- India
- International
The writer is a sociologist.
July 23,2024 16:08:36 PM
Current reinvention of Hinduism — in terms of purity and impurity — owes a great deal to transformation in the cultures of nostalgia. It breaks the connection between actual conditions of life and its romanticised version, and those who are expected to take part in have no role in its propagation
Tue, Jul 23, 2024July 03,2024 20:18:53 PM
Two contrasting speeches in the 18th Lok Sabha — by Leader of Opposition and Prime Minister — show that myths have no monopolists, their potency lies in developing an appropriate language of invocation
Thu, Jul 04, 2024June 04,2024 19:50:22 PM
Threats to democratic culture do not come from hyper or bigotry-inspired nationalism. The most fundamental threat to cultures of dissent derives from the rise of the charismatic state
Sun, Jun 16, 2024May 09,2024 17:43:23 PM
Public anger over the protestors’ lack of knowledge about matters of public and private interest about which they were ostensibly protesting is entirely justified. However, this is not an episode that is necessarily about the end of critical thinking at one institution whose students were found to be particularly ill-informed
Sat, May 11, 2024April 25,2024 08:00:18 AM
The idea that British ‘sovereignty’ is under threat from extra-national forces, including refugees and international courts, echoes parts of the Brexit narrative.
Thu, Apr 25, 2024March 16,2024 16:18:47 PM
Electoral bonds are a national rather than a sectional issue. However, given the consolidation of the sectional, modified voting public, they are unlikely to attract much voter backlash against the party that appears to have benefitted the most
Sun, Mar 24, 2024February 26,2024 15:52:02 PM
The salve for anxieties regarding uncertain futures cannot be found in decrepit, quick-fix and technocratic attitudes towards education
Thu, Feb 29, 2024January 23,2024 10:01:11 AM
It showcases the move towards spirituality as a matter of spectacular display, which is located in cultures of contemporary Indian modernity
Fri, Jan 26, 2024November 24,2023 18:28:03 PM
The migrant labour force produces the visible signs of national pride — governments proudly proclaim the making of a new and global India — but itself becomes invisibilised
Tue, Nov 28, 2023November 02,2023 07:17:26 AM
It is all very well to speak of a market-led society and the spirit of free enterprise, but if this happens in a context of an overweening state presence in everyday life, no one is silly enough to actually believe it
Thu, Nov 02, 2023October 13,2023 07:07:23 AM
The historical roots of contemporary Israeli-Jewish identity lie in acts of forgetting actual relations on the ground. Brute force – both Israeli and of its western allies – has ensured periods of unstable and inherently fragile peace
Fri, Oct 13, 2023September 12,2023 05:15:43 AM
Nehru is easy to criticise for being “alienated” from Indian lifeways but it is difficult to dismiss the philosopher Rahul Sankrityayan and the poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan
Tue, Sep 12, 2023August 03,2023 19:45:28 PM
Enmeshed in ways of the past through means of the present, Gurgaon offers conditions ripe for religious vigilantism, tolerance for it
Fri, Aug 04, 2023July 20,2023 07:07:47 AM
Parliament continues to be a citadel, largely unconnected to the society it is meant to represent — sitting on top, rather than alongside it. The new Parliament House too does not speak the language of democratic symbolism
Thu, Jul 20, 2023June 02,2023 20:26:13 PM
Is our national pride only about winning medals and ignoring the actual lives of those who secure these medals in the face of extraordinary social restrictions and odds?
Thu, Jun 08, 2023May 18,2023 13:03:17 PM
Questions about the nature of religion and caste in India today cannot be answered through mere invocations of what the “founding fathers” might have envisioned. We need to account for what has happened since then
Mon, May 22, 2023March 04,2023 18:05:05 PM
This will require deft handling of the ‘new’ ordinary Indian’s aspirations without abandoning the broader alternative vision underlined in his Cambridge University speech.
Sat, Mar 04, 2023January 30,2023 12:37:15 PM
In a milieu characterised by a search for a homogenous national identity and anti-politics, BJY runs the risk of being interpreted as going against the “true” national interest at best and a political gimmick, at worst
Tue, Jan 31, 2023January 05,2023 13:34:21 PM
There is no public good in ‘bulldozer urbanism’. Demolitions and evictions that mainly affect the poor irreparably damage already vulnerable lives while also failing as public policy
Fri, Jan 06, 2023November 02,2022 17:16:55 PM
The great deal of hand wringing over the invasion of Virat Kohli’s privacy has been accompanied by seemingly endless circulation of the video clip. The line between outrage and enjoyment is as unclear as that between the alternating desire for publicity — that ethereal frisson of celebrity-ness — and revulsion over too much of it.
Thu, Nov 03, 2022August 29,2022 18:59:46 PM
Sanjay Srivastava writes: It would be a tragedy if the spectacle of the Noida demolition comes to stand for how to tackle urban malaise. That requires a different approach
Wed, Aug 31, 2022July 21,2022 04:00:26 AM
Sanjay Srivastava writes: The gender of institutions – courts, bureaucracies, schools, civic associations – is not much discussed and yet, it is fundamental to both the circulation of ideas about women, men and those of other genders.
Thu, Jul 21, 2022April 27,2022 03:50:29 AM
Sanjay Srivastava writes: Its fate could be a portent for anyone who doesn't submit to the demands of a single identity.
Wed, Apr 27, 2022February 17,2021 03:30:35 AM
If the sight of a group of men torching images and effigies of a young woman does not make our stomachs churn, then, perhaps, we have become completely habituated to the idea of violence against women and past efforts to address the issues have been in vain.
Wed, Feb 17, 2021October 05,2020 03:06:06 AM
The cult of new ordinariness appears to have taken a strong grip across a number of institutions that, in a democracy, have the serious responsibility of protecting empirical victims from the imagined ones.
Mon, Oct 05, 2020