#countercurrents

Frantz Fanon is accurate to term decolonisation as a violent struggle to disrupt the colonial problem. The colonised are created by the coloniser. The response of the colonised therefore is determined by the conditions imposed by colonisation. The colonial suffocation is giving us no other option but to take arms and resist. In the language of the colonised therefore this is not violence. This is justice.

Hello hello, I know I've been crazy offline for a while now - my mental health took an insane dip and I've not been able to cope with my work either.

Workers have the right to equal pay for equal work under the Contract Labour Act and Rules. In the writ of Jagjit Singh vs State of Punjab, in the context of electricity workers of Punjab and Haryana, the Supreme Court in its decision given on 26 October 2016 clearly stated that no person voluntarily works as a contract worker at very low wages. He pays the price of his self-respect, dignity, self-worth and integrity for the food, clothing and shelter of his family. The Supreme Court says that in any welfare state, workers doing equal work cannot be given less wages at all. The decision said that undoubtedly giving less wages for equal work is an act of exploitation, enslavement and oppression. The Central Government has abolished the provision of equal pay for equal work in the Labor Code.

Hardly a day passes without news of mob violence against Muslims and Dalits. The violence may range from online trolling, online abuse, rape, and intimidation to physical attacks, lynchings, and calls for genocide. The excuses abound the myth of the Muslim population boom, cow killing, cattle trading, beef eating, love-jihad, burqua, the nuisance of the azan, etc. From their food habits to sartorial wear, from their prayers to recitation of their holy book—everything is under the Hindutva scanner. The non-issues are the main issues in Modi’s “New India”. And flames of hatred are being nurtured at each home. To our surprise, even our mothers and sisters, so-called anchors of moral values and familial congeniality, are fueling the flames of hatred.

For now some of the stories of the US-Israeli genocide linger in the public memory—eighteen year old Shaban al-Dalou, software engineering student who was burned alive still connected to an IV drip when Israeli bombing set fire to a tent camp of displaced Palestinians outside Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, five year old Hind Rajab, trapped for hours in a car from which she made desperate calls for assistance and killed by artillery from Israeli tanks, leading Gaza surgeon Adnan Al-Bursh, head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, captured by Israeli soldiers in December and declared dead in April after undergoing months of torture in an Israeli prison. Soon these will be supplanted by the harrowing stories of more recent victims of the ongoing genocide.

The state of Israel, supported by the United States, and the European Union, which are all but a single and historical geopolitical centre of colonialism, imperialism, slavery, capitalism, and whiteness – have long launched unspeakable crimes against humanity in Africa, in the Americanas, in the Australisia, in the Middle East, Asia, in the Pacific Islands, and in Palestine. We feel and live their colonisation today. The response of the colonised to such gruesome crimes therefore must be understood within the context of seeking justice, freedom, and independence from colonisation. When the slaves revolt against their master, the slaves are seeking justice, freedom, and independence. This response can take any means necessary to be realised. Because the violence of the coloniser is displacing, dehumanising, littered with armed episodes of genocide, racial cleansing, land dispossession, rape, torture, and humiliation – the slaves therefore have no other option but to also take up arms and fight for belongs to them, their land, their humanity.

Bangladesh is a major producer of garments supplying to world’s top brands such as H&M, Lewis, Gucci, Zara and many others. Nearly 4.0 million workers, mostly women toil in 3,500 garment factories supplying nearly 60 percent of global trendy garments. Bangladesh earns nearly $55 billion from exports annually. However, the working conditions of the workers are dire - work day stretching ten hours, with a meagre monthly pay of Taka 8,300 or $75. Though 85 percent of workforce are women, they lack job security, bonus, work safety, insurance or maternity leave and other minimum benefits. The workers are on strike for the last two weeks demanding wage hikes.

We are now living in the era of Dewesternisation, Dedollarisation, DeEuropeanisation, Deracialisation, Depatriarchisation, Deproletarianisation, and Decolonisation. The deployment of the media to enslave our minds will fail. The deployment of the police to discipline our activism, to silence our voices, and to eliminate us from the surface of the earth will also fail. This is our time. Freedom or death. Forward to the freedom of the Palestinians. Forward to the freedom of the world.