SACW - 29 March 2015 | Bangladeshi bloggers / Nepal: Just justice / Pakistan: rightward slide & resistance / Tributes: Tahira Mazhar Ali & Daya Varma / Cow Mad in India / Hobsbawm File / Syriza Govt in Greece - What Future?

Sat Mar 28 18:26:13 EDT 2015

South Asia Citizens Wire - 29 March 2015 - No. 2851 
[since 1996]
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Contents:
1. Bangladeshi bloggers talk about harassment and constant threats meted out to them (Premankur Biswas)
2. The Bangladesh Story: A documentary film by Faris Kermani (Channel Four)
3. Ali Sethi: Pakistani Christians Fight Back
4. Pakistan: Beware the rightward slide (I A Rehman)
5. Pakistan: Rethinking the Left - Editorial, Daily Times
6. Pakistan: Tahira Mazhar Ali, Veteran leader of the left passes away - Tributes and reports
7. Pakistan: Tahira Mazhar Ali - Torchbearer for a progressive politics (Beena Sarwar)
8. A report on Pak - India Forum 20th Anniversary commemorative Seminar on Understanding Pakistan Today (Rita Manchanda)
9. India: Communal politics and the language of numbers (Dilip Simeon)
10. Communist, Scientist, Activist and Dreamer Daya Varma (August 23, 1929 - March 22, 2015)
11. India: Press Release from Justice for Hashimpura Committee - 24 March 2015
12. India: Bans on Cow Slaughter Based on Narrow Sectarian Vision - Statement by PUDR
13. Prabhat Patnaik’s Tribute to Govind Pansare
14. Links via Sabrang to articles and documents on on the Hashimpura Massacre (Meerut Hasimpura 1987)
15. India: PUDR statement on acquittal of 16 PAC personnel accused in the Hashimpura massacre
16. Caught Between Scylla and Charybdis: Europe and The Future For Radical Left Syriza Govt in Greece (Harsh Kapoor)
17. ’India’s Daughter’: Hostile Responses from Modi Regime and a Section of Indian Feminists (Sukla Sen)
18. MI5 and the Hobsbawm File (Frances Stonor Saunders in London Review of Books)
19. Recent on Communalism Watch:
 - Video: The Lemmings of Hashimpura (NewsClick, Communalism Combat and Hillele TV)
 - India: Q & A - `Godse cult gains when govt sympathetic Gandhi's used only to stand for cleanliness'
 - India: ICHR historian Dilip K Chakrabarti raises objection on David Frawley
 - Modi's saffronisation agenda (Kuldip Nayar)
 - India: Aggressive Hindutva on cards in TN?
 - India: Plea to declare Taj a Shiva temple dismissed
 - India: ICHR debate on Aryan invasion theory cut short
 - India: Smruti Koppikar - Maharashtra CM has no will to probe my father's murder: social reformer Govind Pansare's daughter
 - India: CJP Update on Gulberg Trial in Special Sessions Court and Naroda Appeal in the Gujarat HC
 - Attack on Durban Writer Zainab Priya Dala for appreciation of Rushdie and Statements Condemning the attack
 - Big time Hindutva seminar on Indus-Sarasvati (Harappan) Civilzation etc opens at IIC Delhi 26-28 March 2015
 - Salil Tripathi: Why Hindu nationalists would rather honour Gandhi's assassin
 - Hashimpura acquittals - implications for India’s democracy: Press release from Justice for Hashimpura Committee on 24 March 2015
 - A battle Bangladesh must win (Mahfuz Anam)
 - India: Dharam Sena leader Yogesh Agrawal and his associates among those arrested for attack on Jabalpur Church
 - India: Persisting acts of intolerance (Editorial in The Hindu, 23 March 2015)
 - India: Hindu fundamentalists involved in attack on Jabalpur Church (Report in Mail Today)
 - India: ABVP led DUSU demand for banning play uncalled for - Mail Today Comment 23 March 2015
 - Cartoon on Zoo Lions - Jailed for eating Beef ? (Bangalore Mirror) 

::: FULL TEXT :::
20. Nepal: Just justice | Kunda Dixit
21. Cow Mad in India | Kai Friese
22. Narendra Modi government to tighten norms for shooting films and documentaries in India | Aman Sharma & Vasudha Venugopal
23. Ukraine: A Creationist Museum? | Ivaylo Grouev
24. Labour, life and love: Marxist feminists join the dots | Cynthia Cockburn
25. Beyond Doubt: A Dossier on Gandhi's Assassination | Teesta Setalvad 
26. Medicine, Healthcare and the Raj: The Unacknowledged Legacy | Daya Varma
27. War and Revolution in Catalonia, 1936-1939 | Pelai Pagès i Blanch,

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1. BANGLADESHI BLOGGERS TALK ABOUT HARASSMENT AND CONSTANT THREATS METED OUT TO THEM (Premankur Biswas)
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About two years ago, Asif Mohiuddin, 31, was on his way to office in an upscale Dhaka neighbourhood when he was accosted by three men, who later identified themselves as members of Ansarullah Bangla group, part of the Al-Qaeda network. Like Bangladeshi blogger Avijit Roy, who was slaughtered in the heart of Dhaka last month, Mohiuddin was stabbed six times on his neck and shoulder. Fortunately, he survived. Mohiuddin and Roy are members of a new kind of pariah club in Bangladesh.
http://sacw.net/article10910.html

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2. THE BANGLADESH STORY: A DOCUMENTARY FILM by Faris Kermani (Channel Four)
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http://sacw.net/article10903.html

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3. ALI SETHI: PAKISTANI CHRISTIANS FIGHT BACK
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Last week's riots, which were instigated by a religious attack, brought a long-oppressed community's fury to the fore. In that sense they are a sign of things to come. Anyone walking the streets of Pakistan would do well to remember that.
http://www.sacw.net/article10902.html

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4. PAKISTAN: BEWARE THE RIGHTWARD SLIDE
by I A Rehman
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AS Pakistan turns more and more towards a rightist agenda the most important question now is whether those who stand for a progressive, egalitarian order can protect the interests of disadvantaged sections of society that are likely to suffer the most.
http://sacw.net/article10918.html

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5. PAKISTAN: RETHINKING THE LEFT
Editorial, Daily Times
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At the Jamil Omar Memorial Lecture in Lahore on Wednesday, March 25th, Akbar Zaidi delivered a speech about the future of Pakistan's Left movement.
http://sacw.net/article10911.html

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6. PAKISTAN: TAHIRA MAZHAR ALI, VETERAN LEADER OF THE LEFT PASSES AWAY - TRIBUTES AND REPORTS
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Veteran leader of the left movement, Tahira Mazhar Ali, passed away on Monday. Though she had been unwell for some time, her death has been met with a profound sense of loss by those who knew her. (Posted here are messages from PILER, Pakistan Peace Coalition and from the Awami Workers Party; These are followed by reports from DAWN, Pakistan Today and an editorial in The News)
http://sacw.net/article10898.html

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7. PAKISTAN: TAHIRA MAZHAR ALI - TORCHBEARER FOR A PROGRESSIVE POLITICS
by Beena Sarwar
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http://www.sacw.net/article10912.html

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8. A REPORT ON PAK - INDIA FORUM 20TH ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATIVE SEMINAR ON UNDERSTANDING PAKISTAN TODAY
by Rita Manchanda
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“India and Pakistan are neighbours who are open to the world but closed to each other” - Pakistan's foremost human rights activist and public intellectual I A Rehamn said in New Delhi at a memorable Seminar on Understanding Pakistan Today aimed at challenging the dangerous myths and prejudices that are manipulated by self serving elites and institutional interests with utter disregard for the common concerns and futures of the peoples of the two countries.
http://www.sacw.net/article10901.html

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9. INDIA: COMMUNAL POLITICS AND THE LANGUAGE OF NUMBERS
by Dilip Simeon
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This paper is appearing in: Communalism in Post-colonial India Changing Contours Edited by Mujibur Rehman; Routledge India (forthcoming, 2016)
http://www.sacw.net/article10895.html

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10. COMMUNIST, SCIENTIST, ACTIVIST AND DREAMER DAYA VARMA (AUGUST 23, 1929 - MARCH 22, 2015)
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Dr. Daya Varma, life-long communist, scientist, activist, dreamer, pharmacologist, professor emeritus at McGill University, Montreal, passed away on 22 March 2015
http://www.sacw.net/article10894.html

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11. INDIA: PRESS RELEASE FROM JUSTICE FOR HASHIMPURA COMMITTEE - 24 MARCH 2015
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Today, on 24th March 2015, the families of Mohalla Hashimpura whose men were shot dead; and the five survivors, of the worst custodial communal killings in independent India expressed their anguish, suffering and outrage at the judgment of the Delhi Trial Court that acquitted all the accused Policemen of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC). 28 years later, they remembered every detail of that fateful day when about 50 men of Mohalla Hashimpura were abducted by a Unit of the 41st Battalion of PAC in a yellow coloured PAC truck by 19 members of this Unit. 
http://sacw.net/article10891.html

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12. INDIA: BANS ON COW SLAUGHTER BASED ON NARROW SECTARIAN VISION - STATEMENT BY PUDR
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On March 16th 2015, the Haryana Government unanimously passed Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gausamvardhan Bill with main opposition parties INLD and Congress supporting the Bill. The new bill passed by the Haryana Government bans cow slaughter and sale of beef and imposes a punishment of rigorous imprisonment of not less than three years extending up to 10 years and fines ranging from Rs. 30,000 to Rs. one lakh. The Haryana Government’s move comes just days after the President’s assent to Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Bill 1995 early this month.
http://sacw.net/article10890.html

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13. PRABHAT PATNAIK’S TRIBUTE TO GOVIND PANSARE
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Whatever freedom we enjoy in this country, whatever "modernity" we have in this country, whatever social equality we have achieved in this country, is continuously under attack, and its preservation is made possible by the continuous struggles undertaken by a large number of persons scattered all over India. They do not make it to New Delhi’s TV studios, they are not to be found in the corridors of power in the nation’s capital, and they do not even belong to the metropolitan centres of the country. 
http://sacw.net/article10888.html

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14. LINKS VIA SABRANG TO ARTICLES AND DOCUMENTS ON ON THE HASHIMPURA MASSACRE (MEERUT HASIMPURA 1987)
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http://sacw.net/article10887.html

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15. India: PUDR statement on acquittal of 16 PAC personnel accused in the Hashimpura massacre
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On 22 May 1987, PAC personnel of UP reached Hashimpura, Meerut, took away about 50 Muslim men from a crowd outside a mosque, shot dead at least 42 of the men, and threw their bodies into a canal. On 21 March 2015, a Delhi Sessions Court accepted that the PAC personnel had committed these murders, but acquitted the policemen charged on account of insufficient evidence. Twenty eight years after the brutal massacre of Muslims by state forces, the guilty in uniform have not been identified and are roaming free.
http://sacw.net/article10874.html

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16. CAUGHT BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS: EUROPE AND THE FUTURE FOR RADICAL LEFT SYRIZA GOVT IN GREECE
by Harsh Kapoor
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It is difficult to say how long the Syriza govt will survive in Greece and whether it will be successful; but if this is looked at only as national problem and not taken to be an opportunity by the left groups across Europe everyone will miss the bus. A failure of the Syriza government will certainly open the floodgates in terms of rise in social and electoral prospects the extreme nationalist formations within Greece.
http://sacw.net/article10861.html

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17. ’INDIA’S DAUGHTER’: HOSTILE RESPONSES FROM MODI REGIME AND A SECTION OF INDIAN FEMINISTS
by Sukla Sen
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But while the Modi regime is ideologically rooted in xenophobia, though only selectively - no problem with inviting foreign capital with open hands but criticism by a foreigner (if s/he is no Barack Obama) is a strict "no-no"; these feminists are only making instrumental use of this element. Xenophobic nationalism, cloaked as "anti-colonialism" / "anti-imperialism", is of course a bedrock underlying the arguments put forward by this section of feminists.
http://sacw.net/article10871.html

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18. MI5 AND THE HOBSBAWM FILE (Frances Stonor Saunders in London Review of Books)
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Official British anti-communism has attracted much less attention than its American counterpart, with its perspiring, malodorous knuckleheads jabbing their lists before the cameras.
http://sacw.net/article10904.html

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19. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
=========================================
available at: http://communalism.blogspot.in/
 - Video: The Lemmings of Hashimpura (NewsClick, Communalism Combat and Hillele TV)
 - India: Q & A - `Godse cult gains when govt sympathetic Gandhi's used only to stand for cleanliness'
 - India: ICHR historian Dilip K Chakrabarti raises objection on David Frawley
 - Modi's saffronisation agenda (Kuldip Nayar)
 - India: Aggressive Hindutva on cards in TN?
 - India: Plea to declare Taj a Shiva temple dismissed
 - India: ICHR debate on Aryan invasion theory cut short
 - India: Smruti Koppikar - Maharashtra CM has no will to probe my father's murder: social reformer Govind Pansare's daughter
 - India: CJP Update on Gulberg Trial in Special Sessions Court and Naroda Appeal in the Gujarat HC
 - Attack on Durban Writer Zainab Priya Dala for appreciation of Rushdie and Statements Condemning the attack
 - India: RSS' Lawyers Move Court to Claim Taj Mahal as a Shiva Temple
 - Big time Hindutva seminar on Indus-Sarasvati (Harappan) Civilzation etc opens at IIC Delhi 26-28 March 2015
 - Salil Tripathi: Why Hindu nationalists would rather honour Gandhi's assassin
 - Hashimpura acquittals - implications for India’s democracy: Press release from Justice for Hashimpura Committee on 24 March 2015
 - Update from Citizens For Justice and Peace on Naroda Patia and Gulberg Trails [24 March 2015]
 - A battle Bangladesh must win (Mahfuz Anam)
 - India: Dharam Sena leader Yogesh Agrawal and his associates among those arrested for attack on Jabalpur Church
 - India: Persisting acts of intolerance (Editorial in The Hindu, 23 March 2015)
 - India: Hindu fundamentalists involved in attack on Jabalpur Church (Report in Mail Today)
 - India: ABVP led DUSU demand for banning play uncalled for - Mail Today Comment 23 March 2015
 - Cartoon on Zoo Lions - Jailed for eating Beef ? (Bangalore Mirror) 
and More ...
available at: http://communalism.blogspot.in/

::: FULL TEXT :::
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20. NEPAL: JUST JUSTICE
by Kunda Dixit
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(Nepali Times - March 23rd, 2015)

Reconciliation is not possible without truth and justice for the relatives of those murdered and disappeared ten years ago.

Last month, the Supreme Court ruled on a writ rejecting provisions in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act that would have allowed pardons in heinous crimes committed during the conflict, and those already being heard in the civil courts.

The bloodshed of the ten-year Maoist insurgency was accompanied by massive human rights violations by both sides. State security forces perpetrated most of them (summary executions, torture, rape, and forced disappearances) mostly on innocent civilians they suspected to be Maoist sympathisers.

The Maoists, too, ‘exterminated’ ‘class enemies’ after gruesome torture that included dismemberment, disembowelment, crushing bones of victims with boulders and logs, gouging out eyes, burning and burying people alive. There were also many murders that had nothing to do with the war, as the conflict became a convenient excuse to settle personal scores.

The Truth and Reconciliation Act would have allowed many of these crimes to be classified as conflict-related and under the purview of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Commission to Investigate Enforced Disappearances (CIED). But since neither side lost the war, the parliamentary parties and the Maoists became part of the Nepali state after 2006. While this has made many elements of the peace process (like the integration of the armies) easier than in other post-conflict countries, it has also allowed the two sides to collude in letting bygones be bygones so that they don’t have to be accountable for conflict-era crimes.

The latest egregious example of this is that while the ruling NC-UML coalition and the opposition Maoist-Madhesi alliance can’t agree on anything to do with the constitution, they had absolutely no problems dividing up the leadership of the two Commissions between themselves.

Both former-ambassador Surya Kiran Gurung in the TRC and former justice of the appellate court Lokendra Mallik at the CIED are decent people who may not blatantly flout the principles of transitional justice and contravene Supreme Court verdicts. Even so, the way the two have been going door-to-door calling on their political mentors and the chiefs of the security forces since their appointment doesn’t send a very encouraging signal about their independence.

The Supreme Court verdict of 26 February shook up the political establishment, and the ghosts of the dead have come back to haunt the security forces. Their carefully laid plans to evade the long arm of the law has suddenly unravelled. While the army and police are not saying much, the verdict has sent shock waves through the Maoist ranks. Their splinter groups came together this week to warn that the Supreme Court decision goes against “the spirit of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement” and they threatened that it could “take the country back to war”. And just so the message is clear, they want to terrorise the people with successive nationwide shutdowns in April unless they get political guarantees against prosecution for war crimes.

The main agenda of the Maoist-led 30 party alliance is supposedly ethnicity-based federalism, but the rump Maoists are using it to shield themselves from war crime trials. More puzzling is why the Madhesi parties are tagging along to protect the Maoists. After all, it is not their fight.

The other mystery is the hush from the internationals who, as erstwhile champions of transitional justice, pumped millions into NGOs tracking war-time human rights violations. Inconsistency, insincerity and geopolitical expediency has silenced them all. The need to protect the process has become more important than doing the right thing.

Even if the top parties come to an agreement on federalism and on the five disputed districts, therefore, it is unlikely that there will be a consensus on the constitution because the real issue here is transitional justice. Proof of this is how UCPN(M) Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal has repeatedly sabotaged efforts by the Madhesi Front leader Bijay Gachhadar to push what should have been a perfectly reasonable compromise formula to break the deadlock on federalism.

By putting a spanner in the works of the transitional justice mechanism, Dahal is letting down tens of thousands of his own cadre and their relatives as well as ordinary civilians who were tortured, executed or disappeared by the Royal Nepal Army, Armed Police Force and the Nepal Police between 1996-2006.

It is important to remember not to forget our past because if we do, we may repeat the horrors. Not to purse justice may send a message to misguided revolutionaries and the state that they can once more get away with crimes against humanity. Only the relatives of the victims have the right to forgive, but we as a nation should never forget.

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21. COW MAD IN INDIA
by Kai Friese
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(The New York Times - March 25, 2015)

NEW DELHI — There was a time, decades ago, when I liked to think I was the only Smiths fan in this city. But reading the papers recently, I was startled to discover that the erstwhile band’s frontman, Morrissey, shares a platform with India’s robustly chauvinist ruling party: Beef.

The Bharatiya Janata Party is rather more tempered than Morrissey, who believes that all “meat is murder.” Having once deemed cow slaughter a capital crime, earlier this month the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi passed a law in the northern state of Haryana that makes the act punishable by only up to 10 years in prison.

That law, along with a similar one recently passed in Maharashtra, brings to 20, out of 29, the number of states in India that completely ban cow slaughter. This, however, is a not-so-simple majority: Although the population of India is 80 percent Hindu and so largely non-beef eating, the beef ban’s advances have sparked considerable debate and confusion. You see, India is the second-largest exporter of beef in the world after Brazil.

Like all nationalisms, the Indian variety has its icons, and the cow features prominently in this pantheon. And ancient religious symbols like Kamadhenu, a heavenly cow often portrayed with a woman’s face, are routinely put to political use. In the early 1970s, for example, a popular election slogan of the ruling Congress Party was “Vote for Calf and Cow, Forget All Others Now.”

During last year’s national election campaign, Mr. Modi attacked the ruling Congress government for the “pink revolution” in India’s beef exports. Yet since he has come to power, beef exports have increased — by almost 17 percent in April-November 2014 compared with a year before — even as his party has cracked down on domestic beef consumption. Mr. Modi gestures at traditional bucolic virtues to mask an aggressive agenda of export-led development.

Trying to unravel these conundrums, I set out last week to talk to a few people I thought would care about the Cow Question.

Surprise. S.K. Swami, the vegetarian Hindu founder of the Love4Cow Trust, a network of so-called cow-protection activists, had no strong feelings about the burgeoning beef exports. “There’s a confusion about the categorization of cattle,” he explained. “We work to promote the economic and scientific virtues of Indian cows. We don’t work for buffaloes or anything else.”

He meant that the 1.89 million metric tons of beef India exported in 2012-2013 were derived largely from herds of the native water buffalo Bubalus bubalis. This beast is beef, according to the United States Department of Agriculture and the global meat industry, but in India it is known as “buff” and doesn’t count as forbidden flesh. The new laws apply only to Indian cows and bulls, mostly of the Bos taurus indicus subspecies, and possibly imported meats of the Bos taurus species. The law, as they say, is an ass (subgenus Asinus).

I also went to see Chiraguddin Qureshi, the Muslim owner of the Taj Mahal Meat Shop in the city’s historic Nizamuddin quarter, where a friend of mine buys veal for his signature Pothu Ulathu, or Kerala beef fry. Again, surprise. It’s a common presumption in India that the country’s substantial Muslim minority (over 13 percent of the population) are the primary consumers of beef. Yet Mr. Qureshi said, over the syncopated clatter of two men chopping meat on tree stumps, that quite a few of his customers, like my friend the Pothu Ulathu cook, are Hindus.

After all, there are those few beef-tolerant states, and some nominally Hindu communities and individuals with a taste for beef. Then there is economics: One consequence of the general taboo is that bovine flesh is often one of the cheaper forms of protein around, and a staple for many underprivileged communities. Cattle are still valued as a source of manure and draught power, and are left to reproduce freely at pasture. Restrictions on slaughter mean that herds in India are not culled as in countries with regulated beef industries, contributing to a large surplus of animals, particularly older males. In shops in Delhi, adult buff costs 180 rupees per kilo, compared with 420 rupees for goat.

Perversely, this market mechanism is just what has driven the boom in buffalo exports and substantial cattle smuggling (including of cows) to Bangladesh: Foreign prices are much higher than local prices. “Since this government came to power, 80 new slaughterhouses have been built in Uttar Pradesh alone,” Mr. Qureshi said of the Modi administration. “And it’s all for export.”

Which is why — another surprise — this butcher wants the beef-export business banned: Only exporters can afford to snap up the better stock. He said he longed for the “tender pink beef of our childhood,” and the buffaloes of Punjab and Haryana. “We can’t afford those animals any more; they all go to the exporters,” he said. The old India of small traditional butchers, he complained, is getting squeezed out by industrial-scale beef producers.

Mr. Swami, of the Love4Cow Trust, also bemoaned the loss of antique native breeds of milch cows to the modernization of dairy production and “the fad of crossbreeding with Jersey and Holstein lines.” “It’s hard to find a pure Indian herd today,” he said, lamenting the Sahiwal and the Gir, and other endangered lineages of indigenous cattle.

Later that evening, as I watched a talk-show debate titled “Beef and the ‘Bone’ of Contention,” some of these charming contradictions seemed to curdle into harsher ironies. It was a typical televised carnival of adversarial inanities, sententious sermons and barefaced untruths. And it was possibly more representative of the national temper than my own conversations.

There was the imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, who had dragged along his embarrassed Hindu cook to demonstrate his own credentials as a tolerant Muslim. “We eat beef,” he said, “but we don’t cook it at home.” The show’s anchor confused matters further by insisting that the new laws also banned buff. (They don’t.) Sudhanshu Trivedi, court astrologer to the home minister, masqueraded as a rationalist: “The ban on beef is logical, progressive and scientific.” But Rakesh Sinha, the director of a right-wing think tank, trumped him, asserting that “scientific research” had “proved” that eating beef is “dangerous.” A dubious claim, except, of course, if you live in Haryana.

Kai Friese is an Indian journalist based in New Delhi.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on March 26, 2015, in The International New York Times. 

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22. NARENDRA MODI GOVERNMENT TO TIGHTEN NORMS FOR SHOOTING FILMS AND DOCUMENTARIES IN INDIA
by Aman Sharma & Vasudha Venugopal, ET Bureau
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(The Economic Times, 27 March, 2015)

Once bitten, forever shy? That seems to the state of the central government, which, stung by the Nirbhaya documentary episode of a few weeks ago, has set into motion a process to tighten guidelines for monitoring films and documentaries being shot in India, especially by foreigners.

Officials in three ministries — Home, Information & Broadcasting and the Ministry of External Affairs — have been ordered to keep a close watch on proposals for shooting movies or documentaries, especially by foreigners, that are pending approvals, officials in these ministries have told ET. As part of this exercise, more than 200 permissions granted in the past couple of years will now be reviewed, ostensibly to ensure that these "do not spoil the image of the country".

"There is already a three-layered check in place, but it was circumvented in the case of India's Daughter," said a senior official in the I&B ministry, referring to Leslee Udwin's documentary film on the Nirbhaya rape case of 2012 whose telecast by the BBC earlier this month put an unflattering spotlight on the attitude towards women in India.

The government banned its telecast in the country, with some ministers even saying it was part of a conspiracy to shame India before the world.

"Now we want to ensure it is a fool-proof system," said the official cited above, adding that the government would henceforth stringently enforce the requirement that the synopsis of all such films is sent to all government departments, including the defence and home ministries, and permission is granted only after each department approves it.

Of the proposals for shooting of documentaries and short films that have been granted approval, more than 20 are on sensitive topics, which officials say have potential to "spoil the image of the country" if presented badly. Also, over 122 of them were given permission in 2012-2013 and about 80 in 2014. "We are in the process of reviewing the proposals and permissions," said a senior official asking not to be named.

Broadcast of India's Daughter by the BBC in defiance of India's entreaties not to, deeply embarrassed the government.

On one hand, it faced criticism from some quarters for allowing the documentary maker to gain access to the jailed accused in the case, while on the other, its decision to ban the film earned it censure from parts of civil society.

Stung by the episode, officials said the government would take all possible steps to prevent such an incident from occurring again.

The I&B ministry, which was not kept in the loop in the case of that documentary, is running a slide rule over permissions granted to filmmakers in the last four years and is also looking at intensifying the implementation of shooting and screening of these movies before they are cleared for telecast.

"The premiere of India's Daughter was decided without our consent. It was a lesson for us. We thought it was just a social project, but it had bigger players such as the BBC involved," said a senior official in I&B ministry, referring to Britain's state broadcaster.

CLOSER WATCH ON VISAS

Part of the government tightening of the rules could include foreign filmmakers and members of the diaspora making movies on India to be asked to screen movies in meetings where at least one senior government official is present.

Feedback from such screenings will be sent to all concerned departments.

The home and foreign ministries will keep a closer watch on the visas granted to overseas filmmakers. "Documentary filmmakers are issued journalist visas valid for up to six months. But many prolong their stay sometimes," said an official, adding: "There are absolutely no details about funding that we get to know from these filmmakers. Many of them use distributors based abroad, but co-producers based in India. We are looking at asking them for more details so that the intent of the project is clear." 

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23. Why the West is Losing the Information War
UKRAINE: A CREATIONIST MUSEUM?
by Ivaylo Grouev
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(counterpunch.org, March 27-29, 2015)

   “A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.”
   — Mark Twain

When I follow the coverage of the Ukrainian crisis in some of the most respectable mainstream Western media, I have the strange feeling that I am a part of a tour in a natural history museum. Not any kind of natural museum, but a rather unusual one — a creationist museum. For those who may not know a little factoid: there are over 30 in the USA alone and two in the province of Alberta, Canada — the birthplace of the Reform Party, now the Progressive Conservative Party which has been in power since 2006 (although both names are largely misleading).

One of the newest creationist museums in the US is in Petersburg, Kentucky, a 70,000 square-foot (6,500 square meters) “state of the art” facility. A true marvel of robotics, comparable to the best Hollywood could offer: real-size animatronic pterodactyls, realistic sounds of the crying “king of the lizards” — Tyrannosaurus rex — surrounded by the jubilant and carefree robotic children of Adam and Eve. One may be astonished to learn that this $27 million facility is not losing money, on the contrary — it attracted over 715,000 visitors from all over the world willing to pay $30 per ticket for entry. (1)

So where is the parallel with regards to the coverage of Ukraine? First parallel: the facts, the evidence, the exhibit. In general, the impressive display in Petersburg is consistent with the latest findings of modern paleontology, size and shape of the bone fragments and skeletons, as well as rather believable depictions of full size majestic dinosaurs; certainly all of them could be proudly exhibited in any natural science museum. Furthermore, the offspring of Adam and Eve also looks quite realistic and could be a part of any ambitious curator strategy depicting the dawn of early human settlement.

The only problem is that all of that is pure falsification! It is a well known fact that the world is not 5,000 years old, but 13.2 billion years old and humans, amoeba, killer whales and bacteria responsible for dysentery were not created in 6 days before God’s well deserved weekend. So where is Ukraine here?

As some readers may have noticed, a real life exhibition en plein air just opened in downtown Kiev, with tanks, armored vehicles, machine guns and burned/melted vehicles as evidence of the Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine. The authenticity of these exhibits is unquestionable — indeed these are real tanks, real armored vehicles, real machine guns and real burned cars. However, just like in a creationist museum, the only missing element is the context.

Yes — we read, saw, heard, and became deeply traumatized by countless facts and evidence in the mainstream Western media coverage of the Ukrainian crisis. We saw pictures of armed men, soldiers, blown-up houses, car wreckage, and tanks as well as a wreckage of a passenger airliner, rows of refugees, starvation, elderly living in basements without food and electricity — many gruesome pictures of dead bodies and separated body parts. All of this is true, and it represents the heartbreaking human tragedy happening right now in Ukraine. However, there is a problem with the presentation of this reality. The general narrative, just like the creationists placing harmless dinosaur’s (presumably vegetarian as babysitters because violence did not exist in the Garden of Eden) the “evidence” found in the Western mainstream media, presents a distorted picture of the real context. Following the logic of the Ukrainian version of “Genesis”, the pro-western liberal democratic regime in Kiev will resolve all economic, political and social issues in the country plagued by corruption. Therefore, according to this narrative, all facts and exhibits should be carefully arranged just as any devoted curator in a creationist museum would do. And just like in the creationist museum, this exhibit presents an insurmountable challenge to basic logic, where most, if not all questions, remain unanswered.

Let’s name a few of them. On February 20th, 2014, why did the Ukrainian Police Forces, known as Berkut, kill its own members? The facts are there — 18 officers were shot dead and over a dozen sustained gunshot wounds.(2) This is a question of little relevance in the meta narrative, along with questions surrounding the “accidental fire” in Odessa on May 2, 2014, where 48 people (other sources claimed much larger numbers) were burnt alive, while those who managed to jump from the inflamed building were clubbed to death by the Maidan activists in front of the police who did nothing. Why has Western media never asked these questions to the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office, even a year later? Why did the Ukrainian Government refuse the International Criminal Court to investigate the matter? Why have these questions never been asked by the bastions of Western journalism?

Not only that, the Western media also preferred not to bother covering facts contradicting the logic of the Ukrainian “Genesis”. Those who authorized and are responsible for the indiscriminate shelling of large urban centers such as Donesk, Luhansk, Mariopol, Kramatorsk, Slovyansk are left unknown. So are those who authorized the use of weapons forbidden by the Geneva Convention, such as white phosphorus and cluster shells. Questions about the nature of the famous ATO (anti-terrorist operation) which use heavy artillery, aviation, and tanks against a sizable (6.8 million) civilian population in Donetsk and Luhansk that surpasses the total population of the three Baltic states (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania) and seems of little interest to the Western media.(3)

Instead of answers, we were offered dramatic pictures; however, the same technique was applied: the context was missing. The fact that photos of Russian tanks crossing the Ukrainian border were not only published, but discussed on the floor of the US Congress (they were in fact genuine, but depicting Russian tanks crossing the Russian-Georgian border in 2008) as well as the crash of the Netherlands’ passenger airplane, where the face of Putin was placed beside pictures of the victims. Needless to mention, his picture was just as genuine as the pictures of the victims of this tragedy. However, there was complete media apathy about the records of the MH17 black box which was delivered five days after the disaster. To find a solution to all unanswered questions this narrative offered only one option — it is always Putin’s fault.

Indeed Putin became the “darling” of the Western media: 5,771 publications in the US, 8,929 in Germany and 5,209 in the UK in 2,014 alone.(4) This is a lot of coverage. In this biblical script, the newly elected president Poroshenko wears the white hat, the Russian president Putin — the black one. Suddenly Putin developed the worst ever multi-personality syndrome, reincarnating Stalin, Hitler and the notorious ISIS “John Jihad” altogether. (Thanks CNN, the mystery was cleared up. It was indeed Putin) .(5) However, to keep the record straight the unprecedented demonization of the president of the Russian Federation was not an isolated event, it was consistent with the recent effort of the villainization of Saddam Hussein (the Butcher of Baghdad), Muammar Gaddafi (Mad Man, Mad Dog), Slobodan Milosevic (Butcher of the Balkans), which, please note, were all promoted prior to the launch of US military campaigns in Iraq, Libya, and Yugoslavia. Just like the creationists, for the Western media, apologists of the Ukrainian “Genesis”, space, time and logic is of a little consideration — similarly to the Mesozoic era which started 252 million years ago and ended 66 million years later was easily compressed in less than few thousand years. The same technique was applied to a much shorter time period. In 2007, Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” — was Putin. Seven years later in 2014 he became “Hitler”.(6)

What is remarkable in the current “Information War” is how context free Western media is becoming unrelenting in self-disillusioned fable creativity. To cement the myth Putin, the ultimate villain front page titles screaming loudly “Putin killed my son!” may soon not be sufficiently dramatic. Something more spectacular such as “Putin killed God’s Son!” may be totally conceivable evidence in the “creationist media environment”, where time zones are easily compressed, with no questions asked. Indeed Putin may very well travel in time to Palestine in Year 0, ride a friendly pterodactyl to Golgotha, subsequently fatally pierce the dehydrated body of Christ, and on his way back stop in Munich in 1938 to have breakfast with Hitler. Is this farfetched? Of course, but so is the story of pterodactyls being the first babysitters, as well as the curators’ logic of the en plein air museum in Kiev exhibiting “Russian” tanks with current Ukrainian VIN numbers.

The Western media has been reporting half-truths and barefaced lies, depicting the new regime in Kiev as “democratic” and the “rebels” as terrorists. The nature of this “propaganda” resembles more of a televised evangelist preaching from San Antonio, Texas, than a reportage from respectable media outlets, some of which have a renowned tradition in this business. This is one of the reasons why it is rapidly losing credibility and ultimately market share. In contrast, the social media blogosphere “exploded” on the subject of the Ukrainian crisis by offering alternative reporting, videos, frontline testimonials, and most importantly, alternative content analysis and context.

Clearly, there is an appetite for different reporting and “naked” first-hand facts as well as critical analysis contradicting the established meta narrative. Some media outlets such as Russia Today (RT), are specifically targeting this type of rapidly growing audience in the West, Europe and North America. It is not surprising that now RT is the second most-watched foreign news channel in the United States (after BBC World News) and the number one foreign network in the largest metropolis’ such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C. Its global spread reaches an impressive audience of 700 million viewers.(7)

So why the sudden success of this quite “young” competitor? The explanation lies in the Western propaganda make-up often reaching levels suitable primarily to infantile youngsters or elderly, self-disillusioned evangelicals. Clearly this is not a winning proposition, and things are not looking optimistic for the traditional bastions of journalism in the West. Ratings are plummeting, especially for the generation under 35. Naturally, if one day some of them may become extinguished just like the dinosaurs, the blame should not be attributed to a catastrophic asteroid.

The reason for their demise is obvious. It is a prolonged blatant complacency to a Big Lie and a refusal to apply personal and professional integrity. Let’s not forget the simple fact that Fox News Propaganda Style “Facts could be proven wrong, opinions – not!” could work for many, but definitely not for all. Why? To use one of Bertoldt Brecht famous citations: “Man has one defect: He can think.”

Ivaylo Grouev teaches Political Science at the University of Ottawa.

References
1. Creation Musuem. org
2. Katchanovski, Ivan. ‘The “Snipers’ Massacre” on the Maidan in Ukraine.‘ February 20, 2015.
3. Rothoct, Andred. Ukraine Used Cluster Bombs, Evidence Indicates, New York Times, October 20, 2014.
4. Khlebnikov, Alexey. Russia is now monitoring the world’s mass media for bias. Russia Direct. February 25, 2015.
5. Jalil, Justin and J.A. Gross. Vlad the beheader: CNN apologizes for Putin gaffe, The Times of Israel, March 1, 2015.
6. Stengel, Richard. Person of the Year 2007: Choosing Order Before Freedom, Time, December 19, 2007.
7. RT reaches 700MN viewers worldwide. Rapid TV News. 11 September 2014.

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24. LABOUR, LIFE AND LOVE: MARXIST FEMINISTS JOIN THE DOTS
by Cynthia Cockburn
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(Open Democracy - 27 March 2015)

Last weekend two generations of international feminists met at a conference in Berlin designed to prompt fresh thinking on Marxist feminist theory and inspire the renewal of a socialist feminist movement.

Two older women in intense discussion Since the 1970s, a sizeable fraction of the feminist movement has striven to bring together in one coherent body of thought the Marxist critique of capitalist exploitation and our home-grown feminist critique of male power. 'Socialist feminism'. Propelling this analysis into activism, has seen ups and downs in the ensuing forty years, a wavy graph line that parallels the fluctuating fortunes of trade unionism, left parties and anti-capitalist movements.

An international three-day conference on Marxist-Feminism took place in Berlin last weekend, designed to boost the upward slant of that hesitant graph line. Enabled by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, which hosted the event in its spacious premises in formerly Communist east Berlin, the event drew together contributors from across Europe but also from far afield - India, Australia, Turkey, Latin America, the USA, Canada and elsewhere. The invited speakers, many of whom knew each other as hardy survivors from an earlier phase of the women's movement, were astonished to find themselves now in a crowd of five hundred participants, mainly young and mainly resident in Germany, seemingly attracted by a potential renewal of left feminism. What's more, as the conference progressed, many of this audience joined energetically in the debate and seemed hungry for a productive outcome, for ideas that could energize and guide a movement of deep social change.

Woman speaking behind table The conference saw the launch of two new books. One was Der im Gehen erkundete Weg: Marxismus-Feminismus (Making the Road as We Walk It: Marxism-Feminism) by Frigga Haug, who has also devoted many years to editing a multi-volume dictionary of Marxist-Feminist concepts, the Historisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch des Feminismus, similarly published by the Institute for Critical Theory, Berlin. The second publication launched at the conference was a collection of essays on Marxist 'key words' as reworked and used today by feminists. Titled simply Marxism and Feminism and published by Zed Books, London, it was edited by Shahrzad Mojab of the University of Toronto, Frigga Haug's principal partner in conceptualizing the conference. 

Many of the presentations at the conference, like the chapters in these books, dwelt on production, on work and labour power. Frigga Haug, in opening the conference, foreshadowed this economic focus. 'For theoretical consistency', she said, Marxism-feminism 'must think of gender relations as relations of production'. This follows necessarily, she believes, from the perception that a dominant class (be it the owners of the means of production, or men in relation to women) has 'the ability to dispose of others' labour power'. In this spirit some of the conference papers dealt with the experience of female workers - for instance in Spain in present conditions of austerity, and in Latin America and India under the contemporary onslaught of neo-liberal global capitalism. Two speakers stressed the self-interest with which bureaucracies and businesses today welcome into prominent jobs a certain category of aspiring women, products of liberal feminism. Hester Eisenstein, whose recent book Feminism Seduced explores the way global elites use women's liberation to their own advantage, was one of them.

The difference between foundational Marxism and feminist Marxism however is that the latter, as Frigga went on to say, understands the relations of production as including not only the production of the means of life (in farms, fisheries, factories) but also the production of life itself (in human pregnancy, birthing, caring, and in nature). In this vein, many of the conference presentations dealt with health services and the 'care sector'. The natural world was discussed, in relation to women and to the labour movement, and its manipulation and devastation by corporate interests.

Sadly, Lena Gunnarsson had to cancel her attendance at the conference. I imagine that she would have treated us to some of the electrifying uses of Marxist concepts she and Anna Jonasdottir have proposed, extending what is understood as 'the production of life itself' beyond conception, pregnancy and parturition, to include emotional life, feelings. They urge us to understand 'love' - bonding, desire, ecstasy - as a material practice occupying the position in feminist theory that 'work' occupies in Marxist theory. Just as the capitalist grows rich on the surplus value generated by the worker's alienated labour, men grow strong by appropriating more of women's loving and caring than they give back to women.

Not everyone in the hall was happy with the scope of the thinking presented from the platform. There were complaints from some that, notwithstanding a contribution by Tucker Farley on lesbian movements, the tone of the conference was overwhelmingly heteronormative, with LGBTQ issues sidelined. And one or two participants, I'm told, walked out of the hall, angered that racialization, racism and racial domination were neglected by the speakers. This was a little unfair, however, for the issue of identity politics versus intersectionality featured in several presentations and was hotly debated. Had they stayed around for the closing lecture they would have heard a compelling tale of subaltern groups from Gyatri Chakravorty Spivak, drawing on her intense engagement with deeply subordinated village communities in caste-ridden, class-divided and post-colonial India.

Woman standing, clapping It's often remarked that, when feminists try to bring Marxist and feminist theory into a single frame, patriarchy tends to shrink into a mere adjective glossing the principal system: 'patriarchal capitalism'. Perhaps because we feminists have contributed a wealth of analysis of women's work, mainstream Marxist economics has deepened its understanding of the mode of production by paying more attention to the way capitalists benefit from the sexual division of labour in society and employment. But the left has been less ready to hear us when we say that men as men, too, have always had an interest in the sexual division of labour, strenuously resisting employers' attempts to substitute cheap females for skilled craftsmen, while profiting from women's unpaid work in the home. Perhaps it's because men are disinclined to acknowledge that they share an interest with the ruling class in this.

Engaging with men in Marxist and socialist milieux we have sometimes been less than assertive in stating (and they have been disinclined to grasp) that there's more than one kind of ruling, one kind of ruling group and one kind of ruled. There is more than one axis of power. Patriarchal power, exerted in myriad ways that cannot be reduced to the economic, is still somehow elusive in the Marxist context, alluded to but seldom brought to view and challenged. The under-stressing of male supremacy was evident, I felt, even during these intense three days in Berlin. The word 'capitalism' was mentioned perhaps twenty times for every mention of 'patriarchy', and the word 'women', at a guess, fifty times for any voicing of the word 'men'.

This could have been due in part to the fact that militarism, war and violence barely surfaced in our discussions. Gender power as we know and suffer it - call it patriarchy, fratriarchy, phallocracy, male supremacy or what you will - is more easily perceived, and its workings understood, if we bring to view what Charles Tilly called 'the means and forces of coercion', the wealth that states or aspirant rulers exact by tribute or taxation to pay for external war and internal repression, and the men and weapons those resources buy. Marxist theory now has the conceptual tools, thanks to Tilly, to address the relationship between the means and forces of production and those of coercion. Our task as Marxist feminists is to clarify the part that gender plays in 'the continuum of violence', the relationship of socially-constituted masculinity to the structural violence of capitalism and the physical violence of militarism, to say nothing of the overwhelming preponderance of men in the incidence of violent crime. Male-on-male violence tells us much about the masculine (racialized and class) hierarchies of patriarchy; male-on-female violence, especially sexualized violence, tells us yet more about the systemic subordination of women. I touched on this in my own paper, and Erica Burman made mention of the gross incidence of sexual abuse and violence that has been coming to light in British society, in which even the left is not innocent.

Quite a few men were present in the audience at the Berlin conference, and it would have been productive, I feel, had they shared thoughts with us from their own positionality, about the persistence of patriarchy into the modern era, its renewal in religious structures and dogma, its empowerment in ever more costly weapons systems, and the way class power, racializing power and gender power are enlaced in the institutions of our everyday lives - in factories, banks, science labs, schools, churches, families. Marxist men engaging constructively with Marxist feminism in facing up to and refusing male dominance 'in the institutions' (including trade unions and left parties) would help put gender transformation - the profound re-shaping of masculinities and femininities from an early age by conscious policy and deliberate practice - onto the anti-capitalist revolutionary agenda. It would greatly strengthen the likelihood of a forward moving, mixed-gender, socialist feminist activism. For this is what last week's Marxist feminist revival in Berlin is ultimately about.

Watch out for the sequel, promised by Swedish feminists, for 2016.

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25. BEYOND DOUBT: A DOSSIER ON GANDHI'S ASSASSINATION
by Teesta Setalvad 
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The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on 30 January 1948 was a declaration of war and a statement of intent. For the forces who conspired in the killing, the act was a declaration of war against the secular, democratic Indian state and all those who stood to affirm these principles, as well as an announcement of a lasting commitment to India as a Hindu Rashtra . It was also an act to signal the elimination of all that India s national movement against imperialism stood for. Beyond Doubt is a dossier of historical and critical documents that aims to contextualize the politics, motivations and circumstances behind the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Attempts to legitimize the act of killing and to celebrate the killers have re-doubled since May 2014, following the coming to power of the new regime in New Delhi. 

Paperback: 278 pages
Publisher: Tulika Books; First Edition edition (9 February 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9382381503
ISBN-13: 978-9382381501

You can order the book here:
http://tinyurl.com/nu36xqu

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26. MEDICINE, HEALTHCARE AND THE RAJ: THE UNACKNOWLEDGED LEGACY
by Daya Varma
=========================================
The book is a significant intervention in the debates and existing scholarship on colonialism and medicine. Equally critical of the postmodern perspectives and of those who claim modern medicine as ‘gift’ from the western world, virtually identifying modern medicine with ‘western’ medicine, Daya Varma sifts the irrational from the rational critiques of imperialism. He makes a strong defense of modern medicine, preventive care, hygiene and public health as core of a viable strategy for accessible medicine.

Particularly striking are the linkages he makes between poverty and health, and between the state of public health in Britain and colonial India in the corresponding years, themes ignored by most scholars. Less concerned with the effect of modern medicine on ‘indigenous’ medicine, he argues for criteria that center on the health of Indian people.

Unlike most researchers and scholars of the subject, the author is well-versed in theory and practice of medicine and in medical history, which lends his book an originality and wider perspective. The book both provokes and educates.

Written in a lucid and accessible language, and with a clear historical approach, the book would be of as much interest to lay persons as to historians and those in the medical profession.

About the book:
“An insightful and eminently readable critical account of the history of medicine and healing in the Indian context. A medical practitioner by training, Varma provides a compelling critique of existing fashionable approaches to the study of medicine in colonial India and refreshingly rejects labels such as “indigenous” and “Western” medicine etc. The application of a materialist perspective for understanding the interaction between medicine, colonialism and capitalism in India allows Varma to provide a realistic and convincing account of the progress and problems of modern medicine on a global scale. This gem of a book is highly recommended for anyone interested in a critical understanding of the enduring contemporary relevance of the history of medicine.”
Zaheer Baber, Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto

“In this new book, Daya Varma, the justly acclaimed author of Reason and Medicine, the landmark study on the art and science of healing since antiquity, challenges the traditional and postmodern critics of colonial – that is, modern – medicine. Building on Karl Marx’s insights that colonialism had both destructive and regenerative aspects, Varma as a leading historian of medicine provides a positive but critical look at the legacy of British colonialism in the area of medicine and public health. Drawing on a vast literature across disciplines, he effectively demolishes the case of the critics. Varma takes a holistic view of medicine, embedding its study in society, economy and polity, in particular the poverty dimension. There is a lot to learn from this new authoritative study on colonialism and medicine in India.”
Baldev Raj Nayar, Professor Emeritus, Political Science, McGill University, Montreal

About the author:
Daya Ram Varma, MD, PhD (1929-2015) was Professor Emeritus, Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, McGill University, Montreal. He studied at the King George Medical College, Lucknow.  He is author of 'Reason and Medicine: art and science of healing from antiquity to modern times' (2013)

CONTENTS:
Acknowledgements – Time Line – Preface        
Chapters: 1.  Introduction, 2. The Domain of Medicine, 3.  Pre-Colonial Medicine, 4.  Poverty in Pre-Colonial, Colonial and Post-Colonial India, 5.  Poverty, Healthcare and Medicine in Britain, 6.  Colonial Climatology and Anthropology, 7.  Epidemics, Infectious Diseases and the Origins of Public Health, 8. Medical Education and Health Services in Colonial India. 9. Post-colonial Medicine and Healthcare, 10. Historiography, 11. Conclusions

216 (xx, 196) pages
Includes bibliographies and references.
Hardcase. demy octavo 8.5 x 5.5 in.         
ISBN  978-93-83968-06-0
Rs500

Available at major bookstores and with our main distributors: IPD Alternatives 35A/1 Shahpur Jatt, New Delhi 110049 Tel. 011-26491448/26492040 e-mail ipd.alternatives at gmail.com

To buy directly from Three Essays:
www.threeessays.com/books/medicine-healthcare-and-the-raj/

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27. WAR AND REVOLUTION IN CATALONIA, 1936-1939
by Pelai Pagès i Blanch, Translated by Patrick L. Gallagher 
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In War and Revolution in Catalonia, 1936-1939, Pelai Pagès i Blanch analyses the political and military evolution of the events in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War: the street battles that defeated the military rebellion; the social revolution that pervaded all levels of Catalonia's politics, economy, and culture; the gradual erosion of workers' power, culminating in the May Events; and Catalonia's eventual fall to Franco's forces.

Pagès i Blanch demonstrates the extent to which the war was lost when the Republican leaders, in order to ‘unify’ the left against Franco and fascism, turned their backs on the social revolution. This translation of Pagès i Blanch's landmark study is the first full-length monograph in English to focus on Catalonia's experience during the war
About the author

Pelai Pagès i Blanch Ph.D. (1949), University of Barcelona, is Professor of Contemporary History at that university. He is the author of several monographs and articles on the Spanish Civil War, including The War Industry Commision of Catalonia, 1936-1938 (Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat, 2008).
http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/War-and-Revolution-in-Catalonia-1936-1939

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South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. Newsletter of South Asia Citizens Web: 
www.sacw.net/

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DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.
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