Kabir

The allegations of sexual harassment of a girl student at the media department in Srinagar’s Amar Singh college, by the head of the department, for four months is shocking to say the least. It needs a quick and impartial probe.

La création. La conclusion!

Happy birthday, Karl Marx! Marx was born on this day 208 years ago. His work helps us not only understand capitalism but fight for a world free of exploitation and domination. Here's a thread of some of our many writings on Marx and his legacy 🧵

When Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a Columbia professor of South Calcuttan Rarhi Brahmin ethnicity famously asked, "Can the subaltern speak?", there was no internet or generative artificial intelligence. The Calcutta anglophile had a standard path - South Point or Patha Bhaban, followed by Bryn Mawr, Jadavpur or St. Stephens, then a short, unfinished M.Phil stint at JNU, and then the Oxfords, the Cambridges, the Sorbonnes, and the Ivy leagues awaited. Do this well, and sinecure jobs in policy and media awaited you. You could sip your Cuba Libre at the India Habitat Centre, and pontificate on how the subalterns could never speak. Your uncle from NDTV, Hindustan Times or your dad's protege at Prasar Bharati would invite you to thought leader summits and solicit think pieces about how to ameliorate rural life via holistic mother-tongue education. You could even get a Rajya Sabha seat if you were eloquent enough. South Bombay, South Delhi, South Calcutta - the elites from these three towns would play the annual triwizards tournament, with new-age libertarian South Bangalore knocking on heaven's door - demanding a place in this rarefied policy thindi walk. Professor Gayatri Spivak did not envision a Lifeofpujaa in her Derridaesque deconstructivist smorgasbord. In her time, rural subalterns could only speak in Satyajit Ray masterpieces or Mrinal Sen film noirs. Neither did she envision an Otherwarya - a Tamil Brahmin elite ho was less of a Rajagopalachari and more an Iyer-Mitra. Subalterns in her world were accessories for art filmmakers to secure government-sponsored Junkets to Cannes and Venice. Not instagrammers entering brand partnerships with FMCGs. And the "aantels" would stick to the pages of Frontline and the Economic & Political Weekly, and not write unfiltered screeds on Instagram. Social media and generative AI have upended the Spivakian simulacrum - it is no longer the Baudrillardesque ecosystem it once was. The privileged Otherwarya is no cocktail sipper at 4S - she likes her Noon Wines and Chin Lung, and her venom is like methanol-laced hooch from Tirunelveli. And, the subaltern claps back. Lifeofpujaa is no longer the docile Devi in Satyajit Ray's Devi - she is now the kickass Shakti Shetty in Rohit Shetty's Singham Returns. Exit Satyajit "Nyaakachondi" Ray. Enter Aditya "Dhuran" Dhar So can the subaltern speak? The answer is a YES. A resounding YES.