Mughal
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How Did Jainism Survive In India?
Published on 3rd December, 2023, in The Times of India. Until its revival in the 20th century by Babasaheb Ambedkar — as part of the Navayana movement for Dalit upliftment — Buddhism had all but been forgotten in the land…
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India and China Have Received Many Ideas from Each Other
Published on 26th November, 2022, in Economic Times. Nationalists in India and China love the idea that their culture influenced the world, but hate the idea that their culture was influenced by the world. While the Chinese preferred isolating themselves…
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Why Origins of the Caste System Polarise Both Left and Right
Published on 11th September, 2022, in Times of India. A peculiar feature of the internet is finding a vast number of upper caste, mostly Brahmin, men who argue that there was no caste system prevalent in Vedic India. They further…
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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…
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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…
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Can Hanuman Protect Us From Political Sorcery?
Published on 27th April, 2022, in Times of India. Hanuman Chalisa is a 400-year-old Awadhi poem of forty (chalis) verses, aimed at invoking Hanuman to get health, wealth, wisdom, security, and success. Jai Hanuman Gyan gun sagar. Jai Kapis Tihun…
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The Jogi As Seasonal Hermit
Published on 23rd April, 2022, in The Hindu. In North India, especially in the Gangetic plains, in what is now Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, we find songs known as Baramasa. It is a 12-month cycle in poetry, expressing the…
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The Jain Monk and His Saka Saviours
Published on 25th March, 2022, in The Hindu About two thousand years ago incidents took place which involved the Jain community that inspired an epic ballad that was put down in writing a thousand years later in Prakrit and local…
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Neither Mythological Fiction Nor History
Published on 12th December, 2021, in Mid-day. People often confuse mythology with mythological fiction. Mythology decodes ancient stories, symbols and rituals to understand how our ancestors imagined the world. How does Ramayana and Mahabharata fit into Hinduism’s dharma framework? Mythological…
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Temples of Swaminarayan
Published on 13th November, 2021, in Economic Times. Most Indians are familiar with Raja Ram Mohan Roy and his Brahmo Samaj and link it with the 19th Century Hindu reformation. But very few know about Sahajanand Swami or the reforms…
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Collaborators Succeed in History
Published on 16th October, 2021, in Economic Times. In Hindutva’s political history, the Mughals were dacoits, who came from the North-West. A peer-reviewed history of India, of course, says that is not true. Foreign tribes have been entering through the…
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Rivalry of Sants and Naths
Published on 10th October, 2021, in Mid-day. In 13th Century Maharashtra, Dyaneshwar translated the Bhagavad Gita into the local language. It was a great cultural revolution. He encouraged people to use emotions and feelings to connect with the divine. This…
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Tombs of Holy Men
Published on 19th September, 2021, in Mid-day. Since the time of the Buddha, when a holy man would die, he would be buried. His burial site would become a shrine, or a memorial. This shrine would be visited by people,…
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Why Is Secret Love So Important In Gita Govinda?
Published on 28th August,2021, in Times of India. Krishna on television appears in bright light, with fair complexion and light eyes. No one is outraged or offended, even though Krishna means someone with a dark complexion, a fact reiterated by…
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Are Brahmins a Single, Homogenous Group?
Who is a Hindu? Are Brahmins a single, homogenous group? Published on 25th April, 2021, in Mumbai Mirror. Brahmins have to be distinguished from rishis, who actually ‘saw’ the mantras and transmitted them in the Vedas. They were different from…
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Is Goddess Saraswati Connected to Love and Longing?
Published on 14th February, 2021, in Mumbai Mirror. Valentine’s Day upsets Hindutva, that valorises men over women, celibacy over sensuality, politics over arts, and lets saffron eclipse the rainbow. They want to save India’s culture but this does not include…