Arundhati Roy, Jan Myrdal, Basanta Indra Mohan 12.6.2011 Euston

Please join us for a public meeting and an audience with celebrated authors who will discuss their recent experiences in India with a special focus on the raging war against the poorest of the poor, the tribal people living in the heartland of India. Arundhati Roy From India and the author of recently published books [...]

all-Nepal shut

The Workers Dreadnought For International Socialism Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) calls for all-Nepal shutdown on May 28th Comrade Matrika Yadav, the fiery former UCPN(Maoist) leader, and his Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) [a party that is a splinter from the UCPN(Maoist) and purportedly continues to grow with growing dissatisfaction and defections from that Party] have [...]

Sagarmatha (सगरमाथा)

Nepal election count as of 16 April 2008: Parties Seats won CPN (Maoists) 119 Nepali Congress 33 CPN (UML) 30 MJF 23 TMDP 7 NWPP 2 Janamorcha 1 Sadhbhawana (Mahato) 3 Independent 2 These results were taken from here And verified here

Nepal turning red via ballots not bullets?

Comrade Prachanda addressing a mass rally in Backtapur, outside Kathmandu, on March 12. Nepal’s general election is on 10th of April and is more important than the cobra-mongoose death embrace that is the election most people seem presently obsessed about (Zizek, Kellner, the entire media, everyone except the residents of Florida who already know their [...]

Revolutionary Tourism Tuesday 10 April 07

I prepared these notes on the plane back from Hong Kong for a talk in the afternoon yesterday – went well, though it got a bit ropey towards the end (I blame the jet lag – arrived Heathrow Tuesday 5.40am, gave talk at 2.30 PM. Wide awake again from 2 through to (so far) 6AM [...]

Trinket Exit Strategy of our Press

Something from the newspaper yesterday which confirms all I was saying about Nepal – on the very day the Maoists declared a three month cease fire, all The Guardian saw fit to publish was just half the face of this Sadhu. Exotica unabashed. This is an old complaint about media representation however – of course [...]

The double visage.

notes towards the end of the Nepal text for Canada…. My beef with the travel story version of Nepal is that here South Asia appears on the world screen most often as a ‘realist’, but usually tragic, news item. Images of villages awaiting rescue from cyclone, flood, earthquakes, riot, famine. Images of high mountain military [...]

Revolutionary tourism

Revolutionary tourism (notes for article for a Canadian magazine). I am watching television and Nepal is on screen. It is unusual to see anything other than documentary curios from the land locked Himalayan kingdom, but this week the place is news. Strikes, curfews, shoot to kill, the King forced to promise elections, a new interim [...]

Nepal: Palin, docos, TV, WTW, Campbell and Karki

Just some stuff I want to remember for a lecture on television and Nepal: 1. There is (is there?) an antidote to Michael Palin and his [I know everyone won'ty agree] anodyne stumble-bumbling travel t(r)ips: ‘Film South Asia is a competitive biennial festival of documentary films on South Asian subjects that provides a quality platform [...]