Author Archives: aranyo.aarjan

Panic On The Streets of London

Posted on August 13, 2011 by aranyo.aarjan
londonriots

I see plumes of smoke rising from the distance as I stand on the balcony of my father’s apartment, located about ten minutes away by foot from Wood Green, the site where it all started four nights ago. London, this great burgeoning metropolis, this once shining beacon of world leadership, is in flames, and things [...]

Posted in Politics & Human Rights | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Calcutta/Kolkata – A Personal Memoir

Posted on March 14, 2011 by aranyo.aarjan

A typical afternoon scene for the old Calcutta
In the last week of December 2009, just as the whole of Europe froze over, like a migratory bird I headed out to warmer climes. Yet my destination, tropical as it is by location, was Calcutta (known officially now as Kolkata, a ‘reclaiming’ of pre-colonial city names), not [...]

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Tear Down the Walls

Posted on April 14, 2010 by aranyo.aarjan

The issue of ‘migration’, in particular ‘immigration’ has been much at the forefront of European political polemic in recent years, attracting strong opinions on either side of the debate. Among the political discourse, particularly since the recent economic downturn, there has been a strong anti-immigration argument. Not here. When it comes to taking a stance [...]

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Politics & Human Rights Workshop – Fostering Disintegration?

Posted on November 14, 2009 by aranyo.aarjan
DSC_0278

Fostering Disintegration?

“I am not a cultural relativist, in the sense that I believe that our culture is better than a retarded muslim culture”.

Embedded in this statement by Geert Wilders, we find a tendency towards radicalization of the political discourse in Netherlands. A general turn towards a right-wing, conservative political discourse has occurred [...]

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