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Viewing In the Shadow of Genocide: Soundtrack to a Coup d’État

“Africa is shaped like a gun, and the Congo is its trigger.” — Frantz Fanon Over the year, I saw Johan Grimonprez's Soundtrack to a Coup d’État a few times. It is not an easy film to watch, and it always demands another viewing. Watching archival footage of Patrice Lumumba in the 150-minute long…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Deb’s Dos Passos Echo: Tracing India’s Descent

Book Review "Democracy evolves where freedom is able to determine its own policy" — John Dos Passos, The Ground We Stand On, 1941 Siddhartha Deb's Twilight Prisoners: The Rise of the Hindu Right and The Fall of India, published by Haymarket Books in 2024, is an urgent, incisive exploration of India's socio-political transformation under…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Elegy for Beauty: Memory and the Ecology of Presence

“Land art involves a relationship between art and nature that refuses to separate the two, asserting that art is as much a part of the land as the land itself is a part of art.” - Lucy Lippard in Landscript 7: Land and Environmental Art, 2007 Christian Bernard Singer's work is a poetic testament…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Voltaire’s Bastards Strike Again: How the Tyranny of Rationalism Lost America’s Vote

“Democratic systems may hold elections, but those elections are largely ceremonial, moments in which the public is invited to endorse decisions already taken by small groups.” — John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's Bastards, p. 52. Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election marked a seismic shift in American politics. Regardless of one's political alignment,…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Gustavo Gutiérrez: The Lifelong Call for Justice in Liberation Theology

"Justice is what love looks like in public” - Cornel West in The Radical King, 2015 Gustavo Gutiérrez, the influential Peruvian priest and theologian widely recognised as the "father of liberation theology," passed away on October 22, 2024, at 96. His pioneering ideas, especially those expressed in his seminal 1971 book A Theology…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

“No votes for genocide”: The Building of An Independent Anti-War Movement

"We are called to be the architects of the future, not its victims." — Daniel Berrigan, in various speeches and writings, on peace and social justice. In 2013, Kshama Sawant, emerged as a beacon of change in American politics. In 2015 she was called the most dangerous woman in America. Born in Mumbai and…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Palestine Lebanon Extermination Camps: Call to Arms

14 October 2024 The ongoing extermination of the Palestinian people and the bombing of Lebanon should not be blamed on Israel alone. It is America that has been waging wars across the world since they dropped the atomic bombs in Japan, and the present crimes against humanity and genocide are American crimes through the…

Archiving the Present: The Power of the Poster

All I’m really interested in at the moment is trying to say to people, ‘Look, one of the great problems of our time is that there seems to be no other alternative to the political ideas of our time.” - Adam Curtis, British Filmmaker, Chris Darke, Interview: Adam Curtis, July 17, 2012 How do we…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Burden of History: Genocide, Catastrophe, Resistance, and Gaza’s Cycles of Impasse

“Before the war, I used to feel that Gaza was my second mother. Its ground was the warm chest I could lay on, and its sky was my dreams… without limits. The sea would wash away my worries. But today I feel it’s an exile, I stopped feeling it’s the city of my dreams.” …

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Muslims Don’t Matter

BOOK REVIEW: "Muslims Don’t Matter: Sayeeda Warsi’s Candid Dissection of Britain’s Relationship with Islam", Bridge Street Press, London, 3 Oct 2024 Barely in the two decades since the infamous 9/11 marker, Muslims are right at the centre of the political discourse of assertive liberalism and more evident. Caught between the rampant Islamophobia in everyday…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé