Dependency, neocolonialism, and the agrarian problem in Colombia Sandra Jaramillo Restrepo In the 1960s and ‘70s, the Colombian national government embarked on an ambitious agrarian reform program to address poverty in the increasingly violent countryside. Under the bipartisan project of the National Front, which alternated power between the Conservative and Liberal parties, these efforts sparked… Read More Underdevelopment and War
It’s all the more striking that Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar have run to be alongside Narendra Modi as he prepares once again to step into the role of the prime minister after describing the country’s largest minority group as “infiltrators”. Anand Sahay It is noteworthy that two leading political figures — the resurrected Andhra… Read More Naidu, Nitish Ignore the Pain of All Those Who Have Suffered During Modi’s 10-Year Tenure
Mainstream news channels have been in thrall to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A ragtag army of small independent media is helping to save democracy Mukul Kesavan For the last 10 years, India has been the site of a natural experiment. It’s as if a social scientist was testing to see how long it would take… Read More India Deserves a Better Media
I am appalled by today’s sensitivities—how easily people take offense. It impels me to be offensive, or at least to ignore the shrinking violets. George Salis: Your latest book is Burma Sahib, a novel about a young Eric Blair (aka George Orwell) in India. What attracted you to this part of Blair’s life? Paul Theroux: A line in… Read More The Grit That Makes the Pearl: An Interview With Paul Theroux
NB: The crimes of the Iranian theocracy prompt the question: what is it in God’s will that calls for such barbarous cruelty and killing of people for leading an ordinary life? Does the tyranny of the Ayatollahs represent God’s will or is it simply the murderous rage of old men and hooligans using any opportunity… Read More The Amini effect: The impact of a single life and the importance of accountability
Mukul Kesavan The morning of the fourth of June found India’s non-bhakt citizens curled in a fetal position. Braced against news of the four-hundred-foretold by the exit polls, sapped by a decade of electoral defeats, they had decided not to suffer the drawn-out torment of a televised count. Better to get the bad news all at… Read More The Great Escape: When India’s Political Landscape Shifted
NB: There’s no wonder why lacs of Indian students are migrating to campuses abroad to pursue higher studies (800,000 in 2022 alone). The Headquarters of Truth based in Nagpur have taken over most public universities. At this rate, nothing will be left for Indian teachers to do except praise whatever the RSS considers to be… Read More Professor’s Harassment by ABVP Shows Near-Complete Takeover of Universities by RSS-BJP
From the 1910s through the 1930s, Maximilian J. Rudwin produced some excellent pioneering scholarship on the European traditions of the fantastic in literature, especially as related to various manifestations of the devil. Rudwin was an unusually peripatetic scholar, and virtually nothing has been written about him or his oeuvre. His trail has not been easy to… Read More Manifestations of the Devil: The writings of Maximilian Rudwin (1885-1946)
Peg Birmingham: A Lying World Order: Political deception and the threat of totalitarianism (Arendt) argues that while the ancient sophists were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, modern sophists want a great deal more, namely, modern sophists want “a lasting victory at the expense of reality itself.” From… Read More A Lying World Order
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 1976 © 2023 C. Herscovici, London/ARS, New York René Magritte; 1898 – 1967, Brussels, Belgium; Empire of Light; 1953–54 In Empire of Light, numerous versions of which exist (see, for example, those at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique,… Read More René Magritte: Empire of Light
After the truth-shower 