Cultural Press

প্রত্যয়। কানহাইয়া কুমারের গ্রেফতারির প্রতিবাদে। জেএনইউ, দিল্লি। ১৪ ফেব্রুয়ারি। পিটিআই জওহরলাল নেহরু বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ে রাষ্ট্রীয় রক্তচক্ষু দর্শনের শুরুতে অনেকেই হয়তো ঠাহর করতে পারিনি ঠিক কী আকার নেবে এই ঘটনা। কিন্তু কয়েক ঘণ্টা বাদেই পরিষ্কার হয়ে যায়, পড়ুয়াদের নিয়ে মামুলি কিছু বাদানুবাদের ঘটনা এটা নয়, একটা বিরাট পরিকল্পনা এর মধ্যে লুকিয়ে আছে। জানা দরকার কী এবং কেন সেই পরিকল্পনা। দু’দিন আগেই এই পাতাতেই (‘লেঠেল দিয়ে…’, ১৬-২) ‘সিডিশন’ নিয়ে অত্যন্ত জোরালো ভাবে বোঝানো হয়েছে, কোথায় দক্ষিণপন্থীদের চিন্তায় দৈন্য, কেন বারে বারে সেই দৈন্য…

Kunal Basu’s latest novel Kalkatta is unlike his earlier four. It is not historical in scope and neither does it contain the soaring drama that distant time lends to his period narratives. Like its predecessors, however, Kalkatta lets an iconic novel or two hang like a noose around its neck. If Racists replayed the primary tension of Lord of the Flies and The Miniaturist that of My Name is Red, Kalkatta unfailingly reminds one of Émile Zola’s The Belly of…

St Xavier’s College. Pic courtesy, college website. Twenty years ago, I am sure, we lived in a better world. Provocations to planetary violence were limited, the earth was cooler, technological vigilantism that we have come to have made a natural disposition of being human was absent. In short, it was a naïve, innocent and doubtlessly a friendlier planet. In the vast continuum of history, twenty years is nothing, not even a speck. But it seems that modern history has so…

Clyde Waddell. Street scene with shoeshine boys outside the New American Kitchen, Calcutta. Gelatin silver print. 8″ x 10″, 1946. Image courtesy Aakriti Art Gallery…

Baradwaj Rangan has been writing on various aspects of Indian cinema for several years now. He is a Senior Editor with The Hindu but the articles collected in the book have been sourced also from his former stints at The New Indian Express and New Sunday Express. A few of them have also appeared in more serious long-form journals, like Caravan. Divided into six sections – actors, Hindi cinema, directors, music, Tamil cinema, reviews – Dispatches covers 20 years and many hundred reels of cinema in…

The iconic march in Calcutta in support of the #Hokkolorob movement, September 20, 2014 . Photo by author. Last summer I found myself at the annual Critical Theory Summer School at Birkbeck College, University of London. The primary attention and energy of the lectures and discussions at the summer school was to find a lexicon for the many modes of resistances that have been sweeping across the world in the last few years. Etienne Balibar, Costas Douzinas, Slavoj Zizek, the…

First Lady Cyclist…