Religions
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How Vagdevi Merged Into Saraswati
The goddess we call Saraswati today begins as Vagdevi, the Goddess of Speech, identified primarily with the Vedic deity Vac. Her earliest stories foreground the immense power, and sometimes the deceptive nature, of the spoken word. These are found in…
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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…
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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…
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Did Missionaries Construct the Buddha We Know?
The Buddha had drifted through European writing for centuries before scholarship took hold of him, and the early portraits were wildly varied.
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Of Jains And Jews
The comparison between Jains in India and Jews in Europe reveals two remarkably similar minority communities with profoundly different historical destinies. Both occupied economically influential positions disproportionate to their demographic size. Both cultivated strong internal discipline, dietary codes, educational traditions…
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Tantra of the Wheel of Time
Compiled in the early eleventh century as Muslim armies pressed into northwest India, the Kalacakratantra — the Wheel of Time Tantra — is one of the clearest cases in religious history of a sacred text designed as a political response…
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Yama’s Journey from Vedic King to Cosmic Accountant
Yama is the Hindu god of death, accountability, and the afterlife. Often ignored, his history is long and complex, reaching back to Vedic, Indo-Iranian, and Indo-European mythological traditions.
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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…
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The Global Resurrection of Islam
Earlier, Islam was sustained by rulers. In the modern era, it is sustained by communities. Authority shifted from courts and empires to classrooms, print networks, voluntary organisations, and individual conscience.
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Persia was a Civilisation Long Before Islam and Rome
Zoroastrianism traced its teachings to the prophet Zarathustra (Zoroaster), who is believed to have lived many centuries earlier, perhaps around 1200 BC, according to some scholars.
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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…
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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…
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Are God’s Messengers Real or Imaginary?
We know that information about Gautama Buddha, Chanakya, and Shankaracharya come from textual sources that were composed centuries after their supposed lifetimes. There is no material proof of their existence. But they are assumed to be historical figures. The same…
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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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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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Vishnu’s Art of Attracting Fortune
In Indian mythology, Vishnu is described as the beloved of Lakshmi. His names are Sri-vallabha, beloved of fortune, and Sri-nivasa, abode of fortune. In art, the goddess is shown residing in his heart, or seated by his side. When he…