2022
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View: Reclaiming Loans Is an Achievement, But Writing Off Loans Is the Super-achievement
Published on 22nd January, 2022, in Economic Times. 2500 years ago, a great revolution took place in India. The country saw the rise of many monastic orders, in the middle of great affluence. The most popular amongst them were the…
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Ramayana in Jataka
Published on 17th January, 2022, in Mid-day. The Ramayana story reveals the Vedic world that thrived in the Gangetic plains between 1,000 CE and 500 CE, though the story itself came to be written between 200 BCE and 200 CE.…
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How Puritanical Islam Faced Backlash in India
Published on 15th January, 2022, in Times of India. People who follow secularism have been accused of an asymmetrical relationship with Islam and other faiths. Make fun of the Islamic practices, and the secular scholar is upset. Make fun of…
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The Act of Seeing
Published on 9th January, 2022, in Mid-day. To see or not to see, that is the question. The difference between an organism and an object is that the organism can sense the world around it. It’s sentient. Organism needs to…
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How Bindumati, a Courtesan, Made Ganga Flow in Reverse
Published on 8th January, 2022, in Economic Times. The story of Bindumati comes from the Buddhist text known as Milinda Panha, or questions of Milinda (Menander) which is a conversation between the Indo-Greek king Menander and the Buddhist monk Nagasena.…
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What Hindutva Doesn’t Get About Sanatan Dharma
Published on 7th January, 2022, in Times of India. Sanatan means something that is timeless. Dharma in colloquial parlance is religion. It can also mean culture and civilisation. So, sanatan dharma can mean “timeless civilisation”. In the Gita, Krishna describes…
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Why 14 Years of Exile?
Published on 2nd January, 2022, in Mid-day. There are two big mysteries in Hindu mythology. One, why does Kaikai ask Ram to be exiled only for 14 years? Two, why does Duryodhan demand that the Pandavas be exiled only for…
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Sacrilege As a Political Tool
Published on 1st January, 2022, in Times of India. Animals can attack you if you claim their foraging grounds, i.e. their territory. Humans can attack you if you trespass on their holy land. Holiness is a human construct designed to…
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Hindutva’s Caste Masterstroke
Published on 1st January, 2022, in The Hindu. Ever since erstwhile champions of secular values have begun differentiating between Hindu and Hindutvawadi, a whole lot of intellectuals are bristling. They are arguing how these nuanced metaphysical differentiations hold no relevance…
