Ayodhya as a foreign policy issue
The recent Ramnath Goenka lecture by External Affairs Minister, Dr. S. Jaishankar was a model of depth, nuance and sophistication. It contained everything I would have wished to propose myself as an international More...
Why Didn’t Hindus Give Up Ram Mandir?
What do you say of a people who carry on a movement over a piece of land for over half a millennium? What explains that they neither forgot nor any amount of atrocities made them give up their claims on the land? More...
Ram Mandir- A Civilisation’s Sacred Space
A Hindu temple (mandir) is meant to be a consecrated place of residence of the presiding deity. It is not merely a hall of worship. It is the home of the Devi or Devata who has been invoked through Vedic rituals More...
Ayodhya: An Ahistorical argument for Ram Temple
“All the towns and villages that lay on their way were the envy of the cities of the gods. The lakes and rivers of the gods lauded those lakes and rivers in which Rama bathed. The tree of paradise gave glory to More...
રાજીવ મલ્હોત્રા અને મીનાક્ષી જૈન વચ્ચે વાર્તાલાપ
The conversation has been translated into Gujarati by Udit Shah આ વાતચીતમાં હું દિલ્હી યુનિવર્સિટીના ઈતિહાસ અને પોલિટિકલ More...
Rediscovering Rama (Part-II)
[contextly_sidebar id=”BQzPyGmN5Q8HcvPd5atWwDe3IPqepls3″] Even if, for the sake of argument, we do take into account the interpolation of the Uttara Kanda as part of the Ramayana, the story of Sita’s More...
Agni and the Fire of Self-Inquiry
Self-inquiry (Atma-vichara), such as taught by Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi, is regarded as the simplest and most direct path to Self-realization. However, Self-inquiry is also very subtle and can be hard to accomplish More...
Rediscovering Rama (Part-I)
Rama is one of the most exalted figures in all of Hinduism, yet we find him very much maligned today. Scholars like Wendy Doniger accuse Rama of abandoning Sita because he was afraid of becoming a ‘sex addict’. More...
Ram Janmabhoomi Temple at Ayodhya is more about India’s honour than religious belief
I vividly remember that Sunday afternoon when I was loitering in our neighbourhood along with other children. We were school students then, and apart from cricket, the other topic of our passionate discussion was More...
Ayodhya Dispute-II: A Timeline of Events
[contextly_sidebar id=”ytIacg78MWBFbBzpPAqdiRBZ1iYY3Y36″] Between writing Part I and Part II of this series, I came across this article by Deepanjana Pal on a documentary by Anand Patwardhan on Babri-RJB More...