Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
Non-Vedic Hinduism
The study of Hinduism reveals much more than the narrow ideas of the Vedic corpus. Yet it was the Veda that was privileged by the British, who were looking for a Hindu “holy book”…
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Articles
How Story-telling Became a Vedic Tool
Stories transmitted over generations serve as the glue of a community…
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Articles
Agni In Hiding
We find a great number of hymns where there is anxiety about loss of fire…There are many stories where fire runs away. The hungry gods chase him and beg him to return and do his sacrificial duties…
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Articles
Kings Who Hide in Kitchens
Have you ever wondered why, in many parts of North India, the cook is called a Maharaj? This may have something to do with the way the cook treats the kitchen as his sovereign territory that no one can trespass. Or, it may have something to do with the legend of a king who in…
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Articles
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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Articles
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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Articles
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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Articles
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, the world is full of social injustice, which is why a revolution is needed…
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Articles
Glamorising Violence, Gamifying Debate
For the past thirty years, that is what we have been consuming from Hollywood. …
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Articles
Were Our Hindu Gods Meat-eaters?
Hinduism is a plural religion, an umbrella term for many jatis, sampradayas and paramparas, some of whom may be vegetarian some of the time, or not at all…
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How We Tell Our Histories
A lot of history depends on consensus and institutional approval. No nation-state, for example, will present a history that shows it in a negative light…
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Articles
The Many Mythologies of God
Hindus have a very complex idea of god. God is not all powerful. Nature and karma serve as the background in which God exists. …
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Articles
How Faith Destroys Historical Facts
Believers always prefer matters of faith and get irritated with matters of science…
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Articles
How Ramayana and Mahabharata Spread the Idea of Dharma
The earliest Ramayana retellings do not refer to the Lakshman rekha. The earliest Mahabharata retellings do not refer to Draupadi’s vastra-haran. …
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Articles
Is Governance a Yagna?
The word yagna is translated even today by eminent scholars as sacrifice, or fire-sacrifice, or fire-ritual. …
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Articles
Monks Who Loved Combat
We would like to believe that saints are above mundane rivalries, and have conquered the ego, which means they have no urge to compete or conquer…