Unsolicited thoughts from an elder citizen

Questions, observations, suggestions. The addressees should be able to recognise themselves अहंकार व्यक्ति के अज्ञान और मूर्खता का परिचायक  है : गीता (३ / २७) The spectacle is the guardian of sleep: Guy Debord Good is self-existent, evil is not. It is like a parasite living in and around good. It will die of itself when… Read More Unsolicited thoughts from an elder citizen

विचारधारा का संकट

 जनमत कभी विचारधारा विहीन नहीं हो सकता लेकिन हमारे अंदर दार्शनिक साहस न हो तो हम खुद को नष्ट कर लेंगे दिलीप सिमियन This essay first appeared in Outlook magazine on April 11, under the title The Crisis of Ideology क्या हम उस युग में पहुंच चुके हैं जिसमें विचारधारा का अंत हो चुका है?… Read More विचारधारा का संकट

June 6, 1944. What the last veterans can teach us all as D-Day fades from memory

Nearly 80 years since the Allied invasion, the testimony of Charles Shay, a 99-year-old former US army medic, reminds us of the significance of that day Andrew Anthony American D-Day veteran Charles Shay stands on a dune overlooking Omaha beach in Normandy where he landed as a 19-year-old. Photograph: Kiran Ridley/The Observer Next month will see… Read More June 6, 1944. What the last veterans can teach us all as D-Day fades from memory

Between Victory and Defeat

How can the left escape burnout? Hannah Proctor; Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat SAM ADLER-BELL the left can sometimes become “more attached to its impossibility than to its potential fruitfulness, a Left that is most at home dwelling not in hopefulness but in its own marginality and failure, a Left that is thus caught… Read More Between Victory and Defeat

खुदा हाफ़िज़

Ø  दिलीप सिमियन कई साल पहले, 1990 के दशक के मध्य में मैं एम्सटर्डम में था और एक दोस्त के घर रात्रि भोजन करने के बाद एक टैक्सी से लौट रहा था. टैक्सी में बैठने के बाद पता चला कि टैक्सी ड्राइवर एक भारतीय प्रवासी था. या मुझे ऐसा लगा. मैंने उससे इस बारे में पूछा तो… Read More खुदा हाफ़िज़

The Captive Mind revisited

First posted January 24, 2017 The Captive Mind (1953) has been compared to the two most revealing and penetrating works on the same subject previously published – Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon (1940) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Milosz was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980. Read an interview with him in 2003, the year before he died. The… Read More The Captive Mind revisited