A Note on My New Book on Society, Culture and Globalization

MY NEW book, a collection of essays on culture, media and the process of globalization and its impact, was released in Kozhikode this evening by poet and friend Civic Chandran.

The book is called Charithranubhavangalude Koodumattom: Aagoleekaranam, Samooham, Samskaram and it is published by Thejas Publications, Kozhikode. I am indebted to Prof P Koya, editor of Thejas, and K P Kamal, publications manager, for making this possible.

The book contains 16 essays that I wrote in several publications and journals like Samakalika Malayalam varika, Madhyamam weekly, Patabhedam and other small magazines during the period from 1997 to 2007. This is a period in which I underwent a series of transformations in my intellectual and political life, my firm conviction that the Marxist politics that I upheld from the seventies would eventually succeed in building a new, egalitarian and secular India slowly eroded and in its place the explorations for a new politics slowly emerged. I do feel these essays would provide a graphic picture of this transformation and the search for something new, something which is more deeply embedded in our social and cultural history. Perhaps it is now taking the shape of a politics based on identity and its socio-cultural and economic aspects.

But even as I think identity could be the new marker for our political associations for empowerment of the dispossesed sections, I do believe the fundamental Marxist principles of the economic base of a society and social divisions would still remain valid. What we do need is the integration of these two aspects which would held us evolve a new politics that would be truly people-oriented, and would ensure a more egalitarian and truly secular society for all of us.

I try to give a broad outline of such a society and its culture in the making and I do feel in the coming years we will see it much more clearly as the new forces now slowly emerging would become much more assertive and influential.