Mike Marqusee – Page 16 – Writings on politics, culture and sport

May 6, 2007

Good riddance Tony Blair

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 6 May After ten years as Prime Minister, Tony Blair faces the end of the road, and for most of us in Britain, his resignation will come not a moment too soon. A man elected in 1997 because he was portrayed as moderate, prudent and sincere has become a by-word… Read more

Apr 22, 2007

Iraq: resistance and occupation

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 22 April ON April 9, the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein, more than a million demonstrators took to the streets of Najaf, Kut and other cities of the Iraqi south, chanting, “Yes! Yes! Iraq, No! No! America.” Amid an ocean swell of green, white and red Iraqi… Read more

Apr 17, 2007

Strange bedfellows

Palestine News, Spring 2007 During a visit to India in February, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, Yona Metzger, met with right-wing Hindu supremacist notables at the home of former Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani, currently leader of the BJP (the official opposition) in the Indian parliament. In the 1980s, Advani launched and led the… Read more

Apr 8, 2007

Giants and minnows

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 8 April IN a recent debate over the role of the minnows in the World Cup, BBC Radio’s chief cricket correspondent, Jonathan Agnew, argued that in order to ensure the greater public got to see what it most wanted to see (notably an India-Pakistan match) the minnows should be excluded… Read more

Mar 26, 2007

This innuendo about the Pakistan team is a disgrace

Reaction to the murder of cricket coach Bob Woolmer has more to do with stereotyping and hyperbole than the facts The Guardian, 26 March It is a serious matter – as umpire Darrell Hair found out – to accuse a team, purely on the basis of supposition, of cheating to win a cricket match. It… Read more

Mar 25, 2007

Echoes and analogies

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 25 March THE more I travel, read and study the history of peoples and societies, the more analogies I discover, and at the same time the warier I become of all analogies. History does not repeat itself exactly, but it is full of echoes. Some analogies are routinely abused, while… Read more

Mar 11, 2007

Raising the curtain on the World Cup

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 11 March IN sharp contrast with the situation in India, the run-up to the World Cup in England has been a muted affair. This is partly because cricket just doesn’t carry the weight in its native land that it carries in South Asia. Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool et al,… Read more

Mar 1, 2007

A blind eye to bigotry

Five years on, those behind the Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom are still running the state The Guardian, 1 March Five years ago this week, across the Indian state of Gujarat, the stormtroopers of the Hindu right, decked in saffron sashes and armed with swords, tridents, sledgehammers and liquid gas cylinders, launched a pogrom against the local… Read more

Feb 25, 2007

Blurred at the edges

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 25 February A reference in my last column to Moses Maimonides as a “12th century Arab Jewish theologian” has perplexed some readers. An Arab and a Jew? Can such a hybrid exist? Like all ethnic designations, both terms are problematic, blurred at the edges. But in the case of Maimonides,… Read more

Feb 11, 2007

India’s tryst with the death penalty

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 11 February [Note: Muhammed Afzal has been sentenced to death by hanging for his alleged role in the attack on the Indian parliament on 13 December, 2001.] IN 1793, the French Convention was debating the fate of the deposed and imprisoned king, Louis XVI. Thomas Paine, an Englishman who had… Read more

Out now: Definable Traces in the Atmosphere

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