On honesty as an attitude Both of these writers took the view that truthfulness was more important than ideological allegiance and metaphysics, that the facts should be derived from the real world, rather than the world of ideas. They were similar stylistically too: both wrote candidly, clearly and prolifically. William Fear A war still raged… Read More Orwell, Camus and truth
NB: George Bush and Tony Blair are as culpable for war crimes as is Vladimir Putin. If we can’t see this and say it, we are at an advanced level of Orwellian doublespeak. DS Sinan Antoon In early 2003, I was living in Cairo and carrying out research for my doctoral dissertation on a famous… Read More A million lives later, I cannot forgive what American terrorism did to my country, Iraq
Chameli Devi Jain Award 2023 – India International Centre The Lady Vanishes Gandhi’s Assassin. By Dhirendra K Jha Four Indian intellectuals who were murdered for their ideas (2013-2017) George Orwell: Ignorance is Strength; Freedom is Slavery; War is Peace George Orwell – Freedom of the Park (1945) George Orwell’s Final Warning: “If you want a picture of the… Read More 2023 B.G. Verghese Memorial Lecture: Nafrat se Itni Mohabbat Kyo? Why Do We Love to Hate?
An examination of the internet age suggests that we should cultivate the heresies of secrets and silence Stuart Jeffries During a commercial break in the 1984 Super Bowl, Apple broadcast an ad directed by Ridley Scott. Glum, grey workers sat in a vast grey hall listening to Big Brother’s declamations on a huge screen. Then a… Read More Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism & New Technologies of Power by Byung-Chul Han. Review (2017)
The actions of the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha could impede the independent functioning of the parliamentary committees Bharat Bhushan Chairman of the Rajya Sabha and Vice President (VP) of India Jagdeep Dhankar has done something unusual. In an unprecedented move, he has appointed eight officers from his personal office to 12 parliamentary standing committees… Read More More than a referee? Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar prying on House committees
NB: An extraordinary film by one of India’s most talented film-makers. What I saw were three visual metaphors: an eclipse of the sun which never lifted; a professor entering a dark place to contemplate darkness; and an armed woman waiting silently for something unspeakable. For me, the first metaphor signified the contemporary planetary condition; the… Read More Amar Kanwar: Such A Morning
By Sharda Ugra You know the Ahmedabad summer has turned brutal when mirages begin to pop up on city roads. Horizons shimmer seductively, tricking the mind and the eye, sending them stumbling around trying to separate illusion from what is real. Somewhat like what was built around the first day of the India v Australia Test… Read More The Modi Stadium Metaverse: Half Full Or Just Empty?
Narendra Modi posed for the cameras holding a photograph of Narendra Modi in Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi stadium… lets lose ourselves in this “bottomless sinkhole of North Korean narcissism” Mukul Kesavan It isn’t unusual for prime ministers of cricket-mad nations to sidle into the frame, to photobomb the cricket. During a Commonwealth heads of government meeting… Read More Cult over cricket
By Liam Barrett In an interview for the Guardian last week, MSNBC broadcaster Mehdi Hasan launched a broadside against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. Fox is less of a news channel, Hasan said, than “a propaganda arm of the Republican Party.” Hasan accused Murdoch of overseeing the “degradation of our democracy and media.” His criticisms mirror a general distrust of the mainstream… Read More Rupert Murdoch’s press empire is a threat to democracy
A kaleidoscopic journey through a divided country…The river of bile on which Sharlet fights to stay afloat courses from one end of the country to the other. By Elizabeth D. Samet The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet Jeff Sharlet’s new book, The Undertow, plunged me into a vertiginous fever-dream. It induced a physiological response… Read More The Center Cannot Hold
After the truth-shower 