Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
Making Gita a Rashtriya Granth may confuse the world
From being Gandhi’s moral basis for non-violence to capturing essential mystical truths for Aurobindo, the text means different things to different people…
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Articles
Discovery may actually be Re-discovery
Those who believe in discovery lean towards the linear mindset. Those who believe in re-discovery lean towards the cyclical mindset…
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Articles
A brief history of Vedic thought
When we try and study Vedic thought, we realize that we have to do a kind of mental archaeology, digging through layers of literature and ideas…
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Articles
Karma is the new swastika
The West always decides what words should mean in the global arena…
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Articles
Violence and Gita
Ramayana and Mahabharata valorise not war so much as the pursuit of social obligation, even while engaging in long discussions on the morality of war…
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Interviews
In world of patriarchal epics, Sita had extraordinary powers, says mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik
In an interview with dna’s Manisha Pande, he dwells on the nuances of the epic, how we perceive it and what it tells us about us. Edited excerpts:…
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Articles
Objective fact vs subjective truth: A textbook fight
A quick look at some (not all, one must repeatedly clarify) of recent books about Indian culture authored by Western scholars reveals a rather disturbing tilt in the interpretations of objective data…
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Articles
Meaning of Bhagavan
The word bhagavan is traced to the word bhaga, which means share. Bhaga also means womb, or material delight, or even fate…
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Articles
Elusive Ownership
When something belongs to me, I have the freedom to order it around. I also want to protect and nourish it…
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Articles
The Good Death
Euthanasia means a good death and is a term used for an old or sick person voluntarily choosing death to relieve himself/herself of pain and suffering either by refusing treatment, or by asking the assistance of a doctor to facilitate his/her death either actively (administering a poison, for example) or passively (not administering a treatment,…
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Articles
Four Types of Sex
As one goes through Hindu scriptures one finds different types of sexual activity that can easily be classified as dharma sex, artha sex, kama sex, and moksha sex…
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Articles
Making Personal Growth a Lever of Business
Those who chase Lakshmi are not enshrined in Hindu temples. Shiva, who is indifferent to Lakshmi, is, and so is Vishnu, who works towards attracting her…
