In the dream of the man that dreamed, the dreamed one awoke by Jorge Luis Borges NO ONE saw him disembark in the unanimous night, no one saw the bamboo canoe sinking into the sacred mud, but within a few days no one was unaware that the silent man came from the South and that… Read More THE CIRCULAR RUINS (1940)
There is a quiet crisis in higher education in India that runs deep, distinguished academician and former Chief Economic Advisor Deepak Nayyar said here on Wednesday (July 9, 2025), delivering the 2025 B.G. Deshmukh Lecture on ‘The Crisis of Higher Education in India: Disturbing Present and Worrisome Future’. Holding the Narendra Modi government responsible for… Read More There is a quiet and visible crisis in higher education in India that runs deep: Deepak Nayyar
The substitution of Large Language Models for genuine thinking is a generational threat. At stake is no less than the life of the mind. Aaron MacLean I have a warning for you. There is a conspiracy afoot in the land, targeting all of us. The computers in our pockets and the screens all around us… Read More A warning to the young: just say no to AI
One of the major causes of war is industry. When industry and economics go hand in hand with politics they must inevitably sustain a separative activity to maintain the economic stature. All countries are doing this, the great and the small. The small are being armed by the big, some quietly, surreptitiously, others openly. Is the… Read More Krishnamurti on War
NB: Skip the first three paragraphs. What follows should be easy to read. The aphorisms are not purely mine, but then nothing is. DS In our obscurity, in all this vastness , there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us: Carl Sagan The… Read More After Discourse
This article is based on excerpts from my contribution to the second KP Sasi Webinar on Religion and Spirituality in the Age of Fascism held on 18 May 2025 I have been engaged with this subject of religion, spirituality and fascism quite seriously since the 1984 violence in Delhi. And after that, I did a… Read More The further you look, the more you realize you don’t have a clue
First posted March 2013 But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence… illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the… Read More Hans Magnus Enzensberger: The Industrialization of the Mind
We have previously written about the debates over the political relevance of the Enlightenment today, drawing on Antoine Lilti’s critical review of the histories of Jonathan Israel. We present the English translation of his essay, which has import far beyond any disciplinary boundaries: Viewpoint Magazine David A. Bell: The Uses and Abuses of Enlightenment: AV lecture; January 2025 ***… Read More How Do We Write the Intellectual History of the Enlightenment? Spinozism, Radicalism, and Philosophy
Hindu College was set up in Calcutta in 1817 as a pioneering institution to impart Western learning to its students. In 1831, its most outstanding teacher, Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, then only 22 years old, was compelled to resign. A look at the circumstances that forced his resignation attempts to reconstruct Derozio’s ideas and his… Read More The Derozio Affair – An Annal of Early Calcutta. By Rudrangshu Mukherjee
George Monbiot – Ayn Rand: A Manifesto for Psychopaths Her psychopathic ideas made billionaires feel like victims and turned millions of followers into their doormats. I wonder how many would continue to worship at the shrine of Ayn Rand if they knew that towards the end of her life she signed on for both Medicare… Read More George Monbiot – Ayn Rand: A Manifesto for Psychopaths / Paul Krugman explains why Ayn Rand’s libertarianism is absolutely deadly
After the truth-shower 