Dr Ram Puniyani 80
I am two days late in congratulating Dr Ram Puniyani as he crossed eighty springs on mother Earth. I came to know by a Post from Dr Suresh Khairnar, Nagpur on the 26 August about this cheering news.

Dr Ram Puniyani is in one sense our collective conscience keeper. I met him personally only once till NOW, in Ghataprabha, Karnataka, July 2023.

It was an assembly of civil rights activists preparing themselves for the ensuing electoral campaigns. Dr. Ram was the maiden speaker there. Hearing him was a privilege for me in understanding the deep social roots of communal passion, legacy of Hindutva in this land of Hindustani Society, carrying the festering aching wound of Partition among us along the communal lines of religiosity.

Dr Ram spoke on these subjects in the Marx Forum sessions, his was the maiden presentation when we held a series of discussions on “Religion, Spirituality, Secularism, Communalism” spanning over a year from May 2023. Overall, nineteen speakers presented their views in eight such virtual sessions. Dr Ram is relentless in his struggle against communal passion, firm on his interpretation of secular ideals that do NOT eschew or abandon religious culture, beliefs just for the sake of accepting modernity as it is interpreted by the prevailing culture under the rule of Capital.

Dr Ram is a spiritual Human among us.
Arun Kumar Sinha

East Bengal Football Club Protests
Identity has always been central to the football universe. Team allegiances have the power to unite nations, divide societies, and spark rivalries that fuel passion as much as they unleash violence. The Italian Marxist philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci famously described the sport as an “open-air kingdom of human loyalty”.

This sentiment was vividly echoed in a massive banner put up in the colours of East Bengal Football Club at a recent Durand Cup match in Kolkata. It read: “Bharat Swadhin korte shedin porechhilam phaansi/ Maaer bhasha bolchhi boley aajke Bangladeshi?” (That day we wore the hangman’s noose for our country’s independence/Today we are being labelled Bangladeshi for speaking in our mother tongue?). It highlighted not just the burning issue of migrant Bengali-speaking labourers being targeted as “Bangladeshi” in different parts of the country but also the deeply wounded sentiment of people whose forefathers bore the pains of Partition less than 80 years ago.
A Reader

Recognising Palestine
Keir Starmer and the 150 other states have recognised the State of Palestine. But this is an overdue act of reparation. As Starmer himself acknowledged it was the British mandate that allowed the establishment of the state of Israel 75 years ago. We must remember the Sykes-Picot documents, easily available online, whereby on January 3, 1916 the Holy Land was the only area allowed to bear arms, by the very European nations that are involved in today’s recognition. We must place this within a broad geopolitical rhythm that has existed millennially. What the Sykes-Picot merely organised was the resettlement of the map of West Asia (Middle East) after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the conclusion of the First World War That story of power reshuffling is broader than Israel and has not come to an end. We must all strive to preserve the possibilities by Britain, Canada, Australia, and the European Nations today, recognise that it is not Palestine that wishes destruction of the state of Israel, but rather the policy of Prime Minister Netanyahu in Gaza that makes it clear that it is the other way around: in his view, Palestine must not exist for Israel to survive. We must undo this. There is of course a great deal written on specifically the history and tradition of Palestine, but for the best impartial account we go to the work of Rashid Khalidi. For a quick catch up for those who need it, I recommend Khalidi’s “The Neck and the Sword” [The New Left Review 147, May-June 2024].
GayatriChakravortySpivak FBA
University Professor
Columbia University

‘The Bengal Files’ 
“Although I haven’t seen `The Bengal Files’ film, I can make out from the reviews that it is a one sided narrative heavily weighted against the Muslim perpetrators of the Great Calcutta Killings, while ignoring the equally notorious role of the Hindu fanatics in the massacre of innocent Muslims. I as a ten year old lad in August 1946 was an eye-witness to the events of those days in our neighbourhood Ballygunge in south Calcutta. Following the Muslim League call for Direct Action, the Hindu religious organisation Bharat SevasramSangh held a public meeting at Ekdalia Park opposite our house. A saffron clad sannyasi gave a fiery speech asking Hindus to rise and take revenge against Muslims. Soon after that, a crowd from that meeting raided a shop of an old Muslim woman on Ekdalia Road from where she used to sell eggs and other provisions, and set it on fire. Luckily, the old woman had earlier left the shop closing it fearing attacks. What followed was worse. The next morning, some Hindu goondas of our area, led by one Chitta, gathered around the railway lines of Ballygunge station. From our balcony I could see them beating with their lathis some people lying on the railway lines. Later, we came to know that the victims were Muslims, who were trying to cross the railway lines to escape to the other side.
Sumanta Banerjee
Hyderabad

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Frontier
Vol 58, No. 18, Oct 26 - Nov 1, 2025