Analysis/Insights

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 The nit-picking by some Hindu activists that the book wasn’t really banned by a Court but only withdrawn by the [...]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 [...]

“When Germany is Christian, is India Hindu?”  got amazingly good response with thousands of facebook likes. However, some readers felt I made a mistake by not distinguishing between good, tolerant Hinduism, which is a private belief, and bad, intolerant Hindutva, which stands for the ‘communal agenda of an extreme right Hindu party’ that wants to [...]

Gunga Din is a character from a classic Rudyard Kipling poem, and was adapted into a film of the same name in 1939. In that production, Gunda Din is a simple water bearer who sacrifices his life in order to save the white British soldiers from rebel forces of the Thugee. The film is now [...]

The controversy about Penguin India’s decision to withdraw and pulp Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History brings to the surface issues likely to trouble scholars of India for years to come. First, the obvious: the banning of any book violates academic or intellectual freedom. Rightly so, this leads to moral indignation among the intelligentsia of India [...]