kriticulture

By M. L. Raina Time was when being a dissident meant being someone who does not swallow myths and shibboleths wholesale. My gospel then was not Marx but a slim volume by the American philosopher Barry Denham whose book Man Against Myth I read with  religious zeal. For me the time of dissidence is no more. I have reached a state of dissonance when everything sounds out of tune, out of rhythm for me.I have given up on hope, that overarching something that Ernst Bloch the  Marxist philosopher regarded as the mainstay of human endeavour.That hope is now overtaken by  the new mushroom cloud of despair hanging over all of us. A maverick East German poet Wolf Bierman,beset like me with the feelings of disconnectedness,wrote 'dreams that are still red/and not to be buried with our dead'. That was when he hoped that communism would survive. But when his hopes crumbled with the collapse of communism, he came out with: 'well, who preaches hope is a l...

Editor’s Note South Asian Ensemble   Vol. 5 No. 1&2 Winter & Spring 2013 South Asia today is crawling with things that have appointed themselves as saviours and fosterers of identity cultures. This has not happened over a weekend but unfolded over a century and more. The accelerated globalization, as crafted by its neoliberal caretakers, has served to inflate the vanity of the crawling new armies of cultural occupation. It has augmented their local cunning by lending them the tools to forge new rationales. ‘We must be rooted in our soil,’ they mumble sinisterly, yet hopping from continent to continent.  Yes, we must be rooted in our soil. But what is soil? What is its genesis? Can anyone slice it up between us and them and others? What brings fertility to the soil? And what brings upon it the curse of barrenness?  To be rooted in the soil is to experience the withering away of any exclusively defined identity claims to intellectual, affective and cu...

By Badri Raina When we played cricket, Indian Capitalism was still in its Shamefaced early days, Morally strangulated by unrewarding Socialist ways. We spent what Money we could muster From parent and filibuster Just to buy the cheapest bat or ball; Hardly anyone ever thought Of leg guards at all. Off we went, regardless of weather, And joyfully hurled or smashed some leather. There were neither bookies nor bank accounts, Nor the hang-dog looks of salivating mouths. Since then, with Nehru’s demise, India Has “come a long way” don’t we know; As GDP soars could cricket remain below? Yet still we pretend that corruption is bad, When corruption has been our national goal, egad. Not without corruption may Capital multiply, Imagine how many cricket now does gainfully employ.

By Rajesh Sharma Lawlessness is coming to be the destiny of India.  And it goes masked under lawfulness and propriety.  As we fathom greater depths of venality and deceit, experts, specialists, technocrats, managers and ‘intellectuals’ are working overtime to produce effects of oh-so-much happening. A reactive hyperactivity, whose fountainhead is the media, is radiating from tv screens.  Has not the media, whatever the intentions of those who are motivated nobly, come to function as a machine of distraction, consolation, vicarious rage? In short, the Bad Conscience of the Indian people?

-           By  Rajesh Sharma   The Coalgate is getting murkier by the hour.  After what reportedly transpired in the Supreme Court today on 8th May, the media is all aflutter with speculation. Will the Law Minister go? Should he? Will the deities up there ask him to exit? And the Railway Minister? The PM is said to be supporting the continuation of the ministers. Is he doing it on his own or under someone’s directions? It matters little. What matters is what his conduct means for India and its people. And for whatever is still left of democracy here.  This is not a display of amazing political nerve by an I-am-no-politician. This is not a demonstration of loyalty towards party and colleagues. This is not some ascetic indifference to little storms in a tea cup. This is not courage of conviction. This is a systematic destruction of the institutions on whose strength post-independence India ...