NB: This is an interesting historical documentary; and the comments are also thought provoking. (I do not agree with everything said here: for instance the suggestion – at about 1 hr 11 m – that Hannah Arendt’s phrase ‘the banality of evil’ was a way of suppressing the horror of Nazism, or that she blamed… Read More ‘Only a God Can Save Us’: Martin Heidegger & Nazism. A Film by Jeffrey Van Davis
…..the second result of junk politics is more insidious. It solidifies the cult of the self, the amoral belief that we have the right to do anything, to betray and destroy anyone, to get what we want. The cult of the self fosters a psychopathic cruelty, a culture built not on empathy, the common good… Read More Chris Hedges on America’s junk politics
First posted January 13, 2013 NB: These extracts are from the Book within a Book in Chapter 9 of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four; first published in 1949. Sixty fours years later, the dystopian vision contained in the book throws light on the contemporary world, its fascination with war, violence and the fanatical ideologies that justify a continuous system of thought… Read More Ignorance is Strength; Freedom is Slavery; War is Peace
Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past: George Orwell, Nineteen eighty-four DENNIS S. JESUDASAN In an interview with The Hindu , Kesavan Veluthat, the General President of the 81st session of the Indian History Congress which concluded in Chennai on Thursday, shares his views on the ICHR, and whether there… Read More ‘ICHR publishes only papers of those playing second fiddles’
First posted September 13, 2017 While Hindu-right organisations, under the patronage of the Narendra Modi government, are claiming spaces within the spectrum of associations with instrumental roles to play in the India’s nationalist movement, the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) – the primary government-sponsored institution for funding historical research and publications – has found itself… Read More Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta: ICHR Blocks Manuscript on Freedom Struggle Because It Makes the Sangh Look Bad, Alleges Historian
Literature once filled in archival gaps by saying the unsayable. Now a younger generation is devising new modes of telling the story and finding new stories to tell. By Parul Sehgal Before it was an edict, and a death sentence, it was a rumor. To many, it must have seemed improbable; I imagine my grandmother, buying… Read More Seventy-five Years After Indian Partition
DHIRENDRA K JHA is a contributing writer at The Caravan November 1, 2022 NB: How things have changed since June 4, 2024. Mr Bhagwat, not to mention Messrs Naidu and Nitish, have been emboldened by the unforeseen successes of the opposition INDIA alliance. The two N’s are sneering at the opposition, which is ironic, because it is… Read More Bhagwat eclipsed
I know he had unusual eyesWhose powers no orders could determineNot to mistake the men he sawAs others did, for gods or vermin (Thomas Gunn, on a German soldier who risked his life to save Jews from deportation to the camps. Cited by Terry Eagleton, in Ideology, Verso, 1991, 2007; p xxii). What persuades men… Read More Evil
Pakistan and National Unity is an important position paper of the Communist Party of India, and a far-reaching text in the history of the Indian communist movement. The resolution dated September 19, 1942 contains an outline of the CPI’s support for what it called the ‘just essence of the Pakistan demand’; and the Report by Gangadhar… Read More Communist Party of India’s resolution on Pakistan and National Unity, September 1942
First posted September 12, 2018 I will open this comment with an anecdote. Some months ago, whilst exercising in the gym I visit, the senior trainer was talking politics with someone. He is a friendly individual and I normally do not converse whilst exercising. He happens to be an admirer of Narendra Modi. On this… Read More Oxford University’s South Asian Studies Programme’s comments on Venkat Dhulipala
After the truth-shower 