Democracy

Politics of the Poor: Negotiating Democracy in Contemporary India by Indrajit Roy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, New York, US, Melbourne, Australia; New Delhi and Singapore: 2018; pp xxi + 521, price not indicated.

The recent Israeli aggression in Gaza Strip has drawn the world’s attention to the plight of Palestinians once again. The fact that Palestine has remained under occupation for decades, despite the claims of triumph of democracy and human rights, has exposed the nexus between imperialism and global narratives woven with the aid of popular media. The same media is, yet again, trying to twist the facts to vilify the victims of occupation and their resistance against it. Such attempts need to be countered by putting the Palestine–Israel question in a proper historical perspective.

Viewing tech giants like Facebook and Twitter as principal agents of free speech has far-reaching consequences on the health and functioning of a democracy.

Dhirubhai Sheth’s intellectual quest was to reinvent social and political theory based on innovations coming from India. The test for a theory of Indian politics was a sustained dialogue between academics and activists—evidenced in his co-founding of Lokayan and Lokniti. Democracy was at the centre of all he thought and wrote about. All pretenders to it were his enemies.

Dynamics of Caste and Law: Dalits, Oppression and Constitutional Democracy in India by Dag-Erik Berg, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020; pp 243, ₹795.