Thursday * March 3 * 7PM
UMass Campus Center Room 162-75
Featuring Professor Deepankar Basu and Somnath Mukherjee.
The Indian state has recently accelerated and intensified its crackdown on activists, including Dr. Binayak Sen, who is serving life in prison for "sedition" (speaking out in defense of the poor and tribal peoples) and Arundhati Roy, among many others.
This effort is modeled after the US "War on Terror," and comes on the heels of years of the Indian state expelling millions of indigenous people from their land in order to make way for mining corporations, while murdering thousands of those who resist or simply get in the way through infamous "encounter killings" and the use of paramilitary forces.
Meanwhile, the Indian state, a close ally of the United States, is heralded as the "world's largest democracy."
Join us for presentations and an open discussion that will place these events in their political, historical, and economic context, as well as address ways for activists to work in solidarity with those facing repression in India.
Professor Deepankar Basu is a member of the Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst
Somnath Mukherjee is a volunteer with the Association for India's Development (MIT-Boston Chapter)
This meeting is sponsored by the International Socialist Organization (Amherst) and the Association for India's Development (Amherst).
