Politics & Society
Epsita Halder

Shaping the Discourse: Women’s Writings in Bengali Periodicals: 1865-1947

  Edited by Ipsita Chanda and Jayeeta Bagchi                                                            Stree, Rs 550 Book Review by Epsita Halder In its series of readings in Gender Studies, the recent publication from the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, is called Shaping the

Politics & Society
Amit Sengupta

The Border Was Never the Borderline

Amit Sengupta crosses many borders – physical and metaphysical – to find poetry in dark times of the sub- continent. If the Karachi airport had not been attacked by the jihadi terrorists, perhaps, in the last week of June this year,

Politics & Society
Sadaf Saaz

Healing The Wounds of 1971

1971 still torments Bangladesh… and some in Pakistan. Is there hope of healing? Powerful insights from Sadaf Saaz. I was excited and yet apprehensive to be invited to Lahore literature festival (LLF) in early 2014, in a country which had

Politics & Society
Koli Mitra

You Think You Know Me?

Koli Mitra explores the issue of essentialism in how non-Muslims relate to Muslims in a world dominated by perceptions of ‘Islamic’ terrorism. 2003.  The Iraq war had not yet begun. ‘Yellow cake’ was in the news. General Colin Powell threw

Politics & Society
Raza Rumi

Reclaiming One’s Voice

Raza Rumi cuts through the high decibel terrorism rhetoric to voice some ground realities of Pakistan, all this while braving attempts on his life. A few months back, I had to leave my country simply to ensure that I would

Politics & Society
Nidhi D. Kundalia

A Marriage of ‘Foes’

The Indo-Pak partition for some of them is gun fires, bomb-making classes, smiling buddhas, hotlines and FDI. But for most of us rest, it’s  the issue of cricket matches and wedding visas. Nidhi Dugar Kundalia attends an India-Pakistan wedding, only

Politics & Society
Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal

Pakistan: Snapshots from the Border

Living five kilometers away from the borders, Pakistan in many ways was an intrinsic part of my being. My earliest memories of Pakistan go back to 1971 when I was just three – just some hazy memories of blackouts, smoke

Politics & Society
Srajana Kaikini

No standing in these places, walk on

Roberto Rosselini’s Germany Year Zero (1948) is set in post war Germany in depression. A classic Italian Neo-realist film, it shows the city that is all rubbles and pieces, left like a royal standing cadaver. In the opening sequence, the

Politics & Society
Akshaya Kumar

The Modi Wave

By positing Modi as a man from outside history, and by defying the media but staying on top of it, Modi’s image was rendered a ‘sovereignty effect’ that was supplanted upon his person. Akshaya Kumar analyses the key role played

Politics & Society
Saswat Pattanayak

Sovereignty, Unity and The State Of Denial

The self-appointed champions of secular liberalism are decrying the recent electoral triumph of Hindu nationalism as a subversion of the true will of the people. Saswat Pattanayak argues that ‘we the people’ must not be let off the hook so