My initial premise is that the extreme and near-genocidal violence during the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 led to unprecedented psychological trauma, which had a differentiated impact on survivors (as I have argued at greater length elsewhere). In the…
One of the best known things about Saadat Hasan Manto (1912–1955) is the epitaph he composed for himself on 18 August 1954, exactly five months before he died at the age of forty-two on 18 January 1955. It ran (in…
… he saw dimly lit humanity even in the characters that appear to us evil. He perceived glimmers of this humanity both in the oppressed and the oppressor, perceiving a distant flame of human frailties flickering both in the pimp…
Tragic irony can hardly have a superior instance. Sunil Janah was, for a single day, back in the news: he had died, well in his nineties, in distant California. Seventy years ago, photographs taken by him vivifying the starkness of…
A Journey from Popular Front to 'New Labour' Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) was a renowned historian of his age. He was born in the year of the Russian Revolution, witnessed Hitler’s rise to power and the spread of fascism across Europe,…
Christina Folke Ax, Neils Brimnes, Niklas Thode Jensen and Karen Oslund (Eds.), Cultivating the Colonies: Colonial States and Their Environmental Legacies, Ohio University Press, Athens, 2011, p. 337, price not mentioned. The book under review is a fresh new attempt…
The five papers – two key note presentations and three discussants’ responses – and a dedicatory poem comprising this edition of Social Scientist are drawn from a colloquium on the theme ‘The relevance of Gandhism and Marxism to our times’…
When Sashi Kumar asked me to speak along with Prabhat Patnaik on ‘Gandhi and Marx’ in a colloquium in memory of Chinta Ravindran, the prospect seemed very appealing for many reasons. I had met Ravindran many years ago in Bombay,…
It is a privilege for me to have been asked to participate in this colloquium in memory of Comrade Chintha Ravindran. He was without doubt a pioneer- ing thinker: he combined an absolute commitment to the cause of the working…
A discussant is expected to comment upon the keynote addresses and thereby extend the discussion further. I am unable to do so in the present context for more than one reason. 1 Instead, let me take a detour and present…