When writing history, it is essential that the author undertakes deep research into the subject, or at the very least possesses a sound familiarity with the historical and cultural landscape. When someone relies heavily on secondary sources, especially questionable ones, the result is often a half-baked work in which the underlying agenda becomes all too […]
In the small but voluble precincts of the Indian Internet, specifically, the corner of X formerly known as Twitter, where men with saffron-tinted display pictures and bios reading ‘Civilizational Hindu | Anti-Woke | Follow Back’ hold court, a curious consensus has emerged. Narendra Modi, the man under whose government the Ram Mandir got built, the […]
This is it. I can’t take it anymore. Celebrating Holi by standing on the walls of a temple at Assi Ghat, Varanasi, while smoking and dancing on obscene songs, calling girl dancers who were not just dancing — but making vulgar and sexual actions at a festival so rooted in bhakti was just disgusting. Let […]
While I was scrolling through Instagram, I came across a reel in which a Muslim content creator was discussing the failure of liberal intellectuals, pointing out how people were rejoicing in the ongoing attack against Iran by the US and Israel rather than condemning it. What caught me was not the argument itself, but what […]
In 2025, the Election Commission of India (ECI) conducted the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar. It made news. Those on the Left said it was the ‘biggest disenfranchisement exercise’. Now, with some members of the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) approaching the Supreme Court of India against the SIR in West Bengal, The Dossier […]
Faces hidden, yet the Himachali aesthetic alone steals the show. In November 2025, these words, paired with mesmerising photographs, flooded timelines across Instagram, X and YouTube shorts. Captured were the enigmatic figures draped in vibrant Kinnauri Pattu shawls, layered with heavy silver jewellery and crowned with flowers, while their faces remained hidden behind the deep […]
In the winter of 1911, as the dust of the Delhi Durbar settled over the plains of Shahjahanabad, King George V laid the foundation stone for a capital that was intended to be an eternal testament to British supremacy. It is said that Edward Lutyens, surveying the scrubland of Raisina Hill, envisioned a city that […]
For decades, Western intellectuals, journalists, and policymakers have searched obsessively for external explanations for Islamist terrorism. Poverty. Colonial trauma. Social exclusion. Racism. Humiliation. Western foreign policy. Israel. America. France. Capitalism. The list is endlessly recycled because it is reassuring. If jihad is the product of misery, prosperity will cure it. If it is born of […]
Mohammed Zeeshan and Mohammed Gulfam, the two Islamists who stabbed Ex-Muslim Saleem Wastik on February 27, have been killed in two separate encounters with the Uttar Pradesh police. The Indian Right is celebrating their killing. But should it? No. Because it is only the two believers who have died, the religion that made them believers, […]
Last month, I was attending the second day of the Delhi University Literature Festival with my junior when a frantic call shattered the afternoon. Over the call, he was told that a friend of his, whom he had known since his undergrad days, Ruchi Tiwari, a journalist by profession, was being lynched in broad daylight […]
You say you are an atheist or agnostic and still alive — you are a Hindu. Because if you had been a Muslim and been or even tried to be any of the two mentioned before — you would have been in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) by now, just like Ex-Muslim Saleem Wastik. Wastik […]
Not everyone goes to the mandir to worship god? This was the question that arose in my mind when my landlord’s daughter asked me to accompany her to a Gurudwara. ‘It’s a place where we pray, Suraj. It’s a place of remembering Sri Guru Nanak Sahib’, she said. ‘You’ll get langar there. Ghee wala suji […]
If you are a fan of Arundhati Roy, you must be aware of a story that she told from the 2002 Gujarat Riots, in which a woman named Sayeeda was caught by a mob and her stomach was ‘ripped open and stuffed with burning rags’. Not just this, but also that after she died, ‘someone […]
Every great culture and civilization has a clear concept of its self identity. This definition is not rigid and can change with times, but it is perilous for any civilization to not know ‘who they are’, at any given time in history. The logic behind this is similar to the logic behind borders. They are […]
I use X occasionally. On 7 February, when I opened my X account, I saw a post from an account named Faarees. In his tweet, Faarees wrote: ‘Only dumb and stupid folks still believe that Muslims did the 9/11’. Faarees had written this in response to a person’s tweet that had an image of the […]
Every constitutional democracy is defined by its ability to preserve principled distinctions inter dissentum et subversionem, between dissent and disruption; inter protestationem et provocationem, between lawful protest and incitement; and ultimately between civil resistance and organised attempts to undermine constitutional order. India confronted this test in February 2020, when the National Capital Territory of Delhi […]
I’m sure you’ve heard of the grand Maha Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj. I’m fairly certain you’ve heard of the one in Haridwar. I might even bet you’ve caught wind of the gatherings in Ujjain or Nasik. But I am absolutely sure you haven’t heard of the Kumbh in Bengal – or more specifically, the annual […]
Think of your childhood and tell me what your mother would have done if you had brought your friend’s remote control car to your home without asking him. Stopped you, right? That’s the rule. This is exactly what has happened with the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. Gandhi wanted to break a rule of the Parliament […]
Do you, like me, believe that our Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are busy doing critical work? You aren’t wrong. It’s just that this “critical work” is different. The third edition of the Critical Philosophy of Caste and Race conference, held between January 16 and 18, is the latest critical stuff from IIT Delhi (IITD). One suspects […]
Taking a bath was a simple activity, back in the 1980s. While many of our homes had bathrooms, men seldom had a bath inside. The children, almost as a rule, bathed in the open, under the hand pump, which were common in every other home. And children didn’t mean just infants or toddlers. We were […]
Purnima Rani Shil, a 12-year-old Hindu girl, was raped on 8 October 2001. Her fault? That as the polling agent of the Awami League in Sirajganj, Bangladesh, she had protested against the electoral malpractices by the workers of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) during the 2001 general election. The result of doing right was gruesome. […]
Voter Apathy I have generally avoided writing on UGC guidelines except a couple of posts intended to wake up the GC warriors to what they are doing. UGC guidelines are evil. Group guilts and group innocence, and presumption of guilt till the accused proves himself innocent, and he has to stay in jail till he […]
If I ask you to think about Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi is the father of our nation would definitely top the charts of your brain. A website (mkgandhi.org) maintained by two Gandhian institutions: Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal and Gandhi Research Foundation, also repeats this statement. However, it states a lie as well. It says, ‘… Constitution of […]
