We live in a globalised and digitised age. Some of us receive news of friends through the internet, transact our purchases through the internet, conduct businesses through the internet, even receive our medicine through the internet. The richest four persons…
Out of 547 Jātaka stories, eight describe the caṇḍālas. Out of these eight stories, half contain passing references about this social class, but at least four are stories where the protagonists themselves are caṇḍālas. In those four stories which are…
In the present issue of Social Scientist we continue with our series on Gandhi, on the occasion of his 150th birth anniversary, with two more articles on him. The lead article by Gulammmohammed Sheikh, the renowned painter from Baroda, is…
The Indian handloom industry is presently estimated to produce goods valued at around $108 billion. Nearly 27 lakh households across the country are employed in this sector. It is one of the major contributors to exports with a share of…
We continue our discussion of Gandhi on the occasion of his 150th birth anniversary with three more articles on him in the current issue of Social Scientist. Our interest in Gandhi is not a scholastic one; we engage with him…
The concept of ‘nation’ is a modern one, and many definitions of the word exist by authors ranging from John Stuart Mill to J.V. Stalin. The essential common element in these definitions is that, to be a nation, a country…
Gandhi remains controversial yet still demands reconsideration because he stands at the beginning of the long twentieth century and we stand at the other, implosive, end. The questions he asks about how imperial nations were being made and how free…
At a time when toxic masculinity is directing the course of politics in our world, I thought it would be relevant to explore the challenge that the Indian National Movement was able to put up to the ‘the brute masculinity…
The interviews of the defence lawyers M.L. Sharma and A.P. Singh in the ‘Nirbhaya’ case in 2015, in the BBC documentary India’s Daughter, exposed a disturbing aspect of the patriarchal social structure which blames women for arousing the ‘lustful’ and…
Numerous families across India’s urban and rural landscape continue to live in conditions not fit for human habitation, even less making for conducive family environs. Large numbers of occupation-based migration to urban areas as well as lack of access to…