Against the setting November sun of 1963, a streak of dense vapour pierced through the coconut tree-lined silhouette of the Thumba seashore in Kerala.
In an exclusive interview to Swarajya, the economist, historian, and Rajya Sabha MP Dr Subramanian Swamy talks about his Harvard days and what prompted his return to India.
Distinguished filmmaker and now author Vivek Agnihotri is in the limelight because of his new book, Urban Naxals.
In the book, Agnihotri writes about his journey in making the film Buddha in a Traffic Jam, which exposed the nexus between an India-wide Maoist terror movement and their supporters in urban centres such as the academia and media.
It is not that we do not understand Ambedkar; it is that we fear him.
Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, senior fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, and Anand Ranganathan, scientist and author spoke with the Minister of Defence, Ms Nirmala Sitharaman for Swarajya Conversations. From the Nirav Modi scandal to the capital expenditure of the military, to the Rafale deal, to India’s nuclear doctrine and the BJP’s chances in the 2019 elections, Ms Sitharaman spoke on all of that and more.
The euphoria on one hand, and anguish on the other, with which the result of the Gorakhpur bypoll has been received by the Indian commentariat, is proof if any was needed, that investment in elections goes much beyond the one made by the politicians who are fighting it.
Nationalism is as useful to humans as their tail.
Nationalism is an unaccommodating relic and in today’s globalised world it represents a dangerous anachronism.
There is nothing constructive that Nationalism can achieve in peacetime that Patriotism can’t.
Nationalism is as useful to humans as their tail.
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While the individual man is an insolvable puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.
I grew up in difficult times, the seventies. My grandmother had coined the famous slogan – Garib Hatao. It pained me as a kid to have to watch garibs being hataoed from our zones, LBZ in particular.
Recently I read a scholarly article in my favourite newspaper Hindustan Times.… Read more
JP thinks the answer to bad politics is good politics, not no politics
A few minutes into Satyajit Ray’s Jalsaghar and there comes a moment that defines JP, Jayaprakash Narayan of the Lok Satta Party. The genial bhadralok, the sole audience, is enraptured by the raag being rendered to perfection by the sitarist sitting opposite.… Read more
Fifty years ago, roughly 30 babies in 1000 found it physically impossible to emerge from the birth canal. Today that figure stands at 36. We are therefore stuck in a compromise, and C-section babies are living proof of this.
Life has no purpose.… Read more
The state’s health indicators have been abysmal from Narendra Modi’s CM tenure.
Four years ago, this author had scrutinised Gujarat’s health and found it in a sorry state. At the time, its sitting Chief Minister had left no stone unturned in projecting Gujarat as a model for the rest of India to follow – a prosperous state populated by uncomplaining, hard-working people, backed by an able, hands-on administration, scaling heights the other states could only dream of.
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Diwali turns Delhi into a gas chamber, scientific data has proved this year on year. Last year’s Diwali was the most dangerous in a decade.
Humans are particularly adept at savouring joy at the cost of others. We have rationalised this through a variety of means – race, sects, communes, cults, ideologies, religion, to name a few.… Read more
You are saying this now. But what about the fact that you said the exact opposite yesterday?
SnapshotThe gleaners spread around, and here and there,
Spike after spike, their sparing harvest pick.
The story of Upendranath Brahmachari is the story of a forgotten man, remembered only when a street in Kolkata that bears his name shows up on Google Maps.
A veritable Animal Farm has been useful to humans in medical science, from guinea pigs to cows to camels. Thankfully, science and politics don’t mix elsewhere but only in India.
The combined efforts of the human imagination have endowed inter-galactic aliens with two eyes, two ears, one nose, four limbs, and one brain.
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The Left and the Right are two sides of the same coin – emotional, impulsive, hypocritical, entrenched.
You believe what you see, but unfortunately what you see is written by those who see what they believe.
A recent article by columnist Sadanand Dhume is proof if ever it was needed, that Objectivity is a metallic object that must be left behind before the writer passes through the op-ed threshold.… Read more
Unlike those who appropriate him, the one thing Ambedkar was not, was an apologist.
From the Aryans to Aurangzeb, from St Xavier to Shivaji, our historians have chosen what to hide, what to invent, and what to disclose. The singular reason for this is the craving for patronage – of an ideology, a government, an ecosystem, or a clique.… Read more
The real failure of Narendra Modi’s demonetisation campaign has been its callous inability to acknowledge how it devastated vast sections of Indian society.
This is the last part of the five-part series on demonetisation.
Demonetisation, the great experiment undertaken by the Modi government, has run its course of 50 days.
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By definition a liberal cannot be intolerant of a liberal value or a set of values.
The person who goes by the handle @brumbyOz has written an enlightening rebuttal to my recent column, Of Mohammad Shami and the Good Bad Muslim.
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