NB: To this forthright letter, I would like to add just one point. What exactly is the reasoning behind all this verbiage about DNA? Does it follow that people with ‘the same DNA’ must think alike, or love one another, or even belong to the same ‘Nation’? Sometimes even twins don’t have the same DNA.… Read More Javed Anand: On RSS reassurances to Muslims, deeds matter more than words
One of the greatest satisfactions in the history of philosophy is the inconsistency, even the hypocrisy, of the Stoics. For as long as I have studied them, I have quarreled with them. Like the late Tolstoy, they get into your head. The Stoics were meticulous students of human breakability and raised it into a subject… Read More Leon Wieseltier: 'The Wise, Too, Shed Tears'
Noted film personality Javed Akhtar says he is as opposed to Muslim fundamentalists as he is to Hindu extremism, noting that he has even received death threats from Muslims because of his outspokenness. Defending his recent interview in which he drew parallels between the Taliban and Hindu extremists, he said Hindus are the most decent and… Read More Javed Akhtar says he is as opposed to Muslim fundamentalists as he is to Hindu extremism
For around three centuries, the girl reading a letter in the dimly-lit solitude of a Johannes Vermeer painting gave no indication of what the message contained. Facing an open window, her figure gently curved as she scanned the note in her hands, her body appeared slight against the vacant wall behind her. But last week,… Read More Vermeer's 'hidden' Cupid is the enigmatic artist's latest mystery
At a gathering a couple of years ago in the Maharashtra hill station of Panchgani organised by Professor Rajmohan Gandhi, I was challenged by an angry young man: “Keep your Hinduism in your house. Why do you need to bring it into the streets?” The young man could have been a conservative Hindu offended by… Read More Sunita Viswanath: Why I feel the need to bring my Hinduism to the streets
An alarming report by the news agency Reuters quotes corporate India to say “everyone is scared” of the Narendra Modi government and does not want to run afoul of it. It reported several industry executives claiming that “a public diatribe against two Indian business giants by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s officials and his ideological allies… Read More Bharat Bhushan – Fear factor: Corporates must resist intimidation
For some time now I’ve been wanting to work on a book called “constitutional Indians” – a concept that I have briefly touched upon in the conclusion of my book Christianity and Politics in Tribal India: Baptist Missionaries and Naga Nationalism, just published by Permanent Black and Ashoka University in collaboration with the New India Foundation. Partha Chatterjee:… Read More G Kanato Chophy: For Nagas, the idea of India is not defined by the Brahmanical notion of a timeless civilisation
No other event of the 21st century has defined international politics quite in the same manner as that of September 11, 2001. Twenty years later, the world is still grappling with the deeper philosophical, political, economic, and social consequences of “that day” – of the most audacious attack on American territory – and the forces… Read More Amitabh Mattoo: America’s failure of imagination / P B Mehta: What 9/11 unleashed on us / Ben Rhodes: Afghanistan withdrawal has ended the 9/11 era / Uday Bhaskar & Madhavan Palat on 20 Years after 9/11
An experiment that hung rhinoceroses upside down to see what effect it had on the animals has been awarded one of this year’s Ig Nobel prizes. Other recipients included teams that studied the bacteria in chewing gum stuck to pavements, and how to control cockroaches on submarines. The spoof prizes are not as famous as… Read More Upside-down rhino research wins Ig Nobel Prize
An academic conference in the US addressing Hindu nationalism is being targeted by rightwing Hindu groups, which have sent death threats to participants and forced several scholars to withdraw. The conference, titled Dismantling Global Hindutva, which is co-sponsored by more than 53 universities including Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Columbia, Berkeley, the University of Chicago, the University… Read More Hannah Ellis-Petersen: Death threats sent to participants of US conference on Hindu nationalism
After the truth-shower 