Author: Dilip

I'm a scholar, writer and teacher; and my blog is designed for intellectual exploration. It carries no advertisements and requires no cash subscription

Nakul Krishna on A. K. Ramanujan: The literary legacy of an Indian modernist / The essay censored by DU’s Academic Council

First posted August 15, 2013 “Yes, I know all that. I should be modern” – begins Ramanujan’s ‘Conventions of Despair’. Others in India have felt this impulse, and it has pulled them in different directions. In politics, it has drawn them towards nationalism, socialism and fascism. In religion, it has had similarly contradictory effects: either… Read More Nakul Krishna on A. K. Ramanujan: The literary legacy of an Indian modernist / The essay censored by DU’s Academic Council

Dilip

‘Wiping Gaza Off The Map’: Big Money Agenda. Confiscating Palestine’s Maritime Natural Gas Reserves

MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY As outlined by Felicity Arbuthnot with foresight 10 years ago in a December, 30 2013 article:  “Israel is set to become a major exporter of gas and some oil, “If All Goes to Plan.”” In the current context, Israel’s “All Goes to Plan” option consists in bypassing Palestine and “Wiping Gaza off the Map,” as well confiscating ALL Gaza’s maritime offshore gas reserves, worth billions… Read More ‘Wiping Gaza Off The Map’: Big Money Agenda. Confiscating Palestine’s Maritime Natural Gas Reserves

Dilip

Algorithms of Exclusion

Reporters Collective A I series Haryana used the state’s Family ID database and algorithms to identify genuine beneficiaries of welfare schemes. The database wrongly listed thousands of citizens as dead. Result: They lost their pensions. The Collective’s Tapasya travelled to Haryana to understand how states are using artificial intelligence in an unintelligent way, at a… Read More Algorithms of Exclusion

Dilip

Conversations with a textile worker in Surat / सूरत में एक कपड़ा मजदूर से बातचीत

Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu and Surat in Gujarat are the preeminent textile clusters in India. In Surat there are two million workers in fifty thousand textile manufacturing units. Surat is a hub for synthetic fibres, especially sarees. At ease conversations on 27 and 28 December 2023 with a printing & dyeing factory worker in an… Read More Conversations with a textile worker in Surat / सूरत में एक कपड़ा मजदूर से बातचीत

Dilip

तुलसी ने लिखा था ‘संत हृदय नवनीत समाना’, आज होते तो ‘संत हृदय बुलडोज़र समाना’ लिखना पड़ता

क्या हुआ जब राम स्वप्न में आए? कुलदीप कुमार रात सपने में रामजी ने दर्शन दिए. मैं डायरी में कुछ लिखने का कठिन प्रयास कर रहा था. एक हाथ में कलम थी और दूसरे में मैग्नीफाइंग ग्लास. अचानक लगा कि कमरा किसी दिव्य सुगंध से भर उठा है. सिर उठाया तो देखा कि रामचंद्र जी… Read More तुलसी ने लिखा था ‘संत हृदय नवनीत समाना’, आज होते तो ‘संत हृदय बुलडोज़र समाना’ लिखना पड़ता

Dilip

Punishing victims, rewarding perpetrators: The Supreme Court’s creative contortions

The Babri Masjid ruling inaugurated a pattern where the Court berated the government or its favoured party, which still ended up on the winning side. Girish Shahane “The attempt to abrogate Article 370 is likely to meet its end in the Supreme Court”. That’s a line from a column I wrote after the Indian government radically changed… Read More Punishing victims, rewarding perpetrators: The Supreme Court’s creative contortions

Dilip

Against homogenisation: Advancing diversity through Democratic Confederalism

The homogenic national society is the most artificial society to have ever been created and is the result of the “social engineering project… Due to its bureaucratic nature, Statism needs the homogenisation of space and time to function. It requires that within its borders, cultures and ways of life are melted into one singular artificial… Read More Against homogenisation: Advancing diversity through Democratic Confederalism

Dilip

Kurdish solidarity crackdown

How “anti-terror” laws used to silence meaningful dissent and solidarity with oppressed peoples. ~ Arîn Qereçox In January 2019, I travelled to Syria to learn about the revolution unfolding in the country’s north since 2012. At the time, we called it the Rojava Revolution, as the land being held by revolutionary forces was roughly the… Read More Kurdish solidarity crackdown

Dilip

What the West gets wrong on Stalin and Putin

The Western tendency to reduce mass-scale crime to an omnipotent leader has always been a misleading one. Even Stalinism was not the work of one man, but of the security services and individuals willing to denounce their fellow neighbors for housing rights or petty grievances, as the Kyiv-born Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov so mercilessly satires in… Read More What the West gets wrong on Stalin and Putin

Dilip

What Happens in Ayodhya Doesn’t Stay in Ayodhya

Mrinal Pande A cluster of photos printed in a major English daily, the day after the week long rituals began in Ayodhya’s new Ram temple, confirms that our ‘Beti Padhao‘ and ‘Stree Sashkteekaran’ and various ‘Matru Kalyan Yojanas’ notwithstanding, the traditional gendered hierarchies remain firmly in place both on the streets and in the temple in Ayodhya. In… Read More What Happens in Ayodhya Doesn’t Stay in Ayodhya

Dilip