Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
How Hinduism Transformed in the Vedic land
Punjab, watered by the tributaries of the Indus, was the original Vedic land. Yet today, the Veda is more closely associated with the Yamuna-Ganga doab, while Punjab is better known as the fountainhead of Sikhism. The western part of historic Punjab is now in Pakistan and is overwhelmingly Muslim. The eastern part, in India, is…
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Articles
Did Indra Eat Buffaloes?
We live in times, where people want to ban goat sacrifice during the Muslim observance of Bakra Eid, on grounds of compassion. This overt attack on Islamic rituals is also a covert attack on subaltern Hindu practices — where goddesses are offered fish and meat…
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Articles
How the Bhagavad Gita Invented Sattvic Food
The Vedas gave us Purusha. Tantra and Yoga gave us Prakriti and the gunas. Only the Bhagavad Gita welded these to food and caste, creating the “sattvic” framework popularly invoked today…
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Articles
Sanatan Dharma: A Hinduism That Defines Itself Through Food ‘Purity’
Notably, the term “satvik” food does not appear in Ayurveda, yet it has become central to the Sanatan Dharma movement. North Indian temples now demand that no meat-serving establishments operate within 15 km of their premises. This dietary politics points to the real character of the movement: Sanatan Dharma is essentially a vegetarian Hinduism, promoted…
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Articles
Imagining Hinduism Without Caste
For centuries, what we now call Hinduism was never a single religion. It was a civilisation organised through caste. Each caste had its own gods, rituals, food rules, taboos, and ideas of the sacred. Diversity was not accidental; it was structural. To imagine a caste-free Hinduism is therefore to imagine uniformity. Who defines it then?…
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Articles
Narada: the Original Provocateur
Narada is Hindu mythology’s impish, itinerant sage. His presence in a story spells trouble. As a character, he plays a key role. He spotlights our love for gossip, our fragile ego, our competitive spirit, our yearning to measure ourselves against others, our refusal to be content…
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Articles
A Colonial Category Called Religion
Hinduism did not become a religion by organic evolution. It was forced into becoming a religion by colonial definitions, Christian templates and Brahminical reinterpretations. What had functioned for centuries as a civilisational ecosystem of caste, ritual, myth, kinship, land and livelihood was squeezed into the narrow mould of “religion” as understood in the industrial West.…
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Articles
If Usha Vance became Christian, would she be American enough?
Sensing the shift in public narrative following the killing of Charlie Kirk, now seen as a Christian martyr, Vice President JD Vance declared publicly that he hoped his wife, Usha, daughter of Telugu Brahmin immigrants, would convert to Christianity. But in today’s America, that is not enough…
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Articles
All About Marriage, Meaning, and the Shiva–Shakti Union
The marriage of Shiva and Shakti is not about property, lineage, or inheritance. It is not about power, spectacle, or display. It is about two individuals giving meaning to each other. …
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Articles
Can a French man be a ‘civilisational Hindu’?
In New India, an Italian woman with an Indian passport remains a ‘foreigner’, but a French man with an Indian passport becomes a ‘civilisational Hindu’, and is even asked to influence young impressionable minds by creating ‘decolonised’ school textbooks…
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Articles
How Diwali Changes Shape Across India
Diwali is celebrated across India, but contrary to popular assumption, it is not a single, uniform festival. It takes very different forms depending on where you go. …
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Articles
How Theosophy changed Hinduism
Modern Hinduism, as it is practised and explained today, did not emerge in isolation. It was shaped in conversation with Europe at a moment when Christianity itself was in crisis. Theosophy became the bridge in this encounter. Through it, Hindu ideas were reframed, revived, and repackaged, influencing figures as different as Gandhi, Rukmini Arundale, and…
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Articles
The Great Satvic Scam
Across India and in the diaspora, satvikism is now being marketed as a refined, enlightened Hinduism. However, it subtly divides Hindus into two camps. …
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Articles
The Two Faces Of Varuna
Varuna is one of the most ancient gods of the Vedic pantheon. In the Rig Veda, he is majestic, distant, and terrifying. He sits above the world, ruler of the sky and the ocean, guardian of the cosmic law called rta. He sees everything. Nothing escapes him. …
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Articles
Can There Be a Sanatani Missionary?
A missionary (pracharak, in Hindi) is a relentless salesman. He sells God. He sells God’s message. For centuries there have been Christian missionaries, Muslim missionaries, and Buddhist missionaries. The last century saw the rise of Hindu missionaries. Many of these call themselves sanatani today. But what exactly are these sanatani missionaries selling?…
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Articles
A Problematic Indra
In Purana, Indra is a luxury loving god who lives in paradise. Stories of this later Indra are not very flattering. He is always scared of losing all that he has…