Here is a report on Alain Badiou’s appearance in a bookstore in New York City:

… [Alain Badiou] eschewed the political in favor of an explication of the philosophical work in Being and Event. But when the conversation was opened up to the audience, sparks flew about the implications of Mr. Badiou’s work for politics and religion.
In response to one question, asking him to link his philosophy to contemporary politics, Mr. Badiou noted that “names in politics are impoverished. … The weakness of politics today is a weakness of poetry.”
The fall of communism, he continued, influenced that impoverishment. “Marxism,” he said, “had a constellation of names” for political concepts. “It was a sky of names. We lost the sky.”

Original posting Arts and Letters Daily.

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Medha Patkar, on a hunger fast in Delhi, has been forcibly taken by the police to a hospital some hours ago. Here’s a report on the website of Outlook magazine:

The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) leader Medha Patkar had been on an indefinite hunger strike that had entered its eighth day. She had refused to take any food or receive medical treatment ever since she began her fast on March 29 to protest the government decision to raise the height of Sardar Sarovar dam, demanding rehabilitation of those displaced by the project, as per the Supreme Court directives. Her condition had been deteriorating. The doctors who last examined her had warned that the next 48 hours would be very critical for her. But she was determined this time not to break her fast on empty assurances.

To contact Narmada Bachao Aandolan, go here. To learn more, go here. These are contacts in the US. To write or call members of the Indian government, go here. (Let me add as an aside that, at the time of writing, you wouldn’t learn anything about Medha Patkar if you went to the website of the Times of India. All I managed to learn there was that the “actress Cameron Diaz won a court-battle to keep her topless photos out of the public eye.”) Here is an eye-witness account from Sunday.

Post-script:
The Outlook story makes mention of the fact that the ruling powers “panicked” in the face of the “public mobilization … in these post-Rang De Basanti times.” It is not the film, but the frail activist who is behind one of the most momentous political movements in India; and yet, I’m glad that Patkar’s life as well as her political goals should find help because of a Bollywood film. “Rang De Basanti” has touched a nerve. Last month, Somini Sengupta had written in a story in the New York Times about a protest over the acquittal of men accused in a murder:

For nearly two weeks, the Jessica Lall story has dominated Delhi’s newspapers and magazines, providing both a window on the world of the privileged and a morality tale about the perils of Indian justice. The latest issue of the newsmagazine The Week blazed on its cover: “How the Rich Get Away with Murder!”
A 24-hour news channel, NDTV, stepped well beyond news gathering to start a campaign urging viewers to petition for a new trial; in a matter of days, more than 200,000 cellphone text messages had poured in.
Indians have flocked into the streets for marches and rallies, including a candlelight vigil at the capital’s most famous monument, India Gate, that resembled a scene from a movie. That was because it was lifted from a scene from a recent Bollywood blockbuster called “Rang de Basanti,” about a group of Indian college students rising up against an inept state bureaucracy.

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