The threat to Indian democracy posed by communalism, or by ‘communal fascism,’ as Amartya Sen, perhaps first, described it,1 is now perceived globally. Michelguglielmo Torri, arguably the foremost Italian scholar on India, has outlined the rapid growth in recent years…
Is anti-fascism a strategy determined by the turns of national politics and the balance of forces of imperialism? To Georg Lukács, writing in the Soviet Union during its invasion by fascist Germany, anti-fascism is the struggle in the sphere of…
A democrat is attracted to the ideas, life and mission of Periyar because of the latter’s lifelong and praxological dedication to the promotion of social justice and scientific temper. These are values enshrined in the modernist sections of the Constitution…
This article aims to explore the materiality and functionality of Braj poetry and the networks that sustained it. Usually, the Mughal empire is associated with the growth of Persian and Arabic literature but in fact, during that period, a large…
The forces of Hindutva have always tried to hunt down Jawaharlal Nehru’s legacy. He represents the undoing of all that the RSS–BJP stand for, i.e. modernism, secularism and an inclusive form of nationalism. Nehru represents that current of Indian anti-colonial…
Recently, I shared a snap of the Poorna Swaraj at social network, a couple of people from academics and news media questioned the association of MK Gandhi with the Poorna Swaraj. They immediately asked a set of questions about the…
Biswamoy Pati, Tribals and Dalits in Orissa: Towards a Social History of Exclusion, c. 1800–1950, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2019, xvi+222 pages, Rs 945 The book under review is the finale of a lifetime of Biswamoy Pati’s extraordinary publishing…
As this issue is being prepared for print, India is in the midst of an election which many see as a battle between forces that want to undermine and want to save the Idea of India as formulated by the…
As all of you are aware, the Idea of India is deeply threatened today and the discipline of history is being mauled beyond recognition and weaponised to destroy the Idea of India by religious communal forces, which not only did…
In this essay I address the emergence and growth of the Hindu identity in late colonial Punjab, giving special attention to the participation of Lala Lajpat Rai both as an ideologue and activist in the context of the shifts taking…