Teltumbde has been conferred the Basava National Award – Karnataka’s highest honour Those accused in the Elgar Parishad case – lawyers, activists and scholars – have been in jail with no sign of trial for years now. From the world over, criticism has been rife against state action targeting the 16. Although a few have… Read More ‘Never Adjusted Your Stand’: 9 Elgar Accused Congratulate Anand Teltumbde From Jail
When a small plane carrying a mother and her children went down in a remote part of the Amazon, the odds of their survival looked bleaker as the days went by. How could they be found? by William Ralston A longer version of this piece first appeared in The Atavist Hernando Murcia was the kind of pilot… Read More Forty days lost in the rainforest: Colombia’s miracle rescue
How paranoid accusations of “violence” became all the rage… When scholars of higher education write the history of this strange period, they will surely wonder that, with so much real violence raging elsewhere, the denizens of some of the safest spaces in the world fretted so much over merely verbal arrows. By Len Gutkin Shai Davidai,… Read More The Hyperbolic Style in American Academe
A few years ago, Germany seemed like it had all the answers. But in 2024, we find ourselves in a land of bleak absurdity Peter Kuras Germany doesn’t have a reputation as a funny country, but its dark humour is currently shaming the best recent efforts of both Britain and the US. Not that there… Read More Tractor chaos, neo-Nazis and a flatlining economy: why has Germany lost the plot?
‘I have written five books, but I feel that they are all one book. A book about the history of a utopia …’ Svetlana Alexievich held her Nobel Lecture on 7 December 2015, at the Swedish Academy, Stockholm. She was introduced by Sara Danius, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy. The lecture was in Russian.… Read More Svetlana Alexievich’s Nobel Lecture (2015)
Raghu Karnad According to the Mahabharata, the legendary city of Indraprastha was founded by the five Pandava brothers for their queen, Draupadi. Its wide streets and orchards surrounded a palatial hall, built by the demon-architect Maya, which appeared ‘like a mass of new clouds conspicuous in the sky’. The hall was ‘so rich and well built’… Read More Looking for Indraprastha
NB: This most perceptive essay on concepts of imperium was delivered at the Indian History Congress in 1991, and published by the Indian History Congress proceedings Vol. 52 (1991), pp. 831-887) The Soviet Union has just expired, and it seems only natural to know why. It appears as a failure; and to most it illustrates… Read More Madhavan Palat: Forms of Union – Russian Empire and the Soviet Union (1991)
NB: This is the simplest and most brilliant philosophical reflection on time I have heard. Here is Javed Akhtar’s own explanation of it at the Kolkata Literary Festival, 2022; and here is one of his recent recitals, at the Faiz Festival in 2018. It begins around 4.30 minutes into the video. Javed sahib shukriya. DS… Read More Javed Akhtar recites Waqt, his poem on Time
January 22 has been projected as Victory Day. It is, of course, a victory, but not of the vibrant Hindu religious tradition, but of a majoritarian, exclusionist project that is deadly opposed to an inclusive, modern, and dynamic idea of India. The hurried consecration signifies not any vindication of Hinduism, but its appropriation by a… Read More The idea of Ram and the idea of India
NB: The only book by Greil Marcus that I’ve come across is The Dustbin of History; a set of incisive literary essays, mostly book reviews and cultural cum historical meditation. Well worth reading. As is this essay. DS whatever language is the language of your work, if I can move anyone else as that work… Read More Greil Marcus: Why I Write
