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
The anti-choice movement is just one part of a larger effort by Christian fundamentalists to covertly turn the U.S. into a more theocratic state. Anti-choice politics are driven by a small and shrinking group of hard-right white evangelicals who wish to foist their religious views on the majority, in violation of the First Amendment-enshrined value of free… Read More Theocratic Christianity has come to Texas / Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams Texas GOP governor's 'deep ignorance' on abortion
Even for a powerful authoritarian state, the speed and extent to which the Communist Party is expanding its reach into private lives in China has caught many off guard. Since celebrating its centennial with great fanfare in July, the party has imposed a flurry of regulations telling Chinese people, especially the younger generation, how to… Read More Under Xi Jinping, the private life of Chinese citizens isn't so private anymore
The Andhra Pradesh government has a Veda Vyasa Scheme for Vedic Education. Let us, for a moment, put aside the question of whether there is a secular pedagogical argument for the state supporting Vedic education. But who is eligible for this education? Students should belong to the Brahmin community by birth. Similarly, the parallel schemes… Read More Pratap Bhanu Mehta: The little farce of Brahmin welfare schemes is a sign of India’s great tragedy
NB: Although this essay focuses on American politics, it has broader relevance. There are two major points I would make: it does not provide an adequate definition of liberalism, a word that originates in ‘liberty’; and that it does not address the matter of the global domination of capital over economic and political life. There… Read More ANDREW O'HEHIR – Beyond the crisis of democracy: Does anyone still believe in liberalism?
