Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
Who is a Hindu? The making of Hindu anger
Can a religion be objectively criticised? Whose criticism must be taken seriously — the outsider’s or the insider’s? …
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Articles
Who is a Hindu? Diversity unites, homogeneity divides
Unlike Westerners, Hindus have been comfortable seeing unity in diversity for thousands of years…
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Hinduism thrives on diversity, Hindutva on monotheism of Abrahamic faiths
In nature, there is diversity. There is also equality in the sense that no creature is nature’s favourite. Every living organism has to fight for its survival using its strengths and overcoming its weaknesses to find opportunities and fend off threats. The cultural idea of equality is very different: it is the myth that shapes…
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Articles
Were Hindus always casteist?
Note: the word caste is a European word for clan that is used for the Indian system of jati. The word jati, in turn, is confused with the Vedic system of varna…
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Who is a Hindu? No false gods in Hinduism
Secular media would like to reduce Hindutva attacks on missionaries into a simple villain-victim narrative, but those interested in going deeper will realise it has much to do with the incompatibility of their respective mythologies…
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The Jealous God of Science
Published on 26th November, 2017, in Bangalore Mirror. Western scholars often state that Indians do …
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India’s New Age gurus believe sexuality may be fluid – but not brutal structures of caste, gender
They have fine-tuned Indian philosophy to pacify middle-class guilt about wealth and power while amplifying guilt over pleasure that could disrupt social norms…
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Does Hinduism have anything to say about mind, perception and cognition?
The word “spirituality”, which is about self-discovery leans towards the former, and the word “religion”, which is about social engineering leans towards the latter…
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Articles
Defining Hinduism
WHO IS A HINDU? How a quest to define the faith has resulted in a shift of power away from the common man…
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Articles
God’s Marital Status
Is celibacy or singleness a prerequisite to seek an ideal world? It’s another matter that marital pleasures are fine for temple deities with their consorts…
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The start date of my religion
Every religion believes that it originates from the dawn of time…
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Can I be a Hindu and still an atheist?
Since no one can actually define Hinduism, the simple answer is: yes…
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Articles
A Lotus for a Temple
Built in 1986, an architectural marvel, this iconic shrine in Delhi attracts millions of tourists every year…
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Articles
Is Hinduism A Religion, A Myth Or Something Else?
Words are not ‘objective truths’ as we assume, but ‘subjective truths’, imbued with power and embedded in politics…
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How Indian sages viewed violence (and why western mythology has such different ideas about it)
In Greek myth, violence is part of a movement from chaos to order. But Indian myth lays out that as long as violence exists, it will beget violence…
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Are Indian courts and activists denying the gods their gender and sexuality?
This de-sexing of gods and goddesses makes it difficult to explain the exclusion of women from the presence of celibate gods…
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Articles
Leveraging the Aryans
The theories of how the ‘Aryan race’ is leveraged to explain various social phenomena…
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Articles
A ritual cleansing
Notions of reform are often based on ‘assumptions of deformity’, which are dependent on ‘assumptions of normality’…