The intrinsic message of the Hindu Service and Spiritual Fair is that Hindu society must address contemporary challenges through a definite civilisational approach Melas or fairs have, in the near past, played a pivotal role in India, especially in support of movements for national regeneration. The celebrated Hindu Mela in …

Syama Prasad Mookerjee never bowed to Nehruvian pressures when it came to the larger good of the country Making an assessment of Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s life and personality, sometime in 1959, S Radhakrishnan, then Vice President of India, had perhaps come nearest to describing the essential and defining character trait …

Syama Prasad Mookerjee never bowed to Nehruvian pressures when it came to the larger good of the country Making an assessment of Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s life and personality, sometime in 1959, S Radhakrishnan, then Vice President of India, had perhaps come nearest to describing the essential and defining character trait …

The so-called intellectual mainstream relegated SP Mookerjee to an ideological corner and suppressed his versatility, his national acceptance and his vision for national progress Sixty one years after he was consigned to a confined and lonely death by free India’s first democratically elected Government on June 23, 1953, Syama Prasad …

Prime Minister Modi’s trip to Japan could be more than a visit to a friendly nation. It has a potential to unlock civilisational synergies   There is news that among his first visits abroad the Prime Minister of India has decided to include Japan. For those of us who wish …

When a man who is our next Prime Minister espouses ideals that the Mahatma and C Rajagopalachari stood for and promoted, it is time to give him a chance Respected Shri Gopal Gandhiji, Though an ordinary and unknown Indian, I have gathered courage to address you an open letter primarily …

In the consciousness of India, this city symbolises a seat of great civilisational churning which throws up new directions, leaders of new thought and of new epochs Varanasi has, in the last few days, assumed a certain centrality in the national political discourse. In the Indian civilisational experience Varanasi continues …

The spirit of Indianness finds expressions in many ways. But for the biased and the blinded, it has been reduced to symbolism and is exploitable When Mirra Alfassa (The Mother) of Pondicherry (now Puducherry) declared that India was her “true country, the country of my soul and spirit” and that …

The country is yet to be comfortable with her culture and civilisation, and seriously engage in uplifting its people out of a long phase of deprivation and scarcity A few days ago, a motley group of activists and academics of the Left and extreme Left persuasion came together to issue …

The contours of a Fascist political system in West Bengal are fast crystallizing under Mamata Banerjee . What remains to be seen is when such a system poses a final challenge to Mamata Banerjee herself and to her degenerative brand of politics. It is difficult to say whether the periodic …

It is good that the political discourse has at last gradually begun to move us nearer to our true and essential political and cultural self On a visit to southern India last week, I crossed the small town of Utthiramerur in the district of Kancheepuram in Tamil Nadu. A nondescript …

The study of the evolution of Indic civilisation, and how it influenced a number of spiritual movements across the world, is what a university of this kind must advance The governing idea behind the revival of Nalanda University should not merely be to promote ‘international understanding’, which in any case …

I am not in the habit of rebutting every ill-informed position taken on crucial episodes of Indian history, more so if they happen to be articulated by half-baked intellectuals and public personalities with quarter degrees, awarded under aliases from foreign universities. But at times even some ignorant comments made by …

India’s cultural icons must be effectively reached out to and rediscovered in the present struggle to narrate the new story of a changing India  Kenyan thinker, author and a leading voice of Africa’s cultural struggle, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, in his celebrated book, Decolonising the Mind (1981), has talked about the ‘cultural …