Analysis/Insights

India, the world’s largest democracy, is in the midst of a marathon five-week election that will result in the selection of its next prime minister. Although Nate Silver has yet to make it official, most pundits and prognosticators predict that Narendra Modi will be India’s next leader. Modi bears striking similarities to a celebrated American [...]

 The secularists are bad losers. They are the kind of pupil who tampers with his school report before showing it to dad. For fifteen years, I have seen them bluffing to obscure the fact of their defeat in the Ayodhya evidence debate. Now, their thesis of a Hindutva fascism had not been confirmed on any [...]

As an American of Indian descent, I have always been fascinated by the arcane depths of the Hindu culture to which I belong. I have been practicing Yoga and writing about Indian metaphysics, Buddhism and South Asian Art and Culture for a long time, and am fairly sensitive to how my native traditions are represented [...]

कालो वा कारणं राज्ञोराजा वा कालकारणं |इति ते संशयो माभूद राजा कालस्य कारणं || म० भा० श० प० This shlok is sutra to understand a basic question i.e. do historical condition create the character of state, or does the character of the state create historical conditions? Time, is not the force that governs human affairs, [...]

India, a secular democracy or a theocracy? In a secular democracy, as is professed by India, the state should not interfere in the personal beliefs of its citizens. The freedom of faith or religion is the right of an individual. So, it follows, in a truly secular state, all its citizens ought to be perceived [...]

At long last, shortly before he would turn 100, Khushwant Singh has gone. India loses a pleasant writer and frequently humorous political and social commentator. He was a forthright spokesman of the Nehruvian English-speaking elite, at one time even the direct press chief of Jawaharlal Nehru himself. He also served as an assistant to Sikh [...]

For most Indians the word Wahhabi means Saudi Arabian fundamentalism. When told that Wahhabism has deep roots in the Indian sub-continent, the first response is usually denial often followed by claims that Indian Wahhabism was a British invention. Those who think that way would do well to visit a small cemetery hidden away in a [...]

A possibly good side to the Wendy Doniger affair At first sight, the withdrawal of Prof. Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus, an Alternative History by her publisher Penguin is an all-round disaster for the Hindus. The nit-picking by some Hindu activists that the book wasn’t really banned by a Court but only withdrawn by the [...]

‘Sonia Gandhi Maino ‘ Anti Hindu Congress’ ‘Sickularism’ (secularism) ‘Pseudo Secularists’  ‘CIA ‘ ‘Hindu disunity ‘ paid anti hindu media’Taj Mahal is Hindu temple’ and many other slogans along with thousands of conspiracy theories has become the favourite diet of most Hindus who are lost in emotional outbursts of rants and rhetoric. This is not [...]

This article has been generated assuming that majority of the readers are familiar with the background of Arya Samaj, how it got started, its initial association with Brahmo Samaj and the later break off, its founder (Dayananda Saraswati), etc. The focus of this article is more on the situation of the Arya Samaj today and [...]