ChandraMohan

Central Committee Member, CPI (ML) Liberation,
AIKM - All India Kisan Mahasabha State General Secretary

[CPIML Liberation @cpimlliberation]

With profound grief, we announce the sad and sudden passing of Comrade Prem Singh Gehlawat, Central Committee Member of CPI(ML) Liberation and Vice President of the All India Kisan Mahasabha (AIKM).

Comrade Prem Singh Gehlawat passed away while he was in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, attending the National Executive meeting of the All India Kisan Mahasabha. The news of his untimely demise has come as a devastating shock to the Party, AIKM, and the wider democratic and people’s movements.

Having turned 80 earlier this year, Comrade Prem Singh Gehlawat remained as active and committed as ever. He continued to participate enthusiastically in Party programmes, organisational work, and mass struggles, inspiring comrades with his unwavering dedication, simplicity, and revolutionary spirit. His sudden passing is an irreparable loss to the movement.

CPI(ML) Liberation extends its deepest condolences to his family, comrades, friends, and all those who had the privilege of working with him.

Red Salute to Comrade Prem Singh Gehlawat.

[Dipankar @Dipankar_cpiml]

Comrade Prem Singh Gehlawat, veteran leader of @cpimlliberation and VP of All India Kisan Mahasabha passed away due to a massive cardiac attack shortly after the National Executive Committee meeting of AIKM at Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan. Adieu, Comrade Premji. Your legacy will live on.

[The Wire @thewire_in]

The RSS Takes Foreign Money Too. Why Doesn't the Govt Question It?

The Modi regime’s wariness of foreign-funded NGOs does not extend to the RSS.

N R Mohanty✍️
https://t.co/x8Um8YHK8X

[Dipankar @Dipankar_cpiml]

No big fish in #AyodhyaChandaChori?

[Dipankar @Dipankar_cpiml]

Today is the 5th day of the indefinite fast by Sonam Wangchuk and six AISA activists. Will visit Jantar Mantar this evening to express solidarity with the fast and extend support to the student-youth movement calling for the scrapping of NTA and resignation of #DharmendraPradhan

[Dipankar @Dipankar_cpiml]

Salute immortal Adivasi heroes Sidhu-Kanu-Chand-Bhairav and their brave sisters Phulo and Jhano on the 171st anniversary of the great #SanthalHool. More power to contemporary struggles of the indigenous people of India against corporate plunder, communal hate and state repression

[Dipankar @Dipankar_cpiml]

The BJP govt of West Bengal passes a draconian 'detention without trial' bill in the name of curbing organised crime and anti-social activities. The government which has been busy instigating mob violence against political opponents now invokes unmitigated powers of repression.

[Dipankar @Dipankar_cpiml]

Defying the extreme heat and humidity of a sizzling Delhi summer, Sonam Wangchuk, Neha, Danish, Manish, Deepak, Hrishikesh, Aameen are now in day two of their indefinite hunger strike at the Jantar Mantar protest site. Support them and amplify the demand #ResignDharmendraPradhan.

[The Caravan @thecaravanindia]

#AyodhyaRamMandir | The opacity around Ram Janmabhoomi Teertha Kshetra’s dealings is unsurprising, given how the Modi government has operated over the years.

The RJTK overpaid for land and subverted usual procurement procedures, allowing intermediaries to make windfall gains, even as the government obstructed all attempts at seeking transparency and the institutions meant to hold it to account gave it a clean chit under questionable circumstances.

That this corruption was carried out in Ram’s name highlights the hypocrisy of the Hindu Right but is not surprising either, given how lucrative the business of religion is in India and the political capital Modi has already accumulated through displays of piety.

While the processes by which the land was acquired to construct the Ram temple will soon be forgotten in the pageantry surrounding its inauguration, they serve as an instructive episode on what progress looks like in Modi’s New India.

Read the full report by Sagar from January 2024, on the windfall gains made in the name of the Ram temple:
https://t.co/pvq2MmVbrH

[Dipankar @Dipankar_cpiml]

After a week of sit-in demonstration at #JantarMantar, Sonam Wangchuk and six student activists - @neha_aisa, Danish, JS of JNUSU, Manish, President UP AISA, Deepak, AISA DU VP, Hrishikesh, President, Barak Hostel of JNU and Aameen of AUD today started an indefinite fast.

[D. Raja @ComradeDRaja]

We’re looking at a grim forecast for the Indian economy.

For more than a decade, the Narendra Modi government has projected India as the world’s fastest-growing major economy and an emerging global powerhouse. Grand narratives of rapid economic growth, manufacturing resurgence and the promise of a developed India by 2047 are central to its political messaging.

Beneath these claims lies a troubling reality. The country is grappling with deep structural challenges: from capital flight, rising import dependence and weakening rural demand to technological vulnerabilities, job insecurity and growing inequality. Unless these weaknesses are addressed through a people-centric development strategy, sustainable and inclusive growth will remain elusive.

I write for The Hindu.
https://t.co/mTo5tqPAkd

[Seema Chishti @seemay]

Sangh under scanner: ⁦@Apoorvanand__⁩ asks why to get 5kg of foodgrains, a poor person must part with all personal details and information. But for the wealthiest and such a powerful “world’s biggest NGO” there is zero scrutiny.

[Dipankar @Dipankar_cpiml]

The #Ayodhya land, donation and recruitment scams, #Ujjain land scam and #NTA paper leak scam have exposed the #Modi government’s corrupt character like never before. The BJP is caught red-handed playing with the future of India's youth and the faith of crores of devout Hindus.

[Dipankar @Dipankar_cpiml]

Why did Rajnath Singh lie in Parliament? Why did it take so long for the Modi government to make the names of #OperationSindoor martyrs public?

[Dipankar @Dipankar_cpiml]

One Sangh, two cultures! Temple Trust office bearers are allowed to resign, Modi ministers have no such 'culture'! Sooner rather than later, the corrupt will all have to go!

[The Caravan @thecaravanindia]

From the 1980s, the RSS increased its efforts to whitewash its position on caste. In an effort to bring Dalit communities into the Hindutva fold, the organisation launched the Samajik Samrasta Manch, on Ambedkar’s birth anniversary in 1983. The anxieties of the Dalit community had grown even more acute. Two years earlier, in Tamil Nadu, hundreds of oppressed-caste Hindus had converted to Islam in the village of Meenakshipuram. The setting up of the outfit was meant to do reputational damage control.

Alongside it came a broader, decades-long project of appropriating Ambedkar—claiming ideological kinship with him, misrepresenting his views and, eventually, through its political outfit, the Bharatiya Janata Party, routinely trying to appropriate Ambedkar over the last several decades. The BJP and RSS have even attempted to paint a picture that suggests that his views on Islam broadly align with those of the Sangh. These claims have been publicly discredited and debunked by activists and scholars.

Dhirendra K Jha reports how the Dalit Panthers forced the RSS into changing its language on caste: https://t.co/QpHtVS8NRU

[B. Kolappan @kolappan]

Navakandam was a ritual practiced by warriors who offered their lives to Kottravai, the ancient Tamil goddess of war and victory. This sculptural panel at Mamallapuram depicts a form of self-sacrifice known as Thoongu Thalai Nōṟṟal. In fulfillment of a vow, a warrior is shown severing his own head as an offering to Goddess Kottravai, later identified with Kali, after she grants his wish. Another devotee is depicted cutting off his hand as an act of devotion and self-sacrifice. In some cases they sacrifice when the fail to protect the king.

This remarkable sculpture offers valuable insight into the martial ethos and religious beliefs of ancient Tamil society, where acts of extreme devotion and valour were commemorated in art and memory.

[Dipankar @Dipankar_cpiml]

The Modi govt observes 25 June as #SamvidhanHatyaDiwas or Constitution Murder Day to mark the 1975 imposition of the Emergency. Is that why the BJP feels emboldened to treat the Constitution as a dead document and inflict one unconstitutional blow after another on the people?

[The Caravan @thecaravanindia]

Archives | The Thirupparankundram hill's own history has equal parts of violent removals, erasures and reinterpretations that support uneasy status quos. “From the second century BCE, there are ten to twelve stone beds carved there for Jain monks, with a dedication near them written in the Tamili script,” C Santhalingam, a retired officer of the Tamil Nadu department of archaeology, whose co-authored book MaaMadurai traces the city’s past from the Stone Age to the British era, told me.

“That is the earliest archaeological evidence we have there. It was then a settlement of the Jains. Of the eight main kundrams”—hills—“of the Jains, there are Tamil poems from the second century that say this hill, called Perunkundram, was the most important.”

Santhalingam said that ancient inscriptions carry no evidence of the hill housing a Murugan temple. “A stone inscription records that the shrine in the Subramaniya temple of today was built in 723 CE, but was constructed for the deity Sambu, seen as referring to Shiva,” he said. Literary references to Murugan appear only later.

Read Sujatha Sivagnanam's (@sujajourno) report on Judicial overreach and Sangh mobilisation in Tamil Nadu: https://t.co/DH3mluaZLj

[Dipankar @Dipankar_cpiml]

In India where trains run perpetually late, government projects are usually delayed by years, if not decades, where we're still awaiting the 2021 census, NEET examinees are denied entry for being just a few minutes late. The system is cruel when it comes to the country's youth.