I must have been no more than four years old. A hired Omni Van used to ferry all the neighbourhood kids to our preparatory school. One day, the driver of the Van relayed to my mother - either bemused or…
Samir Amin who passed away recently was an outstanding Marxist thinker of our time. An economist by training, he did not confine himself to armchair theorising; he was deeply and passionately engaged till his last breath in praxis for changing…
It is a good way to start with Samir Amin’s family background to understand his development as a fiercely committed Marxist who all his life tried to change the world. All the disappointments and defeats of the cause he espoused…
Masculinity seems to be a fairly recent historical product. It is no longer a silent turf in gender studies but because of its late appearance in the world of social sciences, especially within Indian context, the discipline has still to…
It has been 150 years since the publication of Karl Marx’s formidable work, Das Capital (Volume 1). This first volume provides a critical analysis of capitalist production and defines Marx’s crucial break with the classical political economy of Adam Smith…
The dramatic increase in exports of readymade garments (RMG) from Bangladesh is an impressive example of a labour-surplus country being able to put some of its labour reserves to use in a strategy of exportoriented labour-intensive industrialisation. On the surface…
Gandhi’s ideas on caste and untouchability have created much misunderstanding in scholarly circles. Gandhi has been attacked for ambiguity and inconsistency on this issue and accused of excessive deference to Hindu orthodoxy. Critics have focused on Gandhi’s alleged ‘specious’ distinction…
The Hindu History Series: K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, Writings in The Hindu, THG Publishing Private Limited, Chennai, 2018, 224 pages, Rs 299. K.A. Nilakanta Sastri was one of the doyens of south Indian history. Although specialising in pre-colonial history of the…
Guru Rao Bapat and Lata Singh, eds., Performing Arts in India: Performances of/and Violence, Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2016, 242, pages, Rs. 300. In a troubled time of ours when intolerance and bigotry of almost all sorts are…
We take Akeel Bilgrami’s Asghar Ali Engineer Memorial Lecture for 2018 as the lead article of the current issue of Social Scientist. He gives three instances of what he calls the ‘limits’ of liberalism, namely, its acute discomfort with any…