Intellectual Dilettantism at India’s Expense Must Stop
When Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen, Chancellor of the supposedly modern version of the Nalanda University, accuses the Government of India of interference in education, especially in the context of the Nalanda University, he is essentially declining to be accountable to the people of India who are the principal contributors …
Create a Civilisational Wave via Oceanic Convergence
A mega civilisational convergence of the Indian Ocean Rim (IOR) countries—represented not only by their official bodies but leading thinkers, academics and scholars—took place last weekend at Bhubaneswar. The conference was also a celebration and recognition of the seafaring prowess of civilisational Odisha and the Indian coast’s contribution towards initiating …
SAVARKAR REMAINS INCARCERATED
A selective and motivated reading of Veer Savarkar has suppressed the many facets of his worldview which portray him as a nationalist and patriot If one were to designate one historic national leader who has received unfair and indifferent treatment in independent India then the name of Veer Savarkar, whose …
Of Sen And Insensibility
After eight years of mentorship, and after waxing eloquent about his role and vision in the revival of Nalanda, all that Prof. Amartya Sen and his academic clique have to show are a few paltry aesthetic nonentities in terms of buildings. When earlier this week, Professor Amartya Sen suddenly spluttered …
RACIALLY PREJUDICED, MATERIALLY DRIVEN
The Western civilisation’s evolution has been imbalanced and its decimating mindset remains in full dominance even today The behaviour of the Alabama police towards the hapless Sureshbhai Patel last week, where the defenceless Indian grandfather was tossed to the ground and brutally beaten up just because he was talking a …
ABOUT THE MESSAGE AND THE RECIPIENT
Barack Obama’s reference to freedom of religious practice and Article 25 was really aimed at the over-zealous soul-harvesting types in India This January 26 provided an interesting as well as reassuring image. The leader of the world’s largest democracy, a leader who once sold tea on a railway platform to …
The March to Fulfil India’s Glorious Destiny Begins
The observance of Republic Day is often an occasion for looking back and for national stock-taking. An assessment of the national trajectory is something that the occasion offers. In the oath that he administered on January 26, 1930, Mahatma Gandhi spoke unsparingly of the “inalienable right of the Indian people …
Bengal’s Evil Days Reflection of Power-Ability Imbalance
Ancient Indian texts on governance had always a detailed section on the ethics which enjoined rulers to establish and perpetuate a value-based relation with their subjects. Rulers were clearly directed to be accountable and responsive to those they ruled. Such injunctions on their conduct in public life also succeeded in …
DISTORTING A CULTURAL LEGACY
By not tossing Leela Samson, the Government of India has, in fact, displayed a spirit of fair-play. And she, by accusing it of interfering and obstructing her work, has only taken recourse to falsehood in order to perpetuate a hollow impression of victimhood The founding ideal of the Kalakshetra, was …
THE GLOWING SPIRIT OF OUR CIVILIZATION
It would be interesting to extrapolate some features of a civilisational state into the Indian context and juxtapose them against some present efforts’ The past six months have been positive for India, especially for her quest to rediscover her contours — physical, ideational and spiritual — as a civilisational state. …
THE SWAMI AND THE MAHATMA
Louise Burke noted that Vivekananda wanted to spread the Master’s message not only to Europe and Asia but also to South Africa, where an Indian community lived In her path-breaking multi-volume study, Swami Vivekananda in the West — New Discoveries, one of the few encyclopaedic works on Swami Vivekananda’s actions in …
Contemporary Dimension of a Civilisational Question
In his “Reply to the Madras Address” in 1897, after four hectic years in the West where he reversed, to a great extent, the negative narrative of India that had been ingrained in a section of the intelligentsia by groups professing to labour for spreading the “light” of a particular …
Marxist Historians with Stalinist Mindsets
“Eminent” Marxist historians possessing an intolerant Stalinist mindset have struck again. By referring to the Prime Minister in an inane resolution full of the pathos of the dying embers of an intellectual era and worldview that is fast decaying, they have spoken of the need to “isolate history-writing from chauvinistic …
HOME-COMING OF A NEW KIND
The setting was, ‘balmy Goa’ but the agenda on the platter was an intense and fascinating mind brew. In witnessing it, I remembered the civilisational past of India as a knowledge society that evolved frameworks, charted new courses through continuous debate, dialogue The afternoon before I left for Goa to …