Geography Archives: Asia

The two retired professors are internationally reputed scholars, and are serving the honourary position of Professor Emeritus.

Meet Karl Marx. This is not only a wreath and a silent tribute before Marx’s grave in London’s Highgate cemetery.

The year 2018 marks the bicentenary of Karl Marx, a philosopher and thinker who is partially understood without being read by his critics.

Kim Jong Un’s meeting with Moon Jae-In and the coming summit with Donald Trump do not constitute a volte-face by the North Korean leader.

Contrary to a widely-held belief that U.S. President Trump acts only out of impulse or is being unpredictable, I believe that the opposite is the case.

There is no time for long introductions. The world is, possibly heading for yet another catastrophe. This one, if we, human beings will not manage to prevent it, could become our final.

Did Maulana Bhashani—the famous Red Maulana—ever read Marx? I recently asked this question to a prominent biographer of Bhashani—Syed Abul Maksud.

No I am not talking about my encounter with the ghost of Karl Marx in Bangladesh.

Friedrich Engels, while informing a common friend about Marx’s death in March 1883, wrote “…mankind is shorter by a head, and the greatest head of our time at that”.

In this in-depth interview conducted in Dakar, Samir Amin speaks on a wide range of topics: globalisation; generalised monopoly capital; the alarming growth of inequality; the role of the state in the neoliberal era; globalisation and delinking; capitalism and modernity; the return of fascism in the contemporary capitalist world, and more.

Libya is now a textbook example of a failed state and – more importantly from North Korea’s perspective — a testament to what the U.S. government does to countries who threaten its agenda or superpower status, especially ones it persuades to disarm and denuclearize.

Ashok Mitra who passed away on May1, 2018, was the doyen among Left intellectuals in the country, held in the highest esteem by one and all for his absolute integrity, his outstanding intellect and his commitment to the cause of the working people.

The encroachments of European traders, missionaries, explorers, planters, soldiers, and especially scholars and teachers, represented not civilization but rather, its antithesis.

THE U.S. has been accused of human rights abuses, serious infringements of its citizens’ rights and “systematic racial discrimination” in a damning report released by China.

In late 1965 the rumblings of the Cultural Revolution had begun, due to grumblings over corruption, revisionism (“taking the capitalist road,” selling out socialism, etc.) and the snooty technocratism of urbanites. The party, led by Mao, saw these trends as threats to the common good, the revolution, and the Party’s “Heavenly Mandate” – the millennia-old concept that China’s rulers are chosen by Heaven to rule, and that they must actually display this divinity via perfectly moral conduct and leadership…or else revolt is justified.

There is a lot of concern over the possibility of a trade war between China and the US. In early April President Trump announced that his administration was considering levying $100 billion of additional tariffs on Chinese exports, after the Chinese government responded to a previously proposed U.S. tariff hike on Chinese goods of $50 billion by announcing its own equivalent tariff hikes on U.S. exports. And the Chinese government has made clear it will again respond in kind if these new tariffs are actually imposed.

Indian Americans’ susceptibility to conservative politics in the U.S. is itself a contradictory affair—on the one hand they have largely voted Democrat, but have publicly remained ambivalent about racial politics in the country. One key element of this ambivalence is the question of affirmative action and meritocracy.

That China and the U.S. are moving in opposite directions is not a new trend, but it has been brought into sharper focus in the Trump era. Growing anxious about its diminishing international authority, the U.S. demonstrates increasing hostility towards China.

With the acceptance of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s invitation, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited China from the 25th of this month to the 28th, for the first time since assuming office in 2011. Timed just before Kim’s meeting with the South Korean President Moon Jae-in the next month, followed by a summit with U.S President Donald Trump-where the prospects of denuclearization is expected to be discussed-this meeting with Xi Jinping, in which Kim has reaffirmed his commitment to denuclearization, has been seen my observers as a crucial diplomatic development.

In a slave society, one can argue, the interest of the slaves lies in keeping the slave owner happy, for otherwise he is likely to flog and whip them mercilessly which would cause them great agony. Likewise in a caste society, one can argue, the interest of the Dalit lies in being as inconspicuous as possible, in not ‘polluting’ the upper castes through his presence, for otherwise he is likely to be beaten and lynched.