South Asia

For 9 million people in West Bengal, the electoral voting machines will not open writes Sandip Nayak. Their silence will be counted as absence. And that manufactured, deliberate and meticulously engineered absence will be called democracy.

Farooq Sulehria — Pakistan may seek to play the role of peacemaker globally but regionally it acts as a warmonger.

We, the undersigned Communist, workers’, and left-wing parties of South Asia, issue this collective call in firm and unwavering solidarity with the government and people of Cuba.

Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation — For defenders of democracy and the Constitution, the Assembly elections must be taken up as an anti-fascist platform of political mobilisation.

Sarah Nafisa Shahid — Hardline Islamists gain ground in historic election following the 2024 July Uprising that ousted Sheikh Hasina.

Farooq Tariq — The attack by US and Israeli imperialism on Iran has overshadowed the recent war between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Farooq Sulehria argues that the current confrontation reflects a deeper crisis of the regional order — one whose costs will be borne overwhelmingly by working people on both sides of the border.

Sushovan Dhar — Measured purely by participation, the strike formed part of a familiar repertoire of mass industrial protest in contemporary India. Politically, however, its significance lies elsewhere.

Sankha Subhra Biswas — Before the commercial explosion of the 1990s and the hyper-nationalist staging of the present, cricket fields often functioned as spaces of progressive expression.

Sankha Subhra Biswas — The mass rapes by Indian soldiers in Kunan and Poshpora in 1991 cannot be treated as an aberration or tragic residue of a turbulent decade; it was the structured outcome of a state that chose insulation over scrutiny.

Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation — The unprecedented spate of violence in Bangladesh must be halted immediately.

Balasingham Skanthakumar — Cyclone Ditwah must be the wake-up call for course correction by this government and its supporters who brook no criticism of it.