Sufism in India – A bloodied History
The advent of Islam in India has generally been regarded as a peaceful and mostly non violent process under which the various Sufi saints arrived in India from various parts of West Asia, and settled down here. Their interaction with the local people, who were at various times willing and at others reluctant disciples, relays the story of a mixed approach More...
Yoga: Philosophy, practice, or politics?
[contextly_sidebar id=”PeRhGeG0eFP2a5fDRfs4BKDxjxwWY6id”]Ever since the declaration of an International Yoga Day, there has been a curiously bifurcated international reaction to Yoga, Hinduism and India. More...
Interview with Sinu Joseph: On Sindhoor, Sanitary Pads & GST
[contextly_sidebar id=”M0xWDw2j1NVy5FJGomp98ENpAKBpcADy”]With the Modi government rolling out Goods and Service Tax (GST), there has been a criticism in some quarters regarding categorization of Sanitary More...
Communists and Liberals – Two Faces of ‘Elite Reaction’
Making sense of them Who are the communists? Well, in our country their popular image is of these shabbily dressed people who pontificate on the evils of capitalism, ‘neo-liberalism’ and religion. This is when More...
Narrative and meta-narrative in Tony Joseph’s opus on ‘Aryan’ Invasion Theory
It is remarkably ironic that the last word — positively the very last word — on paleoanthropology was produced by Tony Joseph in The Hindu newspaper “How genetics is settling the Aryan Invasion debate” More...
Anglophonic Hegemony and Indian Languages
In the wake of a statement by Sri. Venkaiah Naidu urging cultivation of Hindi by all Indians, a specter of an anti-Hindi agitation is being raised from some quarters. It is time to understand deeply, some plain More...
Indian Culture & History: Whose Narrative Should It Be- 4
[contextly_sidebar id=”FAmh6weC1d8LxuA52sabhriXmuo5CX5q”] What makes Indian culture and history unique is the multiplicity of conflicting narratives that it is made up of. From those emerging from the More...
New Tactics: Attack Yoga to malign Hindus
On the occasion of the International Yoga Day there was an article published in the Scroll, by one Vikram Zutshi, arguing against the Hindu roots of Yoga, and questioning why Patanjali’s yoga is given so much More...
Propagandizing the Aryan Invasion Debate: A Rebuttal to Tony Joseph
On 16 June 2017, an article appeared on the Hindu titled “How genetics is settling the Aryan migration debate” by Tony Joseph. This article claims that the question of the origin of the Indo-Aryan people has More...
What Constitutes Yoga, What Doesn’t
With another “International Yoga Day” having approached, it is good time to ponder over some fundamental questions like what constitutes Yoga and what does not. This article seeks to answer both these questions What More...