Columnists

Harsh Mander

Mander is a human rights worker and writer

India needs a new social contract

Sat, Jan 29, 2022

🔴 Harsh Mander writes: The pandemic exposed the horrors of the existing economic and social arrangements that privilege some but treat others as expendable

Democracy is flailing in India

Wed, Dec 15, 2021

🔴 Harsh Mander writes: India’s commitment to pluralism, social harmony and the rule of law, lauded at President Biden’s democracy summit, is crumbling.

Where does all our hatred come from?

Sun, Oct 03, 2021

Harsh Mander writes: The violence in Assam, like that inflicted by lynch mobs, shows normalisation of hatred against communities. It cannot be ascribed to social anomalies.

Remember the horrors of Partition, but also draw the right lessons from them

Sun, Aug 22, 2021

Harsh Mander writes: We must remember always what the politics of religious hate does to a people.

What does state’s treatment of pre-trial political prisoners tell us?

Thu, Jun 10, 2021

Harsh Mander writes: It’s been three years since Bhima Koregaon accused were incarcerated by a state that continues to oppose bail for them, despite Covid and other grave threats to their health.

Our silence against forces of hate has enabled this Covid crisis

Sat, May 08, 2021

Harsh Mander writes: Current moment in pandemic points to systematic undermining of countervailing institutions, and to people's complicity in cheering an uncaring and incompetent state.

Stan Swamy has stood with the oppressed. The state considers him an enemy

Fri, Oct 23, 2020

It is adversaries as powerful as these that Swamy and the young Adivasis, who he stands in unflinching solidarity with, are fighting. Is it a surprise then that he is seen as a dangerous enemy of this government?

Nearly seven months after Delhi violence, a continuing attempt to target dissenting voices

Mon, Sep 14, 2020

As threats of arrest and incarceration on charges of secession and armed rebellion shroud young dissenting voices, who will ask: “Who lit these embers? Who stoked the wind?”

What govt could have done differently to deal with the pandemic, what it can still do now

Sat, Jun 13, 2020

Harsh Mandar writes: It is apparent the policies of the Union government to battle the pandemic have failed. I believe that the people of India will gravely suffer the consequences of these failures for at least a generation.

Covid-19 crisis calls for universal delivery of food and cash transfers by the state

Mon, Apr 27, 2020

In these dire circumstances, it is essential for the state to directly provide the basic means of survival to anyone who needs it. This must be in both cash and kind.

Solidarity is a potent weapon against pandemic, prejudice weakens us all

Wed, Apr 15, 2020

Harsh Mander writes on COVID-19: Public health experts differ about whether such a harsh and comprehensive a lockdown was advisable in India. But assuming it was, it was designed and implemented entirely bereft of empathy and compassion.

State’s measures to fight coronavirus are stripping the poor of dignity and hope

Fri, Mar 27, 2020

Harsh Mander writes: The Indian government found it fit to charter planes with medical staff to fly in migrants from other countries. But it felt no responsibility at all to the millions of migrants stranded without work and food in every corner of the country.

Protests are not just against the CAA-NRIC-NPR trinity, but have already succeeded in numerous ways

Fri, Feb 28, 2020

The other part of the movement, therefore, must be to deepen our unity and solidarity. It must address not just the state but each of us. In the end, the kind of country we become will be determined not by law or court judgments, but by whether love or hate colonises our hearts.

States boycotting NPR can cause a constitutional crisis

Fri, Jan 31, 2020

History will long remember this moment for how citizens pulled India back from the edge of fascism, through both, the resolve of collective civil disobedience and the public affirmation of their solidarity.

CAA protests mark collective rejection of toxic politics and policies that dominate public life

Wed, Dec 25, 2019

India’s young have picked up mantle of an older battle — for a country that is equal, just and kind

If Parliament passes the Citizenship Amendment Bill, India’s constitutional structure, as we know it, will lose its soul

Wed, Dec 11, 2019

The CAB-NRC poses the gravest threat to India’s secular democratic constitution since India became a republic, and must be fought with a nation-wide civil disobedience movement. The contours of this struggle need to be worked out by We the People.

On NRC, Shah and Gogoi show a similar disregard for suffering of the vulnerable.

Mon, Nov 25, 2019

Justice Gogoi chose a moment, a few days before he remitted office, in a public function in Delhi, to vigorously defend the NRC in Assam. It is unusual for an incumbent Chief Justice to publicly declare his views on highly politically fraught matters.

National dishonour

Tue, Oct 29, 2019

We need to ask why India lags behind its neighbours in combating hunger, malnutrition

Mon, Oct 28, 2019

Among all the countries included in the report, India has the highest rate of child wasting (which rose from the 2008-2012 level of 16.5 per cent to 20.8 per cent). Its child stunting rate (at 37.9 per cent) also remains shockingly high.

The middle ground

Sun, Oct 06, 2019

Despite some omissions, an eclectic volume of writings by one of India’s longest-serving politicians.

Citizenship Amendment Bill will result in untold fear and dislocation of Muslim citizens

Thu, Oct 03, 2019

This is the fearful tempest that threatens to engulf India in the coming months, one which will destroy in its wake this country as it was imagined and promised.

Tabrez Ansari lynching case: Why the outcome must concern us all

Sat, Sep 14, 2019

India’s criminal justice system has always been biased against disadvantaged castes, women and Muslims. Few people who organised and participated in caste and communal massacres and rapes have ever been punished.

Chronicle of an acquittal foretold

Tue, Aug 27, 2019

Pehlu Khan verdict underlines subversion of justice by police and bureaucracy.

The spectre of foreignness

Tue, Jun 25, 2019

Extending the concept of foreigners tribunals from Assam to rest of India will result in an upheaval that will stir memories of Partition.

Over five years, BJP has consistently sought to marginalise Muslims

Sat, May 04, 2019

The 2014 general elections were crafted by the BJP to render India’s Muslims politically irrelevant by welding disadvantaged Hindu castes with privileged castes— and in India’s Northeast even with Christians — against the constructed common enemy, India’s Muslims.