In Malerkotla, One Can Find the Vestiges of India’s Forgotten History of Tolerance
The senseless and relentless march of violence has made us forget who we are and how we have lived, worked and prayed together for centuries.
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Experiments in Education: The early years of Visva Bharati and Dacca University
In 1921, Bengal witnessed the foundation of two universities: Visva Bharati and Dacca. The early years of the institutions give us a portrait of two unique models of education, learning, and pedagogy.
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Born 200 years ago, What Is Fyodor Dostoevsky Telling Us Today Through His Novels?
Dostoevsky’s books – with their unique mix of dark comedy and pathos – are notoriously gloomy. Yet they can be oddly uplifting. In them he tested the very limits of human freedom: in prison he bore witness to the darkest sides of human nature; in his later years in freedom he agonised over our natural dogmatism and self-destructiveness.
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Culture | India | Online Blog
G.N. Devy’s ‘Mahabharata’ Is an Act of Moral Courage in These Times
Like the subversiveness of the epic, Devy’s Mahabharata is responding to our contemporary crisis in a schizophrenic India that continues to be fed by Hindutva pride: to offer a corrective text in the times of mass euphoria as to what Bharat has to be.
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What Women’s Suffrage Owes to Indigenous Culture
The author describes how White leaders of the women’s suffrage movement were influenced by Indigenous political structures and culture, and how some of this influence took place around Seneca Falls in upstate New York, site of the first U.S. convention for women’s rights.
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Vandana Shiva on the Dangers of Philanthrocapitalism
Physicist, ecologist and prolific author Vandana Shiva discusses her new book, which identifies a new form of colonialism turning us away from each other and the Earth.
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What Shiva Meant to a Sex Worker, to Savitribai Phule, and to Partition’s Refugees
At a time when Hindu deities and traditions are being weaponised by the intertwined forces of Hindutva and caste oppression, these forms of Shiva offer us an alternative vision of peace and justice for all.
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Sankar: From ‘Great Unknown’ via ‘Chowringhee’ to Literary Colossus at 88
The Sahitya Akademi award winning Bengali novelist’s works have been translated into several languages including English, Hindi, Malayalam, Gujarati, French and Spanish.
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When Does Krishna Justify War?
Gandhi famously argued that Bhagavad Gita needs to be seen as a metaphor of internal war, and has nothing to do with violence. Western scholars argue that the book promotes violence. To understand this contradictory view, we need to examine what is the problem to which Krishna offers a solution.
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Culture | India | Online Blog
‘Santiniketan Taught Us That There Is No Such Thing as Worthless Activity’
An excerpt from ‘Our Santiniketan’ by Mahasweta Devi, the famous writer and activist, translated from Bengali by Radha Chakravarty.
