Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
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 trading routes controlled by the Arabs. These routes extended from Southeast Asia, right up to…
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Articles
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 fighters we are told to admire gave India a raw deal. The more creative ones…
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Articles
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 thesis is an essential part of Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism. And so, in all three…
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Articles
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 was the Jewish Bible. All that was prophesied there had been fulfilled in the body…
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Articles
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 of fruit, or phala. From the yoni comes the phala that contains the bija, which…
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Articles
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 White Supremacist of the Western world; they prefer the word ‘Aryan’ to Arya, and insist…
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Articles
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 week is approximately a period of 700 years. On Sunday, in Northwest India, farming appears.…
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Articles
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 and in summer. The bats do not care. In other words, the value of the…
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Articles
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 Krishna and Godavari. These temples became popular as the old Vedic form of Hinduism gave…
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Articles
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 commerce have left brain orientation while students of the arts have right brain orientation. In…
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Articles
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 a philosophy. The chief protagonists are the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and their…
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Articles
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 he had killed. He had killed them because they had failed to uphold dharma. They…
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Books
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 सवालों के सुलझे हुए स्पष्ट जवाब इस पुस्तक में हैं।इस पुस्तक में एक प्रश्न के…
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Articles
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 Kshatriya dharma. Exasperated, Hanuman got his father, the wind god, to send a fierce breeze…
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Articles
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 only in Northwest India. Vedic civilisation emerged 3,000 years ago only in Gangetic plains after…
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Articles
Claiming the Earth as Nation
Published on 22nd May, 2022, in Mid-day. In prehistoric times, people captured a hunting ground or agricultural land or pastures by claiming that is where the ancestor was buried. Burial was an important ritual invented by ancient people to claim rights over lands. Later, they invented stories to claim land. The Maori say that their…