Felix Pal December, 2025 For decades, two parallel understandings of the Sangh have been allowed to proliferate. The first sees the different constituents of the Sangh as inchoately and fuzzily connected, strung together only by a shared ideological goal… The second, on the other hand, understands the Sangh as, in fact, less shaped by conformity… Read More Unveiling the RSS
Nesrine Malik The liar’s punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else: George Bernard Shaw For ease and speed, we are degrading our ability to connect and to organise our societies. We must assert our trust in humans over machines Here is a nightmare scenario… Read More AI is devoid of meaning and humanity. That’s why its vapid voice suits this political moment
How unemployment, addiction, and frustration are turning youth into society’s unwanted category. by Ashraf Zainabi Every modern society has two lists. The first list contains creatures it wants to protect, dogs, butterflies, pandas, dolphins, snow leopards, motivational speakers, billionaires pretending to be simple, and occasionally trees, but mostly on environment day. The second list contains creatures… Read More Linguistic cruelty and beyond
The Tribune, 16 December, 2025 Chat GPT and Google Gemini are rapidly becoming the go-to places for students. That by itself is not surprising-after all generations of students have found ways to avoid rigor and skirt around academic engagement. Champion Guides (which condensed the whole course into a pocket-sized paperback) were followed by short YouTube… Read More Shobhit Mahajan: As AI replaces thinking, learning is eroding
Review by Patrick Malcolmson “In a time when tyranny is resurgent all over the globe, in a bewildering variety of forms – military and civilian, theocratic and kleptocratic, ideological and tribal – this book provides a synoptic historical and philosophic perspective that does full justice to the manifold phenomenon in all its range and complexity.”… Read More Tyrants: A History of Power, Injustice, and Terror
NB: An instructive essay on our current dispensation. I would sum up this regime’s method as a confusion of wisdom with cunning; its speech as unending sophistry (लफ़्फ़ाज़ी); and its goal as the eradication of simple human decency from public life. DS India’s current regime rests on three interwoven factors: Hindutva, a captured civil society,… Read More Suhas Palshikar: Anatomy of India’s New Regime
NB: A well written account of the ideas of a great thinker. However, when the author tells us that ‘Straussians are not necessarily but mostly Republicans‘, it jars, because in his own words, Strauss ‘did say that philosophy had been endangered by adopting a political agenda‘. The domain of the spirit cannot be reduced to… Read More The Legacy of Leo Strauss After 50 Years
Increasingly isolated president is determined to press on with Ukraine war, say well-placed sources, despite ailing economy Pjotr Sauer and Shaun Walker Vladimir Putin pulled up to a hotel in central Moscow earlier in May in a Russian-made SUV, dressed casually in jeans and a light jacket. Carrying a bouquet of flowers, he walked unhurriedly into the… Read More ‘There is profound disappointment in him’: mood in Russia turns against Putin / Russia hits Kyiv with hypersonic ballistic missile in ‘deranged’ attack
NB: This literary enormity is very serious, but I have no idea whether the academic community will take it seriously. I have taught for many years, but these past few weeks have made me more concerned than ever before about what AI is doing to the minds and mentalities of our younger generation. It’s bad… Read More The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is Dead
Academia has become unrooted from pedagogy. William Deresiewicz That liberalism is under threat is now a cliché—yet this has done nothing to stem the global resurgence of illiberalism. Part of the problem is that liberalism is often considered too “thin” to win over the allegiance of citizens, and that liberals are too afraid of speaking… Read More Colleges, Maybe Try Teaching!
After the truth-shower 