What poetry is to language, philosophy is to thought, a craft that brings new concepts and ways of thinking into the scholarly disciplines.
Political Thought(s)
The Great Game 2.0
Photographer: Anagha Varrier | Source: Unsplash After the recent actions in Kashmir, I have read numerous comparisons between India and Israel, of turning Kashmir into Gaza. Not surprising, since both the Indian and the international left have historical sympathies with the Palestinian struggle and perhaps more importantly, know the Middle East well because of their personal…
The State of Algorithmic Politics
Emotional Truths Why is it that at a time when the future of human existence is threatened by climate change, the future of work is threatened by automation and the future of every other living being is threatened by humans, why is it that we are increasingly electing regimes guaranteed to destroy life as we…
Why is Liberalism in Trouble?
Photographer: Pedro Lastra | Source: Unsplash One of the characteristics of the modern era is the importance of politics. We expect it to give us freedom and equality, prosperity and progress, and in a dystopian mode, fear and destruction. It’s a heavy lift, combining the job of religion and community with generous servings of science and…
The Form of the World
Photographer: Heather Lo | Source: Unsplash Configurations India has a renewed government with a few new faces, the most unusual of whom is the new minister for external affairs, Subramanyam Jaishankar, a career diplomat who is now in the Cabinet Committee on Security, which instantly makes him one of the most powerful people in the country.…
Bits of India 2: The Secularism of the RSS
Photographer: Aashish R Gautam | Source: Unsplash Buyer beware: this essay has a higher than usual ratio of speculation to explanation. I am playing with two central ideas (illustrated in the flowchart below): What? The modern system — with the state and the market being its standout institutions — destabilizes traditional categories, breaks them apart, swallows the pieces and finally…
The Bots of War
We think bots might have tipped the polls in the UK and in the US, but will South Asia host the first “war of the bots?” If you had asked me even two days ago, I would have laughed at the possibility, but having experienced how the recent India-Pakistan crisis was amplified on social media,…
Back to the Future
By UY Scuti (Photo taken during my rail-fanning session.) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Thoughts on this wonderful analysis by Pedestrian Observations. I bet Anil Ambani didn’t get the Rafale deal because he submitted his tender in triplicate. Nevertheless, while the Rafale story is — inevitably — about corruption, I want to point out…
Hard Laddoo Politics and the Viagra of History
Most people I know have a whatsapp story to tell of that deranged uncle or classmate who simultaneously believes that Hinduism is the religion of peace and nonviolence and that Muslims and other interlopers have to dealt with severely, i.e., anywhere between abjection and annihilation. It seems we are soft laddoos who need to become…
Lynchings are acts of terror
If you’re Indian you know this already and if you aren’t you may not care, but in this note, I want to pay attention to a new innovation in the annals of violence: the Whatsapp driven lynchings of muslims accused of being rustlers of cows, though like every other innovation, it’s spread to lynchings of…