The Margins Review · Culture-Centered Approach

  The Names They Struck Off India is deleting its citizens from democracy, and Aotearoa has just signed on as a partner Oct 10, 2026  Nabijan Mondal had voted in every Indian election for half a century when, in April 2026, she went looking for her name on the revised electoral roll of West Bengal and found that it was gone. Her husband was still on the roll for the village of Gobindapur in North 24 Parganas, and so were her three sons, her daughter and their spouses, which meant that the only name the state had removed from the household was hers. For decades she had been Nabijan on her voter card and Nabirul on her Aadhaar card and her ration card, a difference no official had cared about through fifty years of polling days, until a system built to hunt for mismatches between old and new records decided that the difference made her a doubtful citizen. She told Al Jazeera that she had not understood much of what was happening to her and had never imagined that carrying...

Thugs in Khaki Lying, rape, looting, and the stealing of a vote: the method of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Oct 8, 2026 In April the electoral rolls for West Bengal came back from revision with nine million names gone out of them. The Bharatiya Janata Party won 207 of the state's 294 seats. On 105 of those seats, half of everything it took, more voters had been struck off than the margin by which the seat was won. Of the nine million, 2.7 million stood suspended for what the Election Commission called logical discrepancies, and most of those people were still waiting on a ruling when the booths opened, the Supreme Court's intervention notwithstanding. The heaviest cutting was done in the constituencies where Muslims live ( Sen, ISAS ; Scroll ). That is my state. My grandmother's village is on that register, and the names that went missing are names whose shape I know. A roll is not a tally. It is the list of who counts as a person in a place, and the Rashtriya ...

    ESSAY   ·   ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN AOTEAROA The Fault of His Own Pen What the Free Speech Union calls academic freedom depends entirely on who is holding the pen Mohan J. Dutta    ·    6 October 2026    ·    culture-centered.blogspot.com   On 22 September 2026 the Free Speech Union declared a crisis of academic freedom at Massey University. Fourteen months earlier, a man on its council published an essay instructing a university that my work should be stripped of academic standing and that I should be kept away from state-funded research. Both documents are public. Set them side by side and the union's principle dissolves in front of you. THE PRINCIPLE, STATED IN PUBLIC On 22 September 2026 the Free Speech Union published this. EXHIBIT A Free Speech Union (@NZFreeSpeech), 22 September 2026 The union states its principle in public, and quotes the statute that carries i...