The ideals that the Self-Respect Movement fought are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago.

31-10-202527 STORIES

In this issue

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The century of self-respect

A hundred years later, the Self-Respect Movement’s ideals of equality, women’s liberation, and the annihilation of caste are finding new geographies.

Karthick Ram Manoharan

E. V. Ramasamy

Editor’s note: The other freedom fight

Periyar knew self-rule without self-respect meant servitude in disguise. A hundred years later, his point still stands—loudly.

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How idealism became pragmatism

Every movement begins with a dream and ends with a negotiation. The Self-Respect Movement’s political afterlife proves no cause stays pure.

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They broke the chains, not the ceiling

While the women leaders of the Self-Respect Movement transformed society in profound ways, full empowerment of women remains far from fully achieved.

Anna Hazare Protest

From the sidelines

Protest phobia

Sonam Wangchuk’s arrest in Ladakh shows how the BJP, a party born of protest, now jails protesters to protect its power.

New Delhi seems to have underestimated Ladakh’s resolve: Siddiq Wahid

The academic and historian discusses the complexities in Ladakh and the circumstances that led to the escalation.

Demonstration

RIGHT TO INFORMATION

CIC: Headless and toothless

Empty posts at the Centre and States have paralysed the transparency watchdog, while the Personal Data Protection Act weakens citizen access.

BJD protest in Bhubaneswar

Cracks in BJD

Biju Janata Dal faces its sternest test yet, as leaders quit over its ambiguous ties with BJP and Naveen Patnaik’s continued backing of V.K. Pandian.

Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay

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Karnataka’s devadasis claim space in law after centuries of exclusion

The Devadasi Act names caste power and demands restitution, placing Dalit women’s dignity and children’s rights at the heart of abolition.

Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed

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Manufactured fame, manufactured consent

India’s media, film, and digital ecosystem are a culture industry manufacturing consent for authoritarian power. Democracy must resist.

Manoj Kumar Jha

Modi-Shah: As wrong-footed in Manipur as they are in Kashmir

Modi’s long-awaited visit to Manipur was a wasted opportunity because his Hindutva mindset renders him incapable of understanding minority concerns.

Mani Shankar Aiyar

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RIGHT WING FUNDAMENTALISM

The Kirk effect

Charlie Kirk’s death echoes through a movement that fuses Trump, the far right, and America’s unblinking devotion to Israel.

Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif

Saudi-Pakistan defence agreement: What it means for India

The pact complicates India’s management of its Western neighbourhood, especially since it strengthens Pakistan’s position in the Islamic world.

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ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES

Bonds without faith

The neoliberal financial order punishes spending and taxes, creating self-reinforcing deficits. The bond market is feeling the strain.

C.P. Chandrasekhar

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The questions hanging over Nimisha Priya’s case

Abuse, language barriers, and an opaque legal process surround the Malayali nurse’s death sentence in Yemen. India must act before it’s too late.

Kaleeswaram Raj,Thulasi K. Raj

Cantao ocellata

Are insects disappearing?

Data from decades-long studies show steep declines in insects, threatening ecosystems and the birds, frogs, and plants that depend on them.

M.B. Srinivasan

M.B. Srinivasan: Maestro of the masses

MBS turned melody into movement. A communist with perfect pitch, he believed every voice mattered and made choral music a call to equality.

Abhirami Girija Sriram,Siddarth Muralidharan

Shah Rukh Khan Aryan Khan family

COUNTER CULTURE

Cynicism as inheritance

Aryan Khan’s Ba**ds of Bollywood turns his father’s myth inside out, mocking the system that made him, yet trapped in its own borrowed irony.

Prathyush Parasuraman

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s last lesson

In his final book, the Kenyan writer confronts how empire colonised the African mind, and how liberation begins with language itself.

Aditya Mani Jha

General S.M. Shrinagesh

The measured General

In his clear-eyed memoir, Gen. S.M. Shrinagesh recalls a time when military restraint, not bravado, helped India’s democracy take root.

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A.B. Vajpayee: A charismatic RSS ideologue

This engaging biography gives a colourful account of the multilayered relationships within the Sangh Parivar and deals with a turbulent time in India.

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India’s neoliberal hangover

A festschrift for C.P. Chandrasekhar turns into a sharp audit of India’s 30-year experiment with globalisation, and the cracks it refuses to fix.

Venkatesh Athreya

Mhadei River in Goa

The other Goa

In The Bitter-Fruit Tree and Other Stories, Prakash Parienkar uncovers another Goa, where Sattari’s forests pay the price for modern progress.

Janhavi Acharekar

The Safekeep

A house, a recluse, and a stranger

It seems entirely fitting that this vivid, slow-burning novel was awarded this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction.

New books on the shelves

A novel set in COVID times, a biography of M.S. Swaminathan and much more.

Death of an edifice

The Bengal Bonded Warehouse building in Kolkata, celebrated in an Abanindranath painting, is soon going to be replaced by a brand new building overloo

‘The Dystopian Times’ by Appupen

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