2024
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Seasonal March of Festivals
Festivals around the world have a number of intimate links to seasons, legend and history. From Indian celebrations linked to the sun’s path, weather and mythic legends, to Christian reflections of a spring rebirth, seasonal festivals worldwide are a manifestation…
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What Modi’s Rise Tells Us About Us
The idea that a person has the power to change society can be seen through a civilisational lens. The focus on a person rather than policy is the hallmark of Indian thought, as valid as Western ideas that privilege institutions…
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Gold Effigy of Sita and a Half-golden Mongoose
For all the violence depicted in the epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata, they carried a profoundly human message for the heart. It is told through the two curious often overlooked moments, one in the Ramayana, featuring a golden effigy of…
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Did Rishi Agastya Colonise the South?
Nowadays two ideas are being pushed by social media intellectuals. First, that mythology is history. Second, that Indian culture needs to decolonise itself from foreign influence. This makes rishi Agastya, a highly-venerated Vedic sage, a problematic figure in South India.
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Pleasure, a Brief Indian History
Atharva Veda says, “Desire gives. Desire receives”. Kama, we are told, is what stirs the first being to create the world.
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Why is Holi celebrated more in north India than south India?
Holi is indeed celebrated mostly in north India, not south India. No one knows the reason why.
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Dharmic Leader in Modern Times
Western leadership models are military in nature. Command and control. It’s about tracking tasks and achieving targets. Indian leadership models were about people – reminding them that the purpose of life is not to eat, but to feed. To feed…
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Avalokiteshvara, Saviour of the Sea Merchant
From Ajanta Cave 1 in Aurangabad district, Maharashtra, comes the famous mural of a rather delicate-looking Avalokiteshvara Padmapani, a bodhisattva who holds a lotus flower in his hand and tilts his head to the side, as if trying to hear…
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Purusha-mriga and Other Fantastic Beasts
Harappan seals depict many monsters: unicorns, sphinx, and horned tigers, and these may have been inspired by their trading relations with West Asia.
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It Is Not Just Hindus Who Love an Imagined Past
Imagined history has always served ideologies. Colonial powers have sought to present precolonial states as barbaric and savage to justify their imperial outreach. Muslims insist that a society before conversion to Islam is ignorant (jahila). For Marxists and Cultural Marxists,…
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Property Disputes in the Vedas
Veda is 3,000 years old and is made up of poetry (mantra) and prose (brahmana). Within the prose we find stories (itihasa) about conflicts over resources between humans, between gods and sometimes between humans and gods.
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Glamorising Violence, Gamifying Debate
For the past thirty years, that is what we have been consuming from Hollywood.
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Maybe Madri Did Not Commit Sati?
How can a body be cremated twice? Is it a reference to the secondary cremation of the leftover bones?
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Vikings Saga on Combat and Curiosity
Like the Greeks, life was tough for the Vikings, and they were fiercely independent people.
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How Saraswati Reached Japan
One of the most popular goddesses in Japan is visualised holding a guitar-like instrument. She is called Benzaiten and she has been linked to the goddess Saraswati.
