Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
Alf Gunvald Nilsen

Creator

Alf Gunvald Nilsen

Guest Author

Context: Writer Amitav Ghosh sees the ecological disaster the world is facing as being rooted in the past. Photo: Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images

Amitav Ghosh: Writing the planetary crisis

Indian author Amitav Ghosh speaks about his work and its relationship with climate change

Maestro: Abdullah Ibrahim’s performance included familiar classics of the jazz giants and songs from his recent album, 3. Photo: Dori Sumter

An exquisite musical twilight with Abdullah Ibrahim

We drank deeply from the musician’s ‘Water From an Ancient Well’ tour

Dancing in the dark: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band perform in Massachusetts in the US in August during their world tour. Photo: Lisa Dragani/Getty Images

God with a battered Telecaster

In his music and concerts, Bruce makes us feel seen, cared for and loved – just like a deity should

Going viral: The tremors of the coronavirus pandemic will hit India’s economy, which is shot through with fault lines that have deepened since it began to liberalise its economy in the early 1990s. People in Mumbai line up outside a store to buy groceries following the announcement of a government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure. (Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images)

Surviving Covid-19 — and Modi

A religious and nationalist agenda has replaced the promise of development and left India ill-equipped to manage the pandemic

Going viral: The tremors of the coronavirus pandemic will hit India’s economy, which is shot through with fault lines that have deepened since it began to liberalise its economy in the early 1990s. People in Mumbai line up outside a store to buy groceries following the announcement of a government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure. (Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images)

Surviving Covid-19 – and Modi

A religious and nationalist agenda has replaced the promise of development and left India ill-equipped to manage the pandemic

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party

Democracy in India faces meltdown

The nationalist government is using violence, repression an the law to deny Muslims citizenship

Surgeons in Paris operate on a patient in a high-tech theatre. (Gerard Julien/AFP)

Human development is under threat

Achieving significant progress means we are going to have to ditch neoliberal capitalism

Nationalist fervour: Activists from the Hindu Bajrang Dal Party , the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, at a procession marking the anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6 1992. (Narinder Nanu/AFP)

The onward march of Hindu nationalism

A recent court verdict over a disputed religious site gives a legal green light to Modi’s majoritarianism

In Lebanon, hundreds of thousands of people have mobilised around the demand that the government must resign and in opposition to corruption and escalating costs of living. (Anwar Amro/AFP)

Rage in the twilight of neoliberalism

People are revolting against inequality, but it is clear that the elites have no plan B

The conflict between India and Pakistan goes back to Partition in 1947. Conflict has flared up regularly in Kashmir since then including in 2019 (above) and now in 2025. Photo: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

Kashmir: Modi’s threat to India’s democracy

The revocation of the contested territory’s special status marks a dangerous Hindu-nationalist shift