JNU Stories | Udaya Kumar: The Classroom
For someone who had stayed away from many lectures during undergraduate and postgraduate years, I was surprised to find myself attending most of my classes in JNU. I don’t think…
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For someone who had stayed away from many lectures during undergraduate and postgraduate years, I was surprised to find myself attending most of my classes in JNU. I don’t think…
Read MoreTHE START OF THE RETURN JOURNEY VIA YUMEN We are journeying back. I am sitting in a hotel room in Yumen, drinking cup after cup of jasmine tea….
Read MoreOF CASTE AND AMBEDKAR Perhaps no one was personally closer to Gandhi than his English friend Charlie Andrews, whom he first met in South Africa in 1912. In August 1942,…
Read MoreThe Colonial Indian Self-image An ancient civilization with amazing wealth of philosophical, literary and scientific treatises and unparalleled continuity of ‘the life of the mind’, India nonetheless was not at…
Read MoreAt the stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947, India won her independence from the British empire and a nation was born.Over the past seventy-three years, our country has struggled…
Read MoreThree days before India played England at Lord’s in the first of the four Test series in July 2011 a dinner was held in honour of Mahendra Singh Dhoni at…
Read MoreWhen the Buddha was eighty years old and knew he wasn’t going to live much longer, he offered the practice of the ‘island of self ’ to his students. He…
Read MoreWhen we suffer, we tend to think that suffering is all there is at that moment, and happiness belongs to some other time or place. People often ask, ‘Why do…
Read MoreOn the evening of 6 August 1947, with the partition of the subcontinent looming, a party to bid farewell to officers assigned to the Pakistan Army was in full swing…
Read MoreThis treaty of 1842 settled the boundary between Ladakh and Tibet in unequivocal terms leaving no cause for any kind of border dispute in this region. * Arguments and counter-arguments…
Read MoreTREE TIME At first it was the underwear. I wanted to become a tree because trees did not wear bras. Then it had to do with the spectre of violence….
Read MoreFor some Dalits, Ambedkar is an actual prophet who changed the course of their history and future. But despite his outstanding political career and invaluable contribution to Dalit rights, Ambedkar’s…
Read MoreONE For months, the front pages had warned of imminent doom. Bombay was reeling under an explosion of ‘pollution, crowds and noise’, noted one pessimist. Predicted another, ‘The urban landscape…
Read MoreBeing a ‘Woman Director’ Up until a few years ago, the label of being a ‘woman director’ used to upset me. When asked, “How is it to be a woman…
Read More‘[Thich Nhat Hanh] shows us the connection between personal, inner peace and peace on earth.’ —His Holiness the Dalai Lama Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the best known Zen…
Read MoreTHE LOOTING OF INDIA Durant’s outrage – the conquest of India by a corporation – the East India Company – the deindustrialization of India – destruction of Indian textiles…
Read MoreIn the summer of 2009, I trekked to the Gangotri glacier, the rapidly melting source of the Bhagirathi—one of the two glacial streams that join to form the Ganga….
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There is a vast cultural movement emerging from the Global South and sweeping all before it. India’s Shah Rukh Khan, after all, is the most popular actor in the…
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7 August 2019 India is battling an educational crisis of unprecedented proportions. Half of the country’s Standard 5 students cannot read a Standard 2 level text in their native language….
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Walking the Roadless Road: Exploring the Tribes of Nagaland is a comprehensive history of the Naga tribes who live within the borders of Nagaland. Starting with an overview of migration…
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