The significance of communist ideology in the political process of Kashmir cannot be understood without examining the political milieu of Kashmir. It had a significant contribution in designing the socio-political and economic structure of Kashmir, being at the forefront in…
Pre-colonial records indicate that opium cultivation in India was practised to meet both medicinal and recreational purposes. Its ability to produce short-lived mind-altering conditions is well known.1 Owing to the caste-mediated nature of the agrarian landscape, it was the koeri…
Tamil Nadu has seen Dravidian political parties in power for the past five decades. Since 1967, its political system was governed either by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) or by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). Despite the…
To most people even a cursory examination of the idea of nation indicates that it is almost normal. It is as if the idea always existed. Its presence being as natural to people as is the light of the day.…
Dynamics of Difference: Inequality and Transformation in Rural India Narender Pani, ed. Routledge India, 2021, 284 pages, Rs 1095. Book Review by Siraj Hussain The Political Economy of New India: Critical Essays Raju J. Das, AakarBooks, Delhi, 2020 202 pages…
This issue of Social Scientist leads with two long review essays: one based on a book by Rehman Sobhan, on his experiences as a member of the Planning Commission established after Bangladesh’s liberation in 1971; and the other on a…
Rehman Sobhan Untranquil Reflections: Nation-building in Post-Liberation Bangladesh, New Delhi, Sage, pp. xviii+348. This book is very important for understanding the economic and political history of Bangladesh from its liberation to 1974, and some of the factors leading to the…
Capital and Imperialism achieves a rare congruence between theory and history, structure and narrative. This is not a question of a theoretical argument finding empirical substantiation as narrative, or history being staged so as to put forth a theoretical proposition.…
The Indian political visual landscape is littered with large and small posters/ hoardings/boards of political wannabes and local level ‘politicians’. These aspirants try to project themselves as not just belonging to a particular political party but also as part of…
It was the autumn of the first half of the seventeenth century when a young Jain merchant from Jaunpur named Banarasidas excitedly travelled to a city named Benares for visiting the holy shrines of the Jain deities Lord Parshwanatha and…