This issue leads with an essay by Akeel Bilgrami on ‘Understanding Gandhi on Caste and Modernity’, a slightly modified version of a lecture he delivered at a meeting in memory of five leading progressive intellectuals and artists and activists –…
After ten years of its dark night of the soul, Indian politics found, on the 4th of June, that it had groped its way into a tentative shaft of light; and though the sour stink of fascism is still in…
The thoughts on Gandhi and caste that Akeel Bilgrami’s lecture give rise to, have been intellectually most stimulating, as have been his explorations of the subject. This in itself makes one look forward to reading his forthcoming book. We also…
Almost all seminars on Max Mueller held in my country begin or end with one of the many euphoric eulogies Max Mueller uttered to underline his deep attachment to ancient India, that is, India of the Vedas and the Upanishads.…
After Cyrus Mistry’s death in a car accident, National Transport Minister Mr Nitin Gadkari posted a video on Twitter on 9 September 2022, emphasising the importance of airbags in cars.1 The video, which starred Akshay Kumar and carried a logo…
One of the striking features of the South Indian rural milieu is the large number of farm labourers who have served the same families of landowners, year after year. Quite often, they are bound to their masters by deep-rooted traditions…
Christopher Thomas Kurien, scholar of distinction and social conscience, and an inspiring teacher of economics, died on 23 July at the MOSC Medical College Hospital in Kolencherry, Kerala. He was 93. CTK’s entry into economics was inspired by the vision…
Tirthankar Chattopadhyay passed away on 23 June 2024 in Kolkata, at the age of 81. He had been suffering from cancer in his last years. I was one of his close friends for the last six decades and his comrade…
S. Irfan Habib, Maulana Azad: A Life, Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2023, xii+306 pages, Rs 899 Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a polymath, nationalist, secularist par excellence, and a key figure in India’s nation-building process. The life and thought of the…
There is perhaps no more urgent and fraught issue in India today than the question of the relationship between the democratic State, secularism and religion. According to a widely held view, either secularism as a conceptnorm is inapplicable in India…