Spontaneous or organised armed resistances in post-colonial India, such as the Telangana revolt, various armed groups in the North-East and the proliferation of the Naxalite movement in various parts of the country were described by the post-colonial Indian state as…
There has been a rapid increase in the politico-sociological literature on the relationship between the armed forces and society in the emerging nations since the 1960s. A fairly large part of the research deals with the army as a political…
For the greater part of my life I was accustomed to take for granted certain civil liberties, including the freedom of thought and speech. Now, as I approach the end of life, the freedoms I had taken for granted are…
The outpouring of admiration, respect and deep affection for Professor Randhir Singh in the print and social media space are a testament to a rare human being whose profound impact on so many lives cannot, quite literally, be imprisoned in…
Randhir Singh passed away on 31 January 2016. He was a communist revolutionary who shaped posterity by way of shaking the discipline of politics. A slew of critical thinkers, comrades, owe a lot to him for their transformation and critical…
Asok Sen (1927–2015) was a mentor to a generation of scholars from Bengal. He went to South Suburban Branch School in Calcutta, and then studied economics at Presidency College and at the University of Calcutta. As an economist, he worked…
Ellen Meiksins Wood, a Professor at York University, Canada, died early this year. During the 1980s, when Marxism came under attack in the West, Ellen Meiksins Wood built a barricade to guard its intellectual existence. She systematically defended Marxism from…
Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui, Indo-Persian Historiography to the Fourteenth Century, New Delhi: Primus, 2014, 260 pages, Rs 1095 The present volume makes an attempt to study literary production in the fourteenth century, and the cultural milieu that made the amalgamation of…
Akeel Bilgrami’s paper in the current issue of Social Scientist contains a powerful and comprehensive critique of liberal thought as it has developed from John Locke’s theory of Social Contract to the ‘multi-person prisoners’ dilemma’ underlying the argument regarding the…
The fact that several third world countries, especially in Asia, have experienced remarkably high rates of GDP growth has been a matter of much discussion. There has been talk of a development of ‘multi-polarity’ in the world, of a shift…