Garga Chatterjee

On 22nd August, the Supreme Court of India’s five-member bench ruled that instant Triple Talaq was illegal and unconstitutional. This is but a small change in the Muslim Personal Law in the Indian Union which needs much more comprehensive reform. In the 1950s, several laws passed by the Parliament of India were to codify and […]

The Bihar state of the Indian Union has just witnessed the most serious post-election reversal of its people’s electoral will. In its last assembly elections, the citizens of Bihar had delivered a direct reversal of the electoral mandate of Lok Sabha 2014 that has enabled the BJP to do a near sweep of Bihar’s Lok […]

  “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce”, said Karl Marx. It is unlikely he had the farce that took place in New Delhi recently in mind. On30th June 2017, history repeated itself as farce, as the Indian Union’s incumbent BJP government presented its ‘revolutionary’ step — the Goods and Services Tax or […]

Middle class citizens of the sub continental fractions of the British empire get to specially engage with each other in mutual hate in the run up, during and follow up of a cricket match that involves any two of the sighted male cricket teams of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. War is the only other thing […]

Recently in Kolkata, an interesting saga played itself out. Barkati, the infamous imam of the famous Tipu Sultan mosque situated in central Kolkata, was removed from the position by the mosque authorities amidst huge protests against him by fellow Muslims. This character who styled himself as the ‘Shahi’ Imam is a non-Bengali import into Bengal. […]

There is this amazing guy Ollie Rye, who makes history based animated videos and for a few years, has been putting them on YouTube. There, I came across an animated video on the history of what is now vaguely called South Asia. It starts roughly with the Harappan era and ends with the 21st century. […]

A diverse group may come together or federate on points of common interest if unity is mutually beneficial. A federal government is one that oversees a diverse group of governments who have come together in pursuance of some common interests. The federating units retain autonomy in some aspects of their existence and cede it in […]

  In the first week of April, the BJP organised numerous marches with open sword wielding activists on the occasion of Ram Nabami. This religious occasion had been unheard-of in West Bengal except in the Hindi speaking pockets of the state. For Bengalis, Ram has largely remained a fictional figure. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement had […]

Yogi Adityanath, a radical Hindu ‘monk’ and a long time veteran in the politics of communal hatred, has been elected as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, the largest state of the Indian Union. If we measure humanity not in money or perceived prestige or whiteness but at a very basic level of numbers, the […]