowdhury Tomorrow, Bengal steps into a landmark election. It’s a livewire event — complete with high-voltage, intensive campaigning, television debates, repartees in the media and of course gauche, garrulous throwaways. For reasons historical and emotional, this election is being…

The Death of Socrates by French painter Jacques-Louis David There are thousands of reasons to die but only a handful of ways to do so. The euthanasia debate is as much about morality as it is about logistics, writes Sayandeb Chowdhury Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow, Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. Poetry has this ability to transmigrate.

Saskia Sassen, Helen and Robert Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University is considered one of today’s most respected urban sociologists and is known globally for her landmark research on transnationalism, denationalization and the impact of globalization on the movement of labour, capital, and urban life. A prolific author, Sassen’s recent books are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages and A Sociology of Globalization. In Mumbai to present the Urban Age Award, she speaks to Sayandeb Chowdhury about Mumbai being a…

Indian political leader Mohandas Gandhi circa 1935. In 1938, 23-year-old Phillips Talbot was sent to India on a fellowship to learn about British-governed India. An American Witness To India’s Partition is a collection that springs out of his experiences in India and the subcontinent between 1938 and 1950, chronicling the build-up to the independence of India and Pakistan, and the early experiences of the new states. The book was released in India in an event organised by Asia Society in…

Arjun Appadurai is the Senior Advisor for Global Initiatives and the John Dewey Professor in Social Sciences at New School University in New York. He was born and educated in Bombay and did his MA and PhD from the University of Chicago. Appadurai is one of the few scholars who have defined the way we have come to understand globalisation. He is also involved deeply with Mumbai-based NGO, PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge, Action and Research). He spoke to Sayandeb…