2022
-
A Brief History of the Lion-Kings of Andhra
Published on 3rd July, 2022, in Times of India. Everyone knows about the famous Venktateshwara Balaji temple of Tirupati located in Andhra Pradesh. What is less known are the Narasimha temples found in coastal Andhra, flanking the rice-rich deltas of…
-
Pre-Macaulay Models of Teaching
Published on 3rd July, 2022, in Mid-day. Today, anyone can go to a school or an institute, where a set of subjects are taught by experts who follow a fixed timetable, an approved curriculum, a standardised method of teaching and…
-
Ask Devdutt – TOI
Mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik explains what our gods and holy texts tell us to do about insults directed at them.
-
Two Gods In Our Brain
Published on 26th June, 2022, in Mid-day. We are familiar with that false idea that the left brain grants us logical thinking and mathematics and the right brain grants us creativity and abstract thinking, and that students of science and…
-
Economics Of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva That Businessmen Across the World Need to Know
Published on 25th June, 2022, in Economic Times. The Puranas were composed 1500 years ago, between 5th and 10th century AD. What differentiates the Puranas from the Vedas is the value placed on temple worship, pilgrimages and stories to express…
-
Shiva from Tibet?
Published on 19th June, 2022, in Mid-day. The idea that Tibet was the homeland of Aryas came from Swami Dayananda Saraswati, who in the late 19th century, founded the famous Arya Samaj. He valued the Vedas as the original source…
-
How Hinduism Flourished in Kerala
Published on 18th June, 2022, in Times of India. As per legend, the western coast of India, Kerala especially, came into being when the sea recoiled in horror on receiving Parashuram’s axe soaked with the blood of the many kings…
-
Dharm Aur Samlaingikta/धर्म और समलैंगिकता
हमारे देश में एक संस्था है क्वीयर हिन्दू अलायंस, जो समलैंगिकता और हिन्दू धर्म के क्षेत्रों में काम करती है। इस संस्था के अध्यक्ष अंकित भूपतानी ने धर्म और समलैंगिकता को लेकर देवदत्त पटनायक से सैकड़ों सवाल किए हैं, उन्हीं…
-
Why Did Medieval Indian Cavalries Shun the Parthian Shot In Archery?
Published on 17th June, 2022, in The Hindu. In one retelling of the epic Ramayana, Ram was so righteous that even though he knew Ravana’s weak spot was his navel, he kept shooting arrows at Ravana’s head, in keeping with…
-
Dharmic Leadership with Devdutt Pattanaik
In the jungle, the big eat the small; no one helps anyone. In dharma, the big help the small. But this can only happen when you feel secure. Most rich, powerful, and knowledgeable people are not secure. This is why…
-
Burning Lanka in Odisha
Published on 12th June, 2022, in Mid-day. Ravana-podi means burning effigies of Ravana. In the Gangetic plains, this happens at the end of autumn Navaratri after the rains on Vijaya Dashami. In Odisha’s Dasapalla, Nayagarh district, the same happens at…
-
Divine Mathematics
Published on 11th June, 2022, in Economic Times. People often ask, if Aryabhatta invented zero, how did people count Ravana’s ten heads and Gandhari’s hundred heads before that. It is one of those foolish WhatsApp “mysteries” for people who do…
-
Mahabharata in Jataka
Published on 5th June, 2022, in Mid-day. While some see Mahabharata as history, others see Mahabharata as an epic born of a common pool of folk stories that was shared by Buddhist Jatakas also. Here are four stories that share…
-
What Our Upside-Down Ancestors Say About Justice and Dharma
Published on 4th June, 2022, in Times of India. Though dharma is often translated as justice in modern translation, there is a fundamental error in such an understanding. Dharma presupposes karma, hence rebirth. Justice does not. In the dharma discourse,…
-
Flying Mountains Do Not Lie
Published on 29th May, 2022, in Mid-day. Nationalists want to believe that Hinduism existed homogeneously across the Indian subcontinent (Akhand Bharat) since time immemorial. However, everyone who studies history knows this is not true. Harappan civilisation thrived 4,000 years ago…
-
Full-and-Final Settlement Before God
Published on 28th May, 2022, in Economic Times. We often forget that the word cash is derived from the Sanskrit word “Karshapana”. Indians invented the idea of money long ago. Irregularly-shaped copper coins were used by merchants for banking 2500…