Christianity in Europe Today
Over the weekend, I read the French political theorist Olivier Roy’s superb ‘Is Europe Christian?’ and was mighty impressed by his analysis and arguments. The transformations of Christianity since the...
View ArticleOn Freud
Each time I hug and pamper my children, I subconsciously know that I’m contributing to the scaffolding of their mental architecture and shaping the landscape of their emotional world. And that dear...
View ArticleThe Golden Road
In ‘The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World‘, Dalrymple’s thesis is that once upon a time, India was the center of the world. It was the land that exported its goods, gods, ideas and...
View ArticleThe Codification of Culture
Like most migrants, I insist, with moderate success, that my daughters speak their mother tongue (Malayalam), diligently expose them to Malayalam cinema (highly successful), feed them Kerala’s cuisine...
View ArticleThe Jaipur Footprint in Colonial New Delhi
When New Delhi was built by the British, a substantial chunk of the required land was under the possession of the Raja of Jaipur. The three villages – Jaisinghpura, Madhoganj and Raja ka Bazaar were...
View ArticleOn Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt, one of twentieth century’s most famous political theorist and philosophers was catapulted to global fame with her coverage of the trial of Adolf Eichmann – the key architect of the...
View ArticleDiscovery of the Indus Valley Civilization
Until September 1924, India’s history was considered to have begun not more than 2500 years (500 BC max) ago. That month, John Marshall, the Director General of the ASI, in a piece published in the...
View ArticleSanchi Notes
The Sanchi stupa is a spectacular Buddhist monument. It’s address is an unusual one as Sanchi was a city that the Buddha never visited during his lifetime. Hiuen Tsang who spent 15 years in India...
View ArticleBhimbetka Notes
After visiting Sanchi, my next stop was Bhimbetka. Since I don’t own a car in Delhi, road trips aren’t a common feature of my life. So the two-hour drive from Sanchi to Bhimbetka was relished. The...
View ArticleAn India-Japan comparison
In ‘Free to Choose,’ Milton Friedman—the poster boy of free markets and the favourite punching back of the left—makes an interesting comparison between India’s 30 years after independence and Japan’s...
View ArticleOn Simone Weil
In the early years of my career in development, one of the raging debates was about the glory and ethical principle of working in the ‘field’ against joining organizations that paid lip service to...
View ArticleOur Refrigerated World
So many of the gastronomical delights of our modern life would be impossible without modern refrigeration. Cheeseburgers, chilled beer, ice cream and of course all the imported exotic items like...
View ArticleSpinoza’s God
The most dramatic moment in the history of philosophy must be Socrates being forced to drink hemlock. If one is asked to pick another moment that could rank high on drama, my submission would be...
View Article‘We Must Cultivate Our Own Garden’ for this is not the ‘Best of All Possible...
In the late 17th century, with scientific discoveries being the flavour of the season, Spinoza had already propounded his idea of God. Into this vibrant mix of new scientific thinking and philosophical...
View ArticleTughlaqabad
The Tughlaqs are seen as a relatively minor dynasty that ruled India from Delhi. But when you think of it, their 90-year reign from 1320 was greater than the age of the modern Indian Republic. Today,...
View ArticleKarthik/Murugan/Skanda/…
When I was in college, the roll call for attendance used to be exasperating for the profs as we had a Balaji Kartik, a Karthik and a Balaji Subramaniam in class. For me, nothing better exemplified the...
View ArticleThe Seventeenth Century – The Age of Genius
At the turn of the seventeenth century, Bruno was burnt at the stake for expanding Copernicus’ heliocentric theory and proposing that the universe was infinite with multiple stars and galaxies all...
View ArticleBalasore, Bhadrak Notes
The coastal districts of Odisha are often the Ground Zero of the ferocious cyclones that originate in the Bay of Bengal. But what was once a destructive phenomenon has now been tamed by the state...
View ArticleQuestion 7
Had it not been for the bombing of Hiroshima, Richard Flanagan would never have been born. The bomb led to Japan’s surrender. His father, a POW, who would never have survived another winter in Japan,...
View ArticleA ‘Brutal’ pic
Yesterday, I was at the Chandigarh Secretariat of the Government of Punjab. The structure, an iconic landmark of the city, is also one of the best representations of Brutalism – the minimalist...
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