It may be rather risky, but I always prefer to end the old year and begin the new one one on an optimistic note. In this year of Brexit blight, Trump tantrums and the tragedy of refugees fleeing violence I was beginning to fear I wouldn’t be able to keep this promise. So: Thank you […]
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Bone-Saws and Bold Words
“Bombs and pistols do not make a revolution. The sword of revolution is sharpened on the whetting-stone of ideas.”(Bhagat Singh) As Jamal Khashoggi’s body, or its dismembered parts, remain to be discovered, and Raif Badawi continues to be incarcerated with the threat of 950 lashes still hanging over him (the first 50 were inflicted in […]
A Message
Apologies to everyone as I haven’t posted an article for a while. Holidays and other work intervened. While I finish up a couple of projects, here’re photos from an article in Youth Ki Awaz (the voice of youth) by P. Sainath, titled Visible Work, Invisible Women – A Lifetime Bending […]
Udham Singh and the Fight for Freedom
Introduction: This is a far longer post than I normally write. I wanted to mark the anniversary of Udham Singh’s execution at Pentonville Prison, but as I’d already written a post on him last year, Udham Singh, The Lonely Revolutionary, this year I decided to place him within the revolutionary struggle forming the turbulent landscape […]
The Need-to-Have-a-Son-Syndrome
Not so very long ago, in a Midlands town: a woman climbed the stairs, flight by flight, all the way to the hospital roof. And threw herself off. She had just given birth to a third daughter. No, we’re not in some dystopian world, or some strange twist of the Handmaid’s Tale, but in modern […]
War and Women
“No-one can take away your human rights,” asserts the photo montage by Kate Holt. Our birthright from life. But they can torture them, rape them, and murder them. 2018 is the 70thanniversary of the signing of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The preamble to the Declaration begins thus: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and […]
We, The Founding Mothers of India…
Activists in the US talk of the Founding Fathers and the betrayal of their ideals by Trump and his administration. Let’s remember India also had it’s Founding Fathers – and its Founding Mothers too. Women who struggled and sacrificed for India’s freedom; who spilled their blood, were beaten and killed. From the Rani […]
Love, Shakespeare and War
As Britain’s prime minister convenes a ‘War Cabinet’ and moves British submarines within missile range of Syria, I would like to take a moment. To talk about love, Shakespeare and Emma Rice, whose role as Artistic Director of the Globe will end this month. I was riveted by Emma Rice’s introduction to the Globe Theatre’s […]