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READINGS FROM RUSSELL: A FEW OBSERVATIONS by Sujato Datta

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I recently happened to come across a handful of pieces of Bertrand Russell which offers ideas about society which are riveting and at the same time rocking the cages of conservative dogma in ideological thought. For the benefit of reference and verification, I talk about four essays in particular, ' The Future of Mankind', ' On Being Modern-minded', 'The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed' and ' An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish'. Russell saw a world, which was more volatile than ever before, disrupted by fighting among the two superpowers of the world and unprecedented advances in thought, technology and unmatched departures in world politics. The greatest depth of Russell's work lies in his revolt against British idealism. It goes without saying, that idealism is not merely a product of fascination, nostalgia or idolatry but is overwhelmingly a form of political ideology. Dogmas have always risen riding the swift waves of idealism. In, 'Th

A SHORT WORD FOR XU LIZHVI AND THOUSANDS OF OTHERS by Sujato Datta

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                                                       "Another screw comes loose,                                 Another migrant worker brother jumps                                 You die in place of me,                                 And I keep writing in place of you."                                                                                              Zhou Qizao's tribute to Xu I want to begin with an apology. I'm sorry because, I, sitting in my comfortable residence in a metropolis, getting a good college education, can never understand how Xu Lizhvi felt, but still I write this. For all the chest-thumping of its Communist Revolution, the standard of living and working of Chinese workers remain miserable, to say the least.The advocates of capitalism and free market talk loftily about its credentials of competence,meritocracy and welfare fail to take notice of what is happening in the factories of the world. Workers are cramped into dingy

VOICES AND THE UNVOICED: WOMEN AND THE TELANGANA PEASANT INSURRECTION by Ananyo Chakrabarty

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The Telangana armed rebellion (1946-51) can be rightfully termed as the most adventurous experiment of the militant peasantry in modern India. It was part of the two-cratered volcano, the other contemporaneous explosion being in Bengal in form of the Tebhaga Movement. Spanning five years, the movement in Telangana, though less widespread than the former, was the longest insurrection of its kind. The Communist Party of India (largely claimed to have) led the mobilized agrarian masses into land seizure and distribution, forming village soviets and later into a systematic guerrilla campaign, against the Nizams (hereditary monarchs of the princely state of Hyderabad) in the initial stage and then against the Indian Government which annexed the state in 1948 after the Indian liberation from colonial rule. The struggle necessarily won important victories for the peasants, with the abolition of the feudal land revenue system, and peasants (though not all-inclusively) given land owners

OCCUPY THE STREETS by Sujato Datta

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Dystopia is no longer the imaginative tool it used to be. It is a reality that is growing stronger everyday. Totalitarianism has become the nature of the state. However it is no longer in its tangible form. In fact, in its tangible form it can hardly be called totalitarianism. It is authoritarianism or fascism at the best. Totalitarianism occurs on the level of ideas.The left and right being garbs, the state is necessarily totalitarian. Time and again it has assaulted ideas and planted manufactured narratives. In doing so they have availed what was our best defence against them - history. Far right governments be it in India, Israel or Italy use history as a justification for atrocities against communities. They use history as a justification for fueling war. They use it to make you think that war is a necessity. Israel, a racist state and an illegitimate state(though all states are) based on Zionism, has cited the atrocities of Holocaust as justification for a Jewish state using wh