Anjel Chakma’s murder bares racism’s teeth in India what an ‘Indian’ is supposed to look like is a question worth thinking about as we cast our mental eye from Jammu and Kashmir to Tamil Nadu and Mumbai to Kohima. This approach cuts across class and political boundaries: even as senior a political figure as Lalthanhawla,… Read More Death in the hills
Abinash Dash Choudhury Cuttack first came to me as a palimpsest of stories in which the personal, the historical, and the mythological mingled without clear distinction. From my father, I learnt that it was the city where my paternal grandfather spent his final days in penury, shuttling between his workplace in the Old Secretariat and… Read More Seeing Cuttack
The image Narendra Modi sought as a world leader who is principled and autonomous has been broken. Indian diplomats rely on lobbying firm not once, but routinely for access. Records show a pattern of dependency on the lobbying firm even for routine telephone calls and meetings — paying upfront for access — rather than through… Read More Muted on Venezuela, patronised by Trump, dependent on lobbyists: Modi’s global image takes a hit
ममता ने वो कर दिया, जो कोई नहीं कर सका, ED से छीन लाईं दस्तावेज़ कोलकाता में आज ममता बनर्जी ED से भिड़ गईं। सीधे उस जगह चली गईं जहां सर्च ऑपरेशन चल रहा था। बाहर आकर ममता ने आरोप लगाया कि छापे के नाम पर उनकी पार्टी से जुड़े दस्तावेज़, सर्वे रिपोर्ट हथियाने की… Read More ममता ने वो कर दिया, जो कोई नहीं कर सका, ED से छीन लाईं दस्तावेज़
Once humiliation is naturalised as a civilisational condition, violence no longer appears as aggression but as rectification. Anubhav Singh Cinema has never merely reflected political life; it has functioned as one of its most efficient laboratories. From its earliest mass forms, cinema has been a technology for organising affect, disciplining perception, and training populations to… Read More How Hindi Cinema is Preparing India for Violence
NB: Justice in India today: no trial, no conviction, no bail; jail for 5 years. Sometimes we are punished not for what we did but for who we are. DS The young scholar’s work, though not without its flaws, is one of one of the most accomplished doctoral dissertations by an Indian that I have… Read More Ramachandra Guha: In praise of Dr Umar Khalid, from one historian to another
The Reporter’s Collective The ECI used an untested software running on dubious algorithms and unreliable data from two decades ago to brand existing voters as suspicious. In just two of the 12 states we investigated we found 3.66 crore voters had been red flagged. That accounts for a quarter of the two states’ combined voting… Read More How India’s Election Commission’s algorithmic chaos hit crores of voters
Maybe we have lost the quality of friendship in becoming too particular about whom we choose to have as friends, and in a sense eroding what is, after all, the essence of friendship—camaraderie of various kinds and a fundamental trust in the other : From Just Being NB: Professor Romila Thapar is a stalwart of… Read More Romila Thapar: Just Being
A Post-Course Update from the fourth month of the Pagdandi Fellowship 2025-26 As the last of this year’s monsoon rains finally came to a halt and with the cold beginning to set in, we headed for the Narmada Valley, the final location of the Pagdandi Fellowship. We reached Jeevika Ashram in Indrana, a village on… Read More Nature, Culture & Economy in the Narmada Valley
For now, “anti-national” or “anti-Indian” books are merely being removed from syllabi. Slowly, they will disappear from libraries. Soon, they will cease to be mentioned at all. A long winter has begun to descend on the land of knowledge. Apoorvanand Knowledge – its very disciplines – are today locked in a struggle for survival on… Read More ‘Indianisation’ of Syllabi is Hollowing Out Knowledge in Our Universities
After the truth-shower 