Reflections

Roadkills have become a fairly common occurrence with the advent of motorized transport. As the motor car, the truck and other vehicles began to speed along highways which cut through wildlife areas, animals began to die as they were run over by speeding vehicles. The term roadkill refers to killing by motorized vehicles, but in North Bengal, the Doon area of Uttrakhand and several South Indian forests, trains are also pretty lethal for wildlife. In the Dooars in particular, elephant deaths are common and have become a regular occurrence after a broad gauge line was allowed to pierce the forest of North Bengal. My personal acquaintance with roadkills in India was with dogs. All Indian drivers are familiar with the spectacle of a dead mongrel lying on the road, getting more and more smashed as vehicle after vehicle goes over it. I have even known sadistic drivers who liked to purposely run over dogs. However, because stray dogs are so common in India, I never really felt any great re...

Hugo Chavez as a Second Lieutenant in the Military Academy at Caracas, Venezuela( From the Venezuelan Ministry of Information and Communication website) This tribute was posted in Rabble.ca Hugo Chavez has died -- undefeated. Yes, undefeated. Chavez, no matter how many times the corporate media and the cheerleaders of the status quo call him a dictator, was elected repeatedly with overwhelming majorities. No matter how many times this slur is moronically or mendaciously repeated, people know the truth. No less than Jimmy Carter certified Venezuela's elections as amongst the most fair and transparent his organization has ever observed. And the voter turnouts that elected Chavez were usually far, far higher than those in the U.S. The voices that cheer and mock the death of Hugo Chavez are in fact mocking democracy and the people of Venezuela, who elected him and who have re-elected him time and time again -- most recently by a decisive majority in October, 2012. But today...

Hugo Chavez died on the 5th March 2013. This was not entirely unexpected. Chavez was suffering from a malignancy which had recurred, it was obvious that this was one battle that the brave champion of the poor was not going to win. His death led to unconcealed rejoicing in the West, his defiance of the US and his strenuous and successfulHe efforts to unite the South American republics against US dominance did not go down well particularly with the Republican right. He had flaws, but he showed that socialist ideas still made sense in a post of modern world. I was one of his fervent admirers. I reproduce below two articles. One from the New Statesman written just before his death. The second from the radical website rabble.ca.I think they make a fairer assessment of one of this century's most important politicians than more easily available obituaries. Hugo Chávez: Man against the world by Richard Gott. ( from the New Statesman, 30 January, 2013 ) An atmosphere of sadne...

David Hare was instrumental in the development of education in India and more particularly in Calcutta. Institutions which he, among others was instrumental in founding and nurturing in the early days include the Hindu college ( Presidency College), the present day Hare School and of course, our very own Medical College. The David Hare block in Medical College where I have studied, worked and lived for more years than I care to remember. As the first Principal of the college has testified, he was its first secretary and literally spent much of his time counseling students, sorting out problems and encouraging the Hindu boys particularly as they were breaking all manner of caste taboos in order to do dissection. The story of Madhusudhan Gupta and his colleagues who broke these barriers in order to start modern medical education in India and Asia is well known. Let me quote Dr Barmley as he wrote in a letter addressed to the Government: "I do not intend to dwell upon my di...

The First World War led to what was till then an unprecedented slaughter of men and women. It was not realized then that this was a prelude to an even greater slaughter just 3 decades later.However the Great War as it was then called, formally started in July 1914. India was also at war, not that Indians had much to say about it. However the Indian army which was even then the largest voluntary fighting force in the world comprised 240,000 men; by the time the war ended the size had nearly doubled. Despite the fact that India and particularly Bengal had been extremely restive during the years previous to the War, the colonial masters were pleasantly surprised to find that Indians responded to the needs of the empire wholeheartedly. Even Bengal which had recently “unsettled” the settled fact of the partition of Bengal and had been punished by the shift of the capital to Delhi, responded positively to the war effort, in the form of an ambulance corps, a signal company and an infantry r...