debates

The 2020 campaign for Presidential nominee in the Democrat Party is very strange. The characteristics are warped, thrown into a quasi-hypnotic level of distortion. At least, that is how it looks from a conservative viewpoint.
The campaign does do one thing very well. It highlights the extremely vivid ideological divide between a culture of common sense and pragmatic conservatism such as it exists with President Trump, and the schizophrenic range of ideologies that all together make up an extremely liberal offering of candidates.

Guest Post by SURAJ JACOB [Note: This article was written before the ongoing violence in Delhi began and is not about current affairs. It rather engages with the political problem at a broader philosophical level. – AN] Analysts of Delhi’s recent election note thatAAP imaginatively courted voters on the BJP’s own turf (Shekhar Gupta): welfarism … Continue reading Kejriwal and the ‘Dirty Hands Problem’ →

PM Modi didn’t mention former RSS chief Golwalkar on his recent 114th birth anniversary. The idea is to implement his ‘essence’ in private while not mentioning him in public. The 114th birth anniversary of Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar went unnoticed. Barring a stray article by a second-rung leader of the saffron party in a national daily, none from … Continue reading Why Modi and Sangh Parivar Want to ‘Disremember’ Golwalkar →

I have been reading with interest the exchange between Aditya Nigam and Satish Deshpande on the AAP’s strategy of avoiding ‘politics’ – or rather, distancing itself mostly from the polarised ideological debates while making small moves to shape for itself a space, arguably fuzzy, in the hegemonic discourse of Hindu. I am also witness to … Continue reading Thoughts on the AAP’s Hindu Gestures from Kerala’s History →

They represented two foundational but antagonistic visions of “what we as a society, what we as a state should embody” ( Review of ‘Radical Equality: Ambedkar, Gandhi, and The Risk of Democracy’ By Aishwary Kumar Navayana, Rs 599) In the early 1990s D.R. Nagaraj published The Flaming Feet, a compilation of his essays in which he … Continue reading Lessons from Ambedkar and Gandhi to take forward →

BJP’s Delhi campaign was not divisive by sanyog or coincidence. That is its prayog or experiment. Which it will take to other elections. Kitney aadmi thhe—how many were there? A meme based on this famous monologue from the highly successful film, Sholay (Embers), from the early seventies, started trending when “David” Kejriwal, leader of the Aam Aadmi … Continue reading Towards BJP’s Hindutva Lite Template →

  What has Gandhi got to do with the recently concluded elections in Delhi? On the face of it nothing. But at another level, the election process, its campaign and its results – all invite us to revisit Gandhi’s stupendous moral-political project of cementing the Hindu-Muslim division with his own blood and his heroic failure. … Continue reading Winning Delhi Elections – AAP, Gandhi and the Ideology Wars →

Of all reasons to oppose CAA, NPR and NRC, most worrying is the Islamists across the borders feeling enthused. Seattle City Council, one of the most powerful city councils in the United States, recently made history. It became the world’s first elected body to pass a resolution asking the Indian government to repeal the CAA, … Continue reading Why Pakistan’s Islamists Don’t Want India’s CAA Repealed →

From Nehru to Patel and Ambedkar, the saffron party has appropriated freedom-fighters or tarnished legacies. Gandhi, however, poses a different problem. Death ends all enmity’ (Marnanti Vairani) goes a maxim in Hinduism. The story also goes that when Ravana was on death bed, Ram had even asked Laxman to go to him and learn something which no … Continue reading Gandhi and the Hindutva Right →

  Guest Post by National Coalition for Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanisation (NCU) The National Coalition for Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanisation (NCU) unequivocally condemns the unconstitutional and anti-constitutional CAA-NPR-NRC being unilaterally imposed by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government.