Writing on the “disappeared” young men in Punjab in the 1980s, civil rights activist Ram Narayan Kumar observed that, in this instance and several others, where horrible crimes had been committed, with the tacit sanction of the State, truth-telling in public was entirely necessary to elicit social recognition of wrong-doing and the suffering it had caused. Such truth-telling, though, was not easy, since it had to prevail over and against civil beliefs, which were predisposed to concur with “official” truth and to affirm it.
About The Author
V. Geetha
V. Geetha is a writer, translator, social historian and activist who has written widely in English and Tamil on modern Tamil history, caste, gender, education and civil rights. She is most recently the author of 'Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question of Socialism in India' (Palgrave Macmillan). Geetha has co-written, with S.V. Rajadurai, essays on the Dravidian movement and politics published in the ‘Economic and Political Weekly’, and the book, ‘Towards a Non Brahmin Millennium: From Iyothee Thass to Periyar’. They have also authored monographs on Western Marxism, including a comprehensive volume on the life and thought of Antonio Gramsci.
