Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Once upon a time there was another public, another India

First posted November 29, 2019 The single best thing ever written on the idea of the university in India is Ashutosh Mukherjee’s Convocation Address to Mysore University in 1916, and published in the now inaccessible Dacca Review (October 1918). It literally anticipates every single debate we have on the idea of the university – from… Read More Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Once upon a time there was another public, another India

Seeking Justice for Lynching, Demolitions Not a Crime: Former Civil Servants Group on Mahmudabad / ‘You don’t need him, you need a dictionary,’ SC tells SIT probing professor

The Constitutional Conduct Group, a group of former civil servants, on Wednesday (May 28) released a statement of solidarity with Ashoka University professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad who was arrested over his posts on Operation Sindoor. “We are greatly distressed by the grave criminal charges levelled against Mahmudabad and his subsequent arrest,” the statement said, calling… Read More Seeking Justice for Lynching, Demolitions Not a Crime: Former Civil Servants Group on Mahmudabad / ‘You don’t need him, you need a dictionary,’ SC tells SIT probing professor

Narendra Modi’s Step by Step Journey Towards Creating Fascism in India

Prem Shankar Jha The following are excerpts from The Dismantling of India’s Democracy: 1947 to 2025 by Prem Shankar Jha; reproduced with permission from the publisher, Speaking Tiger. Over the decade since Narendra Modi has been the prime minister of India, at the head of a BJP government supported by a few local allies in the states… Read More Narendra Modi’s Step by Step Journey Towards Creating Fascism in India

There is a quiet and visible crisis in higher education in India that runs deep: Deepak Nayyar

There is a quiet crisis in higher education in India that runs deep, distinguished academician and former Chief Economic Advisor Deepak Nayyar said here on Wednesday (July 9, 2025), delivering the 2025 B.G. Deshmukh Lecture on ‘The Crisis of Higher Education in India: Disturbing Present and Worrisome Future’. Holding the Narendra Modi government responsible for… Read More There is a quiet and visible crisis in higher education in India that runs deep: Deepak Nayyar

S. B. Zaki: Arab women before and after Islam. Opening the door of pre-Islamic Arabian history

First posted June 19, 2016 “Islamic civilization developed a construct of history that labeled the pre-Islamic period the Age of Ignorance and projected Islam as the sole source of all that was civilized – and used that construct so effectively in its rewriting of history that the peoples of Middle East lost all knowledge of… Read More S. B. Zaki: Arab women before and after Islam. Opening the door of pre-Islamic Arabian history