In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, human rights activist Malcolm X voiced his deep-seated distrust of what he referred to as a faction of the “white liberal”: “The liberal elements of whites are those who have perfected themselves to the Negro as a friend of the Negro. Getting sympathy of the Negro, getting the allegiance … Read More
Megha Majumdar’s A Burning, set in and around Kolkata, couldn’t be more topical. Moving with the inevitability of parable, it lacerates the Hindu right-wing by following violence until it reaches its logical endpoint. In A Burning, Jivan, a young Muslim woman, is thrown into jail for her alleged role in a terror attack. Lovely, a … Read More
Fifty years ago this month, a movement for economic justice built upon racial solidarity was brought to a halt in the US national capital of Washington DC. That movement was the Poor People’s Campaign, created by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in December 1967. In the wake of the civil rights victories of the mid-60s, … Read More
Jagmeet Singh just got engaged and the hype is making me go back to one very telling conversation. “Just think about this,” my dad told me, as he texted me the link to Jagmeet Singh’s bizarre interview with Terry Milewski. I am Canadian by birth, Punjabi Sikh by ethnicity, American by naturalization, and socialist by … Read More
Ravi Bhalla, the first Sikh man to become a mayor in New Jersey, was sworn into his new position as mayor of Hoboken on New Year’s Day. His first action as mayor was to declare Hoboken a “fair and welcoming city” by executive order. While the declaration shies away from the word “sanctuary,” perhaps in … Read More
Ajit Pai, the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission in the US, is the first Indian-American to hold the chairmanship. But before you get excited about the representation of minorities in federal leadership positions, it’s worth learning what Pai actually stands for, and what changes he is trying to bring to the ways we … Read More
Local elections can get ugly, but Edison, New Jersey’s school board elections just took it to the next level. This week, an anonymous campaign mailer appeared in residents’ mailboxes proclaiming, “Make Edison Great Again.” What is keeping Edison from being great already? All the Asians, apparently. Some mysterious concerned citizens of Edison took it upon … Read More
Sometime in the 1970s, my father shook hands with Indira Gandhi, and she told him and a whole cohort of restless young men like him that their services were needed for the greater good of Asian solidarity. Then she loaded them all onto a plane. I don’t bother anymore to ascertain the truth of this … Read More
Hindu nationalists are up to their fascist antics yet again, this time in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in India. Sangeet Som, a lawmaker from the the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claimed at a political rally on October 16th that the revered Taj Mahal was a “blot on Indian culture” built by depraved … Read More
To fight back and stay alive. We are living in scary times — with the inauguration next week of the country’s first Dorito-in-Chief and the beginning of the ACA repeal, it feels like everything is on the brink of collapse. Canadian band LAL knows this and have shared a song to help. From their new album, Find Safety, LAL’s … Read More
