Call for solidarity with Hunger Strike by University Community against Commonwealth Games

The "University Community for Democracy" is initiating a relay hunger strike from 12th of Aug onwards between 9 a.m and 9 p.m at Arts Faculty, North Campus, Delhi University against:

• Eviction of students and labouring poor of the city in the name of Commonwealth Games.
• Violation of legally guaranteed labour standards in the University in particular and in the city in general.
• Lack of rent control around the university which has resulted in the sky rocketing of rent rates making accommodation for common students unfordable.
• Arbitrary decision making and shrinking of democratic space.
  

The Maoist Insurgency in India: An Interview with Jairus Banaji

Maoist Insurgency in India: End of the Road for Indian Stalinism

By Spencer A. Leonard and Sumit Singh

Given the considerable international interest in the progress of Naxalism on the Indian subcontinent, particularly in the wake of the 2008 Maoist revolution in Nepal, The Platypus Affiliated Society has published the following interview with Marxist (and) historian Jairus Banaji conducted on June 28, 2010.

Spencer Leonard (SL): The immediate occasion for our interview on the Naxalites or Indian Maoists is Arundhati Roy’s widely read and controversial essay, “Walking With the Comrades,” published in the Indian magazine Outlook. There Roy speaks of “the deadly war unfolding in the jungles of central India between the Naxalite guerillas and the Government of India,” one that she expects “will have serious consequences for us all.” Is Roy’s depiction of the current situation accurate? If so, how have events reached such a critical state? How, more generally, does Roy frame today’s Naxalite struggle and do you agree with this framing? Does the “main contradiction,” as a Maoist might say, consist in the struggle between the Naxalite aborigines on the one side, and, on the other, what Roy refers to as the combination of “Hindu fundamentalism and economic totalitarianism”?