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Menstruation remains a taboo topic, shrouded in secrecy and discomfort. Despite being a natural and healthy process, societal stigmas and misconceptions perpetuate discrimination against many adolescent girls and young women. This stigma, coupled with limited access to menstrual hygiene products, strips them of opportunities, infringes on their rights, and curtails their freedom.

Heera Mandi - the Diamond Bazaar - Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s latest Netflix production film has created waves globally among the viewers of the sub continent. The focus has shifted to this particular place, now in Pakistan which has been in existence for more than four centuries.

This time last year, theatre director Feroz Abbas was touring the US with Mughal-e-Azam: The Musical, which is often described as India’s most expensive stage production. It has “a cost and crew of over 150, more than 500 costumes, and set so extravagant, they were ferried around in eight 55-ft-long containers.

Each strand of political praxis is informed by a political philosophy which analyses the world around us, especially, in modern times, its economic characteristics. On the basis of this analysis, the particular political philosophy sets out the objectives which have to be struggled for, and the political praxis informed by it carries out this struggle. The objective may be difficult to achieve, more difficult in certain contexts than in others, and this difficulty may act as a hurdle for political praxis; but this does not constitute a crisis for that political philosophy. The sheer difficulty of achieving an objective does not constitute a crisis. A crisis of a political philosophy arises when it has an internal contradiction, when the objective it puts forward is logically in conflict with some other feature in which it believes.

As we are set to observe May 9 as the day of victory over fascism, we are reminded of unprecedented sacrifices made by millions of people who laid down their lives fighting the most ghastly events in the human history. As per the ‘High Point Museum’, ‘World War II that lasted from 1939 to 1945 involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants launched their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. Causes of death included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war’.

Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in a small town called Trier, in Rhine province of Prussia in Germany. Prior to him, in 1776, industrial revolution started with discovery of the strength of steam by James Watt in England. With science and steam, entered modernity and also capitalism. Marx stood witness to the evolution and discovered its dialectics which he called theory, scientifically placed as methodology deciphering the stages of socio-economic formation. These stages were linear, never reversible, preserved old with novelty, hence without repetition.

It takes just a glance at one of her music videos for one stop and replay and then discover all of her playlist. Before the 22-year-old winner of the Best Music Performance Award at Grammy 2024 became a hot South African music sensation, she has been cute and adorable to her global fans — TikTok 8.2 million, Instagram 5.3 million, You Tube 3.5 million, and Spotify 993.5k.

Robert J Oppenheimer was inspired by it, T.S. Eliot was fascinated by the slokas and now an independent candidate aspiring for the White House revealed he was egged on to put a fight for the top job by the Bhagawat Gita.

The Martyr’s Day we observed on March 23 leads us to sharpen our struggle against the communal fascism threatening India. It is the day when Bhagat Singh, a young man of 23, was hanged by the British colonialists along with his two other comrades. He was not afraid when he was taken to the gallows nor were his two friends, who were awaiting the same fate. Turning into an icon of revolution in his lifetime itself, Bhagat Singh opted for gallows, though only after communicating a message. It was to convey to the countrymen that Socialism was the only way to ensure freedom for the entire humankind, to end exploitation of man by man, and to usher in the new construct based on scientific principles. It could be done only after power came to the masses and their representatives. One of his famous quotes from prison was, “…the struggle in India would continue as long as handful of exploiters go on exploiting the labour of common people for their own ends. It matters little whether these exploiters are purely British Capitalists or British and Indian alliance or purely Indian.”

There is one question that haunts many viewers of Christopher Nolan’s film on creator of the atom bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – J. Robert Oppenheimer --- which swept the Oscars this year. Did Oppenheimer endorse the use of the bomb on an essentially defeated enemy? And if so, how can we hail such a man as hero? One of the reasons he endorsed it might be because of his ego. He had spent three years building the bomb with his team at a secret facility in Los Alamos,, and he wanted to see the consummation of his efforts. Greatness was within his grasp. Also, he reasoned that the bomb’s power would ensure the end of all wars in future.