Apoorvanand What happened to Professor Tejaswini Desai of Kolhapur can happen to anyone in the teaching community. It tells you of the perils of being a teacher in India of our times. Teachers can no longer assume that the class is over after the stipulated period of 55 or 60 minutes. Whatever transpired in the… Read More Witch-hunt against Tejaswini Desai highlights dangers of being a teacher in India today
How Hedgewar spurned Bose and his own protégé’s call to join the freedom struggle DHIRENDRA K JHA ON 7 JULY 1939, Keshav Baliram Hedgewar was convalescing in the mansion of a rich colleague at Deolali, on the outskirts of Nasik, when an old associate visited him. This was Gopal Mukund Huddar, also known as Balaji. When… Read More The Great Betrayal
the spectacle is the guardian of sleep: Guy Debord Tom Bunyard The Society of the Spectacle was written, as Guy Debord once put it, ‘with the deliberate intention of doing harm to spectacular society.’ Following the book’s publication in 1967, he and the Situationist International (SI) declared that it sought ‘nothing other than to overthrow… Read More History and revolution in Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle
By Nectar Gan, CNN A series of high-profile domestic violence cases in China, including a killing carried out in broad daylight that was captured on video and circulated widely on social media, has sparked outrage – and reignited a debate among young people about the pitfalls of marriage. The killing in the eastern province of Shandong… Read More Shocking cases of domestic violence are leading young Chinese to question marriage
There are claims that the roots of democratic institutions can be found in ancient India. Studies have shown that such institutions have existed not only in India but also in other parts of the world. No one society can claim it was the ‘mother’.… There were two mutually contradictory strains in Western thought about India… Read More Was India the Mother of Democracy?
NB: Is India an empire? The British Raj certainly was, and the RSS/BJP ideologues who constantly denouce the Macaulay tradition in education; don’t seem to mind the continuance of colonial police codes and the divide and rule method of governance. Do they imagine that a combination of communal ideology and colonial policing will keep them… Read More Modi preaching peace abroad as Manipur burns reinforces historical alienation of the North East
By Richard Wolin Martin Heidegger’s influence has been enormous. Richard Rorty once justifiably claimed that it would be impossible to write the intellectual history of the 20th century without acknowledging Heidegger’s titanic impact. But these tributes to Heidegger’s prodigious achievements are question-begging in one crucial respect: they neglect to consider what we are actually reading when… Read More To Sanitize the Master’s Corpus: On the Heidegger Hoax
I myself have spent some time in the past trying to show “‘the lack of scientific certainty’” inherent in the construction of facts. I too made it a ‘primary issue.’ But I did not exactly aim at fooling the public by obscuring the certainty of a closed argument – or did I? After all, I… Read More Bruno Latour: Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? (2004)
John Powers In China, a group of atheists (the Chinese Communist Party) has long dictated how the country’s religious groups should practise their faiths. Chinese Christians are told to reject salvation by faith and the Resurrection; their core beliefs should be patriotism and love of the party. The party has also published several pamphlets detailing appropriate beliefs and practices… Read More Succession on the Tibetan plateau: what’s at stake in the battle over the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation?
( Middle East Monitor ) – The chilling repercussions of the highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism have been revealed in a recent report by the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC). Titled “Suppressing Palestinian Rights Advocacy through the IHRA Working Definition of Anti-Semitism”, the report by the independent Dutch-based organisation uncovered shocking examples of the IHRA’s… Read More Europe Ignoring Israeli War Crimes under Guise of Combating anti-Semitism: new report
After the truth-shower 