2022
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Three Global Gifts From Indian Civilisation
Published on 14th August, 2022, in Mid-day. Culture creates ideas. Civilisation shares ideas. Can India be considered the mother of civilisation? What ideas has India given the world? The world today is dominated by ideas that can be traced to…
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The Elusive Amrita and the Question Of Eternal Life
Published on 11th August, 2022, in The Hindu. The earliest story of the grand churning of the ocean of milk, samudra-manthan, for the nectar of immortality, amrita, is found in the Mahabharata. But strangely there are more images of this…
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Passionate Devotion for Shiva
Published on 7th August, 2022, in Mid-day. About a thousand years ago, we are told that the Chola king was drawn to a Jain epic called Jivaka Chintamani. It tells the story of a young man’s erotic and valient adventures,…
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What You Need to Know About Buddhist Capitalism
Published on 6th August, 2022, in Economic Times. We have always been taught that capitalism was invented in Europe. But the capitalism that we see today is the outcome of the Industrial Revolution. Before the Industrial Revolution, capitalism thrived in…
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Guardian Yakshis of Jainism
Published on 31st July, 2022, in Mid-day. Jainism is a monastic order. Historically, it emerged 2,500 years ago, with most scriptures written 1,500 years ago. However, as per mythology, Jainism is an eternal religion (sanatan dharma), with 24 Tirthankaras appearing…
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Can Indians Really Decolonise Their Mindset
Published on 31st July, 2022, in Times of India. Of late, politicians, journalists and actors are trying to rewrite Indian history. They argue that freedom fighters aligned to right wing ideology deserve their due. Some even suggest that the freedom…
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Ending the Fast
Published on 24th July, 2022, in Mid-day. Fasting is a very important spiritual practice. It is about denying the body the pleasure it seeks. It is supposed to earn merit and help us rise up in the karmic ladder. This…
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Purva Paksha and the Art of Winning Arguments
Published on 23rd July, 2022, in Economic Times. The New Testament was finalised about 1500 years ago. About the time when Puranas started being composed in India. But what was new about it? The Church said that the old testament…
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Krishna 360 degrees
Krishna 360 degrees Written by: Devdutt Pattanaik Narrated by: Devdutt Pattanaik Summary Audible presents Krishna 360 degrees, an Audible Original, written and narrated by Devdutt Pattanaik. Krishna 360 degrees is a deep dive into the story of Krishna. By exploring…
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Wisdom of Seeds, Before Sanskrit
Published on 17th July, 2022, in Mid-day. In Indian mythology, two metaphors are used to explain the origin of things and the cause of things. These are womb (yoni, in Sanskrit), and seed (bija). Related to bija is the concept…
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Did Aryans Migrate Out of India to the West, or to the South?
Published on 16th July, 2022, in Times of India. Three kinds of people love the word Arya even today. The first is the local Hindutva folks who insist ‘Arya’ refers to the best of Hindu civilization. The second is the…
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The Rise of the Indian Goddess
Published on 14th July, 2022, in The Hindu. How old are the goddesses of India? It is extremely difficult to answer this question. Maybe it started in the Stone Age, when man equated the Earth to a goddess or the…
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History of Bharat in Seven Days
Published on 10th July, 2022, in Mid-day. When you compress India’s history to one week, we gain a rather delightful perspective of our past. Indian history from Harappan times till today is approximately 5,000 years, so each day of the…
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Your Skills Matter. But Do You?
Published on 9th July, 2022, in Economic Times. The sun has no value on its own. Its value comes from plants who seek sunlight to produce food. Its value comes from animals, but only those who thrive in the day…
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Why Goddess Kali Has Many Faces?
Published on 6th July, 2022, in Times of India. The images of Puranic gods only started appearing on cave and temple walls after the 5th Century AD. We find such images in Odisha, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, and among…
