THE other remarkable woman I met was the landlady of my comrades from Karnataka who were in Cuba with me.  They had no idea of her history and thought that she was just a very nice, thoughtful old lady who was very hospitable and generous.  One morning, one of them saw her taking something out of a box and looking at it.  When she saw that he was looking at her, she quickly put it away.  He asked her what it was and she wouldn’t answer, just brushing away his question but when he insisted she told him that it was a medal that had been given to her by Fidel.When I heard about this, I was ver

ON April 20, despite the sweltering heat, the Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata was packed with thousands of workers, farmers, agricultural labourers, and slum dwellers who had gathered for a historic rally organised by four major mass organisations: CITU, the Kisan Sabha, Paschim Banga Basti Unnayan Samiti, and the AIAWU.CPI(M) state secretary Mohammad Salim, addressing the gathering, underscored the increasing role of toiling people in reshaping Bengal’s future and emphasized that only a revitalised Left movement could offer a path forward.

THE use of the term neo-fascism by CPI(M) referring to the current regime in India has ignited a serious debate within the Left as well as other sections of our country. Certainly, the political nature of any regime should be analysed primarily on the basis of its class composition, contradictions and political-economic content, and not the degree of repression unleashed by the State. The action of the State may vary in different junctures of history, in different countries and the bourgeois democratic parliamentary system may be mutilated by many of the authoritarian rulers.

WAQF, an Arabic word, refers to the creation of a property for religious and charitable purposes. When a converted Jew offered a piece of land to Hazrat Mohammad, he advised that the land be donated in the name of Allah as a Waqf. The proceeds from this Waqf were to be used for the benefit of poor Muslim widows, students, or for mosques, madrasas, and orphanages. As a result, lakhs of Waqf properties were established in various countries.

INTERNATIONAL students on US campuses are at present a terrified lot: they can be abducted, sent to some detention centre hundreds of miles from where they live, kept there for any length of time, and then deported abroad. And all this can happen to them not because they have violated any known law, but entirely at the whim of the administration.