Pravin Raj Singh At its core, a literature syllabus is more than a list of prescribed texts. It is a pedagogical contract, a space where students and educators commit to engaging with the world’s complexities, however uncomfortable. This contract enables critical engagement with power, history, caste, gender and the structures that shape our lives. It… Read More The Quiet Dismantling of Liberal Education at Delhi University
NB: A profound reminder that our self-appointed decolonisers themselves need to decolonise their minds. DS भारतीय ज्ञान परंपरा और संघी एजेंडा पर समाजशास्त्री प्रो. पुरुषोत्तम अग्रवाल के तीखे सवाल। क्या हिंदुत्व एजेंडा के तहत सिर्फ वैदिक-ब्राह्मण परंपरा का महिमामंडन हो रहा है और बौद्ध, जैन तथा लोकायत जैसी लोक परंपराओं को दरकिनार किया जा रहा… Read More भारतीय ज्ञान परंपरा या RSS का कोई छुपा हुआ एजेंडा? Indian Knowledge System: प्रो. पुरुषोत्तम अग्रवाल
Apoorvanand “ Why did Muktibodh became uniquely significant in the summer of 1964? Why did …almost all the weeklies, monthlies and dailies started introducing him to their readers?” Fifty years ago, Shamsher Bahadur Singh, asked this question in the preface to Chand Ka Munh Tedha hai, the first anthology of poems of Muktibodh being compiled. Muktibodh then,… Read More Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh: Put fire back into firewood / The Ultimate expression: Muktibodh’s poem, “Andhere Mein”
Wake up: Song by Arcade Fire – 2004 Somethin’ filled upMy heart with nothin’Someone told me not to cry Now that I’m olderMy heart’s colderAnd I can see that it’s a lie Children, wake upHold your mistake upBefore they turn the summer into dust If the children don’t grow upOur bodies get bigger but our… Read More Wake up
The Shell University: Fully automated cheating. AI has taken something fundamental from the business of teaching and learning… If I’ve learned one thing this year, it’s that we need recenter the human part of the university: the student-teacher relationship. By Rory Truex As I write this, my students are taking an in-person exam on Chinese… Read More This Semester Shook My Faith as a Professor
Junk speak, like junk food, encourages verbal littering. Moronic vagueness is another form of junk. Not to mention how amazing and awesome everything is… Louis de Bernières Ilive in the Norfolk countryside, and what irritates me most about living here is the deluge of litter that gets thrown out of car windows in the lane outside my… Read More I really don’t like ‘like’ – or other imprecise and redundant speech
“Was it always the case that half of our students would cheat if it were easy enough?” By Jay Caspian Kang In my writing, and in my idle thoughts, I often return to Arjuna’s lament upon surveying the battlefield of Kurukshetra and finding that he must kill his friends and family. What is his duty in… Read More The Despair of the Professor in the Age of A.I.
For tens of thousands of years, these Palaeolithic artworks were unseen. When they were rediscovered, onlookers marvelled at their vivid beauty. One of the world’s leading experts took me up close. The latest thinking on the subject proposes that our ancestors painted their way across western Europe, and what we now know as “cave art’ is… Read More ‘They take you out of life, out of time’: a journey into Spain’s astonishing cave paintings
How unemployment, addiction, and frustration are turning youth into society’s unwanted category. by Ashraf Zainabi Every modern society has two lists. The first list contains creatures it wants to protect, dogs, butterflies, pandas, dolphins, snow leopards, motivational speakers, billionaires pretending to be simple, and occasionally trees, but mostly on environment day. The second list contains creatures… Read More Linguistic cruelty and beyond
Beyond remittances: A rare insight into the everyday lives of migrant workers Social anthropologist Shankar Ramaswami’s ‘Souls in the Kalyug’ is a rich, multi-layered text that provides a window into workers’ lives in India, including some hopeful strands within the destructive churnings of global capitalism. Sapan BookshelfSouls in the Kalyug: The Politics and Cosmologies of Migrant… Read More Book review: Souls in the Kalyug
After the truth-shower 