To G.S. Arundale; August 4 1919: Let there be no mistake. Civil resistance has come to stay. It is an eternal doctrine of life which we follow consciously or unconsciously in many walks of life. It is the new and extended application of it which has caused misgivings and excitement. Its suspension is designed to… Read More Mahatma Gandhi on littleness and difference (1919)
When we judge scholarship only as politics, something crucial is lost A new consensus unites college administrators with many of their faculty members, especially in the humanities: Scholarship today must be socially engaged. This demand, and the morally charged language that comes with it, might seem to meet the urgency of our political moment.… Read More Justin Sider: In Defense of Disinterested Knowledge
There is no better symbol for the disappearance of women’s rights in Afghanistan than the end of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the return of the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. When the Taliban on September 7 announced their new interim government, the vice and virtue ministry featured on the list, with… Read More Heather Barr: For Afghan Women, the Frightening Return of ‘Vice and Virtue’
The police all over the country is increasingly brutal in their approach towards common people. Flouting law rather than protecting the rule of law is becoming the norm. When the chief minister of a state says “thok diya jayega” (will be shot), it is an open call to the police to ignore rule of law in dealing… Read More Sanjiv Krishan Sood: It Is the Need of the Hour To Understand Police Brutality in India and Take Action
In the pantheon of women shamed for exposing the actions of high-profile men – before Christine Blasey Ford in 2018 and Monica Lewinsky in 1998 – there was Anita Hill. In 1991, the US president, George HW Bush, nominated Clarence Thomas to the supreme court. Senate hearings for his confirmation were completed without incident, until an interview… Read More Anita Hill on sexual harassment and survival: ‘You have to think: what is my life for?’
Greta Thunberg has excoriated global leaders over their promises to address the climate emergency, dismissing them as “blah, blah, blah”. She quoted statements by Boris Johnson: “This is not some expensive, politically correct, green act of bunny hugging”, and Narendra Modi: “Fighting climate change calls for innovation, cooperation and willpower” but said the science did not… Read More ‘Blah, blah, blah’: Greta Thunberg lambasts leaders over climate crisis
Normal life was hit as farmers blocked highways and squatted on railway tracks at many places on the occasion of the Bharat Bandh called on Monday against the three contentious farm laws. The bandh began at 6 am and ended at 4 pm on Monday. BKU leader Rakesh Tikait said, “Our Bharat Bandh was successful. We had… Read More Bharat Bandh Today Live Updates: Highways, rail tracks blocked; strike successful, says Rakesh Tikait / Bharat Bhushan: Time for farmers' movement to launch a political party
NB: India’s Prime Minister has warned the world of the threat of ‘regressive thinking.’ The rhetorical artistry of our Great Leader is indeed admirable; although I think his camp-followers will miss the irony. The article below describes what can happen in India in the name of politically correct nationalism. And here’s another: A Grateful Nation. We… Read More Mukul Kesavan: Photobombing death and the banality of evil / Evil, framed. By SLAVENKA DRAKULIĆ
The most striking aspect of the persona that Goebbels composes in the diaries is that it doesn’t try to conceal traits that any halfway decent morality would condemn. He is not ashamed of the abject servility that he shows in relation to Hitler; he glories in it. He registers no flicker of remorse regarding the… Read More The Nazi everyman: Hitler’s propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels
NB: I agree with much of Gray’s argument about the fragility of liberal democratic values, but would like to underline one of his sentences, containing the phrase about earlier generations of ‘liberal and socialist thinkers downplaying the colossal human toll of communism in Russia and China‘. There’s no denying this, but let us also remember that… Read More The West isn’t dying – its ideas live on in China. By John Gray
After the truth-shower 