Dear Prime Minister, nothing about Jammu & Kashmir is as your party sees it Economist and activist Jean Dreze, who has co-authored books with Nobel laureates, such as Amartya Sen and Angus Deaton, was in the headlines for a placard he carried to a protest rally in Delhi earlier this week. His placard challenged the … Continue reading Shyama Prasad Mukherjee’s Role: Official Myths on J&K Busted →
A military school under RSS is worrisome because of earlier experiences, such as the Malegaon and Nanded blasts, that were concretised with the intervention and involvement of Hindutva activists. Representational image. | Image Courtesy: Money Control Rare are the occasions when the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) — which could be said to be the biggest … Continue reading Militarising Minds, Hindutvaising the Nation →
Guest Post by Gargi Chakravartty BOOK REVIEW Hindutva’s Second Coming by Subhash Gatade; published by Media House, Delhi; 2019; pages: 272; Rs 395 (US $ 18). The return of Modi to power with a huge margin in this 2019 election is a clear verdict for the Hindutva plank. Why and how it happened leave us, the secular billions, to … Continue reading Return of Hindutva: A Challenge for Secularism →
The German acceptance for stolpersteine plaques helps them honour victims of Nazism. One wonders if it will ever be possible to take up similar projects in this part of South Asia. Hier Wohnte Bernhard Marx JB 1897 Deportiert 20.07.1942 Minsk Ermordet 24.07.1942 ‘Here lived Bernhard Marx Year of Birth 1897 Deported 20.07.1942 Minsk Assassinated 24.07.1942’ … Continue reading Will India Remember Dadri’s Akhlaq, as Germany Recalls Victims of Nazi Barbarism? →
In May 2019, the party of the Hindu Right, Bharatiya Janata Party, under Narendra Modi, won a spectacular electoral victory. The victory seemed to defy common sense – why did conversations of life and livelihood not dominate the election? Why did the thuggery of the Hindutva vigilantes seem inconsequential to vast numbers of ordinary, decent … Continue reading Modinama : Issues That Did Not Matter →
By distributing knives to meritorious children, organisations like the Hindu Mahasabha, are trying to give religious legitimacy to what is essentially a political use of faith. Image courtesy: Twitter What does an organisation do when it wants to congratulate meritorious students who have excelled in exams? Reward them with some gifts, say, books, and (if … Continue reading Arming Children, Securing a Future? →
This election verdict will have vital ramifications for democracy’s onward journey for decades together, and silencing and further invisibilisation of religious minorities would be its logical outcome. “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” … Continue reading Modi 2.0: Majoritarianism Normalised? →
The art of legitimising religiosity in a secular country and live happily ever after. Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by wise people as false and by the rulers as useful. — Seneca (4 BC-AD65) A picture is worth a thousand words. An outgoing Prime Minister of the ‘world’s biggest democracy’ seen … Continue reading Modi’s Meditation ‘Tour’ →
Extract from the Preface of ‘Hindutva’s Second Coming’ Preface Democracy as Majoritarianism “We can never forget that everything that Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal,’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did was ‘illegal.’ It was ‘illegal’ to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany, but I am sure that if I lived in … Continue reading Democracy as Majoritarianism →
In India, elections are around the corner. This is when voters take stock of the things done in their names and elect a government. Modi’s performance in the last five years has been far from satisfactory. Today it would be fair to say that, with few exceptions, hardly anyone is buying what the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is selling.
