NB: Shashank is a former student of history at Ramjas College, the University of Delhi. He can be assured that his erstwhile teachers are very proud of him. DS The 2025 Karwaan Book Award has been awarded to Shashank Shekhar Sinha for Casting the Buddha: A Monumental History of Buddhism in India. The Jury also awarded… Read More Shashank Shekhar Sinha wins the 2025 Karwaan Book Award for ‘Casting the Buddha’
The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant & regular employment of violence: Adolf Hitler NB: This is what is happening in India. A concerted assault on simple human decency. It is not aided by the ruling establishment, it is the policy of the ruling establishment – regardless of partisan affiliation. There is… Read More “Freedom Of Worship Being Attacked”: Shashi Tharoor On Christmas Vandalism / Hindu extremists try to shut down Christmas in India
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) — Thousands of people flocked to Bethlehem’s Manger Square on Christmas Eve as families heralded a much-needed boost of holiday spirit. The giant Christmas tree that was absent during the Israel-Hamas war returned on Wednesday, overlooking a parade of scouts playing songs on bagpipes. People gather next to the Christmas tree… Read More Thousands flock to Bethlehem to revive Christmas spirit after 2 years of war in Gaza
The Bible is unquestionably the most scrutinized “book” in history. Yet certain obvious facts about it nonetheless escape notice. For example, as Diarmaid MacCulloch points out in the Review’s December 18, 2025, the Bible is not in fact a book, but “books,” as its original Greek name (biblia) attests: sixty-six of them, or seventy-three, or seventy-six, depending… Read More A Christmas Story
NB: The Indian Army has always been the most visibly secular part of the Indian establishment; commanding maximum trust among the public in times of communal unrest. It is a tragic and extremely dangerous move on the part of the ruling party to try and influence the Armed Forces with their political ideology. It is… Read More The Indian Army’s Visible Adherence to the Majority Religion Can No Longer Be Ignored
Composed between the 10th and 12th centuries, these moral observations from old Kannada texts show great care about how to be properly charitable. Chandan Gowda ‘A person of understanding gives in charity without wondering, “What do I stand to lose?”, without hesitation, without the weight of self-doubt, and without any dampening of enthusiasm.’ “The one… Read More The grace of giving
Readers outside of India can donate hereto support Mainstream Weeklyhttps://tinyurl.com/2rsy4ss6++++++ In this issue IMAGE & SOUND Editor’s Picks: Books of Note https://mainstreamweekly.net/article16391.html
NB: I appreciate this author’s empathetic understanding of religion, especially this sentence: of my three particular political heroes, only one – Dr King – is a Christian. Gandhi was Hindu, and his colleague, the too-little-known Abdul Ghaffar Khan – was a Muslim. I learned something special in this line: Philoxenia is the Greek term used… Read More They’re doing to America what they did to Christianity
This article, The Deconstruction of the Walls of Jericho; is an abridged version of The Bible: No Evidence on the Ground; by Zeev Herzog, Professor at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University. He participated extensively in collaboration with other archaeologists in excavations at ancient sites relevant to Biblical legends.… Read More Biblical Archaeology and the Judeo-Christian legends / The Deconstruction of the Walls of Jericho
It’s worth recalling that the familiar biblical history of the Israelites’– the Exodus from Egypt, the conquest of the land and the rise of the empire of David and Solomon – is almost entirely fiction. It’s not history but mythology. Shaphan the scribe, a marginal figure in the Bible, was the ghostwriter who shaped the… Read More The Obscure Scribe Who Invented Judaism
After the truth-shower 