Left Must Do its Utmost to Protect Parliamentary Democracy
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You have been supporting the Congress-led UPA Government for the past four years. On July 9 you formally withdrew support to the ruling coalition at the Centre by saying that the government went ahead to operationalise the Indo-US nuclear deal by approaching the IAEA to get the draft safeguards agreement, worked out by it with [...]
You Disrobed the Temple
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Forget all the loot of the past
Forget all the heirlooms and jewels
Forget all the gold and family silver
Stolen, sold, resold, melted, moulded and parked away.
This time,
Twentysecond July 2008
You went for the jugular of our faith
You disrobed the Temple
You stripped it of its dignity
You pillaged its ethics
You [...]
Best Tribute to Freedom Fighters
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As we approach our sixtysecond Independence Day, once again we cannot but remember our indomitable freedom fighters, drawn from all parts of this vast landmass characterised by unique diversity, who underwent superhuman sacrifices and shed their precious blood so that we, belonging to a different generation, live a better life unfettered by the ignominy of [...]
A Betrayal of India’s Constitutional Vision
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“There are shining victories to be won in the cause of peace and social justice. We shall reach the new freedom by not submitting to economic slavery…. forward with the people.”
—From an editorial in Daily Mirror in 1945, as reproduced in Hidden Agendas, by John Pilger, Vintage, Great Britain, 1998
This piece appeared in The [...]
Sikhs in the Freedom Struggle
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The last to lay arms and foremost to raise them against the British, the Sikhs of Punjab may not figure prominently in the galaxy of freedom fighters led by Mahatma Gandhi barring Shaheed Bhagat Singh, who, too, was consistently disowned by Bapu, but the contribution of the Sikh people to the freedom struggle is no [...]
Election-Eve Political Scene
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The last four years have been years of great disappointment for the toiling millions of the country. These have been years showing the failure of the Central Government to fulfill the pledges given to the people. The policies pursued by the Central Government have been influenced by the dictates of the World Bank. Removal of [...]
Tribute to Harkishan Singh Surjeet
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In the afternoon of August 1, 2008 passed away in NOIDA’s Metro Hospital, former CPM General Secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet, 92, after a prolonged illness. Since he relinquished the post of party General Secretary in 2005 he had been ailing and due to ill-health and advanced age could not meaningfully contribute towards shaping the course [...]
Can We Fail Any Lower?
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The whole drama of the confidence-seeking vote in Parliament on the nuclear deal reminded me of what transpired during the 2000 US Presidential election between Gore and Bush. During the counting, the votes cast in the State of Florida had assumed decisiveness for victory. Gore wanted all the votes to be recounted as a short [...]
Bridging the Divide in J&K
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The all-party meeting called by the UPA Government to tackle the Jammu unrest and bridge the J&K divide was indeed overdue. While it is true that differences did surface between the BJP, which projected the feelings of the agitators in jammu demanding immediate restoration of forest land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB), and [...]
The Conciliatory Revolutionary
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On October 2, 2006, the thought of writing a novel based on the life of CPM stalwart Harkishan Singh Surjeet began to germinate in my mind. The idea took me to Surjeet’s residence where I sat with him and other members of his family in the verandah of his spacious Delhi home. We began talking [...]
