India's Supreme Court has given the government six weeks to explain the circumstances under which a prominent Maoist was killed last year. Cherukuri Rajkumar was acting as an intermediary to set up peace talks between the Maoists and the Indian government when he was shot dead. One judge said the state could not be allowed to kill its own children. Human rights activists alleged the victim, also known as Azad, was killed by...
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Mocking Adivasi Concerns
There is a new “plan” for the scheduled tribes, but the adivasis themselves will have no say. Alienation from the forest and its resources, alienation from cultivable land and alienation from the State underlie the anger of the adivasis in India’s heartland. This is not a new or startling observation. Adivasi mass organisations, the more sensitive administrators, political organisations with their ears to the ground and scholars who have studied India’s...
More »India, largely a country of immigrants
A Supreme Court judgment projects the historical thesis that India is largely a country of old immigrants and that pre-Dravidian aborigines, ancestors of the present Adivasis, rather than Dravidians, were the original inhabitants of India. If North America is predominantly made up of new immigrants, India is largely a country of old immigrants, which explains its tremendous diversity. It follows that tolerance and equal respect for all communities and sects are...
More »Dr Binayak Sen, convicted of sedition, is star Lancet author by Teena Thacker
The seven papers in The Lancet: India Series mentions Dr Binayak Sen; the journal’s January 8-14 issue carries an article by the paediatrician who has been sentenced to life on charges of sedition. The Lancet calls Sen a world renowned public health physician, rights activist and civil liberties expert who has worked tirelessly over the years to protect the human rights of vulnerable people, including health as a human right. The Lancet...
More »A Fable For The Cola-Wallahs by Saba Naqvi and Debarshi Dasgupta
In post-globalisation India, middle-class heroes are usually entrepreneurs who make a fast buck, stars that glitter brightly and talk glibly, cricketers who hit the ball hard. In an aspirational world of consumer goods, fine dining and malls, values such as service, integrity, simplicity are becoming rare. Perhaps that is why the story of Binayak Sen, the skilled doctor who turned his back on material success to work among the poor...
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