Editors' Note

Abstract

We remain in uncertain times. The crisis in Tigray and the vicious bombardment of Gaza create ever-greater horrors. The COVID crisis continues, and in some places it is now taking on a too-familiar form. Countries like India, previously relatively lightly affected, now face catastrophe; many more grimly await a third wave. While many countries in the global North anticipate the end of the crisis as their vaccination programs ramp up and COVID recedes, many countries of the global South still find the vaccines almost inaccessible. The medical crisis is embedded in moral and ethical catastrophe. It is surrounded by fierce debates about access to care, artificial scarcity of vaccines, counting and reporting COVID deaths, and the balance between biosafety and dignity in suffering, loss, and death.At this unpropitious moment, we are grateful for the response we received to our editorial in CSSAAME 40:3 on COVID-19 and the Movement for Black Lives, a first installment of which appears here. The issue opens with a poem by Hasan Mujtaba and a roundtable convened by CSSAAME editorial board member Kavita Sivaramakrishnan with Sunil Amrith, Omar Dewachi, Julie Livingston, and Banu Subramaniam. Their wide-ranging discussion points to the provocative possibility that the current crisis brings into question contemporary states' biopolitical conceits. What refigured forms of state power and political community will emerge? Their conversation is followed by a set of essays: Harris Solomon's story of an Indian hospital, Joelle Abi-Rached on vaccine passports, and Dwaipayan Banerjee on intellectual property.Our next section reflects on how the concept of “minority” and the problem of minority rights was used in novel and often unpredictable ways throughout the twentieth century. “Minority Questions” develops case studies and reflections first explored in a workshop organized by Anupama Rao at Columbia University (2018). Roy Bar Sadeh and Lotte Houwink ten Cate organize and introduce a set of essays by Paul Werth, Laura Robson, Cindy Ewing, On Barak, Amal Ghazal, Aaron Glasserman, SherAli Tareen, Shaunna Rodrigues, Kelvin Ng, Orit Bashkin, and Judith Surkis, which address the enduring reach and relevance of minoritarian thinking for the political present.Finally, our last two sections consider issues around intimacy and estrangement and vernacular politics. In the former, Emma Parks investigates the blurring of corporate and nationalist politics around Safaricom in Kenya, while Beeta Baghoolizadeh considers race, religion, and nationalism in twentieth-century Iran, and Trishula Rachna Patel follows the work of Indian diplomats in twentieth-century southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. In “Vernacular Politics,” John Chalcraft explores the possibilities for a theoretical framework to research popular politics in the Middle East using Gramsci's philosophy of praxis as a starting point. Lastly, Sravanthi Kollu traces how debates over how Telugu moved from discourses of it as “vulgar speech” to a vernacular “common speech” in early twentieth-century India.