The Leaflet / By Shikha Pandey, Priya Shukla, Chandni Chawla, Nirupama Bajpai, Shailza S, Madhur
For it is better to have loved badly than to never have loved at all. And it is better to write badly than to never write at all.
To Sudha,
With love.
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Scroll.in / By Ajaz Ashraf
Ajay Gudavarthy explains why given the many forms of political violence in India, it is Maoists who are seen as the biggest threat to democracy.
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CJP / By Akhil Vasudevan
On January 12, 2018, two weeks after Bhima Koregaon Elgar Parishad program in Pune, the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of the Maharashtra Police picked up four workers of Reliance Infrastructure, one contractor from the same company and a casual worker. Their houses in the slum were raided in the middle of the night for hours before the arrest. A union activist was picked up a day before. The ATS squad questioned several other workers from the same company in the following days and finally arrested one more person from Reliance Infrastructure on 25th January. Interestingly, all the eight arrested men are migrants from Andhra/Telangana region. All of them have been charged under draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
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Call by Organizing Comittee
… The Bhima Koregaon case marks a turning point in the use of state repression. An event to celebrate the valour of Dalits and OBCs is sought to be delegitimized by casting overtones of extraneous Maoist activity. Ten prominent human rights defenders, lawyers, professors, cultural, social and political activists, while homes of ten others have been raided. These arrests represent something more sinister – that the legal work of human rights defenders (trade union activists, anti-displacement activists, lawyers, poets and writers etc.) can be criminalized and deemed as terrorist activities that require the slapping of the draconian UAPA; and that all space for democratic dissent can be usurped by the State in the name of ‘Public and National Security’.
The Wire / By Sukanya Shantha
Villagers have highlighted the work done by the forest rights activist in the area and the challenges they have been facing since his arrest in June 2018.
Mumbai: Four months after Pune Police arrested Mahesh Raut, forest rights activist and former Prime Minister Rural Development Fellow, terming him an ‘Urban Naxal’, as many as 300 gram sabhas (village councils) from Etapalli and Bhamragad tehsils of Gadchiroli have passed a resolution in his support.
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First published: Feb 2, 2016
Sanhati / By Bagaicha Research Team
This is a research study undertaken to document and highlight the problems of impoverished Adivasis and Moolvasis of Jharkhand, who are being accused as Maoists. Maoists are simplistically referred to as Naxalites in the commercial media.
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N.Y.
Sanghparivar WordPress.com / By Varavara Rao
Merit Rule of Brahmin
Lucky
You are born rich
To say in your language
“Born with silver spoon in the mouth”
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First published: 1990
Poetry International Web / By Varavara Rao
Words
Words, smothered in the folds of the self,
Must be stirred awake,
Made to amble and watch
See if wings can bear aloft
The crippled limbs
And soar into the sky.
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Scroll.in / By Aritra Bhattacharya
Lawyers for Surendra Gadling, under arrest in the Bhima Koregaon case, say their client was denied access to reading material, including SC judgments and books.
On September 13, six alleged Maoists lodged in the Yerawada jail in Pune, Maharashtra, participated in a one-day token hunger strike. The date chosen was significant. Freedom fighter Jatin Das had died on the 63rd day of his hunger strike on that day in 1929.
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Scroll.in / Anjali Mody
The Isro case is the latest reminder of what the police-media nexus can do.
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