In and around the dark recesses of the ruins of a fourteenth-century palace in Delhi, Anand Vivek Taneja finds a counterculture to the demands of today’s India. In Taneja’s view, this world of jinn veneration is more inclusive and less judgmental than the outside world and hearkens back to a fast slipping past, with elements… Read More Book review: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi
“All I wanted to do when I started was change the world, and now, 60 years on, I’ve succeeded,” says the 84-year-old artist. “But it’s worse now than when I started, we’re really living in a hell of a year, aren’t we?”…. When the Welsh artist Ralph Steadman picks up the phone, he sounds a bit paranoid.… Read More Ralph Steadman: 'We're really living in a hell of a year, aren't we?' Interview by Nadja Sayej
A recent article in the Financial Times narrates, with scrupulous detail and objectivity, the astonishing surge in fortunes of a businessman from Gujarat in the years and months since Narendra Modi became prime minister in May 2014. One paragraph in the article runs: “When Mr Modi took office, he flew from Gujarat to the capital New Delhi in Mr… Read More Ramachandra Guha: Adani after Gandhi
Dara Shukoh, along with Akbar, remains among the two well-loved personalities of Mughal India. In the case of Dara, he finds appeal even among Hindu nationalists. As the figure of Dara is inscribed with modern labels of liberal and secular, the nuances and complexities in the personality of Shah Jahan’s eldest son remain hidden. The… Read More Book Review – Supriya Gandhi’s Biography of Dara Shukoh Separates the Man From the Myth
The world of secret offshore companies is outrageous. The rich and corrupt, seeking to hide assets and income from taxes, set up shell companies, foundations and trusts – by the hundreds of thousands – every year. Despite the harm it does to local government and the likely illegality of it, the industry holds public trade… Read More Book Review: 'Secrecy World' by Jake Bernstein
If anyone embodies the archetype of the evil that was Auschwitz, it is surely Josef Mengele. Dubbed by the inmates and survivors of the camp the “Angel of Death,” the immaculate doctor – with a slight flick of the finger – would casually select those permitted to live and work and those destined to die… Read More Book review: How Did Josef Mengele Become the Evil Doctor of Auschwitz?
Leave Truth to the police and us; we know the Good; We build the Perfect City time shall never alter; Our Law shall guard you always like a cirque of mountains… (p 266) But ideas can be true although men die, And we can watch a thousand faces Made active by… Read More Journey To A War by W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood (1939) // W. H. Auden 'In Time of War' (1939)
Around 1905 or 1906, Sigmund Freud wrote an essay, unpublished in his lifetime, called “Psychopathic Characters on the Stage.” The essay addressed the question of what we, as spectators, get out of watching people go crazy. Freud’s theory was that we’re fascinated by crazy characters because they help us express our own repressed impulses. Drama,… Read More Book review: The Hamlet Doctrine: Knowing Too Much, Doing Nothing
First posted March 09, 2017 Mohan K. Tikku The most outstanding figure in 20th century Kashmiri literature has also been the least published poet of his generation. To his many readers and admirers, Dinanath Nadim has been a bit of a paradox. In a literary career extending over half a century, Nadim (1916-89) wrote a… Read More Dinanath Nadim: Kashmir’s forgotten poet
