April 2021

The Caravan

A journal of politics and culture

The Caravan15 min readPolitics
On Repeat
The Bharatiya Janata Party looks set for more electoral success in the four states and one union territory going to the polls this summer. The Congress is struggling in all of them, and obituaries have been written in advance for regional parties suc
The Caravan28 min readPolitics
Battle Royal
SINCE NOVEMBER LAST YEAR, protests have erupted throughout Nepal, including in the cities of Butwal, Biratnagar, Dhangadhi, Pokhara, Janakpur and Kathmandu. While civil and political protests are a strong and regular feature of Nepali politics, these
The Caravan25 min readPolitics
Origin Stories
IN 1957 , a special-forces inspector in Tiruchirappalli filed a case against EV Ramasamy—the founder of the Dravidar Kazhagam, popularly known as Periyar—under Section 117 of the Indian Penal Code. Section 117 forbids the abetment of an offence by te
The Caravan3 min read
The Bookshelf
Between 2013 and 2016, Project 39A, a criminal-justice research-and-litigation centre, interviewed death-row prisoners and their family members. This book is a counterpart to the Death Penalty India Report based on these interviews, with 19 snippets
The Caravan2 min read
True Media Needs True Allies.
I think that there will come a time when people will ask of the Indian media: What were you doing in those five years when a government came to power that spread hate and poison, that controlled the media, what were you doing then? And very few in th
The Caravan9 min read
Where’s the Beef?
Nascimento Fernandes is a third-generation beef trader in Goa. Ubaldo’s Beef Shop, set up by his grandfather in the 1920s, overlooks Calangute’s bustling fish market. Fresh beef from Belgaum, in neighbouring Karnataka, is brought in daily. Five miniv
The Caravan1 min read
The Caravan
EDITOR Anant Nath EXECUTIVE EDITOR Vinod K Jose POLITICAL EDITOR Hartosh Singh Bal SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR Roman Gautam DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR Praveen Donthi BOOKS EDITOR Maya Palit CREATIVE DIRECTOR Tanvi Mishra SENIOR ASSISTANT EDITORS Martand Kau
The Caravan2 min readPolitics
Editor’s Pick
EMS NAMBOODIRIPAD (LEFT) and members of his cabinet head to lunch from their offices in Trivandrum in April 1957, shortly after he was sworn in as the chief minister of Kerala. The Communist Party of India won the largest share of seats in the inaugu
The Caravan5 min readPolitics
Learning Experience
Every few decades, India gets a new National Education Policy—a framework to guide the development of education in the country. The first education policy was passed in 1968, the second in 1986 and the third was approved by the cabinet on 29 July las
The Caravan45 min read
Works in Progress
IN A RARE MOMENT OF LEISURE, on the night of 5 December 1956, at his rented bungalow on Delhi’s Alipur Road, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar chanted the Buddhist liturgy as it played on the radiogram: “Buddham Sharanam Gachchhami, Dhamman Sharanam Gachchhami,
The Caravan18 min readPolitical Ideologies
The Biased Referee
On 12 March, the Election Commission announced an unprecedented eight-phase polling schedule for West Bengal’s 294 assembly seats and a three-phase one for 126 seats in Assam. The way the phases have been marked out has drawn attention, especially si
The Caravan4 min read
Act of Faith
On 15 March, at the sixth protest gathering of the National Adivasi Indigenous Religion Coordination Committee, Adivasis from across the country came together at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to demand a separate column for “tribal religion” in the census. T
The Caravan4 min read
Home Brew
Post lunchtime on a crisp winter afternoon, Rupesh Khakholia settled into a black leather chair at his tea shop in Fancy Bazaar, a bustling market in Guwahati. His tiny office was lined by posters and boxes for various kinds of tea—CTC, green and ort

The Caravan

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